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Impeach George Bush
Repeating History
The installation of an American puppet government renders meaningless the “handover.” "If the handover of authority had been accompanied by the withdrawal of the occupation troops, it would have been a proper handover and today would have been a day of festivities for all Iraqis to celebrate," Abdul Sattar Abdul Jabbar, a member of the association, said on Al-Jazeera television. "But what took place, as we've seen, is a formality."
Source: The TIP, 2004-06-28
Candidate: TheTIP
When the Shaw of Iran was installed by the British in 1953, he was the puppet of the industrialized nations looking for a perpetual and cheap source of fuel - the oil of the Middle East. But 38 years of dictatorship finally led to the violent overthrow of the mostly secular puppet, the Shah, by the Islamic fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeni in 1979.
Khomeni’s neighbor, Saddam Hussein, was predisposed to violence. Tens of thousands of Iraqis emigrated to the United States and Europe. To clamp down on his population and to maintain his control, Hussein himself maintained control within Iraq’s borders. Overseas, Hussein sent his Head Henchman, Iyad Allawi, to search out and destroy his enemies, many of them organized to overthrow Hussein. They was ruthless in combatting revolutionary voices among the oppressed Kurds and Shi’ias.
The cheap supply of oil was interrupted. Iran’s oil was no longer under the control of the US and Britain. The long gas lines made a real impression on Americans, so much so that they, along with the double-digit inflation that accompanied them, contributed more than anything else to the election of Ronald Reagan.
Reagan, as the Ayatollah knew, was a man who would deal with terrorists - secretly selling Iran arms to fight their war with Saddam Hussein of Iraq, the man the Reagan Administration publicly supported.
Reagan’s cultivation of Hussein largely replaced the flow of oil from Iran with Iraq’s oil. That, coupled with Saudi Arabian oil, kept American machinery humming for a while. But America wanted a military presence in the Middle East and Hussein, unlike the Shah, wouldn’t play ball.
So George (41) Bush siezed an opportunity to escalate a war in the area by encouraging his ally Hussein to invade oil-rich Kuwait. Then, Bush sounded the alarm and convinced the House of Saud it needed American military protection from its neighbor and installed a military base in Saudi Arabia.
Bush’s invasion of Iraq added to his support for a military coup/revolution caused an escalation of Hussein’s crackdown on his enemies.
For eight years the Clinton Administration kept the myth of Iraq’s military might alive - daily fly-overs, United Nations sanctions... All the while choking the economy of Iraq and causing the gradual but steady destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure. Hussein hated Bush (41) and planned an assassination attempt against Bush’s entire family during a visit to Kuwait. That he didn’t succeed was, for Hussein, a a fatal error.
Early on in Bush (43) Administration, (according to Secretary of Treasury Paul O’Neil) Bush raised the question of how best to attack and oust Saddam Hussein. The 9/11 tragedy gave him his answer.
Bush’s takeover of Iraq ended up raising a lot more questions than it answered, though. Saddam Hussein’s ruling style had created a deeply dysfunctional society - one that simply won’t bend to a gentle hand. George Bush said he wanted to give the Iraqi’s a Democracy. After over a years occupation, it is another tyrant Bush is leaving in control - Saddam’s Hussein’s old ally Iyad Allawi, who’s first decree was that he intends to delay any election and instead enforce a regine of martial law.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice passed a note at a NATO Summit Meeting in Istambul that read ''Mr. President, Iraq is sovereign." Bush wrote ''Let freedom reign!" on the note and passed it back.
The temporary stewards of Iraq's future reclaimed their nation two days early, accepting limited power Monday from U.S. occupiers who wished them prosperity and handed them a staggering slate of problems - including a lethal insurgency the Americans admit they underestimated.
With the passing of a sheaf of documents and a prime minister's oath on a red Quran, the land once ruled by Saddam Hussein received official, if not actual, sovereignty from U.S. administrators in a secretive ceremony moved up to thwart insurgents' attempts at undermining the transfer.
