Washington looks to ‘blame Iraqis and run’

This is plan B.

Plan A was to blame the Democrats and those goddamned "libruls, dump the hole mess in the next president's lap and run.

Either way, it is typically Junior: Blame somebody, anybody, take the money and run.

FT.com / World / Middle East & Africa - Washington looks to ‘blame Iraqis and run’:

Although informed observers say that the writ of the Iraqi government stops at the perimeter of the Green Zone – the heavily fortified enclave in the centre of Baghdad – leading Republican and Democratic politicians are increasingly blaming Nouri al-Maliki’s friable coalition government for a lack of progress.

It is a consensus that was crystallised last week by the Iraq Study Group, which called on Mr Bush to withhold US assistance from Baghdad unless it made progress on fulfilling a long list of US-imposed “milestones”. It is also shared by many senior officials in the Bush administration, which had already drawn up an earlier list of milestones for Mr Maliki.

“You could call it ‘blame and run’, ” said Zbigniew Bzrezinski, a former national security adviser now at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. “It is based on a pervasive illusion that there is such a thing as an Iraqi government. The more we blame it for doing things it cannot do, the more impotent it will become. ‘Blame and run’ is self-fulfilling.”