Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 14 February 2005

Good article in Post ("Iraq Winners Allied With Iran Are the Opposite of U.S. Vision," By Robin Wright, Washington Post Staff Writer, Monday, February 14, 2005; Page A08), which loves to stick it to Bush. I found the analysis rather doofy, though. Usually expect better out of Wright. She's poking a straw man here (ah, what was it again? Yes! Jeffersonian Democracy flying right out of Allawi hind-quarters!).

Here's the key paras:

But, in one of the greatest ironies of the U.S. intervention, Iraqis instead went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base -- and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door. It is the last thing the administration expected from its costly Iraq policy -- $300 billion and counting, U.S. and regional analysts say.

Yesterday, the White House heralded the election and credited the U.S. role. In a statement, President Bush praised Iraqis "for defying terrorist threats and setting their country on the path of democracy and freedom. And I congratulate every candidate who stood for election and those who will take office once the results are certified."

Yet the top two winning parties -- which together won more than 70 percent of the vote and are expected to name Iraq's new prime minister and president -- are Iran's closest allies in Iraq.

Thousands of members of the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite-dominated slate that won almost half of the 8.5 million votes and will name the prime minister, spent decades in exile in Iran. Most of the militia members in its largest faction were trained in Shiite-dominated Iran.

And the winning Kurdish alliance, whose co-leader Jalal Talabani is the top nominee for president, has roots in a province abutting Iran, which long served as its economic and political lifeline.

I don't know anyone who had his head on straight in DC who expected much better than this with the elections. Pretending the White House thought they'd end up with some secular regime hostile to Iran is just nonsense.

Now the Post is just catching up to the reality that drives my logic in the Esquire piece: Saddam is gone, we have our Big Bang rolling, but let's be real about tabling our winnings with regard to Iran.

Meanwhile, Friedman's rerunning his get-off-oil op-ed for like the 20th time. Really good stuff showing he's basically out of ideas since 9/11. He wants to be a serious thinker on security but he doesn't know how to be. So he shoots for the moon on economics, hoping it sounds really profound. It doesn't. It sounds like pie in the sky.

How much you wanna bet his upcoming tome on geopolitics goes on and on about his "geo-green" strategy?