Is the American Puppet Government in Iraq about to collaspe?

[MSgt213]

Fallujah Bloodbath threatens US-Appointed Iraqi Government with Collapse

AP reported that the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) issued a demand early on Saturday that the US cease its military action against Fallujah and stop employing "collective punishment."

Not only has what many Iraqis call "the puppet council" taken a stand against Bush administration tactics in Iraq, but individual members are peeling off. Shiite Marsh Arab leader Abdul Karim al-Muhammadawi suspended his membership in the council on Friday. A Sunni member, Ghazi al-Yawir, has threatened to resign if a negotiated settlement of the Fallujah conflict cannot be found. Old-time Sunni nationalist leader Adnan Pachachi thundered on al-Arabiya televsion, "It was not right to punish all the people of Fallujah, and we consider these operations by the Americans unacceptable and illegal." For him to go on an Arab satellite station much hated by Donald Rumsfeld and denounce the very people who appointed him to the IGC is a clear act of defiance. There are rumors that many of the 25 Governing Council members have fled abroad, fearful of assassination because of their association with the Americans. The ones who are left appear on the verge of resigning.

This looks to me like an incipient collapse of the US government of Iraq. Beyond the IGC, the bureaucracy is protesting. Many government workers in the ministries are on strike and refusing to show up for work, according to ash-Sharq al-Awsat. Without Iraqis willing to serve in the Iraqi government, the US would be forced to rule the country militarily and by main force. Its legitimacy appears to be dwindling fast. The "handover of sovereignty" scheduled for June 30 was always nothing more than a publicity stunt for the benefit of Bush's election campaign, but it now seems likely to be even more empty. Since its main rationale was to provide more legitimacy to the US enterprise in Iraq, and since any legitimacy the US had is fading fast, and since a government appointed by Bremer will be hated by virtue of that very appointment, the Bush administration may as well just not bother.

The Interior Minister, Nuri Badran, who was dismissed by Paul Bremer on Thursday, appears to have gone into exile in Jordan. He was probably let go because he objected to the twin US assaults, on Fallujah and on the Sadrist Shiites, or at least to the way it was being done.

The degree of hatred for the United States in the Muslim world is growing by the minute, as the events in Fallujah are broadcast throughout the region. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's warning to Bush that by invading Iraq he would be creating 100 Bin Ladens may well come to pass. For more on this see the Washington Post.

http://www.juancole.com/2004_04_01_juancole_archive.html#108157786505341380

[LittleApple81]

1. Next question: will anybody notice? We might save some of the

Money being paid to Chalabi (I think I read something like $380,000 a month?)

[mac1000a]

2. It's hard for something

to collapse when it never stood up in the first place. The puppet government we have in Iraq is a joke. It makes for great TV for the talking heads at FOX and CNN that the Iraqis have any control over their country, but we have been calling the shots and will continue to do so after the supposed handover this summer. That government is powerless. If it fell tomorrow nothing would have changed.

[neverforget]

3. Who do we hand power over too on June 30 if their is no CPA?

Purveyor of truth and all around great guy Ahmed Chalabi! :puke:

[kentuck]

4. When the IGC is meeting with al Sadr, one would have to say.....

it is very possible that the US will be asked to leave by an ever-changing IGC....The possibility is there, imo...