Iraq's incoming government must abide by American-made laws

[Judi Lynn]

Iraq's incoming government must abide by American-made laws
By Jim Krane, Associated Press, 6/27/2004 15:17



BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) The U.S. led-coalition, facing a Wednesday deadline to hand back power, has put in place major legal revisions that would force Iraqis to get drivers' licenses, obey traffic laws, ban certain people from holding office and place American contractors above the law.

Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish politician and member of the disbanded U.S.-picked Governing Council, said he thinks the Americans began pushing the flurry of laws once it became clear the occupation would be cut short. Washington's earlier plans, he said, called for a longer occupation that would have allowed Iraq's constitution to be written under U.S. watch.

Proponents say the sheaf of edicts signed by occupation chief L. Paul Bremer are the best way to ensure one of the top U.S. goals in invading Iraq: to leave behind a functioning democracy with a base of liberal institutions such as an independent judiciary, civil society and free market economy.

But critics say the Coalition Provisional Authority's flurry of laws amounts to meddling in Iraq's basic institutions, something that international law places out of bounds for an occupying power.
(snip/...)

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/179/world/Iraq_s_incoming_government_mus:.shtml

[Sagan]

1. are the neocons bugging out, pre-election?

Is this paving the way for a big "Chimpy brought the troops home" push? Lord knows, I can't think of much else that would save him.

[0007]

26. As much as Bangar junior would like to raise his poll numbers,

even if it meant bringing the troops home. It won't happen for several reasons in my opinion.

Who would protect the oil workers while the cabal rips off Iraqis oil? What about all those big sweetheart contracts. You know they won't be abandoned. Greed is to strong!

The operation is so big that it would probably take a year to pack up and get out, and monkey face junior ain't gonna leave that soon.

[leftchick]

2. does anyone have a link to the pro-Allawi/New gov't poll in Iraq?

It was cited several times today on the Sunday chat fests saying 70% of Iraqis think Allawi et al is a great start to the "New Iraq".
Has anyone seen this?

[Judi Lynn]

3. Is this the one? Washington Post?

Iraqis Back New Leaders, Poll Says

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 25, 2004; Page A19


A large majority of Iraqis say they have confidence in the new interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi that is set to assume political power on Wednesday, according to a poll commissioned by U.S. officials in Iraq.

The results are a significant victory for the United States and the United Nations. Together they negotiated with squabbling Iraqi factions in an attempt to cobble together a viable government that balanced disparate ethnic and religious groups.

The first survey since the new government was announced by U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi about three weeks ago showed that 68 percent of Iraqis have confidence in their new leaders. The numbers are in stark contrast to widespread disillusionment with the previous Iraqi Governing Council, which was made up of 25 members picked by the United States and which served as the Iraqi partner to the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority. Only 28 percent of Iraqis backed the council when it was dissolved last month, according to a similar poll in May.

The previous survey, by the same independent professional polling organization, also showed widespread anger at, or disapproval of, the U.S.-led coalition that has ruled Iraq since the ouster of President Saddam Hussein. The current poll is considered a welcome sign that the new government has not been tainted by association with the United States and may have at least a honeymoon period to prove itself, U.S. officials said.
(snip/...)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3433-2004Jun24.html
(Free registration required, I think)

[leftchick]

4. That sounds like the one I heard about...

Thank you JudyLyn! I don't believe it for a second though since the source is US Officials in Iraq. I think they are way too desperate right now not to fudge the numbers bigtime. If indeed they even bothered with a real poll at all. More propaganda...<sigh>

[Disturbed]

5. Full Sovereignty?

This is another con job on the American people.



Full Sovereignty?

