Iraqi council holds first meeting as Bush under fire from US democrats

[LauraK]

Iraq's first representative body since Saddam Hussein fell from power prepared to hold its inaugural meeting as attacks on US troops continued more than three months since the end of the war.

Sunday's landmark meeting of the new transitory governing council in Baghdad has been declared a major step by coalition forces desperate to restore order and placate Iraqi citizens seething at the slow pace of US-led efforts to restore basic services and security and introduce a democratic government.

The council, with 25 members reflecting the make-up of Iraqi society, is charged with mapping Iraq's path towards elections -- and is meeting almost 35 years to the day since Saddam's Baath party came to power.

The credibility of the unelected governing council is considered crucial to coalition efforts to rebuild Iraq and get its oil-based export economy up and running to fund the massive costs of reconstruction.

Its success will also be vital if Bush is to reverse plummeting US public support as the majority find the number of US casualties in Iraq "unacceptable", according to a new poll Saturday.
<cut
(AFP)
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030712/1/3ci7j.html

[lcordero]

1. The keyword is "unelected"

EOM

[I AM SPARTACUS]

3. "...Iraq's first representative body ..."???...NOT QUITE

[jamesinca]

2. Well I have a few questions

"The credibility of the unelected governing council is considered crucial to coalition efforts to rebuild Iraq and get its oil-based export economy up and running to fund the massive costs of reconstruction."----- If Iraq is funding this with oil exports, why in the world is Bush asking the U.S. for money to fund this genocide? It should be a self paying thing. There is a lie in there somewhere.

"Its success will also be vital if Bush is to reverse plummeting US public support as the majority find the number of US casualties in Iraq "unacceptable", according to a new poll Saturday."------They are fooling themselves if they think this is the issue. People are not upset about the number of dead soldiers because a government is not in place over there. People are upset about the number of dead soldiers because they were lied to about the WMD and the reasons for war.

[starroute]

4. The real question is what is meant by "its success"

I don't think the article is saying that Americans will stop worrying about dead soldiers because they'll see Iraq now has a "government" of 25 people hand-picked by the US. I think it's saying that the US administration is hoping this "government" will be able to prevent Iraqi attacks on US troops.

I can see a couple of ways in which that might theoretically happen, though none of them is very likely. One would be if the Iraqis said, "Oh, we have a government of our own now, I guess we can stop fighting." A second would be if the Iraqis said, "It's all the new government's fault, let's attack them instead of the American soldiers." A third would be if this group of 25 people was actually capable of using their knowledge of Iraq to come up with a viable plan for dealing with the chaos.

The third of these is the only one that might actually be possible, though I'm inclined toward skepticism. It mainly depends on the composition of the council. If it consists of the usual crooks and Karzai-equivalents, there's not a chance in hell. If it includes a significant number of well-intentioned people whom a majority of Iraqis are willing to give the benefit of the doubt, it could have some short-term success in ending the sabotage and violence and getting the everyday institutions of life functioning again.

But even that best-case scenario would do no more than postpone the inevitable by six months or so. The bottom line is that the US is bent on recolonization and has no intention of either leaving Iraq or allowing the Iraqis to run their own country in any way that counts. The US doesn't dare let Iraq have a real government, with elections and the power to make serious decisions. And any short-term success at normalizing conditions is only going to make that fact more obvious.

My guess is that the US knows this and is anticipating no more than a brief period of pacification which would (1) drop the casualty rates enough to take off some of the heat at home and (2) enable them to set up a serious police state apparatus in place of the current haphazard system of martial law. At that point, they'd figure they could easily repress whatever the Iraqi resistance might bring against them.

(Of course, at that point other factors come into play, such as whether the US can successfully intimidate Syria and Iran into not offering any support to the resistance. But that's another story.)

We shall have to see how it all plays out.