"BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The temporary stewards of Iraq's future reclaimed their nation two days early, accepting limited power Monday from U.S. occupiers who wished them prosperity and handed them a staggering slate of problems - including a lethal insurgency the Americans admit they underestimated."
Are the Iraqi people really better off than 4 years ago?
They have gone from rule under a despot to anarchy.
This Pandora's box will not be easily closed.
ABC, NBC and CBS hate Bush so much that they don't show any of the good things happening. Iraq is much better off now and the terrorist in the Sunni triangle will be beaten by the Iraqi people.
I predict a stunning success. And I predict that George Bush will win the November election. Godspeed to George Bush and to VICTORY in Iraq and in November!!! Yeeaahhaa
The dawn of a new Iraq - or a return to secrecy and killing?
By James Meek 06/28/04
Something happened in Baghdad yesterday, but what exactly? What we know is that somewhere in Saddam Hussein's sprawling former cantonment on the banks of the Tigris, behind silver miles of new razor wire, behind high concrete barriers stronger than most medieval fortifications, behind sandbags, five security checks, US armoured vehicles, US armoured soldiers, special forces of various countries and private security guards, behind secrecy and a fear of killing so intense that none save a handful of people knew it had happened until after it was over, an American bureaucrat handed a piece of paper to an Iraqi judge, jumped on a helicopter, and left the country.
Paul Bremer's departure and the handover of a limited form of sovereignty to an unelected Iraqi government was to be the end of military occupation and the beginning of independence.
From London and Washington it may look that way and Iraqis, too, seem eager to believe that yesterday was the beginning of the end of chaos and fear. But the Bremer who waved from the steps of his departing C-130 didn't only leave sovereignty, in the form of a terse two-paragraph letter, with the Iraqis. He left 160,000 foreign troops, a broken economy and a land beset by ruthless, reckless armed bands.
The first thing reporters saw as they came into the sunshine from the banal auditorium where the newly sworn-in Iraqi government hailed the new era was two US Apache helicopter gunships, pirouetting low in the furnace sky.
The journey out of the fortified cantonment, previously known as the Green Zone, now renamed the International Zone, still winds through ramparts and fortifications, past jumpy US soldiers threatening to confiscate mobile phones. In the streets beyond, menacing signs in English and Arabic still hang beneath US watchtowers. "Keep Away, Deadly Force Authorised." "Tactical Military Vehicles ONLY." "Do Not Enter Or You Will Be Shot."
The handover was held in a single-storey former Saddam-era guesthouse in the zone which has been given to the new prime minister, Ayad Allawi. Fear of the bombers gave the occasion all the pomp of an office leaving do. It lasted only 20 minutes.
Mr Allawi's residence and a similar building provided for the president, Sheikh Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar look out on pleasant lawned gardens, studded with pools and orange trees.
It is a delightful setting from which to reinvent independent Iraq, except Mr Allawi and Mr Yawar are sandwiched by the enormous weight of American enthusiasm, there to make sure they get the independence thing right.
On one side, the huge new US embassy. On the other side, Saddam Hussein's lavish principal former palace or, as it is known since yesterday, the annex to the US embassy.
Mr Yawar had hoped to be waking up in that palace this morning but was told the Americans needed it too badly; in that sense, as in so many others, today will be just another day in the zone.
The first many people around the zone knew of yesterday's events was an Iraqi flag billowing in the hairdryer-hot breeze from the Zone's tallest building. Inside the Zone, logos of the now defunct Coalition Provisional Authority which Mr Bremer headed, emblems which had started to look permanent, disappeared.
There was a curious ceremony in the Zone's convention centre which, apart from the odd Saddamish mural, could be a convention centre anywhere, intended to mark the handover of military authority from the coalition to the Iraqi military. A column of US cavalrymen, dressed in the blue shirts, kerchiefs, gauntlets and black broad-brimmed hats of the Custer era, marched out across the industrial carpeting, bearing their departing standards.
It was as if they were leaving. But they were not, any more than Mr Bremer's departure is America leaving.
