Body blow to Iraq’s Potemkin Government?

27 thoughts on “Body blow to Iraq’s Potemkin Government?”

1. Brillant!! This administration never ceases to amaze me. It’s bad enough they were so ignorant of ME cultures at the beginning of this occupation, but they are just as ignorant now. How is it that any human being can be so consistently incompetent…..for so long? Ninnyism in spades. Amazing. Thanks for the post.

2. Brillant!! This administration never ceases to amaze me. It’s bad enough they were so ignorant of ME cultures at the beginning of this occupation, but they are just as ignorant now. How is it that any human being can be so consistently incompetent…..for so long? Ninnyism in spades. Amazing. Thanks for the post.

3. Helena,
   We all knew as long as occupation forces styling in Iraq, the more worse to come.
   To be truthfully on whom to blame we should share the blame on US and Iraqi puppet government shamble rule of the Iraqi disastrous mismanagements, as from start these guys chosen for the show to rule the country they have long forgot it , they have no real support from the majority of Iraq, we saw grouping support but that not rise to the point promote them to guide the country for the best and they failed to do so
   Despite some who think and optimistic that sending troops , professionals to repair Iraqi public services to the citizenry and other services its all hoax and doubtfully to believe, why I am saying this is the outcome prove what what I said.
   There are many examples highlight these untruthful claims by US administration or other people who still believe sending some of their loved ones will be for the best of Iraq and Iraqis.
   Lets take electricity take a look at recent report of Iraq Sweltering With Almost No Electricity I still argue that this is on going problem four years now and its never reach to the level of delivering power to the past levels before 2003 with all billions that US Aid ageneses claims they spent to improve the electricity infrastructures in Iraq. This lead recently to the rise of Troubled handover for US-Iraq projects the puppet government refusing take responsibility which I believe they have doubt that these project done shamble and not what US agencies /contractors saying from the quality of work and the amount of money spent on these project that under conflict between them.
   What really devastating and sad that recent Oxfam report that Forty-three per cent (PDF) of Iraqis suffer from ‘absolute poverty’. According to some estimates, over half the population are now without work. Children are hit the hardest by the decline in living standards. Child malnutrition rates have risen from 19 per cent before the US-led invasion in 2003 to 28 per cent now.
   About 8 million Iraqis — nearly a third of the population — need immediate emergency aid because of the humanitarian crisis caused by the war, relief agencies said Monday. Those Iraqis are in urgent need of water, sanitation, food and shelter, said the report by Oxfam and the NGO Coordination Committee network in Iraq.
   Last thing to say and apologies for long post, recent report by Adm. Michael Mullen, President Bush’s nominee to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Here’s What Went Wrong in Iraq
   His list:
   
   1. Did not fully integrate all elements of U.S. national power in Iraq.
   
   2. Focused most attention on the Iraqi national power structures with limited engagement of the tribal and local power structures.
   
   3. Did not establish an early and significant dialogue with neighboring countries, adding to the complex security environment a problematic border situation.
   
   4. Disbanded the entire Iraqi Army, a potentially valuable asset for security, reconstruction, and provision of services to the Iraqi people, providing a recruiting pool for extremist groups.
   
   5. Pursued a de-Baathification process that proved more divisive than helpful, created a lingering vacuum in governmental capability that still lingers, and exacerbated sectarian tensions.
   
   6. Attempted to transition to stability operations with an insufficient force.
   
   7. Unsuccessful in communicating and convincing Iraqis and regional audience of our intended goals.
   
   A damning list of mistakes. Mullen, of course, didn’t name names, but he hardly needed to since these mistakes were based on key decisions and orders so closely tied to former Iraq occupation chief Paul Bremer (who disbanded the Army and ordered de-Baathification), former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (who held down troop levels and froze out the State Department in post-war planning), Vice President Cheney, and President Bush himself.
   I found it it’s very truthfully from some US official till now who have spook the all the truths what’s went wrong

4. I think that the Americans would already have dumped the Al-Maliki government if it was possible to elect another candidate. But no other person seems to be able to get thru the vote in parliament.
   Probably that the Americans are waiting for everybody (The Iraqi, their neighbours, the American opinion…) to get enough stuffed with the paralysis of the actual government so that they can replace the PM with (what they call) a strongman (aka force another dictatorship on the Iraqi. Illyad Allawi looks like their man.
   (Juan Cole’s blog entries are especially interesting to-day) concerning the situation of Al-Maliki, also check his links to Tom Dispatch and the guest opinioned entry by Polk..

