... we have no business imposing the law of Moses on the Iraqi people.
Good one.
Posted on 04/22/2003 5:31:05 PM PDT by RJCogburn
The top American civilian administrator for Iraq met today in northern Iraq with the two main Kurdish leaders and called for a new Iraqi government to be a "mosaic," fairly representing all Iraqis.
The official, Jay Garner, a retired Army lieutenant general, received a notably warmer greeting in the north than he had the day before in Baghdad, with cheers, hugs and a shower of flower petals reflecting his efforts in the early 1990's to help create the thriving Kurdish autonomous area of northeastern Iraq.
"The new government of Iraq will have one leader, one army, one government," General Garner said. "Our desire would be that the new government of Iraq represent all the Iraqi people. It will be a mosaic."
Elsewhere in Iraq, there were more signs of dissatisfaction with the American presence, the continuing lack of basic services and the sense that American forces had not done enough to prevent looting.
There were also reports of cases of typhoid and cholera — diseases linked to the failure of water and sanitation services. However, electrical power was returning to Baghdad, though 80 percent of the capital remained in the dark.
Hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims continued to throng to a religious festival in Karbala that had been banned by Saddam Hussein's government. Some pilgrims chanted anti-American slogans, and many rival imams, appealing for support in a country that is 60 percent Shiite, denounced any continuing United States role in Iraq.
Outside the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, a small anti-American protest was eased by the release of a prominent Shiite cleric, whose freedom the protesters had sought for days. The cleric, Sheikh Muhammad Fartusi, was cheered when he later appeared aboard a minibus in central Baghdad. American spokesmen said they could not confirm that American forces had detained him.
Some looted goods, including medical supplies taken from local hospitals and artworks stolen from museums, began to appear in Baghdad, offered for sale by street vendors who did not always know, reporters there said, quite what they were selling.
About 2,000 troops from the 101st Airborne Division arrived in Mosul, in northern Iraq, and armored vehicles made a show of force in the central city. Anti-American sentiment has flared in Mosul after American forces killed several people during a tense demonstration. There have also been clashes between Kurds and Arabs there.
With Syria under heavy American pressure not to harbor fleeing Iraqi leaders, the United Nations refugee agency expressed concern about Damascus's expelling into Iraq dozens of people seeking asylum, including many children. Security forces were reported to have entered a camp in northeastern Syria and moved 32 Iraqis, including 23 children — all from Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown — to the border, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement.
In Baghdad, one of Mr. Hussein's most-feared lieutenants, former Prime Minister Muhammad Hamza Zubaydi, was reported to have been captured on Monday. Mr. Zubaydi was known as Saddam's "Shiite Thug" for his role in the bloody suppression of a Shiite Muslim uprising of 1991, which left tens of thousands dead.
A spokesman for the newly returned exile group the Iraqi National Congress, Haider Ahmad, called Mr. Zubaydi "one of the most hated men in the former regime." The congress said its members had arrested Mr. Zubaydi in Hillah, south of Baghdad, and turned him over to American military forces.
In Doha, Qatar, American officials said that General Garner would attend a meeting in Baghdad on Saturday that is intended to bring together Iraqi faction leaders to discuss establishment of an interim national administration.
United States officials said that the Baghdad meeting was a follow-up to a gathering last week in the southern city of Nasiriya that brought together leaders of several factions, though other factions boycotted it. Both of the Kurdish leaders with whom General Garner met expressed support for the Baghdad meeting.
General Garner received crucial reassurance from one of the Kurdish leaders, Jalal Talabani, that the party he heads, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, had no plan to pursue an independent Kurdistan.
"At this moment, we want to deal within the framework of Iraq," Mr. Talabani said. But he essentially reserved the right to change that position, saying, "We believe that the Kurdish people, like other people in the world, have the right to self-determination."
Kurdish cooperation is vital to General Garner's efforts on at least two levels. Turkey strongly opposes any Kurdish independence moves in Iraq that may inspire its own Kurdish minority, and the United States wants to see a new government that will protect Iraqi territorial integrity while fairly representing the Kurds in the north, the Shiites in the south and the Sunnis.
General Garner met with Mr. Talabani and the other Kurdish leader, Massoud Barzani, of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, in the town of Dukan. Their two parties, which ruled northern Iraq in uneasy rivalry after 1991, have in recent months cooperated, with strong American encouragement.
Mr. Talabani had friendly words for General Garner, acknowledging the aid he helped provide to the Kurds after the 1991 gulf war and jokingly urging the general, who is 65, to return to the region when he is ready to really retire.
General Garner was also warmly received in Sulaimaniya to the southeast, where university students showered him with flower petals. He told them that Kurdish administration of the northern region since the 1991 war could inspire an approach for the rest of the country.
"What you have done here in the last 12 years is a wonderful start in self-government, and what you have done can serve as a model for the rest of Iraq," Garner told the students.
As director of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, General Garner heads a United States effort to restore essential services and oversee reconstruction in Iraq, which is expected to cost tens of billions of dollars. He has said his office will stay no longer than necessary, but he would not commit himself to a three-month schedule suggested by one questioner.
A Pentagon official said today that the Bush administration planned to convene an international donors conference to raise money for Iraqi reconstruction. But the official, Dov Zakheim, the Defense Department comptroller, offered no estimate of final rebuilding costs.
Already, the United States has pledged $541.6 million in financial aid and relief supplies; Britain has pledged $329 million; Australia and Japan have promised $100 million each; and the Netherlands and Norway have pledged about $22 million each, for a total of slightly more than $1 billion. A 100-bed field hospital sent by Jordan arrived in Baghdad.
The Associated Press quoted Mr. Zakheim as saying that he believed there would be more international interest in investing in Iraqi reconstruction than was the case with Afghanistan, which was deemed to have poorer prospects. The initial donors conference on Afghanistan produced pledges of about $2 billion.
That's interesting.
Saw this on the Foxnews banner ! Sounds like a major deal!
It seems to me that if your country is in the Middle East, it is a given that it is either a Monarchy or a Theocracy. I feel the people in this part of the world have accepted ths as their fate long ago, and our country will not have what it takes to spend the many years it will take to turn Iraq into a non-reigious Democracy.
That coupled with the obvious pressure Iran is exerting to get the Shiite leaders to stir up the rabble, I suspect it's just too tall of an order.
But I would think that Bush & Co would of seen this scenario and it will be interesting to see how they plan to pull it off.
I'm just very pessimistic about it.
This is hypocritical. If we are telling the Shi'ites they can't have a fundamentalist government like Iran, and that they are to secularize, we have no business imposing the law of Moses on the Iraqi people.
... we have no business imposing the law of Moses on the Iraqi people.
Good one.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.