A rchive Date
[ 13-06-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margolis/2004/06/06/488600.html
American fib factory
By Eric Margolis - Contributing Foreign Editor
Sun, June 6, 2004
THE WHITE House's Iraq fib factory went into overdrive last week, ballyhooing claims that the new "caretaker government" the UN had supposedly just installed in Baghdad was "fully sovereign" and "totally independent."
We would like to believe American president George Bush. But this latest claim comes from the same truth-deficient people who concocted Iraq's imminent threat to destroy the U.S. with nuclear and germ weapons, Saddam Hussein's vans and drones of death, Saddam's tryst with Osama bin Laden, and a slew of other preposterous whoppers that would have made the Nazis' propagandist, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, blush deep crimson.
A political charade
The latest U.S.-authored regime change in Iraq was a political charade designed to soothe uneasy American voters who are increasingly alarmed by the aimlessness, mounting casualties and $186-billion US cost - as much as the Vietnam War at its height-- of the Iraq misadventure.
The White House dreads the oncoming national uproar when the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq hits 1,000. It desperately needs to show some light at the end of the Iraq tunnel before November's elections.
So it arm-twisted the UN's weak secretary general, Kofi Annan, into allowing his organization to be crudely misused to legitimize continuing U.S.-British occupation of Iraq by supposedly selecting candidates for the new "sovereign" regime.
In the end, Washington chose its own men and simply ignored the UN after it provided the required fig leaf.
The result: Iraq's new regime, installed under the guns of U.S. tanks, makes the former Soviet Union's Eastern European satellite states look like paragons of unfettered independence.
Off-the-shelf CIA "asset" Iyad Allawi was made strongman/prime minister - just like Afghanistan's U.S.-installed figurehead Hamid Karzai, another CIA stock item. Iraq's defence and interior ministries will also be run by other U.S. "assets." Some 160 senior American "advisers" will supervise all key ministries, notably defence, police, finance, communications and a new, CIA-trained secret police.
All the U.S. billions presently funding Iraq, and overall control of oil revenues, will be managed by a special U.S. "advisory and monitoring board."
France once ran its nominally independent West African colonies in a similar manner.
Guns make the law
By comparison, after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, they left the newly installed regime considerably more independence of action than the U.S. is giving its Iraqi satraps. The supreme law of the Arab world: The men with the guns make the law. Iraq's new Quisling regime has no soldiers, only some useless police. Real power will, of course, be held by 140,000 U.S. troops who will stay on, Washington says, to "guarantee security" and "fight terrorism."
The administration suggests its troops will be withdrawn in 2006, unless the next U.S.-engineered Iraqi regime, due to be "elected" next year, "invites" them to stay on.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is building six, and as many as 14, permanent military bases in Iraq, while major U.S. firms are being encouraged to buy up Iraqi industrial assets on the cheap.
Next year's Iraq elections, if held, will hardly reflect the nation's will.
Islamic, pro-Iranian, Nasserite and Baathist parties will be banned. Only pro-U.S. groups need apply.
This means today's bunch of collaborating exiles, nobodies and Kurds are likely to form Iraq's next "elected" regime. In short, a shadow regime whose independence and sovereignty may be limited to garbage collection and goat catching - the same Bantustan-type formula Israel offered Palestinians.
U.S. real government
The big decisions - military, internal security, oil, banking, industry, foreign relations, bases - will be decided by the real government, the U.S. Embassy and Iraq's American "advisers."
Some members of Iraq's new, American-engineered regime will eventually seek more independence from U.S. control. But they will vividly recall how the last puppet rulers of British-controlled Iraq, King Faisal and strongman Nuri as-Said, were overthrown in 1958, and hanged from lampposts.
The moment Iraq's Quisling "rulers" start showing too much independence, they will be quietly replaced, or threatened by denial of U.S. security protection, leaving them to face their hostile, angry people.
Two acid tests will determine whether any Iraqi regime is truly sovereign and independent of U.S. control: The ability to order all U.S. forces out of Iraq; and reaffirmation of Iraq's active support of the Palestinian cause.
Anything less means Iraq remains an American colony, the administration's fancy double-talk notwithstanding.
Eric can be reached by e-mail at: margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com Letters to the editor should be sent to: editor@tor.sunpub.com Home Page
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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