5. I’ll agree that the al-Maliki government has been so far ineffectual, to say the least. That being said, I don’t think al-Tawafuq’s withdrawal should be regarded as a high-water mark in the failure of this government.
   Let’s keep in mind that these guys withdrew DURING THE AUGUST RECESS, almost as if it is a political stunt. To quit the parliament permanently, the affected ministers would stand to lose a lot personally and politically. Secondly, as an anonymous Iraqi MP pointed out, all of the parliament’s dealings are done behind closed doors, back-room agreements and the like. al-Tawafuq’s withdrawal is a nod to its constituency, and does not signify the end of an era.
   Big picture, I agree that the IAF’s withdrawal is a non-issue. If the al-Maliki government were on the cusp of accomplishing something (which we cannot know, given its propensity for behind the scenes maneuvering) it would be devastating.

6. “the Maliki government is not the real thing”
   Precisely, which is why I have always referred to it as the Iraqi make-believe government, to Maliki as the Iraqi make-believe prime minister (lower case intentional), to the parliament as the make-believe parliament, etc. They are not even real enough to qualify as a puppet government.

7. “If the al-Maliki government were on the cusp of accomplishing something…”
   I cannot imagine what that “something” might be. One of Emperor Bush’s self-serving colonialist “benchmarks”? The onerous oil theft law?
   And if they actually accomplished a decision that was of benefit to Iraq and Iraqis, how on EARTH would they make it happen?

8. Me, I don’t particularly blame Maliki. He has no power, as indicated by yourself and commenters above. He himself said that he doesn’t want to be Prime Minister. He said why he continues, though I don’t recall the reason. He evidently recognises that he is not up to the impossible job.
   That said, he could have made more of an effort to bring Iraqis together than he does. It is not difficult to have a vision of the future of Iraq. But it is clear that he allows himself to be sidetracked by the sectarian discourse.
   The overwhelming factor is of course the occupation, and nothing will be resolved until that is removed.
   As a weak personality myself, I can imagine the position he is in, overwhelmed by demands from all sides. Nevertheless, in that situation, I would have gone for a future for Iraq, even if the policy did not succeed. But he does not do it.
   I suppose that the conclusion is that the pressures from the US embassy and his militant colleagues are so great that it is easier to say nothing. While at the same time, he is not allowed to resign.

9. Well, Alex, I do not blame Maliki either, and I do not think he has even as much ability to do anything as you seem to think he does. He is, after all, not a real Prime Minister of a real government, but a make-believe prime minister of a make-believe government, who, as he has said himself, cannot even send a group of policement out on patrol without approval from the Americans.
   He can talk as much as he likes about future Iraq and so on, but it will never be more than just talk, and in fact too much of the wrong kind of talk could get him into serious – even deadly – trouble if he is not careful. He is not, after all, playing with kindly, generous people who want to see the best for Iraqis. He is swimming with some of the worst cutthroats and sharks in the world – people who have no compunctions about destroyed an entire country to get what they are after (and I am not referring here to Iraqis).

10. Any possible wrong decision that could have been made, causing the current state of tensions and instability, has been made since the occupation began. Depending on who you listen to, the current state of affairs is due to one or more of the following: incompetence, stupidity, negligence, corruption, Al Qaeda, Iran, Iraq Government, Mahdi Army, Democrats, Rumsfeld, Bremmer, the liberal MSM, Bloggers, Global Warming, etc.
    If you were to develop a perfect plan on how to screw up an occupation and transfer of power to a new goverment, the plan would have followed something like what we have seen executed for the last 4 years.
    I wonder at times if we have executed the perfect plan to stay in Iraq. While our country does not have a good track record in nation building over the last 50 years, we are pretty good at creating instability with our various interventions since the birth of the CIA, so I think we could have a good plan for this, if not perfect.
    Lets see if the plan we didnt have can be expanded. We do not capture Bin Laden, dead or alive as promised, and now we are told AQ is building strength due to a safe sanctuary in NW Pakistan and is prepared to strike again, because we do not want to destabilize the Pakistan government by attacking him there (Uh, didn’t we blame Bill Clinton for the same thing when OBL was in Afghanistan?).
    According to some, this development will lead at worst to a major attack in the next few months, or at the very least an upset tummy for Chertoff, and if the former this will renew support for the War on Terror and the administrations policeis.
    How much do you want to bet that if such an attack happens, someone will link it to Iran?
    Then of course, we will do as McCain said we should do, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran, for aiding AQ, forgetting that this was made possible (if true, remember the WMD intelligence that got us in Iraq) because we allowed AQ to rebuild in the safe sanctuary of our main ally on the War on Terror.
    After such an attack, Iran would of course immediately invade Iraq if it were not for our presence in Iraq today. But lucky us, we perfectly executed the perfect plan we didn’t have, so we are still there. Our new mission can then be to stay in Iraq for decades and protect them from Iran who would surely invade once we left, just like the South Korea model that some said Iraq would follow.

