Salon: Escape from Baghdad

[kskiska]

The country that U.S. authorities are hastily handing over to the Iraqis is more of a bloody mess than ever.

By Eric Boehlert

This time there was no "Mission Accomplished" banner flying high.

Forsaking public, self-congratulatory speeches, the much-anticipated transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi people did not take place among pomp and circumstance, nor was it captured for history by a throng of journalists. Instead, the transfer occurred nearly in secret inside a well-secured building behind the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, witnessed by a handful of participants in the five-minute service. Coming off a weekend of unending violence, during which more than 100 Iraqis were killed by terrorists protesting the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the pageantry of a ceremony on June 30 suddenly seemed less inviting to both the United States and its Iraqi partners in the interim government, and the transfer of power was quickly moved up to Monday.

It was just the latest U.S. plan for the Iraqi occupation to go awry. That sovereignty is being passed to Iraq against a backdrop of violence so extreme that martial law is being seriously discussed by the new Iraqi government highlights how poor the postwar conditions are and how big of a challenge the new government faces. Indeed, the handover occurs as a wide range of foreign policy experts have concluded that the plan to invade Iraq as well as the postwar-construction phase have failed on nearly every front.

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"The Iraqi people have their country back," President Bush declared in Istanbul, Turkey, where he is attending a NATO summit. "We have kept our word." Ordinary Iraqi citizens and others critical of the U.S. occupation, however, suggest that the violence-riddled country Bush has handed back to Iraqis is in far worse condition than it was before the war. As one Baghdad literature student told a reporter over the weekend, "The security situation seems to be getting worse day by day. Our lives are much worse than in the time of Saddam."

"I think many Iraqis, outside those of Kurdistan, would say they're getting a worse country back than they had before the invasion," adds Toensing. "It's utter chaos."

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http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/06/29/iraq/index.html