Free Republic

THE thick, black smoke that drifted over the prosperous Mansour suburb of Baghdad last January had nothing to do with the bomb blasts and rocket fire that shook the Iraqi capital almost daily. In special furnaces built into an old warehouse complex near the former headquarters of the Mukhabarat intelligence service, Iraqi workers were burning money. The coalition's decision to introduce a new Iraqi currency could scarcely have been avoided. No one wanted banknotes bearing the face of Saddam Hussein. Yet the operation to exchange and destroy countless old Iraqi dinars was an invitation to fraud. The way judge Zuhair...

United Nations, 7 May 2004 (RFE/RL) -- As UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi begins final negotiations on an interim Iraqi government, he's facing renewed opposition from Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi. Entifadh Qanbar, spokesman for Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, told journalists that neither Brahimi nor the UN have the credibility to lead the transition. He also said Brahimi, a Sunni Muslim Algerian, was too close to ousted dictator Saddam Hussein. "To have somebody from outside the country who is an Arab nationalist who had some great support to Saddam in the past, to come and rule the political process in...