"What would you call someone who wants to hand over control of Iraq to a group of terrorists that first made its reputation by blowing up a couple of American embassies? I'd call him President Bush."

So writes Paul Mulshine, reporting on the Iraqi election for the New Jersey Star Ledger. William Rivers Pitt explains:

The Shia will walk away from Friday with the lion's share of control over the Iraqi government. The two most powerful Shia political parties, the ones that will come out of this with the big wins, are the Dawa Party and the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is known by the initials SCIRI. Both were founded and funded by Iran in the 1980s. Both have a history of spectacular violence against the United States and other nations. "These guys are murderers," says former CIA agent Bob Baer, who dealt with Dawa during the 1980s. "They were the core element that blew up our embassy in Beirut in 1983."...

"The other coalition partners aren't much better," continued Mulshine. "The sanest group on the Shi'a side is the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. A 1984 Washington Post story portrayed the group, known by its initials SCIRI, as 'a kind of parent organization for four operational terrorist groups.' SCIRI was founded in Iran a couple of years earlier by the Ayatollah Khomeini with the goal of taking control of Iraq. Now, they're about to do so, courtesy of George W. Bush."

A walk through history serves to remind those afflicted with short attention spans of who exactly is about to take control of Iraq.

A story from US News and World Report dated December 26, 1983, titled "The New Face of Mideast Terrorism" describes the bombing of the American embassy in Kuwait: "The terrorist who detonated the truckload of explosives at the US Embassy in Kuwait was identified as a 25-year-old Iraqi belonging to an outlawed Moslem unit, the Iranian Dawa Group."

A story from the Associated Press dated February 11, 1984, titled "Trial of Bomb Blast Defendants Opens" describes the trial of 21 people charged with bombing American and French embassies: "Of the other defendants, 17 are Iraqis; two, Lebanese, three, Kuwaitis and two are stateless. Most of them said they belonged to Al-Dawa (Islamic Call) Party, an Iraqi movement of Shiite Moslem fanatics who are pro-Iranian."

A story from the Associated Press dated December 27, 1986, titled "Five Groups Claim Responsibility, Iraq Accuses Iran" describes the attempted hijacking of an Iraqi jetliner that resulted in the deaths of over 60 people: "The hijackers acted in cooperation with the Dawa party of pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiites."

Pitt goes on to cite a former prof of mine, Mark Gasiorowski, who testified before the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks. Gasiorowski noted Iranian support for SCIRI as part of an overall pattern of assistance for any number of organizations that aren't exactly friendly to the United States. And I'm not exactly expecting SCIRI to proffer flowers, candy and kisses once the votes are tallied.

In fact, it scarcely matters who "wins," except for the embarrassment factor--Team Bush might as well be wearing a giant "Kick Me" sign. But the elections themselves don't change squat--they're the rough equivalent of changing the tire when you've got a blown engine. Power, as Juan Cole notes, isn't conferred solely via plebiscite:

The Iraqi "government" is a failed state. Virtually no order it gives has any likelihood of being implemented. It has no army to speak of and cannot control the country. Its parliamentarians are attacked and sometimes killed with impunity. Its oil pipelines are routinely bombed, depriving it of desperately needed income. It faces a powerful guerrilla movement that is wholly uninterested in the results of elections and just wants to overthrow the new order. Elections are unlikely to change any of this.

Whether or not Shrubusto realizes this is doesn't matter either--his handlers may be evil and vicious, but they've got some functioning brain cells. So they're crowing--but also hinting the violence will continue, and desperately seeking some sort of traction for a "blame the libruls" strategy when the shit REALLY starts flying.

Now we've got to hope the Democrats won't play along with this...which is by no means a sure thing.