Meanwhile, In Iraq...

With more evidence of lies revealed, how is the actual war going now?

Let's check in-

Parliament extended Iraq's state of emergency Monday as gunmen snatched 14 employees from computer stores in downtown Baghdad in the second mass kidnapping in as many days...

...Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has struggled to rein in sectarian violence, which U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Sunday has become deadlier than the Sunni-led insurgency that broke out after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Parliament approved another month's extension of the state of emergency, in place since November 2004. The measure allows for a nighttime curfew and gives the government extra powers to make arrests without warrants and launch police and military operations when it deems them necessary. It applies everywhere except the northern Kurdish autonomous zone...

Sadly, business as usual.

Now, however, there is news that the Iraqi Prime Minister has unveiled a 'peace plan'-

Iraq's prime minister announced a new four-point plan aimed at uniting the sharply divided Shiite and Sunni parties in his government behind stopping rampant sectarian violence.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki emerged with the plan after talks with the top Sunni and Shiite leaders in his government, trying to stanch a potential crisis over the sectarian divisions.

Under the plan, local commissions will be formed in each district of Baghdad, made up of representatives of each party, to oversee security forces' efforts against violence, al-Maliki said. A central committee comprising all the parties will coordinate with the armed forces, he said.

A media committee also will be formed, and the progress of the plan will be reviewed monthly, al-Maliki said...

I'd like to be optimistic, but all common sense tells me not bother.

Could the announcement of this plan today have anything to do with this?-

According to one Iraqi official, the curfew was imposed because of a plan for a coup d’etat against the government of Prime Minister Maliki, who was elected to lead the U.S.-installed regime. There’ve been periodic reports of a planned coup all year. Many U.S. officials, too, are publicly warning Maliki that he has only a short time to fix things. Everyone from top U.S. military officials to Ambassador Khalilzad to Lee Hamilton, who heads the Iraq Study Group, are saying the same thing: that Maliki has only a couple of months to act. “There’s going to come a time when I would argue that we are going to have to force the issue,” a U.S. military official told the Washington Post last Thursday. It seems that both U.S. occupation authorities and various Iraqi factions are ready to give up on Maliki.

Sounds like Maliki's peace plan is a last-ditch effort to save his own ass politically.

Finally, Congress throws more billions at the war, but not without some reservations-

The U.S. Congress on Friday moved to block the Bush administration from building permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq or controlling the country's oil sector, as it approved $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The restrictions included in a record $447 billion military funding bill were a slap at the administration, and Republicans have stripped them out of legislation in the past.

Democrats and many Republicans say the Iraqi insurgency has been fueled by perceptions the United States has ambitions for a permanent presence in the country.

The administration has downplayed prospects for permanent military bases in Iraq, but lawmakers have called on President George W. Bush to make a definitive statement that the United States has no such plans.

U.S. officials have predicted a lengthy U.S. military presence in Iraq...

Lengthy presence? Golly, that's not what Rumsfeld said in February 2003.

He gets to keep his job, you know. And so the shitstorm adventure continues...