Occupation's New Guise
Rothschild, Matthew
Editor's Note Matthew Rothschild Occupation's New Guise When Paul Bremer hastened his formal exit from Iraq on June 28, the Bush Administration trumpeted the end of the U.S. occupation and the...
...And Iraqis are far from sovereign...
...How can they be when, in the days before departing, Bremer issued one edict after another that will determine many of the contours of Iraq's government for years to come...
...Allawi wasted no time in office before shredding the fallback rationale for the U.S...
...I'm sure, too-if you call that being helpful...
...occupation and the onset of Iraqi sovereignty...
...Iyad Allawi, long on the CIA payroll, is now under deep cover as Iraq's prime minister...
...How can they be when the U.S...
...Embassy in Baghdad will house several thousand personnel, by far the largest outpost of the empire...
...But where was implementing martial law among the high-minded goals for the Iraq War...
...Bush, ever insensitive to civil liberties, was asked on June 28 about the possibility of martial law in Iraq...
...We can certainly be supportive of the Iraqi government when asked, on a case-by-case basis," a senior American military official told The New York Times...
...They don't have enough troops...
...Guess who will be enforcing martial law...
...Now Bush has his very own Iraqi quisling to carry out his every wish...
...How can they be when 130,000 U.S...
...Not the Iraqis...
...One of those edicts, according to an article in The Washington Post, established five-year terms of office for Iraq's national security adviser and national intelligence chief...
...The notion that Bremer was handing over power to the Iraqis was also laughable when you consider the particular Iraqi who grabbed the reins...
...Allawi was handpicked not by U.N...
...And Bush and his generals are more than happy to keep handling the job...
...envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who was supposed to do so, but by Bremer and the now defunct Iraqi Governing Council, itself a creature of Bremer...
...He handed down a seventy-six-page law enshrining the rights of private companies and tailoring the economy to meet the requirements of the World Trade Organization, the Post noted...
...Barely a week into office, Allawi signed a law granting himself extraordinary powers to "restrict the freedoms of citizens or foreigners," to ban groups, to barge into homes, and to hold suspects indefinitely...
...While we miss Ehrenreich here, I hope you've been enjoying her there...
...She had a good reason: The mighty New York Times offered her Thomas Friedman's perch on the op-ed page for part of the time he is on leave...
...Now that should be offensive to all Americans who bought the lie that this war was about democracy...
...And, the article added, he empaneled a seven-member commission with the "power to disqualify political parties and any of the candidates they support...
...In addition, Bremer "has installed inspectors-general for five-year terms in every ministry...
...I'm sure we can be helpful...
...And they aren't reliable, anyway...
...troops are in their midst...
...invasion of Iraq, which was, as you'll remember, to bring democracy to Baghdad...
...But the occupation continues, only under a new guise...
...No, this task will fall to the Americans, who have been essentially performing it already...
...Barbara Ehrenreich e-mailed me in June to tell me that she needed to take a break from her column for a month or two...
...He said: "The best way to defend yourself is to go on the offensive...
...It was all so convenient...
Vol. 68 • August 2004 • No. 8
