Beginning of the end of just the beginning?

US hands over power in Iraq two days early
George Bush will without doubt claim that the job is done and that he was even able to hand over power in Iraq two days ahead of schedule. The truth is, the situation in the country is so catastrophically out of control than he had to go cap in hand pleading with the international community (which he derided) and chickens out as fast as possible.

George Bush claims a lot of things. He claims that Iraq has Weapons of Mass Destruction, he claims that he knows where these weapons are (messages from God?) and he claims that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to the United States of America and her allies. What he does not do, is tell the truth. Maybe it is not from God that he receives his messages, but from Satan.

He was warned time and again by the international community, by numerous advisors, in the international press, in this column, that the debacle he was about to embark on in Iraq would be the biggest mistake in the recent history of international relations, the greatest travesty in the norms of crisis management.

However, he just had to go ahead because there was no stopping the greedy clique of corporate elite surrounding him, pulling his strings and dictating Washington’s internal and external policy. These days when people say “The President”, they mean “All the President’s Men”.

Today, 28th June, Paul Bremer hands over power two days earlier than planned as he hurries out of the country, doubtless with a huge sigh of relief and a theatrical wiping of his brow as the new “leaders” of Iraq, “President” Ghazo al-Yawar and “Prime Minister” Iyad Alawi are sworn in.

In fact, these two men are no more than puppets elected by Washington to do its dirty work overseas. For this reason, why should there be a downturn in the activity of the Iraqi Resistance forces, which seem to be proving more resilient than at first imagined and seem to be scoring their first successes regarding policy change?

Another fine mess Washington has made for the rest of the world to clear up. Rather than limiting, reducing and solving the Palestinian question, Wolfowitz and company have opened a second front in the Middle East, which makes Hamas, the Martyrs of Al-Aqsa and the PLF looking like a grandmothers’ tea party compared to what is happening in Iraq, with every wannabe Moslem fundamentalist pouring over the borders to fight the Infidel.

Claims that the new Iraqi government has “full sovereignty” are also a tissue of lies. It cannot make long-term policy, Washington retains the ultimate say over important policy issues and the government has zero jurisdiction over the 160.000 foreign invasion troops on its soil.

With many thousands of Iraqis left with nothing more than a semi-automatic and a box of ammunition, after Washington precision-blitzed the country’s civilian infra-structures in its act of butchery, how surprising it is than more and more young Iraqis are taking sides with the Resistance against what is seen (and what is) an illegal foreign invasion force.