''The Iraqi people have their country back," President Bush said at a NATO summit in Istanbul, Turkey.
On paper, the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority granted power to Iraq's interim government at 10:26 a.m., 467 days after the U.S. invasion began. The reality is more complicated: Some 145,000 foreign military forces - most of them American - remain in charge of keeping rebellion at bay. Add to that another 20,000 civilian special services. There is currently no accounting of how many foreign workers are in the country.
The U.S. civilian authority, which rode in on a swift military victory that swept away Saddam's generation-long regime, withdrew quietly. Its leader, L. Paul Bremer, left Iraq aboard a military plane two hours after the transfer and was swiftly succeeded by U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte who plans to arrive in Iraq in a week or two.
Hours later, NATO leaders agreed to help train Iraq's armed forces - a decision that fell short of U.S. hopes that the security alliance would take a larger role in Iraq.
There were no immediate reports of violence or threats linked to the power transfer, held in the heavily guarded Green Zone against a backdrop of Louis XIV furniture and a row of Iraqi flags - the same green-black-red banner that flew over the nation while Saddam was in power.
Transfer of Power
''Please let us not be afraid by those outlaws that are fighting Islam," interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said in his inaugural address. ''Some of them have already gone to the fires of hell and others are waiting their turn.''
On the streets of the Iraqi capital, there was no sign of unusual activity or celebratory gunfire.
Iraq's tentative step toward democratic rule will operate under major restrictions - some imposed at the behest of the country's influential Shiite Muslim clergy, which wanted to limit the powers of an unelected administration.
The current plan is interim government will hold power for seven months until, by U.N. Security Council resolution, elections are held ''in no case later than" Jan. 31. The Americans retain responsibility for security (read that military.)
''The political arm of our operation here has gone out of business. Certainly the military operation has not gone out of business," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the coalition deputy operations chief, told AP Radio.
There being no one spokesperson, it goes unspoken that the commercial arm of the American operation is certainly not out of business.
Though the government is unable to amend the interim constitution, it assumes responsibility for the daunting problems that have bedeviled U.S. occupiers for more than a year - public turbulence, a ruined infrastructure that has angered the citizenry and, most urgently, the accelerating and violent insurgency that has left hundreds dead. It must make initial attempts to stitch together a patchwork of ethnicities that Saddam pitted against each other - including Iraqi Kurds who had carved out a largely autonomous region in the north.
It also inherits responsibility for the fate of Saddam, the dictator-turned-prisoner whose harsh rule left tens of thousands dead. His brutality and Iraq's alleged terror links was one reason cited by Bush for the decision to invade.
Saddam Hussein will be transferred to the custody of his countrymen and will appear before an Iraqi judge in the ''next few days" to face charges, officials said Monday.
A military spokesman said he will remain in a U.S.-run jail because the Iraqi government lacks a suitable prison.
The months since his regime's demise have produced headache after headache for the U.S. government, even as it insists that slow, steady progress toward instituting democracy is under way.
As of Friday, 848 U.S. service members had died since military operations began last year, according to the Defense Department - 627 of them in hostile action. The number of civilian Iraqi dead, officially unknown, is believed to be approximately 15 thousands. There is no count of Iraqi injured or military deaths.
On Friday, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the cost of the war, already over $89 billion will probably be $55 billion to $60 billion this year if troop levels remain unchanged.
No weapons of mass destruction have been found - the chief reason cited by Bush for war. Bombs have ravaged Baghdad, claiming the top U.N. official in Iraq among their victims. Abductions are increasing, violence has spiked and videotaped beheadings have horrified the world.
On a video shown Sunday, insurgents threatened to behead a U.S. Marine and a Pakistani driver they had kidnapped unless the United States releases all Iraqis in ''occupation jails." Three Turks are also being held.
