Please Allawi to Introduce Himself

Patrick Cockburn has a good summary of the Doctor's public life in The Independent. Short version: Iyad is anything but independent, having served many masters over the course of his chameleon-like career.

Allawi was responsible for feeding the false claim to Tony Blair's government that Iraq had the ability to launch chemical weapons withing a 45 minute time window. Looks like he was off by more than a little bit.

In addition, there are ties to the CIA, and MI6, as well as the fact that in his younger days, Allawi was a fervent Baathist, albeit a Sh'ia. Cockburn ends the article by noting a decided lack of support--during an uprising just north of Baghdad last year, one of the first things the crowd did was set fire to the INA office. Iyad Allawi was the leader of this faction of exiles.

For more on the INA, the INC, and the various manueverings that put Dr. Allawi in the catbird's seat--or the electric chair, depending on your point of view--check out these excellent posts by Steve Gilliard. This one is a primer on the vocabulary of newspapers, while his previous post more or less sums up my own feelings--the Doctor, if he takes the job, is a dead man walking. Note: of late, I've had to use the F11 key to get the entire article to display at Gilliard's site. Hit F11 twice if you run into this problem.

Oh--and, as the LSU Blogger noted, Billmon is back to posting after taking a week off. Count me as yet another person glad to see he's writing again.