Coup attempt under way in Iraq?

[smoogatz]

Yesterday, this news:

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Tired_Iraqi_president_falls_ill_as__02252007.html

Today this:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070226/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

Anyone else see a connection?

[liberal N proud]

1. Maybe Iraqi President Jalal Talabani isn't really ill

Maybe he fled the country and they don't want to report otherwise.

[smoogatz]

2. That's my thinking--he may have been "tipped off" by the CIA

or elements of the Iraqi security forces. He's a Kurd, after all, and nobody wants trouble with the Kurds. He may also have been poisoned in some exotic way--a few years ago I'd have ridiculed anyone who'd suggest such a thing as a paranoid, but not anymore.

[peace13]

6. We have to add in Cheney's unscheduled visit

to Dubai as well! Wait, let me get the tin foil out. Really...anything is possible. I just hope that our troops don't get trapped in something that we can't get them out of!

[smoogatz]

7. Heh.

Too late for that.

[peace13]

4. It was first reported as a stroke!

How odd that they jet the president out and then an attack on the VP occurs!

[smoogatz]

8. The second VP is a Sunni

Not a coincidence, I'm guessing.

[malaise]

10. He fled on a US aircraft?

While it is strange that both the President and one VP are out of the picture for now, if he merely fled why have they now said he has been moved to intensive care. Why did they tell us the Sunni VP was only slightly bruised in the bomb attack this morning?
What a fugging mess.

[smoogatz]

11. If it's a CIA sponsored coup--

there's every reason to think they'll fuck it up. I had a friend in DC who was a CIA analyst/op, and he was a fucking moron. Nice guy, but what an idiot.

[malaise]

24. Possible n/t

[doublethink]

3. It had momentarily crossed my mind when I .....

heard that the Pres. and VP of Iraq were both in dire straits this morn. Don't know. Peace.

[dogday]

5. Yes and this is very weird indeed

I guess it is time to take out the tinfoil....

[snappyturtle]

9. I'm glad you brought this up!

The current Iraqi administration is a big problem for the Sunnis but how does one depose an elected official unless.....................yep.

[Jack Rabbit]

12. Somebody's been wearing his tin oil hat too tight

If Talabani had fled the country ahead of a coup, the plotters would already be proclaiming it. They wouldn't be making up a story about Talabani suffering a stroke while other sources report he is in intensive care in Jordan.

Meanwhile, bomb attacks are an everyday occurrence in Baghdad. There is no reason to think this tree is special when it's part of a dense forest.

[smoogatz]

14. Maybe.

But if the idea is to get Talabani out of the way so you can take out his Shi'a VP and possibly other members of his cabinet, then you sure as hell wouldn't announce it in advance. And if Talabani's poisoned or otherwise intentionally compromised by the CIA or Sunni operatives, you wouldn't exactly announce that, either. If Talabani recovers and returns to power, I'll admit that I'm being paranoid. If not, and if other attacks on high-level Iraqi officials take place over the next couple of weeks--which I'm guessing is likely to happen--then I'll admit to being paranoid, but maybe not quite paranoid enough.

[Jack Rabbit]

18. The Iraqi Government could fall anyway

In which case Talabani wouldn't return to power regardless of the state of his health.

Also, attacks on high level officials could increase anyway, regardless of anything else.

This does not sound like a coup to me. Coups better organized and faster than this. If it were a coup, Maliki would already be under arrest and a new government, with the support of Iraqi security forces (read: Bush and Cheney) would be on television announcing the new order, curfews that no one will respect, new decrees that will be laughed at, etc.

[smoogatz]

19. If it's a fast, obvious coup, though

doesn't the U.S. have an obligation to intervene in support of the democratically elected government it "successfully" crammed down the Iraqi people's throats two years ago?

[Jack Rabbit]

20. I think you answered your own question

The US has just as much obligation to support "the democratically elected government it 'successfully' crammed down the Iraqi people's throats two years ago" as it had to support the Diem regime in South Vietnam in 1963.

[smoogatz]

21. Purple fingers! Purple fingers!!!111!!

What are they going to say about all those Iraqis who turned out at risk of life and limb to vote for liberty? No, if it's a slow, quiet coup they don't have to admit in public to being cynical imperialists who've killed and injured 25,000 American service people for $16 trillion-worth of Iraqi oil. If it's a fast, noisy coup and they don't respond with a vigorous defense of the elected government, they can never again pontificate about bringing liberty and democracy to the oppressed peoples of Iraq. Which leaves them with zero functioning rationales for the invasion/occupation. They can't do it politically, I don't think. But I've misunderestimated their cynicism in the past. Lots of times.

[Jack Rabbit]

22. Truth is malleable for the neoconservatives

They can stage a coup with their fingerprints all over it and still say "democracy in on the march" and "Iraq is a sovereign state."

[smoogatz]

23. True enough.

Time will tell. It just seems like rather a broad coincidence right now, given everything else that's going on in Iraq, and the difficulty presented by the current government and its increasingly close ties to Iran. I believe it has finally dawned on the Bush administration that what they've done is basically hand the lion's share of that $16 trillion to the Mullahs. Then, if you can force yourself to think like a Neocon idiot for a moment or two, the next step becomes obvious: replace the existing government with one that's hostile to Iran; i.e., one that's Sunni dominated and by extension unelected. How do you do that without getting caught in the act? Take out the top Shi'a officials one by one, maybe, while the folks back home are distracted by the "surge" and Anna Nicole's decomposing corpse? I'm just saying...

[leftofthedial]

13. don't you have to have a real government

before you can have a coup?

[smoogatz]

16. Nope. You just need a power structure.

Which is currently dominated by the Shi'a and the Kurds. There are elements within the U.S. government, as you know, that have grown frustrated with the Shi'a-led government's inability to control even its own constituency, much less the open revolt in al Anbar and the rest of the Sunni triangle. Plus, the Saudis are pretty much openly funding the Sunni insurgents (and have recently armed them with what are probably U.S.-made shoulder fired missiles), and Saudi interests in the region tend to coincide with U.S. interests as an unspoken rule--except maybe where Israel's concerned. Israel is another factor to consider--if they're realists (and they are), they have to know that the PNAC/AIPAC/AEI fantasy of a stabel, pro-Israel Iraq is dead in the water. So now the question is, which side are they on in the civil war? The Saudi/Syrian side, or the Iranian side?

[Dhalgren]

15. Talabani is the head of state, not the head of government - that's al Maliki.

You couldn't really pull a coup against the President of a country that is actually run by the Prime Minister. It's the PM who would need to be replaced in a coup, not the President...

[smoogatz]

17. We'll see.

If I was al Maliki, though, I'd be checking under the bed at night.