More likely the U.S. wanted to make sure that the Shi'a government would be forced to deal with Allawi's bunch or the pro-U.S. Kurds instead of cooking up an unassailable 2/3 majority with the aid of small, mysterious, and easily-manipulated fringe parties.

Maybe the Bush administration was more interested in the rhetoric of democracy, and still terrified of its actual practice.

In retrospect, the Bush administration PR arc is laughably clear.

The sacrosanct January 30 date for the Iraq elections was tied to nothing more momentous than Bush's State of the Union address.

That exercise in purple-fingered majesty was meant to kick off the relaunch of Bush's pre-emptive war/hard power doctrine, repackaged as democracy promotion instead of the stale and discredited al Qaeda/war against terror/WMDs snake oil, now well past its sell date.

Then it's Off to Europe! To try and hoist the French and Germans on the cleft stick of having to oppose democracy if they declined to back U.S. actions against Syria and Iran.

But if Ritter's charge gains traction -- and he says a major U.S. journalist is on the story -- then Bush has irrevocably blown it.

100,000 dead on both sides and $300 billion squandered -- to grunt out a rigged election.

If the Bush administration had shown itself willing to live with an absolute Shi'a majority, that would have been pretty significant.

It might have shown that the U.S. was confident enough of its power and influence over genuine democracies that we could destabilize autocratic regimes and let the democratic chips fall where they may.

That would have put the Left between a rock and a hard place, forced to deal with the possibility that the logic, knowledge, theories, principles, and caution of the °ßreality based community°® were irrelevant and unnecessary in a world of hard power, where a virtuous conspiracy of America's conservative oligarchy could drive positive outcomes that were beyond the imagination and abilities of the toppled liberal elite and the international order and institutions it championed.

Well, looks like we've dodged that bullet for now.

In fact, the incompetence and venality of the Bush administration has allowed liberals to survive in a charmed circle for the last two years.

Imagine what would have happened if the Iraq occupation had gone right, or there had been an al Qaeda link, or WMDs. The American public -- desperate for a post-9/11 red, white and blue triumph -- would have enshrined pre-emptive war as America's unique gift to the world and we'd be up to our necks in Iran and Syria by now.

Since up to our necks in Syria and Iran is exactly where Bush wants us to be, he's now reduced to making the shaky yet seductive case that the road to national security runs through international instability -- the serial destabilization and democratization of who knows how many regimes around the world.

Exhibit A is supposed to be Iraq, where, we are being told, George W. Bush took a bold roll of the dice with the future of the Middle East at stake, betting that Western-style democracy backed by American military power could transform the region.

But what if the dice were loaded -- because America wanted the sure thing of a divided client state instead of the uncertainty of a sovereign, nationalistic democracy?

That's going to make disappointed and angry suckers out of a lot of people -- people who put not just their money but their lives and their futures on the line.

If the democratic veneer is stripped away, U.S. foreign policy today is going to look just like the cynical aggrandizement of Imperial Japan in the first half of the 20th century.

Japan exploited its position as Asia's most politically advanced and technologically superior military superpower to engage in a fifty year campaign of subversion, coups, and conquest throughout the Pacific and East Asia.

It preyed on antiquated regimes such as China that were unable to resist its implacable assault; "failed states" whose sufferings merely excited the disdain, contempt, and greed of the international community.

The unifying thread was Japan's belief that asserting its hard power -- its determination to accomplish its goals by any means necessary -- would ensure the lazy indifference of the world to the horrors it was perpetrating in the name of that de-colonialized political and social utopia it called the East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Instead of prosperity -- or security, Imperial Japan endured escalating error and peril as it choked on its own cruelty and ineptitude in the conquered territories, blundered into Pearl Harbor, and thundered headlong to its own destruction.

Maybe in our fast-forward world we won't have to wait for 50 years -- or suffer the collapse of our country-- for the neo-con imperialists to be humbled.

Especially if it turns out our boy emperor remained true to form and took the lazy way out of rigging an election instead of honestly attempting to acknowledge and master the immense forces his military adventure in the Middle East has unleashed.

Because it means if Bush is so venal he squandered the only chance we had of emerging from the Iraq debacle with a modicum of honor...

...that he could rig the Iraq election, in which every ballot was stained with U.S. and Iraqi blood...

...just to give Rummy some more overseas bases and Cheney's Halliburton buddies a few more years at the trough -- and to yank the world's chain in favor of military action against Iran and Syria...

...then he's committed the ultimate betrayal of the world's remaining trust in America and the faith that Americans (mis)placed in him.

A guy like that, rigs the Iraq elections, then I gotta say he could have rigged the U.S. election too.

Maybe he's not just the Thief of Baghdad.