The American game plan in Iraq is a sham and a lie to everyone else in the world - except to some Americans, and not even quite half of them.

The alternately whining, churlish, or threatening George Bush keeps shouting "victory," but it is he and his gang of pirates that have been beaten. Bush takes credit for elections that the U.S. never wanted in the first place, but were obtained under the Shi'ite religious leadership's threat of mass action. Ayatollah Sistani knew that his followers would sweep the elections to become the dominant political force in Iraq. The original American plan for "victory" called, not for general elections, but a farcical pyramid of local potentates easily manipulated by the U.S., with the Americans sitting on top of the pyramid, in perpetuity. That plan was defeated by the armed resistance and Sistani's political maneuverings.

The buffoonish Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, hectors reporters, demanding patience in developing the Iraqi armed forces and police that he, himself disbanded at the beginning of the occupation. He cannot admit, and may not understand, that the scattering of Iraq's army provided the manpower and skills for a ready-made resistance, a circumstance that any intelligent observer could have predicted - and that many of us did predict. But Rumsfeld is not intelligent. The Iraqi "battalions" that he speaks of are largely made up of Kurdish and Shi'ite militias, on which the U.S. has become dependent. The Kurdish troops are loyal to their own two political parties, while many of the Shi'ite soldier's fidelity lies with their own militia, political and religious leaders. Rumsfeld and his crowd accomplished this "miracle" - but it's certainly not what they intended.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice lies through her smile - her principle skill - as she crisscrosses the world hailing Iraqi "sovereignty" and "democracy." Of course, Iraq cannot be sovereign while under occupation by a power that reserves to itself the time of withdrawal. But even Iraq's technical sovereignty was pried loose from the slipping grip of the Americans by the United Nations. That, too, was never part of the plan.

The plan never included real sovereignty, nor one person-one-vote - especially not the rise of a government and military whose leaders spent decades of exile in Iran, which was to be target number two or three of the actual Bush war plan.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell now claims that he wasn't part of the real plan or its defeat. "I was kept out of the loop," says Powell. Which means he's just another clown with a frown. For Radio BC, I'm Glen Ford.