It was hard to get away from the reality of the beleaguered, hunkered-down US military behemoth. Before the ceremony a pleasant, anxious, motherly Virginian woman began to chat. She'd only just arrived, for a six-month tour. She was a Pentagon civilian, but they had put her in camouflage fatigues. They hadn't given her a gun. She had never used one before. She was worried she might find herself under attack and unable to help her comrades out. She lives next to the US military cemetery at Arlington. "They're doing 26 funerals a day," she said. "People go jogging there, but they show respect."
There were other, more transient visitors in the Zone. There was Gregg Andrew, a Pentagon contractee who described himself as an "advance man", hired to choreograph the handover so it would look decent on TV.
He said of the ceremonies: "There is a pageantry involved." Yet there wasn't. The swearing-in of the president, prime minister and government could not have been more simple.
The principals sat on an auditorium stage adorned by nothing more than 18 Iraqi flags, and swore plain oaths under God to Iraq, democracy and the people with their hands on a big red Koran. It was appropriate to the occasion. The advent of what is supposed to be the opposite of dictatorship looked suitably modest.
Just before the swearing-in began the Iraqi leadership waved to the people watching. As they did, they looked like middle-aged people look when the restraining bar locks into place on an extreme funfair ride about to lurch into the air.
For despite the constraints the US and Britain will keep on them, they have power and responsibility, and they know that in trying to invent a new narrative for Iraq, they are only doing what their Arab and Kurd predecessors did in learning the strange art of politics under the Ottomans and the British, likewise times of violence, revolt, occupation and compromise.
We will have to wait for Mr Bremer's memoirs to know what he thought, looking down as his Chinook banked over the parched date groves, yellow cubescape and sluggish brown river of summer Baghdad for the last time.
Yet between the disastrous spell of looting which began the US occupation, the disbanding of the army and police which enabled crime to flourish, the failure to rebuild the country, the continued presence of a vast US force and the uncertainty surrounding future elections, the creation of a transitional government seems a thin achievement, particularly when that government is showing authoritarian tendencies.
But an Iraqi government, any Iraqi government, seems to many like the overdue fulfilment of what they wanted from the Americans all along, which was to painlessly extract Saddam and his family from their lives, like a bad tooth, and immediately vanish. Instead, the dentist moved in.
-- Modified on 6/29/2004 7:03:41 PM
-- Modified on 6/29/2004 7:23:03 PM
People going into shredders...
The liberals and the Marxist Appeasement Party (Dems) are really becoming Chicken Little "the sky is falling, the sky is falling"
Besides reminding us who Chicken Little was (and sounding like Rush the pill popper), just what is the point of your post. Are you saying that the war in Iraq is ``Operation Iraqi Freedom'' ?
Does the TYPICAL Southern Man really care about the Iraqis. Or, is it any excuse to kick some ass that you find so appealing.
The left in this country wants to tell the rest of the world to have abortions under the guise of feminism. It also wants to tell the poorer countries not to eat bio-altered grain. It wants to tell these same countries to not pollute water, soil and air.
But let the US want to use its superpower strength to actually help people not be tortured, arrested indicriminately, raped, etc...then it's a whole different story. All of a sudden we are "forcing our values on others" and "meddling where we don't belong."
Conservatives do care. We are abhored when the left does not want to get involved. Anyone on the left care about Rwanda??? Conservatives ("who we all know hate black people") mention it as a foreign policy debacle.
Don't try to pull this "no compassion" line on me.
right- the GOP DOES have some compassion. Not for the poor in thier own country. Not for women with unwanted pregnanacies. Not for politicians who actually do its work.
But for all the oppressed overseas, they are a shining beacon of good ness.
you guys are too good for us. It is a joy to behold your munificance. We were silly to have doubted you.
BTW- that compassionate stuff was pretty much unmentioned when the war rationales were put out BEFORE the war! Back then it was all about how threatening Iraq was, and how strong their military were.
I am one non-GOPer who had no prob with smackin' Saddam around, and I think this argument holds little water. We screwed up- we didn't get the rest of our usual allies on board. Now we pay the piper...
