From The Independent, 6/28/05:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=650186
Iraq: A bloody mess
By Patrick Cockburn
28 June 2005
A year ago the supposed handover of power by the US occupation
authority to an Iraqi interim government led by Iyad Allawi was billed
as a turning point in the violent history of post-Saddam Iraq.
It has turned out to be no such thing.
Most of Iraq is today a bloody no-man's land beset by ruthless
insurgents, savage bandit gangs, trigger-happy US patrols and
marauding government forces.
On 28 June 2004 Mr Allawi was all smiles.
"In a few days, Iraq will radiate with stability and security," he
promised at the handover ceremony.
That mood of optimism did not last long.
On Sunday the American Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, told a
US news programme that the ongoing insurgency could last "five, six,
eight, ten, twelve years".
Yesterday in London, after meeting Tony Blair, the new Iraqi Prime
Minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, tried to be more upbeat, commenting:
"I think two years will be enough and more than enough to establish
security".
Tonight President George Bush will make his most important address
since the invasion, speaking to troops at the US army base at Fort
Bragg, North Carolina.
He is expected to seek to assure increasingly sceptical Americans that
he has a plan to prevail in Iraq, and that the US is not trapped in a
conflict as unwinnable as the one in Vietnam, three decades ago.
The news now from Iraq is only depressing.
All the roads leading out of the capital are cut.
Iraqi security and US troops can only get through in heavily armed
convoys.
There is a wave of assassinations of senior Iraqi officers based on
chillingly accurate intelligence.
A deputy police chief of Baghdad was murdered on Sunday.
A total of 52 senior Iraqi government or religious figures have been
assassinated since the handover.
In June 2004 insurgents killed 42 US soldiers; so far this month 75
have been killed.
The "handover of power" last June was always a misnomer.
Much real power remained in the hands of the US.
Its 140,000 troops kept the new government in business.
Mr Allawi's new cabinet members became notorious for the amount of
time they spent out of the country.
Safely abroad they often gave optimistic speeches predicting the
imminent demise of the insurgency.
Despite this the number of Iraqi military and police being killed
every month has risen from 160 at the handover to 219 today.
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What a bloody mess.
Harry
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