11. After such an attack, Iran would of course immediately invade Iraq if it were not for our presence in Iraq today.
    OR, there will be civil war inside Iraq
    Its all a hoax from your imaginations folks.
    That’s why US keep saying they are their till the job done?
    which job?
    God know!
    but we seen Nation Cleansing and State of Iraq vanishing to the degree some write now Former Iraq as if Iraq was not a sate and will never been a state in the future? a hateful wish for Iraq

12. it doesn’t actually do anything that governments by definition do, such as provide solid basic services to the citizenry– especially public security.
    By this criterion Saudi Arabia (or Shah-era Iran) has a more legitimate government than South Africa or Venezuela. North Koreans I’m sure enjoy excellent “public security” within their state gulag. The implication seems to be that a powerful state security apparatus confers legitimacy.

13. What he says is that a government who provides no public service has no legitimity. I think he is right. It doesn’t necessarily implies that all the government who are able to provide such services are legitimate. There are a lot of other reasons for being illegitimate, like appartheid for instance.
    Of course, foreign invasion and occupation controlled government won’t be legitimate, even if they were able to provide these services.

14. A government that sends its minions into an Intensive Care ward to twist the Attorney General’s arm is just the sort of enterprise that would regard a formal vote on the Oil Law as important.
    And it does: al Maliki is in power to get Parliament to scrawl an endorsement on the back of the trillion dollar cheque Bush has promised to the oil companies.
    Sure, the Parliament is phoney, the government is a quadriplegic puppet and the proposed deal is utterly larcenous but given just a sliver of legality, the leverage afforded by an occupation and the probability of Maliki being replaced with a Quisling/Dahlan passage through the legislature could be turned into gold.
    Incidentally, Helena, Potemkin was a celebrated illusionist in some areas but government wasn’t one of them.

15. With the very minor exception of Anadarko, no US company has any current stake in any Iraqi oil production, though Iraq’s state oil companies have inked exploration and production deals with dozens of non-US based oil firms (OGI, Petrel, Avrasya) Very few have proceeded due to poor security.
    The most significant claims on Iraqi oil wealth are French, Russian and Chinese – whose state-owned oil companies are attempting to enforce generous PSAs signed by Hussein (Lukoil, Total, CNOOC.) No informed discussion of Iraqi oil revenues should ignore these gargantuan concessions.
    If the Iraqi/US administration is incapable of providing public security, it’s also impossible for it to extract oil from Iraq in meaningful amounts.
    http://www.energypublisher.com/article.asp?id=10010

16. Vadim makes an interesting point. All agreements made between governments under the sort of pressure Iraq’s has been under since 1990 are the contractual equivalents of “odious debt”. There is always the likelihood that the underlying motive of the agreement was not commercial but political.These hastily signed agreements constituted opportunities to sway Security Council votes in order to preserve the regime. Given the devastation that has followed the invasion they can be seen as justifiable in the circumstances.
    Surely now though, all bets are off.

17. “Surely now though, all bets are off.”
    No, the bets are still on and the stakes are higher than ever. The big question still has to be decided: how long can a fossil-fueled machine whose only functions are the concentration of wealth and the destruction of its own environment continue to function? Here in Minneapolis, the cracks are beginning to show.

18. Here are some quick links for those wanting to research new millennium Iraqi oil revenues further:
    Western companies may get 75% of Iraqi oil profits. (Marketwatch)
     Pepe Escobar on Iraq – The U.S. “Surge” in Iraq and the oil law.. Sao Paulo, Brazil: The Real NewsScene occurs at 2:25 – 3:14.(Via Wikipedia)
    The Iraq Oil Crunch: Index Timeline By Sarah Meyer Index Research Updated: 04.08.07

    A Crude Awakening (no link sorry please google I’ll be lucky to get 3 links posted) a documentary film about modern day world oil reserves, has been very well reviewed. It can leave people a little depressed, so you might want to Google “LS9 GM Biofuel research” as well for a bit of optimism on a range of fronts.

19. Disclaimer: My position is that the invasion of Iraq was one of the dumbest moves in the history of the American republic…and the sooner we bring our troops home, the better.
    Nonetheless, I was intrigued by a line from Michael Ignatieff’s article (“Getting Iraq Wrong”) in today’s New York Times Magazine:
    The costs of staying will be borne by Americans, while the cost of leaving will be mostly borne by Iraqis. That in itself suggests how American leaders are likely to decide the question.

