THE HAWKS ARE RIGHT AGAIN:

Iraqi self-rule splits White House (JONATHAN S. LANDAY, 1/27/04, Knight Ridder Newspapers)

[P]rivately, President Bush's national security aides are debating a number of U.S. and British fallback options, including acceding to a demand by Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, that the assembly be directly elected.

Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld favor a proposal to turn over power early - by April 1 - to the Governing Council, a body of U.S.-installed Iraqi leaders, said senior U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The council would be expanded from its current 25 seats to include more Shiites. The aim would be to persuade Sistani to agree to delaying elections, they said.

"This proposal came up in September and Bremer shot it down," said one senior U.S. official. "It has come back to life."

Adnan Pachachi, who holds the council's rotating presidency, heavily promoted the idea during a visit to Washington earlier this month.

But the State Department, the National Security Council staff and the CIA oppose the idea, the officials said.

State and CIA are always wrong and Condi happens to be wrong in this instance.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 29, 2004 2:27 PM