Bismarck worried more about his Pomeranian Grenadiers, than Dubya did about our boys' lives. When you act more clumsily than Mr "Blood and Iron", you pretty much fall in the Military adventurer class....
You sound like you are happy with what you bought. Don't be amazed that others think it a poor deal and want to sack the negotiator. Personally, I feel we bought a pig in a poke- that turned out to be sick and too small.
The left does not tell everyone ``hey go have an abortion this weekend. It's all the craze''. Its support of the right to choose is just that - THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE. It's not under the guise of feminism but the ``guise'' of freedom.
As far as the ``US wanting to use its superpower strength to actually help people'' PLEEEEEEEZE. I do hope the Iraqis are better of in the future but that this was Bush Jr.'s motivation is hardly believable in my eyes (to say the least).
I'm abhored when war mongers use what was billed as a war on terrorism as a crusade to further their political agenda.
Well, at least we agree that it is possible that the Iraqi people can generally be ``better off'' in the future.
Only around 100 Americans were EVER killed when Saddam Hussein was in charge of the place. And all of those were killed because they part of an invading army.
There were no fanatic Islamic terror groups operating in Iraq, targetting Americans in the U.S. and in Iraq under Saddam. Now that we have gotten rid of Saddam, within the power vaccuum has emerged an Al Qaida ally named Zarqawi going around cutting heads off of American contractors, coordinating suicide bombings, and blowing up oil fields. He has now become, arguably, as powerful as Osama Bin Laden, and his organization is growing. Meanwhile, thousands of more Arabs have signed onto Al Qaida, bolsetered by anti-U.S. hatred, exacerbated by photos of our soldiers sexually humiliating Arab prisoners.
Please explain how this war was in AMERICAN interests?
You're wrong about Zarqawi. He moved to Iraq, and was given safe haven there by Saddam after the US destriyed the Taliban in Afghanistan. By the way, Clinton's Justice Dept. indicted Bin Laden in '98 and cited his efforts to cooperate with Iraq in developing WMD. You really need to look this stuff up before asking where the US interest was.
I would be quite confident that the number was zero. It was only the post-Saddam power vaccuum that has enabled Zarqawi to consolidate his organization. And, as usual, you resort to the old saw that Clinton said Saddam was bad. Well, the fact is, Clinton's justice department could not have made the case that Bin Laden and Saddam worked together, despite what they might have said. And Clinton realized that invading Iraq was something whose cost FAR outweighed its benefits, and hence, he did not pursue it. This war wasn't in U.S. interests under Clinton, so he didn't engage in it. And it remained NOT in U.S. interests under Bush, as we so clearly see now.
And, BTW, I DID look all this stuff up. Only I STILL have not found where there has been anything CLOSE to $200 Billion + ~900 American lives, plus thousands of Americans seriously wounded, + Americas relationship with most of our NATO allies worth of American Interests being preserved by this war.
All of the Israeli school busses that have been blown up in recent years were blown up by suicide bombers, assisted by Hamas.
I can assure you, if Zarqawi were directly responsible for any of these bombings, the Israelis would have taken him out, just as they have taken out every major Hamas leader in the past couple of years.
At this point, they have to play the hand they are dealt. I hope things turn out well for them. They are probably better off -- they have a chance at a reasonable future maybe 5-10 years down the road. They did not under the leadership of the Bath party and the status quo in the country.
By: Haifa Zangana 06/29/04
In Iraq, we have an expression: same donkey, different saddle. Iraq's long-heralded interim government has now formally assumed sovereignty. Official labels and tags have duly changed. The US administrator will now be an ambassador, while Sheikh Ghazi al Yawar and Iyad Allawi, US-appointed members of the former governing council, are to be known as president and prime minister.
To formalise the change, the UN has already issued a resolution under which "multinational forces" will replace "US-led forces". On the issue of control over US troops, the message is clear: the US forces are there to stay only because "Iraqi people" has asked them to. But which Iraqi people? Do they mean the new administration headed by the CIA's Iyad Allawi? And why does all this sound strangely familiar?
In Iraq we don't just read history at school - we carry it within ourselves. It's no wonder, then, that we view what is happening in Iraq now of "liberation-mandate-nominal sovereignty" as a replay of what took place in the 1920s and afterwards.
