http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=734952004Sun 27 Jun 2004
IT WAS going to be a celebration of the triumph of democracy over tyranny, and also a superb photo-opportunity for use in President George W Bush?s re-election campaign.
Standing on a podium surrounded by cheering crowds at the exact spot where the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled by the victorious US-led forces in April 2003, the president would formally hand Iraq back its sovereignty.
Even the timing of a Nato summit which Bush is attending this weekend in Istanbul, a short plane hop from Baghdad, had been shifted back a few weeks so as to take place two days before the handover.
That was Plan A. Instead, when the US-led coalition hands over authority to the Iraqi interim government on Tuesday, it will be a furtive affair.
Bush, assuming his security experts still deem it safe enough for him to go, will never step outside the impenetrable cocoon of the ?Green Zone?, and will meet only hand-picked Iraqis.