"Throughout the spring, as hundreds died in the spiraling conflict, as Regime bosses applied their hardcore "anti-terrorist" tortures to innocent bystanders raked up in their occupation nets, as Regime mouthpieces prated endlessly of "liberation" and "sovereignty," Bush viceroy Paul Bremer was quietly signing a series of edicts that will give the United States effective control over the military, ministries -- and money -- of any Iraqi government, for years to come, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Bremer has placed U.S.-appointed "commissions" made up of Americans and local puppets throughout Iraqi government agencies; the ministers supposedly in charge weren't even told of the edicts. These boards "will serve multiyear terms and have significant authority to run criminal investigations, award contracts, direct troops and subpoena citizens," the Journal reports. Any new Iraqi government "will have little control over its armed forces, lack the ability to make or change laws and be unable to make major decisions within specific ministries without tacit U.S. approval, say U.S. officials.


Earlier Bremer edicts laid the Iraqi economy wide open to ruthless exploitation by Bush-approved foreign "investors"; dominance of such key sectors as banking, communications -- and energy -- is already well advanced. The latest dictates aim to ensure that this organized looting goes on, no matter what kind of makeshift "interim government" the United Nations manage to piece together. Bush's plans to build a Saddamite fortress embassy in Baghdad and 14 permanent military bases around the country are designed to provide the knee-breaking "security" for these lucrative arrangements."



http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/05/21/120.html

[Judi Lynn]

7. That's one great article, Disturbed. "Goon squad" is correct. Thanks. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

6. You start to actually assume it's a lie, if it's connected to Bush's war

Here's another Iraqii poll article:

www.chinaview.cn 2004-06-27 17:08:12

BAGHDAD, June 27 (Xinhuanet) -- The results of a recent poll carried out by a specialized center in Baghdad University showed more people were optimistic for the formation of the new government, local newspaper Al Sabah reported Sunday.

The local newspaper, which is supported by the coalition authorities, said that 45 percent of the Iraqis expressed their satisfaction with the formation of the new Iraqi government while 17 percent were not satisfied with it. About 38 percent did not give an opinion.

The new interim government led by prime minister Ayad Allawi will receive political power from the Coalition Provisional Authority on June 30.

The poll, which surveyed 200 Iraqi families in different regions of Baghdad, also showed that 55 percent of the interviewees said they would support the resolutions of the new government. Enditem
(snip/)

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-06/27/content_1549772.htm

Not nearly as "scientific" as we are lead to believe we get here, is it? Also, don't forget, the people they can reach by phone in either devastated areas, or areas with people so poor they don't have home phones, and can't EVER be reached, is going to be skewed automatically!

[tlcandie]

12. You are so right JudiLyn!

:hi: Watched FSTV some today and a very influential Islamic spiritual leader in Naujhaf(?..in a hurry :/) stated to the person doing the documentary that within 5 years of the US leaving if the government put into place was shown not to be for Iraq and its people it would be slaughtered in front of the US.

I believe it was Iraq on the Brink..yes here it is!
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/top/features/documents/03866778.asp
Found it via FSTV first though...



<snip>
In a yet-to-be-released documentary, a top international investigative reporter offers a tentative explanation for both forms of derailment. On March 14 — almost six weeks before 60 Minutes II aired its Abu Ghraib story — the Australian NineNetwork’s Sunday newsmagazine program aired a scaled-down version of Iraq — On the Brink, reported by Ross Coulthart, a journalist whose award-winning investigations have spanned rough-and-tumble assignments in East Timor and Afghanistan to seminal intelligence and public-corruption investigations in the US and Australia. Indirectly, Coulthart raises serious questions about American media self-censorship — something journalists have been wrestling with since the first Gulf War. The film also raises the possibility that, then as now, such self-censorship may have helped the military cover up Iraqi wartime deaths. (A 15-minute trailer for Iraq — On the Brink can be seen at www.journeyman.tv/?lid=14772. Latest RealPlayer required. American audiences may get to see snippets of the documentary in Michael Moore’s award-winning Fahrenheit 9/11, depending on how it’s released.)
<snip>


SMOKE 'EM: a night-sequence shot from a US Apache helicopter's gun camera showing one of three suspected insurgents in the gunner's sights (above) and being hit seconds later. The action was permissible under the Army's rules of engagement.


