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Politics : Attack Iraq? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (7177)	7/21/2003 11:05:20 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 8683

Iraqi Council Hailed With Faint Praise By Jefferson Morley washingtonpost.com staff Wednesday, July 16, 2003; 11:11 AM The new U.S.-appointed Governing Council in Iraq is getting a lukewarm welcome in the media of nearby countries. In Baghdad and Beirut, the two cities with the freest press in the Arab world, the council is receiving expressions of support, leavened with low expectations about its powers. Many media outlets observe that the chief of the U.S. military occupation, Paul Bremer, retains a veto over all of the council’s decisions. A few urge that the Bush administration turn over control of Iraq to the United Nations. Iraqis Observe July 4 A new Baghdad newspaper, Al-'Adala, is published by the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite group which has a representative on the Council. In a translation done by the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute, the paper’s writers scorned the U.S. occupation while expressing support for the council. "It is a ridiculous incongruity that the occupiers celebrate their independence day while occupying other countries," the paper declared last week. "We congratulate the American people on their independence day, but we question whether the Americans are concerned about [other] peoples' freedom as much as they are concerned about theirs? Do they honor the will of nations to be independent as much as they sanctify their own independence?" the paper asked. "America's excuse in Iraq was its 'liberation' from a terrorist, corrupt, and despotic ruler ... and it was correct doing so. But it is a different issue when it removes the despot but ignores the right of the Iraqi people [to have] freedom and independence." Nonetheless, Al-'Adala expressed support for the new Iraqi Governing Council on pragmatic grounds: "As we stand on the threshold of a new phase in the political rehabilitation of Iraq, after the fall of the dictatorial and despotic regime ... the Iraqi people should rise to any level that will pave the way to the dominance of the national will, and the establishment of an interim Iraqi government that has the capability, authority, and responsibility to carry out successful plans that will, first and foremost, benefit the people." MEMRI is a pro-Israel organization with a reputation for accuracy in translating the Arab press. Lebanon: The Losers The U.S. handed authority to the council because it is "sensing the danger" of the current power vacuum in Iraq, wrote columnist Ghassan Charbel in Monday’s edition of the Beirut daily Dar al Hayat. Charbel said the council’s emergence had created two political "losers." "The first one is Saddam Hussein, as the participants announced the day of his regime as an official holiday and canceled all the holidays that the Baath had introduced to the Iraqi calendar," he said. "The second loser is the armed resistance, because it was made clear yesterday that it does not represent the majority of the Iraqi people, nor their vision to restore Iraq's sovereignty. This means that the resistance is the choice of a minority comprising Saddam's partisans and other groups that are seizing any opportunity to heat up relations with the U.S." Doubts in the Gulf The Khaleej Times, a politically cautious news site in the United Arab Emirates, is also pessimistic. "For ordinary Iraqis, struggling to emerge from over two decades of war and crippling international economic sanctions, security and stability, economic revival and improved public services have become urgent priorities," it said. "With the country's crude oil sales falling far short of expectations, however, the council's room for maneuver could be severely restricted. Retaining the trust of the people could prove more difficult than winning it." Pakistan: Bring in the U.N. The editors of Dawn, the leading English-language daily of Pakistan, expressed hope Tuesday that the council will "move quickly and effectively in the direction of lessening the Iraqi people's suffering." But they’re not holding their breath. "The vast majority of the Iraqis hated Saddam, but they have not accepted American as a godsend, particularly because of Washington's anti-Arab and pro-Israeli role since 1948," the Pakistani paper said. "The Iraqi resentment is evident from the frequent attacks on American and British troops. As time passes, this resentment will mount, leading to more American casualties. Aware of the consequences of body bags arriving in America, the Bush administration wants other countries to share the responsibilities of policing Iraq. Very few countries are willing to do that for fear of their troops being seen and targeted as America's collaborators." The way out of this situation, the editors said, is a "substantive U.N. role in post-war Iraq. "The newly set-up council is there merely to provide a fig leaf for American paramountcy in occupied Iraq. The Bush administration would be wrong in thinking it can carry on this way for long. Unless it evolves an exit strategy soon, it will find itself hopelessly bogged down in Iraq. An exit then will not be easy or even safe," they said. "What Iraq needs is a transition to democratic rule. Common sense dictates that it is a U.N.-sponsored set-up that should prepare for and hold elections." The editors of the Peshawar Post, an independent daily published in a stronghold of Islamic militancy near the Pakistan-Afghan border, are harsher. The creation of the council, they said Tuesday, did not create "any excitement among the native Iraqis themselves. No charged crowds were witnessed anywhere on the Iraqi streets to celebrate the event. Evidently, the Iraqis, by and large, have shrugged it off as a non-event. There indeed is not much in the council for the resident Iraqis to be cheerful about. "While the country is increasingly coming under the sway of criminal gangs, the occupiers have thrown hundreds of thousands of government servants and servicemen out of jobs with a blanket closure of several ministries and disbandment of Iraqi security forces," the Peshawar editors said. "Most of the country still goes without running drinking water supply, electricity and repaired sanitation systems. In the given conditions, what can this council deliver is to be seen. One must keep one’s fingers crossed, though the prospects look very dim." © 2003 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive

