It makes it sound all cloak-and-dagger. In reality an American handler almost certainly passed it to them which doesn't sound very sexy. In fact, it would make them look like Quislings.

Then think a bit deeper about that statement, "hold of an American intelligence document detailing undue Iranian influence in Iraq". I suppose that American influence is not "undue" even though they are occupying Iraq.

Perhaps a bit of context is necessary here. Who owns Al-Sharq al-Awsat? It couldn't be Prince Salman bin Abd al-Aziz ibn Abd al-Rahman and he couldn't possibly be a bit upset that Saudi Arabia is not exerting "undue influence" in Iraq?

Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer asks if Iraq is really a democracy, and comes up with a resounding 'No!'

Is America a democracy? {resounding}No!

Hasn't any one in America heard the old saying – men in glasshouses shouldn't throw stones.

BTW FWIW, I don't think Iraq is a democracy but there are things such as life and security which are probably far more important to the Iraqi people, so I am not going to criticize them for the lack of it. Any attempt to establish "real democracy" in Iraq would be met by a violent response from those occupying forces since the Iraqis would almost certainly want to kick all Americans out of Iraq and support the Palestinians against Israeland Washington would never allow that.

It seems that “The Surge is Working” is no longer the appropriate slogan. The new message, articulated in todays NYT: “U.S. officials are worried that the parliamentary elections scheduled for Sunday could ignite violence that would complicate the planned troop withdrawal”. I can’t wait to see what the new slogan will be.

And the beat goes on…

He also defended printing 7M extra ballots saying that its normal to print an extra 10%, of 70M voters now?

Fraud was rife in all previous elections, but the Iraqis, Americans, UN and EU all kept quite. In fact the UN said the Afghan elections were fair too until Galbraith blew the whistle — for some reason.