<snip>
As the Washington Post’s Richard Leiby wrote last year, embedding was nothing short of a "propaganda coup" for the Defense Department. By embedding scores of reporters (many with little or no combat or foreign experience) in rapidly advancing frontline units, argued Leiby, the Pentagon ensured that virtually no one who was "cover the instability and power vacuum left in the invasion’s wake" got nearly the play their "embedded" colleagues did — thus minimizing the disturbing realities of poor post-war planning and lulling Americans into a sense of complacency, not about what was to come, but about what was already happening.

Speaking at an extraordinary-but-unnoticed symposium at the University of Texas last year, award-winning combat photographer Peter Turnley was unsparing in his criticism of the increasingly institutionalized self-censorship he believes began in the first Gulf War, and has only become more insidious since. In Gulf War I, Turnley — then a top Newsweek photographer — was so uncomfortable with the Pentagon’s control of journalists through its "pool" system that he actually left Saudi Arabia before the war and snuck across the Kuwaiti border by dressing as an Army colonel. While many of his colleagues were being shepherded through the theater of operations by US military minders, Turnley at one point found himself surveying a horrific scene that the Army thought it had successfully quarantined from journalists.

"I witnessed US soldiers forcing Iraqi prisoners at gunpoint to pick up bodies and pile them up and put them in mass graves where bulldozers would come and cover them up," he said. "There were two Iraqi soldiers, they were really very pathetic, in their 40s, didn’t have teeth, very tired and fatigued, and at gunpoint being made to pick up dozens of bodies. It seemed rather inhuman to me, how long they were obliged to do this. I remember as they dropped a body next to a stack of bodies, one of the Iraqi soldiers fell to his hands and knees and started sobbing. I got on my knees and started to make a picture — at that point an American soldier came up and punched me in the chest and said, ‘You animal.’ And I grabbed him by the shirt and told him I didn’t make these guys do this."
<snip>

[Judi Lynn]

14. What an article, tlcandie. I'm coming back later to make sure I've read

every word.

I've been screwing around trying to get my "Real Player" to run the 15 minute trailer, and it's not working for me. Gonna take a run at it later on.

I REALLY hope that documentary gets shown here.

This is unbelievable. It needs complete airing. Thank you so much.

[struggle4progress]

25. "... at least 32 Iraqi deaths may qualify as homicides." eom

[0007]

29. Thank you for the link. Everyone should see the video

www.journeyman.tv/?lid=14772

[Judi Lynn]

33. Didn't make it back to read this article until tonight

It's excellent throughout, and mentioned this important point, as well:

As the Washington Post’s Richard Leiby wrote last year, embedding was nothing short of a "propaganda coup" for the Defense Department. By embedding scores of reporters (many with little or no combat or foreign experience) in rapidly advancing frontline units, argued Leiby, the Pentagon ensured that virtually no one who was "cover the instability and power vacuum left in the invasion’s wake" got nearly the play their "embedded" colleagues did — thus minimizing the disturbing realities of poor post-war planning and lulling Americans into a sense of complacency, not about what was to come, but about what was already happening.
(snip)

I really hope a lot of people will set aside a few minutes and read this. It's surely worth the effort.

[Disturbed]

15. A BushCo Hoax

Full Sovereignty?

"Throughout the spring, as hundreds died in the spiraling conflict, as Regime bosses applied their hardcore "anti-terrorist" tortures to innocent bystanders raked up in their occupation nets, as Regime mouthpieces prated endlessly of "liberation" and "sovereignty," Bush viceroy Paul Bremer was quietly signing a series of edicts that will give the United States effective control over the military, ministries -- and money -- of any Iraqi government, for years to come, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Bremer has placed U.S.-appointed "commissions" made up of Americans and local puppets throughout Iraqi government agencies; the ministers supposedly in charge weren't even told of the edicts. These boards "will serve multiyear terms and have significant authority to run criminal investigations, award contracts, direct troops and subpoena citizens," the Journal reports. Any new Iraqi government "will have little control over its armed forces, lack the ability to make or change laws and be unable to make major decisions within specific ministries without tacit U.S. approval, say U.S. officials.


