The people have spoken (but this will never do...)

Oh Christ, here we go again: ( from http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GB15Ak02.html )

To head off this threat of a Shi'ite clergy-driven religious movement, the US has, according to Asia Times Online investigations, resolved to arm small militias backed by US troops and entrenched in the population to "nip the evil in the bud".

Asia Times Online has learned that in a highly clandestine operation, the US has procured Pakistan-manufactured weapons, including rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, rockets and other light weaponry. Consignments have been loaded in bulk onto US military cargo aircraft at Chaklala airbase in the past few weeks. The aircraft arrived from and departed for Iraq.

The US-armed and supported militias in the south will comprise former members of the Ba'ath Party, which has already split into three factions, only one of which is pro-Saddam Hussein. They would be expected to receive assistance from pro-US interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National Accord.

A military analyst familiar with strategic and proxy operations commented that there is a specific reason behind procuring arms from Pakistan, rather than acquiring US-made ones.

"A similar strategy was adopted in Afghanistan during the initial few years of the anti-USSR resistance [the early 1980s] movement where guerrillas were supplied with Chinese-made AK-47 rifles [which were procured by Pakistan with US money], Egyptian and German-made G-3 rifles. Similarly, other arms, like anti-aircraft guns, short-range missiles and mortars, were also procured by the US from different countries and supplied to Pakistan, which handed them over to the guerrillas," the analyst maintained.

The obvious reason for this tactic is to give the impression that the resistance acquired its arms and ammunition from different channels and from different countries - and anywhere other than the United States.

Well, obviously they were not going to leave it all up to Allawi.

Further evidence that they didn't leave it to Allawi, from Yahoo news:

Abdel Mahdi is a leading member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq but his conciliatory rhetoric during the campaign and since the January 30 poll has led some observers to present him as the frontrunner in the premiersip race.


The French-educated economist has stopped short of openly admitting his ambitions but presents himself as a consensus politician, who will extend a hand to the once-powerful Sunni elite and focus his efforts on drafting a balanced constitution.


His drive for a free-market Iraq, emphasising decentralisation and strong private investment strikes a chord with the ultra-liberal US administration.

Che?

In case you missed it, Naomi Klein in Saturday's Guardian:

Al-Mahdi is the Bush administration's Trojan horse in the UIA. (You didn't think they were going to put all their money on Allawi, did you?) In October, he told a gathering of the American Enterprise Institute that he planned to "restructure and privatise [Iraq's] state-owned enterprises", and in December he made another trip to Washington to unveil plans for a new oil law, "very promising to the American investors". It was al-Mahdi himself who oversaw the signing of a flurry of deals with Shell, BP and ChevronTexaco in the weeks before the elections, and it is he who negotiated the recent austerity deal with the IMF.

On troop withdrawal, al-Mahdi sounds nothing like his party's platform, and instead appears to be echoing Dick Cheney on Fox News: "When the Americans go will depend on when our own forces are ready and on how the resistance responds after the elections." But on Sharia law, we are told, he is very close to the clerics.

Iraq's elections were delayed time and time again while the occupation and resistance grew ever more deadly. Now it seems that two years of bloodshed, bribery and backroom arm-twisting were leading up to this: a deal in which the ayatollahs get control over the family, Texaco gets the oil, and Washington gets its enduring military bases (call it the "oil-for-women programme"). Everyone wins except the voters, who risked their lives to cast their ballots for very different policies.

[NottyImp]

His drive for a free-market Iraq, emphasising decentralisation and strong private investment strikes a chord with the ultra-liberal US administration.

Liberal in the economic sense, no doubt.