More Kudzu

I was going to write something about this myself, but why bother when Josh Marshall does such a good job:

The greatest deceit perpetrated by the architects of the war turns out to have had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction or ties between Saddam and al Qaida. The profoundest deception was the claim that the IGC was designed to be a transitional governing authority when in fact, as is now becoming clear, its true purpose was to provide a sort of dark, Falstaffian comic relief to balance out the ominous backdrop of postwar Iraq.

Much of the jockeying we're now seeing involves efforts by the IGC to perpetuate its power into post-occupation Iraq even though -- with the exception of the Kurdish faction leaders -- few of its members have any serious base of political support in the country or, to put it bluntly, any armies on hand for when things really get fun next fall.

So, while the real players jockey for position and await our departure, these boneheads are trying to use the paper power we've given them against us in order to hold on to authority even after we leave.

(via Atrios)

Law of unintended consquences, which I've been calling "kudzu" for some time now. And all this reminds me of the dose of reality from the CSIS a few weeks ago.

File under: no duh. Cross-reference: wish we'd been wrong.

ntodd  ¶ 9:21 AM