20. I read that article, though it was difficult to get through it and hold down my lunch at the same time.
    Ignatieff may be rethinking his support for Georgie’s Great Iraq Adventure, but he remains as big an idiot as he has always been if he thinks the Iraqi people are not the ones who have, remain, and will continue to pay the price for the American presence in Iraq. It is an insult to the Iraqi people to suggest that Americans will EVER bear one fraction of one per cent of the price the Iraqi people have already paid.
    Michael Ignatieff’s self-centered blindness is appalling.

21. he remains as big an idiot as he has always been if he thinks the Iraqi people are not the ones who have, remain, and will continue to pay the price for the American presence in Iraq.
    and whom do you think will bear the price if that presence – as ill-advised to begin with as it was – were to be removed?
    American parents and taxpayers or Iraqi citizens?

22. If there is anything like justice in this world, one which isn’t applied with double standard, then the US should be large war compensations to the Iraqi, since the US attacked and destroyed a country which wasnt’ threatening to any US citizen.
    We need a Nuremberger like trial in order ot condemn the Americans to pay compensation and its leader to life imprisonment.

23. Truesdell,
    1. The Iraqis, not the Americans, have paid and will continue to pay an incalculable price for the United States’ aggression against their country. It is likely Iraq and its people will never recover. It will certainly not happen in my lifetime.
    The price paid by the Americans is a pin prick compared to the price paid by the Iraqis.
    2. As the last four and a half years have shown, the longer the U.S. remains in Iraq, the higher the per deum price paid by the Iraqis becomes. There is no reason to believe that this trend will change as long as the U.S. remains. There is every reason to believe that as long as the U.S. remains, the situation in Iraq will continue to deteriorate.
    And then, of course, there is Iraq’s oil, which the U.S. is determined to gain control of. Loss of control of their oil will make it all but impossible for Iraqis to recover from the devastation brought on it by the U.S.
    In short, as long as the U.S. remains in Iraq, the situation will continue to get worse for Iraqis.
    3. Given the fact of number 2, the price of the U.S. leaving is very likely to be less than the price of its continued presence. A reasoned, reality-based analysis reveals the reasons this is so.
    Iraqis pay the price whether the U.S. stays or goes. The price gets higher and higher the longer the U.S. leaves. There are reality-based reasons to believe that this trend is likely to at least decelerate once the U.S. is no longer there. It is also a reality that the longer the U.S. remains, the worse things will become, and the more difficult and lengthy recovery will be once the U.S. leaves (and the U.S. will leave, whether of its own volition, or a la Viet Nam). Therefore, it is in Iraqis’ best interest for the U.S. to make a rapid and complete departure sooner rather than later.

24. Correction:
    “The price gets higher and higher the longer the U.S. leaves.” should be “the longer the U.S. remains“.

25. Christiane, I agree with you completely that there should be a Nuremberg-style trial for those responsible for the destruction of Iraq, and the defendants should include not just the George Bushes, Dick Cheneys, and Tony Blairs, but also the Chalabies, `Allawis, and others.
    The U.S. and its “coalition” allies should be ordered to pay reparations in proportion to their participation, and it must be reparations not aid because aid always comes at a price, and can be put under the control of the aid giver. Reparations should be ordered and administered by a third party not allied with or beholden to the United States.
    And certainly life in prison for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Blair, et al. is the only acceptable justice. (It is tempting to give them a taste of their own medicine by subjecting them to a few of their “extraordinary interrogation techniques”, but we would not want to compete with them in their race to the bottom.

26. Shirin,
    I agree with you completely that there should be a Nuremberg-style trial
    Shirin, did any colonies brought to trials?
    Franc and what they did Algeria? Italy what they did in Libya? Britt’s what they did in ME?
    Finally US in ESA, Vietnam, or the South America?
    So it’s never been and will never been any of those “Civilised” will be in Nuremberg-style court.
    BTW, did you here about US solder that raped and put on fire the Iraqi girl Abier?
    The Americas themselves defending him and they set trust collecting money to free him.
    If this sort of sense exists in a society that the criminals prised for their crime for whatever reason how you expected that the US administrations will be in court for their crimes?

27. Salah, my brother, I spoke of what SHOULD be, but I have no illusions that it would ever happen. Unfortunately, the true criminals will never pay the price for what they have done.
    And generations of Iraqi people will pay the price for the crimes of the Bushes and Cheneys and Odiernos, and Sanchezes, and Petraeuses, and Rumsfelds, and Chalabis, and Makkiyas, and on and on and on and on and on.

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