WP: Mistakes Loom Large as Handover Nears

[Trajan]

PROMISES UNKEPT : The U.S. Occupation of Iraq

Mistakes Loom Large as Handover Nears

Missed Opportunities Turned High Ideals to Harsh Realities

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, June 20, 2004; Page A01


First of three articles

BAGHDAD -- The American occupation of Iraq will formally end this month having failed to fulfill many of its goals and stated promises intended to transform the country into a stable democracy, according to a detailed examination drawing upon interviews with senior U.S. and Iraqi officials and internal documents of the occupation authority.

The ambitious, 15-month undertaking stumbled because of a series of mistakes that began with an inadequate commitment of resources and was aggravated by a misunderstanding of Iraqi politics, religion and society in occupied Iraq, these participants said.

"We blatantly failed to get it right," said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution who served as an adviser to the occupation authority. "When you look at the record, it's impossible to escape the conclusion that we squandered an unprecedented opportunity."

Viewed from Baghdad since April 2003, the occupation has evolved from an optimistic partnership between Americans and Iraqis into a relationship riven by frustration and resentment. U.S. reconstruction specialists commonly complain of ungrateful Iraqis. Residents of a tough Baghdad neighborhood who welcomed U.S. forces with cold cans of orange soda last spring now jeer as military vehicles roll past. A few weeks ago, young men from the area danced atop a Humvee disabled by a roadside bomb, eventually torching it.

-snip-

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54294-2004Jun19.html

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. And when Iraq descends into chaos....

Shrub will say it is Clinton's fault.

[Disturbed]

2. Another huge mistake>

A Puppet Govt. The CPA was handpicked by the US who in turn picked the "new" Govt. When the elections come up for Iraq in Jan. '05 if the Iraqis don't have a mass uprising against the Occupation before that, the same handpicked puppets will be running for election saying what they think Iraqis want to hear then once in office will do the bidding of the US Govt. This is all a sham. The question: Will Iraqis go along with it?

Full Sovereignty?
Throughout the spring, as hundreds died in the spiraling conflict, as Regime bosses applied their hardcore "anti-terrorist" tortures to innocent bystanders raked up in their occupation nets, as Regime mouthpieces prated endlessly of "liberation" and "sovereignty," Bush viceroy Paul Bremer was quietly signing a series of edicts that will give the United States effective control over the military, ministries -- and money -- of any Iraqi government, for years to come, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Bremer has placed U.S.-appointed "commissions" made up of Americans and local puppets throughout Iraqi government agencies; the ministers supposedly in charge weren't even told of the edicts. These boards "will serve multiyear terms and have significant authority to run criminal investigations, award contracts, direct troops and subpoena citizens," the Journal reports. Any new Iraqi government "will have little control over its armed forces, lack the ability to make or change laws and be unable to make major decisions within specific ministries without tacit U.S. approval, say U.S. officials."


Earlier Bremer edicts laid the Iraqi economy wide open to ruthless exploitation by Bush-approved foreign "investors"; dominance of such key sectors as banking, communications -- and energy -- is already well advanced. The latest dictates aim to ensure that this organized looting goes on, no matter what kind of makeshift "interim government" the United Nations manage to piece together. Bush's plans to build a Saddamite fortress embassy in Baghdad and 14 permanent military bases around the country are designed to provide the knee-breaking "security" for these lucrative arrangements



http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/05/21/120.html

[BootinUp]

3. The article pretty well documents

the failure of the CPA, and Bremer, and by extension our feerless leader. I especially liked the paragraph about the children's show /cooking network we set up for the Iraqis...what a damn joke!

[calimary]

4. Reminds me of the ONE THING the Reagan and bush2 regimes share:

A "mystery woman" named Rosey Scenario.

Anybody recall the lovely David Stockman admissions on the heels of the Reaganomics budget mess? They got all their figures wrong because they had built an assumed "Rosey Scenario" with her "magic asterisk" (all the "savings" and other fabrications that were gonna magically appear in the mix somewhere and fix everything, but that they couldn't put their fingers on just then) into their projections.

Well, looks as though Rosey Scenario had a daughter who moved in with little georgie, who let her move in at the Pentagon and in his vice pResident's office.

[TolstoyAndy]

5. "we squandered an unprecedented opportunity."

We committed war crimes from the very beginning.

This entire undertaking (no pun intended) began with the mass slaughter of innocents during shock and awe.

No good fruit could ever have come of it - it was unprovoked premeditated mass murder.

All those who voted for it in Congress, all those who voted for Bushit, all those in the military who participated in it, all are nothing more than murderers and their accessories.