This one (Allawi paying a Republican lobby firm to help him depose Maliki coincident with our Republican government talking about how Maliki should be deposed) is just too easily understood to sink out of sight because of complexity.

I do hope the MSM picks up on this horrific perfidy. Is anyone home?

As in the great movie by Costa Gavras, by the same title. The letter "Z" was expunged from Greek alphabet and Zelikow should be expunged from public life and the public dole (where do we think that 300 grand comes from?). ABC should amend and apologize in the same forum they promulgated his spin and the University of Virginia should fire his sorry ass. I'm not holding my breath.

You are especially lucky Ms. Walsh,

You really should compare what you have with Glenn to the journalistic/blograstic shenanigans that occur on a daily basis in Broadsheet.

Where Glenn does everyone proud, Broadsheet is just as bad as the worse of the right wing blogs. Misstatements of facts, bashing and denial of science, never updating, never correcting, never conversing with the readers, Broadsheet is a real canker sore blemishing Salon's pages.

Is there a Salon Ombudsman?

There is SO much shady stuff that this guy Zelikow has been involved in over the years. I googled his name and got lost for hours. He is one of the scariest hidden government creeps of the last century. It would be nice to see an organized team of researchers really dig through his entire background, especially the controversy over of his whitewashing in the 9/11 Commission testimony and Report, and have a full profile written on him for everyone to read. Not just your average right-wing mafia thug.

But it's Friday. All good Salonians have gone to bed.

But Friday night is when all the dirty laundry is hung out on the line. There should be the "morgue desk" at Salon. When I was a reporter, somebody had to cover the weekend police blotter. That's when all the really interesting stuff happened.

You guys can't just leave for the weekend!

That's when the Bush administration takes it's dump. It gets rid of all the crap it needs to disclose, but doesn't want to talk about all week long.

This is one of those stories. Bury it on the weekend and by Monday, it's history. Friday night is when "shit happens."

It's the most important news night of the week.

Dear Joan:

Maybe we focus too much upon the Administration which is best discribed as the caretaker of a dead delusion. It is a vacuum when it comes to any vision concerning our national security or our intentions for what we hand to posterity outside a possible picure of a White House wedding, a staggering national debt and a globe full of annoyed friends and encouraged enemies.

Much of what runs Iraq, be it either from major forms of Islam or allied to whatever monarchy or theocracy or cell, has realized that opportunity exists in tag team dancing with the blind and lethally desperate mouse even if it is currently wrecking the neighborhood.

It is a real reality tragedy in which the same loser, always the mouse, voluntarily remains week after week and each winner gets a rotating chance for gaining profit from inflicted pain or successful fraud.

The best that can be said concerning the 300K now being spent on friendly elephants is that it is being removed from the winner's profit and not available, unless renewed thru supplemental appropriations, to fund cells or arms and elephant ivory traders.

@ Garry Owen:

On The West Wing, they referred to Friday as "Take Out the Trash Day", which I have to assume Sorkin got from Dee Dee Myers or another of their consultants. The idea was to lump all the unfavorable press releases into one bundle on Friday, because (a) each story would receive proportionately fewer column inches of coverage and (b) nobody reads the paper on Saturday.

But during the slow-motion meltdown that is the US Attorneys scandal, I've noticed something interesting: It doesn't work quite as well any more. Now, documents or news released on Friday go into the blogosphere almost immediately. But many bloggers are part-timers and hobbyists, and the weekends are when they have the most free time. So the bad news gets chewed over by self-proclaimed political junkies when their energy and creativity are maximized ... and rather than being hidden, it's amplified.

Personally, I've found it quite amusing to see the Bush administration transparently using the "Take Out the Trash Day" tactic only to have it blow up in their face. Much like Karl Rove's unprecedented mastery of the increasingly-irrelevant direct-mail campaign, it's another sign that the supposed permanent majority is mired in the 1990s.

The bigger story seems to be collusion at the highest levels of the GOP establishment to topple Maliki, while President Bush claims that leadership change can only come from the Iraqi people.

In case you haven't noticed it Joan, the recent statements of Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton telegraph that the official position of the Democratic Party is ALSO to topple the Maliki govt. But don't worry, I'm sure it's just a coincidence the positions of the WH and Senate Dems is identical. **cough**

Water weighs 8.34 lbs/gal. Be careful Joan, it gets heavy real quickly.....

Did I read somewhere that Zelikow is affiliated with a university? If so, that is really frightening.

...WHO? There seems to be an implicit assumption that Allawi is personally funding this lobbying effort -- and while that may be true, is there any PROOF?

As they've said at least since the days of Deep Throat & Watergate, "follow the money." Getting back to the ultimate source of the $300,000 could be very instructive.

Also, in response to intimations in a couple of other posts, even though Democrats and Republicans alike seem to be piling on Maliki, does that mean that everyone is "in bed" with the Allawi effort?

Does the fact that 75% of Americans oppose Bush and his policies mean they're united in supporting ONE other alternative to him and those policies? Of course not. Neither does it mean that Democrats pointing out the reality of Maliki's situation are united behind any single alternative.