Bush may turn to UN in search for Iraq solution

The man who ignored the UN before invading Iraq, stating that he didn't need "a permission slip" to defend the United States of America, has performed a rather dramatic U-turn and now says that - if the surge fails - he plans to internationalise the Iraq dispute and find an expanded role for UN forces.

I'm sure other country's all over the world simply can't wait to send their youngsters into this American quagmire and help take the heat off the Republicans before the 2008 elections.

It's about as insane an idea as I have ever heard and the greatest admission of failure one could ever expect to hear from a man and an administration that have not only treated the UN with contempt but, by insisting that the UN must rubber stamp their wars, they have often acted as if they don't even understand what the UN was set up to do.

The move comes amid rising concern in Washington that President George Bush's controversial Baghdad security surge, led by the US commander, General David Petraeus, is not working and that Iran is winning the clandestine battle for control of Iraq.

"Petraeus is brilliant. But he is the captain of a sinking ship," said a former senior administration official who questioned whether Iraq's divided political leadership could prevent a descent into chaos. "Iraq's government is a mobile phone number that doesn't answer. Iraq probably can't be fixed."

Having said that he would know if the surge was working after three months, Bush increased the time needed to six months and there are now reports that, when Petraeus presents his "progress" report in September that Bush may ask for another six months.

While insisting that no decision had yet been taken on an extension, the Pentagon announced last week that 35,000 soldiers from 10 army brigades had been told they could expect to be deployed to Iraq by the end of the year. That would enable the US to maintain heightened troop levels of about 160,000 soldiers through to next spring.

According to an analysis published by Hearst Newspapers yesterday, the number of combat troops could almost double - to 98,000 - by the end of the year if arriving and departing combat brigades overlap. By the same calculation, the overall total including support troops could top 200,000 - an increase the report said amounted to a "second surge".

It seems obvious that, no matter what happens, Bush is not going to admit defeat here, and is simply piling more and more troops towards a problem that he is not fixing.

And to sweeten that bitter pill he plans to announce that he's inviting other nations to take over responsibilities that currently belong to the US. This would allow him to placate public and congressional opinion by talking of a drawdown of US forces.

There's only one problem with this plan. Why would any other nation wish to send troops into Iraq? Why should other nations take over a mess that is not theirs, which they did not vote for at the UN, and which the whole world can see is a disaster?

Why should the UN bail out Bush?

"The administration's plan calls for moving on several fronts," the former official said. "Firstly, there is the international plan to win political, economic and military support for the Iraqi government and state, not least by going to the UN and asking for a UN command and flag to supplant the US coalition command.

"Regionally, there is diplomacy aimed at mobilising more Arab neighbours to understand that there is no Sunni leader coming back to Baghdad and that countries like Saudi Arabia should support Maliki [Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's Shia prime minister] before he has no choice but to fully align with Iran," the official said.

"Internally, the plan is for US forces to help isolate takfirists (fundamentalist Salafi jihadis), peel off Sunnis from the insurgency, contain hardcore elements of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, and halt Iranian and trans-Syrian infiltration of troops and materiel."

This whole plan is typical of this regime in that it simply ignores reality and acts as if reality is something that the US can fashion as it likes on the ground. Maliki's government is already aligned with Iran and no amount of American wishful thinking is going to change that fact.

I also notice that, even when staring defeat in the face, Bush has still not found a realistic role for Syria and Iran in restoring order in Iraq as requested by the Baker Report. This is the policy of lunatics, the finest example of which is reported as Dick Cheney's "deep fall back option".

If all else failed, the US might seek an arrangement with Mr Sadr, if only to secure an orderly transition, the official claimed. "Cutting a deal with the Mahdi army is [vice-president] Dick Cheney's deep fallback option."

Good luck with that Dick, the last time Mr Sadr attended peace talks the US Army attempted to kill him, so I'm sure he'll be falling over himself to accept your invitation.

The US are said to be putting their hopes on the fact that Kofi Annan - one of the wars harshest critics - has been replaced by Ban Ki-moon at the UN. However, for this plan to work the other nations of the world would still have to vote to send their troops there to take the place of US forces and there are surely few nations who would be willing to do that.

Indeed, with the forthcoming election of Gordon Brown there must now be questions over how committed Britain is going to remain to the Iraq war as Brown has already given large hints that he intends to review Britain's involvement.

While it was uncertain whether the new "internationalised" approach to Iraq would get off the ground, the political stakes as the 2008 presidential and congressional elections approached could hardly be higher, the former administration official said.

"The blame game has already begun. The Democrats want to run against a 'chaos in Iraq' scenario. The Republicans will want to keep extending it [the surge] past next February. The White House may offer a schedule for a drawdown - but what does that really mean?... The only policy Republicans have is a policy of delaying the inevitable."

In a sign that personal as well as governmental damage limitation is under way, key Bush administration figures appear to be distancing themselves from current policy. National security adviser Stephen Hadley is expected to hand over many Iraq-related duties to Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, who some in Washington are already describing as a fall guy.

Similar senior-level role changes involving officials dealing with Iraq at the state department and Pentagon has fed speculation that people who helped launch Gen Petraeus's "sinking ship" are now abandoning it.

The Republicans can try as hard as they like to distance themselves from this conflict, but they will not succeed. For four years these people ignored international law and treated the UN as if it was an irrelevance, and there is a certain schadenfreude in watching these arrogant arseholes re-approaching the UN on their knees, although I am convinced that they have left it far too late for the UN to be able to help them.

The Republicans are hoping to avoid being punished for the disastrous policy that they forged ahead with against all world opinion, but there would be no justice if they were allowed to escape the consequences of their arrogant foolishness. Thousands of innocent people are dead because Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle and Wolfowitz wanted Saddam toppled at any cost. In order to facilitate this they "fixed the facts" around the policy.

Crimes on that scale deserve to be punished. And no amount of dancing around at the UN will ever make any of us forget whose war this really was.

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