We are the Rube

“If you can’t spot the rube in a poker game, then the rube is you.”

So much of what has been written and reported to us in the United States about Iraq has been pure fabrication, myth, and PR. The picture [Patrick] Graham’s work (“Beyond Fallujah: A Year With the Iraqi Resistance” and “How George Bush Became the New Saddam”) paints of Iraq is of a situation much, much more complex than the “Sgt. Rock” comic book scenario that has been spun by the White House, the Pentagon, and their enablers in the US media. In Iraq, multiple factions are working together, then against each other, then together again, all trying to game the system and stay alive at the same time. ...US forces, both military and political, are walking a dangerous tightrope whereby they are now cozying up to our old enemies the Saddam loyalists in an effort to fight a beast of our own creation, al-Queda in Iraq.

From Firedoglake