Don't believe it?  Read Saalam Pax:

Thinks have reached another record low, whole districts in Baghdad are under the insurgent’s control and the promises the Shia Coalition came to power with, the promise of security and stability are now as tattered as their posters that are still glued to the walls from the last elections. New posters of smiling political clerics are also up but these smiling faces look down at us like they are amused at the joke of a government they have created.

Districts like Ameriyah have become Jihadi Central. After they blew up all the clothes shops there they started blowing up grocery shops and now they have moved on to shops selling watches. Very symbolic isn’t it? Time stops HERE.

A couple of weeks ago I told you about my mother’s cousin who was abducted and held for ransom. He was released around a week ago. His advice for my mother’s family was: change your name. He talks about a highly organized group of Sunni extremists with lists of names, some to kill, some to squeeze for money. He came out a deeply shaken man, he is convinced this is sectarian war. His abductors were a group of young, very devout Sunni Muslims who see this as Jihad. They have people who provide them with information and names and these youngsters do the dirty work.

Yes there is stability in some regions in Iraq but that is either in Kurdistan, for all intents and purposes a separate country, and in the Shia regions controlled by SCIRI’s militia. The rest of the country is on fire. And depending on how you define civil war we are either in the middle of it or five minutes away from it.

We are at our most divided. And it is at this point in our history we write a constitution. Well hurray for us. A constitution written by the powerful two groups (Shia and Kurd) catering for their wishes and whims while the rest of the population is left with table scraps and hopes that the we will be able to make it better in the future.

Either the Sunnis or the Iranian Republican Guards will control Iraq.  That's why arguments against permanent bases in Iraq are nonsense--there's no way we can do it.

Remember how the President suspended Davis-Bacon prevailing wage provisions in order to make it easier for minority-owned businesses to get federal contracts?  Well, if this WSJ article via Daniel Gross is any indication, there are a lot of minority business owners in Mississippi and Louisiana trying figure out why they were left out of the running, especially for some of the more lucrative contracts handed out not long after Katrina hit.

This Iron Mouth Editor attended the massive anti-war demonstration on Saturday in D.C.  At one point we were held up because march organizers did not want counter protesters in front to be photographed leading the march.  They wanted them to clear out before moving forward.  Expecting a crowd, I saw four counter protesters. 

So it was no suprise that I learned that the pro-war rally billed as a 20,000 strong demonstration of support for the troops drew 400. 

Oh, and remember how Bush asked for direct contributions to the Iraq reconstruction fund?  In the first two weeks of the program the donations have been rushing in:

An extraordinary appeal to Americans from the Bush administration for money to help pay for the reconstruction of Iraq has raised only $600 (£337), The Observer has learnt.

The public's reluctance to contribute much more than the cost of two iPods to the administration's attempt to offer citizens 'a further stake in building a free and prosperous Iraq' has been seized on by critics as evidence of growing ambivalence over that country.

Two ipods. Heh.

I've never understood the decision to take people from the Gulf Coast and put them up in FEMA sponsored trailer parks.  Beyond the stigma of concentrated poverty associated with trailer parks, there are any number of programs like Section 8 housing vouchers that would probably be more effective at reintegrating the evacuees into any number of communities throughout the Southeast and elsewhere.  Looking at this article made me even angrier because they know that Section 8 and other public-private venture programs have worked well in past disasters yet they still go ahead with the trailer parks!  Hell, even Newt Gingrich thinks its a godawful idea!  Cost and expediency seem pretty hollow reasons when in effect they will be creating unsightly reminders of the failure of the government's original response to Katrina for months, if not years, to come.  Watching Rita start to hit the coast, it looks like the trailer and RV industry is going to be pretty busy.

Looks like the Pentagon isn't the only place having trouble with numbers, budgets and accounting.  Who knew that there were so many Foreign Agricultural Service Attache's and they made so much money?  Are there any job openings in the meantime?

This is too weird.  Yep, Jeb again.

Germany--Joschka Fischer steps down.  What does this mean?

Fischer made clear that he would remain at the head of his party only under the most extreme circumstances. As far as he was concerned, it didn't make any sense for the Greens to be in any of the possible governing coalitions under discussion. Still, he said he would continue to take part in the negotiations, as long as it had to do with governing.

