Nouri al Maliki, Meet Don Rumsfeld

The week before last November’s election, George Bush told reporters his Secretary of Defense would stay in office until January 2009. The day after the voting, Rumsfeld resigned and Bush admitted he knew about it but lied.

Yesterday the President said “Prime Minister Maliki is a good guy, a good man with a difficult job, and I support him.”

But behind the scenes, the skids are greased. Today there is a leaked “intelligence assessment” that concludes, “Iraqi political leaders remain unable to govern effectively.” Arriverderci, Maliki. Payment is being stopped on the “blank check.”

But hold the cheers for the replacement who is being groomed--Ayad Allawi, one of the exiles who told us about Saddam’s WMDs and then was anointed Interim PM until the elections in which his party polled 14 percent of the vote after voters threw shoes at him. He is related by marriage to Ahmad Chalabi, another Neo-Con exile winner. but they don’t get along.

Now, here he is with an OpEd in the Washington Post last weekend, “A Plan for Iraq,” planted by a Republican lobbying firm that is also starting a web site for him.

President Bush keeps insisting that al Maliki’s tenure in office is up to the Iraqi people. But in light of what happened before Rumsfeld’s departure, Maliki shouldn’t be buying any green bananas for his office fruit bowl.