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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (566613)	4/19/2004 12:09:44 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

And if you doubt anything in this article, just remember that Bremer and the US generals announced this weekend that it won't be possible to turn over Iraq to the Iraqis come 30 June. This article tells you why. ******************************************************** The failure in Iraq is even deeper than people imagine uploaded 18 Apr 2004 Patrick Cockburn It is astonishing how fast the American position in Iraq has unravelled over the past two weeks. Two experiences - one peaceful, the other violent - summed up for me the extent of the US débâcle. It is far worse than is generally appreciated outside Iraq. I was driving along a main highway in south Baghdad when we stopped and talked to half a dozen young men. They were Shia pilgrims, dressed in black and carrying a green religious banner, on a three-day march to the holy city of Kerbala to attend a religious festival. The pilgrims said they used to walk secretly to Kerbala under Saddam Hussein, but now "the Americans have become as bad as Saddam". One was wearing a badge with the face of Muqtada Sadr, the radical Shia cleric. I did not find any of this very new or surprising, since anti-American sentiments are common enough in Iraq, until I asked the men if they had jobs. They said politely that they were all soldiers in the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps, one of the paramilitary bodies the US has been training with desperate speed over the last year to replace American soldiers. "We will certainly fight for Muqtada if our religious leaders tell us to," said one of the marchers. Across Iraq in the last fortnight, the US army has discovered to its horror that the 200,000 men in police, paramilitary and army units are not prepared to fight for the US against fellow Iraqis. An army battalion mutinied rather than go to Fallujah. In the cities of the south, the police melted away, often handing over their weapons to Sadr's Army of the Mehdi. My second experience was more dramatic. While following vehicles loaded with aid for Fallujah, we were suddenly caught in the ambush of an American convoy of petrol tankers. We lay with out heads pressed to the ground as guerrillas blazed away at the Americans and the US soldiers fired back. Eventually we got away in a pause in the fighting. I wondered what a vulnerable convoy of petrol tankers was doing on this highway west of Baghdad. Could it be that the US generals did not know that this stretch of road was under the guerrillas' control? It was something any taxi driver in Baghdad could have told them. The US now has no serious allies in Iraq, aside from the Kurds, who have their own special agenda. The US-trained Iraqi military units cannot be relied on. The Sunni Arabs have been alienated by the siege of Fallujah and the high civilian casualties there. The pursuit of Sadr, coming on top of other disappointments with the Americans, has alienated the Shia. The consequence of this is that there is nobody with any legitimacy in Iraq to whom the US can hand over sovereignty on 30 June. The US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, its credibility never high, has been further discredited. It has taken incompetence of a high order for the US to become so isolated in Iraq. The insurgents in Fallujah and Muqtada Sadr never previously enjoyed majority support in their own communities. Fallujah, the small city at the heart of the Sunni Arab insurrection, was considered something of a hillbilly place by other Sunni in Iraq. It was seen as Islamic, tribal and closely connected to the former regime. The number of guerrillas probably totalled no more than 400 out of a population of 300,000. But by assaulting a whole city, as if it was Verdun or Stalingrad, the US Marines have managed to turn it into a nationalist symbol. In dealing with Sadr, Mr Bremer made the same mistake. He turned a significant but ultimately minor figure in Iraqi politics into a martyr. He did not see that the Shia community as a whole has become increasingly alienated from the US. It believes Washington wants to avoid elections the Shia will win. Most Shias do not much like Sadr, but they thought he was unjustly treated when his newspaper was shut down and his aides arrested. Iraqis who cooperate with the US are increasingly treated as collaborators. Recruiting offices for US-trained paramilitary units are empty.** Lakhdar Ibrahimi, the UN envoy, suggests dumping the Iraqi Governing Council and setting up a new executive chosen by the UN. But the experience of the last year is that the US is not prepared in practice to share power in Iraq. The only positive way forward is to establish a provisional government whose main purpose is to hold elections. This means satisfying the demands of the Shias. A government so elected would decide all questions, such as the presence of US troops. If the handover of sovereignty to Iraqis on 30 June, so much trumpeted by President Bush, is a purely cosmetic change then the fighting this month will be a foretaste of a bloodier war to come. khilafah.com