And you thought that following the Libby trial (and error) is damn near impossible? Well, here’s a Saturday night Mind Games Special.

Power Line has unearthed an ABC News report from 2000 (that’s before 9/11 for those of you following along at home in the wee hours of Sunday morning) about conversations and cooperation (or conversations about cooperation) between…wait for it…Saddam and bin Laden, or at least Iraq and al Qaeda.

Abbas, Mashal, and Haniyeh in Mecca

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh touches the black stone inside the Kaaba in the Grand Mosque in Mecca, early February 9, 2007. Rival Palestinian factions signed a deal to form a unity government, hoping to end bloodshed between their followers and to win back Western aid halted because of the hostility of Hamas to Israel. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem (SAUDI ARABIA)

Reuters

Early reports have this as a huge victory for Hamas over Fatah, engineered by the Saudis, who reportedly pressured Abbas into caving to Hamas’s demands. The Economist, skimping on the details (including the most noteworthy—that Hamas’s notorious “Executive Force” will be folded into the Fatah security forces—gives this circus a half-thumb up. For now, it seems to me that the biggest winner is Ismail Haniyeh, who is also the biggest whore.

Why? Because just a couple of months ago he was visiting with Ahmadinejad (as I noted here). You do recall talk of the Sunni-Shia split, right? So it was indeed puzzling that Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh, a devout Sunni Muslim, would cozy up to the Shia Islamic Republic of Iran. But it’s puzzling only to those who don’t understand that Hamas is basically just like the Mafia and that it just managed to extort $1billion from the nervous Saudis (who are Sunnis and Iran’s arch-enemy, for those of you falling asleep in front of your monitors) and to thumb its collective nose—and possibly worse—at the politically weakened and battered forces of the Enlightened West (whose tepid responses you can read here).

“We have agreed with the Saudis to market this agreement internationally. Our (Saudi) brothers are in constant contact with the Americans and Europeans,” Hamas government spokesman Ghazi Hamad told Reuters.

“They (the West) cannot ignore this agreement and impose their own conditions,” he said. “The European Union should open a dialogue with this new government and this is the only way to have stability in the region.”

Nizar Rayyan, a senior Hamas leader in Gaza, welcomed the agreement reached in Mecca but said Hamas shunned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s call for Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, who will form the new cabinet, to abide by previous peace accords.

To make Hamas’s position crystal-clear, for all who care to listen:

“We will never recognise Israel. There is nothing called Israel,” he told Reuters. “We, in the Hamas movement, will not abide by anything.”

Hamas spokesman Ismail Rudwan said: “The recognition is not an option at all, is not discussable.”

Via Wretchard, who sees dark days ahead. Spengler the Reptilian has rather a different take on things:

As he observed in the January edition of The Atlantic Monthly, the predicament of Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurd resembles that of the European powers just before the outbreak of the World War I in 1914. [2] I made a similar argument last year. [3] The difference is that everyone cared if Germany, France, Russia and Britain went to war. No one today cares if Sunnis kill Shi’ites in Iraq or Lebanon, or Hamas and Fatah fight to the bitter end in Gaza - provided, of course, that US aircraft carriers keep the oil flowing through the Persian Gulf.

I knew it! It is all about oil!

…so posting will be erratic.

Go take a walk—it’s downright balmy today.