Iraqis Request Quick Turnover

The Washington Post ^ | September 28, 2003 | Mary Beth Sheridan

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Leaders of Iraq's interim Governing Council joined U.S. officials and Middle Eastern immigrants at a memorial service in Northern Virginia last night that reflected rising demands by Iraqis for a quicker turnover of power by U.S. occupation authorities.

"We need to build our own security and our own government. We will work with the coalition . . . but they need to hurry," said the council's temporary president, Ahmed Chalabi, speaking in Arabic to an audience that included Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. His comments were translated into English for a reporter.

The service was in honor of Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, a Shiite Muslim leader who was killed in a car bombing in the central Iraqi city of Najaf on Aug. 29. Hakim had been a key interlocutor with the U.S. occupying authority.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

ping

[Uncle George]

Seems to me I just heard our president say the very same thing. I guess Bush haters can say they had the idea first though.

[xJones]

Sounds like Ahmed Chalabi can hardly wait to be head honcho. But if his junta isn't too weird, and Iraqis will start paying their own tab, it might not be so bad.

[SubMareener]

Sources I really trust tell me that Ahmed Chalabi is in this for Ahmed Chalabi, not Iraq.

[xJones]

Sources I really trust tell me that Ahmed Chalabi is in this for Ahmed Chalabi, not Iraq.

I don't doubt that at all, but finding a George Mohammed Washington in the Middle East is going to be next to impossible. Corruption is an milliniem-old way of life.

[SubMareener]

Hamid Karzai is working on becoming Afganistan's Ataturk, which is like Tom Jefferson and George Washington rolled into one. We will have to see if someone steps forward in Iraq. Some of the tribal chiefs are pretty savy.