posted April 22, 2003 at 1:29 PM MDTMy idea was to get food / water / medicine to the most needy ASAP ... not only for humanitarian reasons. Is it only Bushite vampires that are capable of pragmatic thinking?!
The Iraqis' idea of democracy may differ from that of Mr Bush [an unfortunate title: those who accord most with Bush care least about civil society; these disruptions favour the vampires] - " ... Unless General Garner and his office in Baghdad can bring water, power and a reasonable semblance of order to Iraq's cities very soon, authority may gravitate irreversibly towards those Iraqis who can command respect at a populist level. At present, this means the imams; above all, the Shia imams who declined to attend last week's US-convened talks on an interim government, thereby seizing for themselves an opposition role.
It was not meant to be like this. One favoured scenario for the war was that the Baathist regime would fall almost of its own accord, leaving a near-complete administration intact. The British advance into the south was envisaged as primarily humanitarian, with convoys and pipelines bringing food, medicine and clean water to the needy of Basra. The fighting changed all that, as did the reluctance of the local sheikh nominated by the British to assume the burden of power.
Nothing is settled yet, and it may be at least a year before an Iraqi government is in place. In the meantime, nothing can be ruled out – including the possibility that this imposed revolution brings forth a government that looks rather more like those of Iraq's neighbours than the regional beacon of democracy forecast by President Bush."
