British foreign minister Jack Straw and US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice delivered a stern message to Iraqi leaders today. Flying to Baghdad after tea in Blackburn, Lancastershire — thereby forcing Sir Paul McCartney to rework the final stanza of “A Day in the Life” — the pair told Iraq’s president and prime minister that the failure to form a central government was contributing to violence in Iraq and reflected a certain hurtful contempt toward Iraq’s liberators.

Here’s what Straw said**, in part: “I think we’re entitled to say that the loss of American and British and coalition lives, and the huge amount of money that’s been spent here, is itself a reason for Iraqi leaders now to make swift progress.”

Translated (and read with a British accent), that means this: “Now see here: We undertook to unlawfully invade this country and establish a benign protectorate on condition that the risks and costs would be negligible and the rewards considerable. Well that’s not happened, has it? You’ve forced us to squander almost all your wealth and a good tiny fraction of our own in a botched attempt to reconstruct what I like to call “Blackburn-on-Tigris,” you’ve not let us govern it ourselves and now you refuse to let those we find acceptable among your own people govern it. No more: we want you to form a sovereign government, we want you to form it under a candidate agreeable to me and my visibly uncomfortable opposite number and we want you to form it now.”

Straw and Rice are particularly unenamored of the outgoing/interim prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, whom Rice apparently dislikes so much that she tried to edge out of frame during the photo session prior to her meeting with him. Her ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been working to undermine al-Jaafari for months, ever since he emerged as the consensus candidate among the dominant Shia coalition, apparently not least because al-Jaafari enjoys the support of vehemently anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Khalilzad’s resistance has in turn led to calls from prominent Shia clerics and politicians that he be replaced as ambassador.

It appears that al-Jaafari’s support within the United Iraqi Alliance is crumbling, so he’ll probably bow out within a few days. Whether that’ll help or hurt, I haven’t a clue. Previous experience suggests that just about every development in which the US plays a significant role hurts.

Before Straw and Rice boogied off to Baghdad, Rice took a few moments to explain that when the US exports kidnapped terrorism suspects to third countries for torture, we’re very careful not to just come right out and say that’s what we’ve done.

SECRETARY RICE: … But let me make one point about renditions. Rendition is a practice that has gone on well before September 11th. And the United States does not transfer people to places where we know they will be tortured. In fact, when we think there might even be a possibility of such, we do seek assurances. But I would ask people, should we rather than let known terrorists wander the streets to commit their crimes? It is not good enough to say we can’t do these things, even though they fall within international law or an international practice. And then when a terrorist attack takes place say, “Well, why didn’t you do more?”

QUESTION: Well, it’s not a question of letting them wander the streets. It’s what’s done with them.

…

QUESTION: So, Secretary of State, let me ask you just a very simple, clear question: Have any prisoners of the United States been taken to third countries where they are treated in ways which break any of the obligations to which the United States has committed itself around the world.

SECRETARY RICE: The United States takes its obligations both in terms of international law and in terms of domestic law absolutely seriously. And the President has been very clear that there are to be no violations of international law by any personnel of the United States on the territory or extraterritorial.

Excluding the president, his heirs, family, coworkers and any authorized or unauthorized designees, of course. I guess that’d be a “damn straight, they have.”

UPDATE: During his final press availability in Baghdad, Jack Straw allowed as how the United Iraqi Alliance has the right to nominate the next prime minister. They have done, of course, in the person of al-Jaafari, who is unacceptable to the UK and US.

=======================

**My transcription. As of now, the official transcript isn’t yet available, so there’s no link. But he said it, he really did.

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