Allawi roasts Bush

The AP showed no quarter on Easter Sunday by featuring a scathing new book about our Iraq failures written by Iyad Allawi's cousin, Ali Allawi, one of the wealthy Shia exiles who swooped into the new Baghdad government after the invasion. Not surprisingly, Allawi's book takes Bush to the cleaners for screwing up the post-war.

Here are some quick facts about the former Minister of Finance:

Ali Abdel-Amir Allawi, a wealthy businessman, was previously a consultant to the World Bank and heads a London-based investment company, Pan-Arab. He was elected to Parliament on the United Iraqi Alliance.

His uncle on his mother's side is deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi. On his father's side, he is a cousin of outgoing interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

Don't know whether his maternal connection to Ahmad Chalabi means anything other than he's related to the man largely blamed as lying us into Iraq and both are Shia.

Speaking of Shiites, recent events in Iraq signal we might be nearing an allegiance change. Let's set the stage--first, the US captured high-level Iranians operating inside Iraq. Next, we announced a surge and scared al-Sadr off into hiding. Then Iran captured British sailors as hostages and humiliated them.

In the interim Pelosi and three Republicans visited Damascus. While we can't assume Pelosi was acting clandestinely on Bush's behalf wonder what the Repubs told Assad? Were they offering him a deal to switch sides as we turn on Tehran? If Iran falls to regime change Mr. Assad could easily wind up all alone in the world, so perhaps we convinced him to our side with pressure about Hariri/Gemayel? That would certainly help the situations in Iraq, Israel and Lebanon. Notice we didn't see any transcripts from those meetings.

Somewhere along the way the main Sunni insurgency sent a smackdown letter to their AQ in Iraq counterparts suggesting sides had been taken there. Swirling around at the same time was a nasty rumor regards a pending US attack in Iran and just today we've learned that al-Sadr is rallying the Mahdi boys with death to America calls with US troops engaging in the south.

We can throw in the oddball story about the British Ministry of Defense allowing the released hostages to sell their stories to the press for good measure. All very interesting and confusing unless it indicates we've picked a final side for a final push.