Hard to tell what all of this means.  Thoughts?

The candidate: Gerhard Schroeder

The Playbook:   Bush/Cheney 2000.

"There will be no coalition under her leadership with my Social Democrats," Mr Schröder said, glaring at his opponent across the table. "Apart from me, no one is in a position to form a stable government."

Mrs Merkel squirmed in her chair.

"I sent her a letter this morning, which should be there if her fax machine is working," said Franz Münterfering, the leader of the SPD. "Then we got a call from her office asking if we could talk."

She's already beat.

However, 50 percent of those polled said they feared the federal government would spend too much on reconstruction, and 45 percent said Americans should make "major sacrifices" to pay for the effort. But only 20 percent said they would be willing to make those sacrifices themselves.

Seventeen percent said they would be willing to pay higher taxes to support reconstruction efforts, while 15 percent favored financing the cost with more deficit spending. Six percent said they would pay for reconstruction efforts with cuts in domestic spending.

Seriously, we have to qualify for the most unrealistic electorate ever.  They want everything, but they don't want to pay for a dime of it.

Oh and:

Bush's overall job approval number was 40 percent, with 58 percent of those surveyed telling pollsters they disapproved of his performance in office. It is the second time his approval rating has hit that low a mark.

His personal qualities hit fresh lows: Only 49 percent called him a strong and decisive leader, down from 54 percent in July and 51 percent in August. Just 42 percent said he cares about people like themselves, and 47 percent called him honest and trustworthy.

GOP legislative priorities: There has to be some poor businessman killed by Katrina who we can use to sell that estate tax repeal?

NBC's Brian Williams notes in his blog this morning that there was much jubilation in New Orleans when the lights came on 30 minutes before the President's motorcade arrived for his speech last night.... and much disappointment when they turned everything off an hour after he left.  Probably looked good on TV, though?

Need to rebuild the Gulf Coast?  Who would you call to oversee such a massive undertaking?  Maybe somebody with some sort of experience managing such a massive reconstruction project?  Well if you're the President you evidently look to your chief political operative, Karl Rove. 

I don't know how the reconstruction effort will go but I think you can expect a lot of staged events, speeches, no-bid contracts for political supporters (ie. Republicans), sudden federal investigations to discredit meddling local officials (ie. Democrats) and just the right juxtaposition of images of our decisive and resolute Commander in Chief walking around the Gulf Coast for the next couple years.  Genius!

In the comments here, a battle has raged as to who is responsible for the mess in Louisiana.  We've focused mainly on the political aspects of the question, without getting much into the who did what when side of things.  What has come through on this and other blogs is that conservatives believe that it is the liberals and the media who are trying to play the "blame game."  The reality is much different, however. 

The Republicans had looked to place blame squarely at the feet of Governor Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.  Since Nagin and Blanco had complained about the federal response, they were fair game in the eyes of the White House.  Its politics, after all.

But now ominous rumblings seem to indicate that a new phase of the blame game is in order.  Bush is now looking to exploit the tragedy to go after his traditional foes and burnish his image.  This makes sense given the name of the person who is running the operation to reconstruct New Orleans: Karl Rove.

That's right, the President's political eminence grise, Rove, is handling the operational task of rebuilding a city shattered by a killer storm.  Not a construction expert, or someone with experience running a large government organization, but a political operative with no governmental executive experience.  Hell, Michael Brown has more experience than Rove in these matters.

And what are the first results of this assignment?  Politics as usual, baby.  Contrary to his words of last night, Bush is going on a witch hunt to try and remove responsibility from his shoulders: Take this E-mail sent out by the Department of Justice to the U.S. Attorneys across the country:

SUBJECT: Have you had any cases involving the levees in New Orleans?

QUESTION: Has your district defended any cases on behalf of the Army Corps of Engineers against claims brought by environmental groups seeking to block or otherwise impede the Corps' work on the levees protecting New Orleans? If so, please describe the case and the outcome of the litigation.

District: __________
Contact: _________
Telephone: ________

 Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.