August 25, 2007 (LPAC)--There is mounting public evidence that the Bush Administration and the British government are actively plotting the overthrow of the al-Maliki government in Iraq, and its replacement by a "strongman" tied to Iyad Allawi and the recast Iraqi intelligence service. According to one well-placed Arab source, the U.S. and British governments are actively working behind the scenes to isolate and discredit the current Iraqi prime minister, with accusations that he is an Iranian agent or, at least, a Shi'ite-only sectarian leader, who cannot hold the country together.

U.S. intelligence sources contacted by Executive Intelligence Review have

confirmed that both Washington and London, under strong pressure from Saudi Arabia, are trying to oust al-Maliki, and blame him for the failure to politically stabilize Iraq through the Bush Administration's failed military "surge" policy. On Aug. 24, a number of U.S. news organizations, including ABC and CNN, revealed that the former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, a darling of the Anglo-American plotters, had hired a White House-linked Washington public relations firm, to lobby to depose the al-Maliki regime and install him in power instead. The $300,000 payment went to Barbour Griffith & Rogers, a firm headed by Robert Blackwill, the former Bush White House special emissary to Iraq, that also employs Philip Zelikow, a recently retired top aide to Secretary of State Condi Rice, and top Bush-Cheney fundraiser Lanny Griffith. The firm's founder, Haley Barbour, is the former head of the Republican National Committee at the time of the 2000 Bush-Cheney election, who is now the Republican Governor of Mississippi.

The "dump al-Maliki" rhetoric has also come, increasingly, from the mouths of top Bush Administration officials, including the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, and from President Bush himself. Speaking in Montebello, Quebec, Canada during a summit meeting with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts last week, President Bush hinted that the Iraqi parliament should dump the prime minister. The backlash against the President from "the foreign policy establishment," according to one U.S. intelligence source, was so severe, that several days later, speaking before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the President reversed himself and praised the Iraqi prime minister as "a good guy." Nevertheless, the Bush-Cheney kiss of death was unmistakable, and sources tell LPAC that the coup maneuvers are moving apace.

One U.S. intelligence official, who confirmed the efforts to replace al-Maliki and the role of Allawi in the effort, cautioned that the prospect of success was near zero, and the outcome of such an effort could be disastrous--leading to the breakup of the country altogether.