Earlier Bremer edicts laid the Iraqi economy wide open to ruthless exploitation by Bush-approved foreign "investors"; dominance of such key sectors as banking, communications -- and energy -- is already well advanced. The latest dictates aim to ensure that this organized looting goes on, no matter what kind of makeshift "interim government" the United Nations manage to piece together. Bush's plans to build a Saddamite fortress embassy in Baghdad and 14 permanent military bases around the country are designed to provide the knee-breaking "security" for these lucrative arrangements."



http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/05/21/120.html


* No doubt most Americans will believe that Iraq will have sovereignty. It is great for BushCo because whatever goes wrong can be blamed on the Iraqi Govt.

[geek tragedy]

16. Just wait until they find out that

the new boss is the same as the old boss, and that Allawi is a stooge for the American occupation forces.

Then the Iraqis will be really pissed.

[NeoConsSuck]

17. *Any* non Anglo Saxon is a great start (nt)

[indepat]

8. If this is the neocon idea of sovereignty for the Iraqi folks, wonder what

do they have in mind with respect to freedom and liberty for the home folks back in the USofA? Will it be at the end of a bayonet?

[daleo]

9. Too bad the PNACers didn't wish this for the United States

"a functioning democracy with a base of liberal institutions such as an independent judiciary, civil society and free market economy"

[Judi Lynn]

11. Almost brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it? <sigh> n/t

[Judi Lynn]

10. Firms staying to help oil flow: Halliburton, others see work moving slowly

June 26, 2004, 11:43PM

Firms staying to help oil flow
Halliburton, others see work moving slowly
By DAVID IVANOVICH
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The United States will hand over control of Iraq on Wednesday, but that doesn't mean American contractors such as Halliburton Co. will be heading home anytime soon.

Houston-based Halliburton, in fact, will stay on for months, perhaps years, after this week's transfer of sovereignty. Halliburton won't just provide support for the 138,000 U.S. troops still deployed in Iraq, it will also to try to complete a lengthy list of projects to rebuild the country's oil infrastructure.

Hampered by massive looting, repeated sabotage and bloody insurgent attacks, Halliburton, together with Iraq's reconstituted Oil Ministry and a joint venture led by Parsons Group, has begun work on barely half the projects deemed crucial to restoring the nation's energy industry.

Technically, Iraq's oil sector woes are now Baghdad's concerns. The U.S.-led coalition formally ceded control of the country's oil and natural gas assets to the newly minted Oil Ministry on June 8.
(snip)

"We have a lot of projects that will go on for a long period of time," said Bill Roberts, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, which has led the effort to restore Iraq's energy sector.
(snip/...)

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/2648260

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

22. Hmm.

Houston-based Halliburton, in fact, will stay on for months, perhaps years, after this week's transfer of sovereignty<sic>.

Ain't likely gonna leave this gravy train.

[Malva Zebrina]

13. It is written into the constitution actually,

as I understand it,that corporations, American corporations are not held accountable to any Iraqi law and are protected. Very neat, indeed. eh?

This is so very sad. So sad that the American people are not made aware of what is happening to that country in their name. So sad that some Americans , claiming to be Christians, think it their right to invade and kill any sovereign country they deem necessary to invade to get what we, the proud Americans, need.

How did it ever become acceptable to pre-empt an invasion and a devastating war on a people who never threatened us? A people and a country that had no army to speak of, no navy and no air force to ever become a threat to anyone? How did it happen?
We murdered ten thousand and more of them on the lies of pathetic frat boy who stole and election. We did not elect him! How has that been allowed to become our national policy, even amongst Democrats?

How did this happen?

We are the barbarians at the gates of Babylon, that is for sure.

