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[AsiaTraveller]

For those who are so deluded that they think American troops in Iraq are "freedom fighters":

�Occupation�s New Guise�
by Matthew Rothschild
August 2004

[emphases added]

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 onset of Iraqi sovereignty. But the occupation continues, only under a new guise. And Iraqis are far from sovereign.

How can they be when 130,000 U.S. troops are in their midst?

How can they be when the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad will house several thousand personnel, by far the largest outpost of the empire?

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?

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. In addition, Bremer, �has installed inspectors-general for five-year terms in every ministry.� He handed down a 76-page law enshrining the rights of private companies and tailoring the economy to meet the requirements of the World Trade Organization, the Post noted. And, the article added, he empaneled a seven-member commission with the �power to disqualify political parties and any of the candidates they support.�

The notion that Bremer was handing over power to the Iraqis was also laughable when you consider the particular Iraqi who grabbed the reins. Dr. Iyad Allawi, long on the CIA payroll, is now under deep cover as Iraq�s prime minister. Allawi was handpicked not by U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who was supposed to do so, but by Bremer and the now defunct Iraqi Governing Council, itself a creature of Bremer.

It was all so convenient. Now Bush has his very own Iraqi quisling to carry out his every wish.

Allawi wasted no time in office before shredding the fallback rationale for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which was, as you�ll remember, to bring democracy to Baghdad.

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.

Guess who will be enforcing martial law?

Not the Iraqis. They don�t have enough troops. And they aren�t reliable, anyway.

No, this task will fall to the Americans, who have been essentially performing it already.

And Bush and his generals are more than happy to keep handling the job ...

... Now that should be offensive to all Americans who bought the lie that this war was about democracy.

[moonraven]

The Neo-cons (I'd like to see all their bellicose butts behind bars) brought murder and Halliburton to Iraq. Murder they had before--on a smaller scale--Haliburton is a new feature. Saddam looks pretty good by comparison--but then so would Idi Amin, were he still alive (died in guess where, Saudi Arabia....)

[ls650]

[AsiaTraveller]

ls650,

That's pretty easy to discover on the Internet:

He's the editor of The Progressive, published in Madison, Wisconsin. The award-winning monthly magazine was founded by "Fightiing Bob La Follette", the Republican senator from Wisconsin, in 1909. It features political commentary, investigative reporting, interviews, social criticism, humor and poetry.

"Throughout its history, The Progressive has published some of the leading social critics of the day: Jane Addams, James Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, John Kenneth Galbraith, Helen Keller, Martin Luther King Jr., Jack London, Ralph Nader, George Orwell, John Reed, Edward Said, Carl Sandburg, Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Norman Thomas and Gore Vidal".

To some, that's an excellent cast of characters. To others, those are much-reviled writers because they critique the status quo and the powers-that-be. And don't forget that La Follette was always a Republican, albeit a quite progressive one. Those were the days when the U.S. Republican Party had REAL conservative values and progressive ideals.