Monday, June 28, 2004"Two days ahead of schedule"I love the way the media is phrasing this, like the transition was going so smoothly that they finished early or something. In fact, June 30 was always just an arbitrary day, picked by Karl Rove (probably) to give the Bush administration enough distance between the hand-off and the US elections in November. Just enough time inbetween so Iraq becomes a fuzzy memory in the voting public's collective mind. And it's not like everything's A-OK in Iraq right now. Just last Thursday, a coordinated offensive killed more than 100 Iraqis and 3 US soldiers as insurgents detonated bombs in 6 different cities. The handover's not even a day old and the US is already giving its support for martial law to be declared in Iraq. Even money might be missing from the coffers. Democracy sure does look a bit different outside of the US: 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. Paul Bremer may have gotten the hell out of there, but our troops haven't been given that luxury. And the new boss just arrived, contrary to earlier reports that the administration didn't want to make it look like exactly what it looks like: Only hours after Mr. Bremer's departure, the new American ambassador here, John Negroponte, landed at Baghdad International Airport. Mr. Negroponte, you may recall, got into a little bit of trouble down in Central America some years back with that whole "Iran-Contra" mess. But that certainly doesn't mean the man is unfit to be an Ambassador of the United States of America to the Iraqi people. No, not at all. posted by chris at 3:56 PM ------------------ |
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