To: calgal who wrote (7177)	7/21/2003 11:05:44 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8683

Getting to Know the Iraqis By Jim Hoagland Sunday, July 20, 2003; Page B07 AL TURABAH, Iraq -- Lionized by conservatives and denounced by liberals as the architect of the second Gulf War, Paul Wolfowitz sits cross-legged in the blowing dust of a hall made of reeds and perspires visibly as a tribal sheik pleads for support. Wolfowitz's blue blazer and red tie add to his discomfort; but the U.S. deputy defense secretary insists on showing respect to a people he has almost certainly helped save from extinction. Watching him in the fiery 115-degree heat and the blinding glare of a parched wasteland that stretches far beyond the horizon, you know that there is nowhere else in the world Wolfowitz would rather be. We have flown by helicopter 100 miles northeast of Basrah and descended into a man-made inferno on the eastern edge of what once were Iraq's lush and productive marsh lands. Today, that territory is a salinated desert, the product of Saddam Hussein's wrath against the half-million people known as Marsh Arabs. For more than a decade, the Iraqi tyrant drained and diverted water from their lands. His genocidal campaign here was even more devastating than his serial wars on the Kurds in northern Iraq. An estimated 300,000 Marsh Arabs perished. Forcibly resettled in what is as close to Hell as I ever want to experience, the survivors here have re-created a traditional gathering hall that Wolfowitz is visiting. On this five-day fact-finding trip that began in Baghdad Thursday, Wolfowitz has made a point of putting Hussein's victims rather than himself in the spotlight. Also on his schedule is a visit to a mass grave in the Shiite heartland and a stop in Kurdistan. At each station, he talks repeatedly -- his critics might say obsessively -- about the Baathist regime's crimes against humanity. Isn't he concerned, I ask later, that he seems to be dwelling on the past when Iraq needs to secure its future? Is he seeking to justify a regime change he pursued relentlessly for two decades by raking up deeds that are monstrous but overtaken by the vast new problems of liberated Iraq? For once, Wolfowitz does not pause to reflect judiciously before responding to a question. Trained as a professor of international relations, he has become passionate about the need for and possibilities of change in Iraq and the Arab world at large. That passion today drives much of the Bush administration's policy in the greater Middle East. "It is important to offer firsthand testimony about things I have only read in books until now," the 59-year-old defense intellectual says. "That part of history I am observing -- the destruction, the fear and trembling that the old regime induced in its subjects -- is still alive in the minds of many Iraqis. We have to be aware that things could go backwards here if we do not put to rest that part of their history." Wolfowitz continues: "I plead guilty to optimism -- but not excessive optimism -- that these are remarkable people who can achieve a change in their lives that will also mean much for the whole region, even if there is more unease than I would have hoped to see at this stage." This grueling trip has confirmed rather than shaken the long-distance vision of Iraq that Wolfowitz began to develop in 1979 when, as a junior policy analyst at the Pentagon, he identified Iraq as a regional challenge for the United States. This was, he recalls, "when others pooh-poohed" the idea. "You can be elated that these people are free but still remember how much they suffered and how much of that suffering was unnecessarily prolonged," Wolfowitz says, referring indirectly to the premature ending of the Gulf war in 1991 by the first Bush administration. "At least there was still a Marsh Arab civilization capable of being preserved. They would not have lasted another 12 years." Critics who cast him as the leader of a neo-conservative, pro-Israeli cabal that has seized control of the administration's Middle East policy deride him as Wolfowitz of Arabia. But such critics ignore Wolfowitz's deep intellectual interest in Arab society and his firm belief that it can reform itself, especially if given encouragement from outside. In his spare time, Wolfowitz reads Arab writers such as Egypt's Alifa Rifaat, whose collection of short stories, "Distant View of a Minaret," graphically portrays the frustration of women in purdah and other restrictions they face. "It is important for Iraqis to show what Arabs can do when they live in freedom," he says to the local leaders gathered here. He has arranged to meet them in the company of Britain's Baroness Emma Nicholson, the redoubtable human rights campaigner who has championed the Marsh Arabs in the European Parliament. "What we are seeing," Wolfowitz tells me later, "eliminates any moral doubt about whether this was a war against Iraq, or a war for Iraq. This was a war for Iraq." © 2003 The Washington Post Company