Sovereignty: "If they want it that bad, they can have it"

In addition to that "elite force," what other signs of sovereignty have been evident lately in General Petraeus's "sovereign Iraq"? Somini Sengupta of the New York Times reports that a worthy sign of sovereignty has indeed appeared: "There is one thing the sovereign state of Iraq can offer its citizens today," she writes, "and Iraqis are banging down the doors to get their hands on it: a passport out of the country… Jobless, rattled, fed up, Iraqis are dreaming of getting out." Finally, sovereign Iraq can offer those capable of paying or landing a job abroad a way out other than a porous border -- and the result is a significant brain drain. "It is generally believed in Baghdad that around 1,000 Iraqis leave the country every day for Jordan and Syria because the security situation is intolerable," wrote former British ambassador Oliver Miles in the Guardian -- and that's quite understandable given the other horrific brain drain underway -- the program of assassination of educators and intellectuals countrywide by unknown elements.

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An occupation by any other name

Paul Bremer, the former U.S. administrator in Iraq, has packed up his trademark boots and gone home. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the deputy chief of military operations in Iraq, and Dan Senor, the former U.S. main spokesman in Iraq, no longer grace our television screens. And the controversial John Negroponte, who is now running the show out of the largest U.S. embassy in the world, is rarely seen or heard. In other words, the U.S. occupation of Iraq has officially gone underground. The Bush administration is indeed putting an "Iraqi face" on the occupation by keeping its operations outside the media spotlight. Since the White House can't come up with a strategy to actually get out of Iraq, it is now hoping that voters will simply forget we're over there.

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'America is not a charitable organisation - they came to steal from Iraq'
By Robert Fisk in Najaf

Outside on Sayed Ayatollah Ahmed Hassani al-Baghdadi's little lawn, the temperature is touching 60C. But inside his spacious library with its shelves of leather-bound volumes of Islamic science and law, the political heat soars between 3,000 degrees and minus 20. The Shia marja [leading Shia scholars] are known for their outspokenness but Sayed Baghdadi more than speaks his mind. The Americans occupied Iraq as part of a Zionist project, he announces. They will not leave Iraq because they intend to steal Iraq's oil. The new US-appointed Iraqi government are "collaborators". And Sayed Baghdadi, remember, is a highly respected and very influential marja whose lectures draw students from all over Iraq. When I ask him to talk about the current situation of Iraq's Shia population, he responds with an attack on my question, suggesting that the world's press are involved in a vast project to separate Sunni from Shia. When I ask him what would happen if the Americans left next week, he roars back at me. "Impossible! The Americans will not retreat from Iraq because they have strategic benefits in the region from Afghanistan to Morocco ... How can you ask such a question?"

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Cheney Watch

Vice President Dick Cheney gave his stump speech in Utah on Wednesday, attempting to rally the Republican faithful while the national spotlight remained on the Democrats. Rebecca Walsh reports: Cheney said terrorists are as determined to destroy America as the "Axis powers" of Germany, Italy and Japan during World War II. Borrowing a quote from the 9-11 Commission's report on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 2001, the vice president said the terrorists are "sophisticated, patient, disciplined and lethal." "This enemy is perfectly prepared to slaughter anyone man, woman and child to achieve its ends," Cheney said. "This is not an enemy we can reason with. This is an enemy we must vanquish." Although it may be true that al-Qaeda is as determined to destroy the US as the Axis Powers were in World War II, this observation is a Himalayan exaggeration if it is meant to suggest a parallel. Al-Qaeda is a few thousand fanatics mainly distributed in a handful of countries. If Zacharias Moussaoui and Richard Reid are any indication, a lot of them are one step away from from collecting old soda cans on the street in their grocery carts while mumbling about the radios the government implanted in their asses. So while their determination may be impressive (or just creepy), they are not comparable to the might of three industrialized dictatorships with populations in the tens of millions. Some 13 million men served in the German army (Heer) alone between 1935 and 1945. (And WW II killed 55 million persons, not 3 thousand). I repeat, al-Qaeda proper only has a few hundred fighters, those who pledged allegiance personally to Bin Laden, and a few thousand if you count other Afghan Arabs and their ideological soul mates. Most of them are not wealthy or trained or competent, and a lot are just crackpots. (Read an account of the misadventures of Richard Reid again). September 11 was possible mainly because Ramzi Bin al-Shibh lucked out and managed to recruit some high-powered engineering Ph.D. students in Hamburg who knew something serious about kinetic energy. The organization does not have a lot of persons of that caliber, though Cheney has done everything in his power to make them easier for al-Qaeda to recruit.

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