We are the lowest of the low to have done this to this people.

We are the drooling idiots cheering for death and destruction as if it were a video game, in order to identify ourselves as the unbeatable, conquorers.

Wow, that makes us feel really good, especially with a man at the helm who knows not a single theing about it and who never in his entire life had to navigate on his own without the beautiful mind of his mum and the influence of his dad, helping him out. He and his Stepford fatassed, drooping large bosoomed, rictus smiling waxed faced wife, appear like the king and the queen over the world, where most of them hate them both.

How did this happen?

Ray Talliaferro did a whole show once on this. It is written into their constituion that Halliburton and all the others cannot be accountable under the Iraqi law, whatever it may be or become.

[ninkasi]

18. Can anybody please explain to me

just exactly how the administration defines "sovereignty", when it looks like the U.S. will still be in control? Apparently, I'm not intelligent enough to see just exactly how what we are doing is turning things over to the Iraqis. We are still dictating pretty much every aspect of their lives, so what do they get to control?

[Ivan Zero]

19. They're not getting sovereignty

All that's really being transferred to them on Wednesday is the burden of official responsibility.

In other words, it's all so Georgie boy can say "Don't blame me, THEY'RE in control" whenever the shit hits the fan.

[leftchick]

20. kick

:kick:

[dusty64]

21. So much for democracy, although

it sounds like they are getting the American version. Is anyone really buying this farce?

[struggle4progress]

23. U.S. Transfers Sovereignty to Iraqi Govt

By TAREK EL-TABLAWY Monday, June 28, 2004

<snip>
Although the interim government will have full sovereignty, it will operate under major restrictions _ some of them imposed at the urging of the influential Shiite clergy which sought to limit the powers of an unelected administration.

For example, the interim government will only hold power seven months until, as directed by a United Nations Security Council resolution, there must be elections "in no case later than" Jan. 31. The Americans will still hold responsibility for security. And the interim government will not be able to amend the Transitional Administrative Law, or the interim constitution. That document outlines many civil liberties guarantees that would make problematic a declaration of emergency.

As Iraq's highest authority, Bremer had issued more than 100 orders and regulations, many of them Western-style laws governing everything from bankruptcy and traffic, to restrictions on child labor and copying movies.
<snip>

Others are more controversial. On Saturday, Bremer signed an edict that gave U.S. and other Western civilian contractors immunity from Iraqi law while performing their jobs in Iraq. The idea outrages many Iraqis who said the law allows foreigners to act with impunity even after the occupation.
<snip>

http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2004/06/28/ap/headlines/d83g16i80.txt

[cthrumatrix]

24. this is the news....Mr. Moore has more material everyday with *bush cabal

[gula]

27. Somebody help me please

Here is what I don't understand: Since this whole bloody mess was illegal from the start why don't the Iraqis just tear up the edicts and write their own laws? Could it be fear of being shot or worse by the occupiers or am I missing something here? Any explanation would be appreciated.

[GoldenOldie]

28. What US Laws????

Laws passed by our Representatives that have admitted they don't even read them before passing them???? God help the Iraqi's.

[Bridget Burke]

30. You got it--the occupying army will inhibit any independence.

Of course, the Iraqis now in charge have been hand-picked as "reliable". If they misbehaved, I'm sure they'd be punished.

[Matilda]

36. You and me both.

If - pardon me, when - the Islamic Revolution comes, they'll just
tear up the old laws, and make some real ones.

They'll doubtless nationise all their industries again, and good
luck to them.

[TankLV]

31. But it's a SOVEREIGN and INDEPENTENT government, right?

Just checking to make sure I got it right!

Love the way CNN and the other whore media state as FACT that claim.

No mention of "the administration says" or "the administration claims".

Just "the new Iraq government will is..."

What utter bullshit.

[Judi Lynn]

32. Kick!

:kick: :kick:

[dusty64]

34. This just about says it

all, doesn't it.

[struggle4progress]

35. Important. eom