Different headline, same news + a twist!

Divisions mar Iraq unity meeting
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer
18 March 2008
BAGHDAD - Major Sunni and Shiite political blocs Tuesday boycotted a national conference aimed at reconciling Iraq's rival communities — underscoring the deep divisions tearing at the country despite a decline in violence.

This story adds that al Sadr's Shiite bloc also walked out.
(Aside: this is the first story I've seen in quite a while to identify al Sadr as "anti-American". The "anti-American" tag, prevalent during the first 3-4 years of the war, had recently morphed into something more concilialtory, like, "powerful" or "influential" or, occasionally, "nationalistic". I'm a bit surprised to see the return to "anti-American"... we owe this guy a lot! He's kept his Mahdi Army under a more-or-less well-enforced cease-fire since last August!)

Meanwhile, the putative Republican nominee continues to insist that,

“Anybody who believes the surge has not succeeded, militarily, politically and in most other ways, frankly, does not know the facts on the ground.”

... and somehow hasn't noticed that the near-deified Gen Petraeus is among those woefully misinformed miscreants:

Petraeus, who is preparing to testify to Congress next month on the Iraq war, said in an interview that "no one" in the U.S. and Iraqi governments "feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation," or in the provision of basic public services.
[Washington Post, Petraeus: Iraqi Leaders Not Making 'Sufficient Progress', 14 march 2008]

Today McCain revealed his profound mastery of all things Middle Eastern by asserting that it is

“common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known."

... somehow forgetting that Iran is a Shi'ite theocracy and al Qaeda (even the so-called al Qaeda in Iraq) is a fundamentalist Sunni organization... and that Shia & Sunni don't get along all that well.

For what it's worth: this is exactly the kind of illegitimate, uninformed certainty that W and his minions displayed when assuring us that Saddam was behind 9/11.

It is of a piece with the "logic" that allows W and his minions - and the putative Republican nominee - to conflate al Qaeda with AQI.

It is the same ignorance that allowed Wolfowitz to assert - without challenge - that "Iraq has no history of ethnic strife."

This last is perhaps the weirdest willful ignorance diaplayed by any of W's minions:

- the great Shi'ite shrine to Imam Hussein in Karbala memorializes the central battle in Islam that defined for once and all the Shia-Sunni rift
- one of the counts against Saddam was that he used poison gas on Iraqi Kurds
- following the Gulf War, Bush I encouraged the Shiites in the south to rise up against Saddam, then sat back and watched as Saddam brutally suppressed the uprising

Stop the madness!