Day Becomes Night

Bush and Blair may agree that, as they subtly put it, 'we are not winning' in Iraq, but unsurprisingly Iraqi President Jalal Talabani disagrees with their developing strategies.

In Bush' case this seems to be to let his successor organise a pullout while he talks big and serious, and, as even the odd correspondent, on Fox News' site is now allowed to suggest, sticks his head in the sand, see Susan Estrich: President Bush: State of Denial About Iraq.

Blair meanwhile is talking about regional stability again - and talking up our friends in the hijab and our friends in the Baath (Iran and Syria).

Still Jack Straw always argued that a bird in hijab was worth two in the baath but hey that's another country, I mean story...

More pertinently old cronies like Geoff Hoon appear on Radio 4 to remind us that the Brits were never in favour of disbanding Saddam's army - that was those crazy yanks with their failing Iraq policies which we have been so successful in mediating through our participation in them.

Remember how we were showing them the way in Basra - before the shit hit the fan and we got confined to barracks and handed the streets over to the militias. Jesser Greenstock has been making similar noises to Geoff's recently on this front, explaining how well it was all going before the Americans f**ked it up. As Tony's red-handed loyalists try to persuade us all that they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong rednecks - and that really this unfortunate (if bloody) mix-up should not, God forbid, constitute the legacy of their leader's poppy-red reign.

Oddly none of that early positive stuff ever matched what soldiers returning from Iraq would tell you even in the early days; when they wondered whom they should tell the real story to, the press or the politicians. 'Stay quiet' advised wise heads of military families, unwisely, though perhaps they knew that only individual careers would be at stake, since policy was, so as to speak, so embedded, at that point.

- Well so much for defeating fascism Geoffaroony, there was I thinking we were at least principled in our dementedly ignorant approach to the whole post-conflict[sic] situation. Never mind the pre-conflict choreography of lies and hysteria - never frankly a great basis for a principled liberation - heck sometimes even the liberated get the wrong end of the stick!

Then again it was Tony your mate who offered Saddam a last minute reprieve, so what the hell - after all, that kind of thing can really muddy the water

Meanwhile Mr Talabani rages at the coming of the night

Saddam prepares for his, as Riverbend discussed, appropriately enough one might say, on Guy Fawkes Night: http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_riverbendblog_archive.html

And over at Iraq Body Count the figures keep climbing. Though as reporting deaths becomes ever more disorganised with increasing social breakdown, their methodology, while applaudable, looks to be reaching the limits of its usefulness.

And perhaps they should start adding Lebanese casualties too, not exactly, after all, the law of unintended consequences, when one talks of 're-making the middle east'...