Most problematic for Washington has been the abuse of detainees by U.S. forces at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad - a scandal brimming with details of sexual humiliation that has antagonized even Iraqis who support the U.S. occupation.
Some Iraqis said Monday's transfer meant little.
''The real date will be when the last American soldier leaves," Qassim al-Sabti, an art gallery owner, said after learning of the transfer. ''Of course I feel I'm still occupied.''
Judging from other American occuations, that could be decades. And the installation of an American puppet government renders meaningless the “handover."
The Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential, year-old Sunni clerical organization that has criticized the occupation, said Monday's events ''deceived the Iraqi people and the world.''
''If the handover of authority had been accompanied by the withdrawal of the occupation troops, it would have been a proper handover and today would have been a day of festivities for all Iraqis to celebrate," Abdul Sattar Abdul Jabbar, a member of the association, said on Al-Jazeera television. ''But what took place, as we've seen, is a formality.''
The most recent U.S. occupations are cited, even by the countries occupied, as success stories. Japan, vanquished in World War II, emerged from American occupation as a budding economic powerhouse. The road for Germany was bumpier but is considered a similar triumph. Both countries, however, are still occupied by American military.
The transfer of sovereignty places Iraq's immediate future in the hands of two men with widely different styles and power bases: Allawi, a Shiite Muslim, physician and former Baath Party member with longtime ties to the State Department and CIA; and President Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni, American-educated engineer who lived for many years in Saudi Arabia and prefers traditional Arab dress.
''I will leave Iraq confident in its future," Bremer told them and fellow ministers at the handover ceremony.
Allawi’s official bio:
Allawi lived for many years in London, while al-Yawer spent his time outside Iraq in the Arab world. Al-Yawer is seen as more in tune with Iraqi values and culture and has become widely popular as a champion of the Sunni minority. Although the presidency is largely ceremonial, many Iraqis expect al-Yawer to play an important role in public life.
Some world leaders expressed cautious enthusiasm at the developments. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, an outspoken opponent of the U.S.-led invasion, sent congratulations and offered ''trusting collaboration." Jordan's King Abdullah II praised a ''landmark in history of Iraq.''
Others said the event was a sham. ''Occupation will wear a new dress," said Syrian political analyst Haitham Kilani.
Ali Hussein Ali, a retired teacher, held blue prayer beads as he played dominoes at a Baghdad cafe.
''People are afraid to express their happiness," Ali said. ''When security prevails, Iraqis will be very happy. They will celebrate when the American troops leave and when they are no longer taking orders from the Americans.''
Iyad Allawi is one of a US-backed clique of secular Iraqi opposition figures who lived in exile until the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003.
But he has the advantage as prime minister - to paraphrase one commentator - of being equally mistrusted by everyone in Iraq's multifarious population.
Religious leaders think he is too secular, the US-led coalition now sees him as a critic, for the anti-Saddam opposition he is an ex-Baathist, while ordinary Iraqis say he is a CIA man.
Born in 1945 to a prominent Shia Muslim merchant family, Mr Allawi trained as a neurologist and joined the Baath party underground movement as a young man.
But when the party came to power, he fell out with the rising hard man Saddam Hussein in the early 1970s and was forced to go into exile.
He was badly wounded in an assassination attempt while living in the UK in 1978, believed to have been ordered by Saddam Hussein.
Well-connected
Mr Allawi went on to co-found the Iraqi National Accord (INA) party, which is known for attracting disillusioned former Baathists from the military and security fields.
From its foundation in 1991, with the backing of the US Central Intelligence Agency and British intelligence, the group supported the idea of fostering a coup from within the Iraqi army to overthrow Saddam Hussein, but its attempts ended disastrously.
Correspondents say Mr Allawi is well-connected politically in Washington and London, has extensive business dealings and has close relations with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Since joining the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, he has publicly opposed the purging of members of Baath party from government positions.
His work has been focused on running the IGC's security committee, which has been responsible for building up the new Iraqi army, police and intelligence service.
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