On April 28 1920, Britain was awarded a mandate over Iraq by the League of Nations to legitimise its occupation of the country. The problems proved enormous. The British administration in Baghdad was short of funds, and had to face the resentment of the majority of Iraqis against foreign rule, which boiled over that year into a national uprising. In the aftermath, the British high commissioner had to come up with a solution to reduce the British loss of lives.
A decision was taken to replace the occupation with a provisional Iraqi government, assisted by British advisers under the authority of the high commissioner of Iraq. Finding a suitable ruler was not easy,.
On the August 21 1921 Gertrude Bell, Oriental secretary to the high commissioner, wrote to her father about the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis. She mentions some of her Iraqi "pals" and enemies, descendants of whom are playing similar roles in Iraq today: "Muzahim Pachachi (the one who made the speech in English at our tea party at Basra). And another barrister whom you don't know, Rauf Beg Chadirji, a pal of mine. And still more splendid was one of the sheikhs of the northern shammar, Ajil al Yawar; I had seen him in 1917 when he came in to us". Then she refers to "Saiyid Muhammad Sadr ... a tall black bearded alim (cleric) with a sinister expression. We tried to arrest him early in August but failed. He escaped from Baghdad and moved about the country like a flame of war, rousing the tribes."
To the British government, control of Iraq's oil was a necessity. Iraqi national liberation movements called for "Istiqlal al Tamm" - complete independence - which was regarded by the British as "the catchword of the extremists". Any protest against the British-imposed monarchy was similarly regarded as the work of "extremists".
In 1930 a new treaty was signed which aimed to satisfy Iraqi aspirations for the coming 25 years, but the British retained their power, through military bases, advisers and control of oil. The monarchy proved an oppressive regime under which many opposition leaders were executed and thousands more were imprisoned. Elections were managed, corruption was widespread, bombing and military force was used against popular uprisings, chemical weapons were used against the Kurds. Popular uprisings followed in 1930, 1941 1948, 1952 and 1956. Between 1921 and 1958 Iraq had an astonishing 38 cabinets, some of them only lasting 12 days. The mainstay of a corrupt and docile regime was the presence of British forces on the ground. Is this what present-day Iraq has to look forward to?
Three major events have shaped our national identity. The 1920 revolution, the 1958 coup regarded by most Iraqis as a revolution that finally achieved real Iraqi independence - and the Palestinian cause. At the heart of the three lay the struggle to end occupation. Occupation has always been perceived as a process by which to rob us of our identity and dignity. The British, in the past, failed to understand the depth of the feeling among Iraqis both against occupation and towards the Palestinian issue. Now, in their partnership with the US, they are repeating the same mistakes.
As in the past, Iraqis are denied their natural right to resist the occupier and its imposed form of government. The "extremists" of our history are now called "terrorists".
Within a year the occupiers have achieved what Saddam's regime failed to do over decades. They have killed our hope in democracy. What of tomorrow? It would be useful to reread history and take notice of Al Istiqlal Al Tam and above all Miss Bell's warning about Iraq: "There are so many quicksands."
You can bet on Iraq being a success. And I predict within 90 days it will be evident and really going great in 180 days.
The people are really getting pissed at the terrorist foreigners (no not U.S. troops) and are going to start turning on them. The North is fine, the South is fine and in 180 days, the middle will be fine.
The Iraqi police and army will take the lead and the U.S. will be their backup muscle should they need it.
timeframe that you mentioned then the prospect of getting the rogue factions under control will grow dimmer as the people there who hate us grow bolder.
The Palestinian cause is one of the three major events that have shaped Iraqi national identity? No wonder Iraq is so fucked up. Why don't they concentrate on their own backyard first? Are we supposed to believe that Israel is the cause of all Iraqi misery through the centuries? Remember, if the Arabs (and Iraq was not involved at the time) had not attacked Israel and had given Jews access to their holy sites, the occupation of the West Bank would never had happened! Spare me this Iraqi horseshit. No Israeli ever occupied Iraq, and no Israeli would ever want to!