Nightline 6/1: Hey, who are those guys? (new Iraqi leaders)

[Bozita]

After Jon Stewart and the Daily Show (NEW newscasts begin tonight.)

It should be interesting to see how Nightline handles this.



Nightline Daily E-Mail
June 1, 2004


TONIGHT'S FOCUS: There is a new Iraqi government that has been designated, and most if not all of them, already sworn in, in advance of the June 30 handover. But will they actually be able to govern? And just what does sovereignty mean?

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Who are those guys? Okay, I stole that line from Butch Cassidy, but it is appropriate today. And let's face it, if you're going to steal a line, it might as well be from a great movie. But who are the Iraqis who are going to make up the interim government? Most Americans have never heard of them, and I think it's a fair bet that many Iraqis don't know them either. Many of them lived outside of Iraq while Saddam was in power. Do they have credibility? Will they be able to govern? As I write this, President Bush is speaking from the Rose Garden, saying that we will give them full sovereignty. But what exactly does that mean? The new interim government, which will rule until elections are held in 2005, will not control the U.S. forces there. Can it be "full sovereignty" if foreign forces are in your country and you don't control them? That, of course, is a non-starter. American troops do not serve under foreign control.

But the handover is now 30 days away. And there are a lot of questions still unanswered. So we're going to take some of them on tonight. Nightline correspondent Dave Marash will report on who the new leaders of the Iraqi government will be. And then our plan is for Ted to be joined by a number of guests, including Dave from Baghdad, to try to answer some of those questions. And of course, the violence continues, and Dave will bring us up to date on that too. So our plan tonight is to try to answer some of the most basic questions that we, and I presume all of you, have about what's going on. I hope you'll join us.

Leroy Sievers and the Nightline Staff
Nightline Offices
ABCNEWS Washington D.C.

 

[the Kelly Gang]

1. who ?..people with a short shelf life