Friends, Several of you have sent in follow-up comments to the last two 'dialog' postings. Those will be posted tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'd like to say a few things about the recent transfer of pseudo-sovereignty to Iraq. The transfer of sovereignty is so obviously fraudulent that one almost wonders why there are bothering with the charade. It is clear to everyone that the Pentagon continues to run the country. Allawi is a Ba'athist who is closely connected to the CIA--his installation is basically a replay of the installation of Saddam. Some commentators have referred to him as "Saddam lite". His first act in office has been to declare martial law. The effect of this decree is to legitimize the continued arbitrary actions of the U.S. military, given that Allawi's own security forces have little stomach for fighting. One puppet dictator has been replaced by another. And if the new one ceases to be a good puppet, he can be indicted for the crimes he will be carrying out on behalf of the CIA--just like Saddam and Noriega were before him. But despite all this obvious fraud, the formal transfer of sovereignty does succeed in changing the propaganda climate to the benefit of the U.S. Administration. Before the transfer, we had a situation where the U.S. was pretending that it was liberating Iraq, and every act of insurgency gave the lie to that pretense. Now that Iraq pretends to be sovereign, every act of insurgency can be seen as evidence that the government needs American support to suppress "the terrorists". The actual situation--a people resisting an occupying aggressor--has not changed one bit. But the propaganda coming out of the White House and the mainstream media will make more sense, will seem less self-contradictory. The basic purpose of the pseudo transfer is to legitimize escalation of the war against the Iraqi people. yours, rkm http://cyberjournal.org
