Oh the little Saddams we weave
By Jeremy Scahill
There is a despot in Iraq, ruling with an iron fist from the comfort
of his luxury palace on the banks of the Tigris River. He oversees a
ruthless military force and a web of repressive domestic “intelligence”
thugs that have terrorized Iraqis for decades. His name is not Saddam
Hussein; it’s L. Paul Bremer.
Some like to call Bremer the governor of Iraq, others politely refer
to him as the US Administrator. But what he really is is Saddam’s
successor. This week, as the US death toll in Iraq rose, as more Iraqi
(and Iranian) civilians paid the heavy price of the occupation, Bremer
had more pressing issues to attend to. He finally got around to fixing
up that shabby old palace of his. He paid an Iraqi firm $27,000 to remove
4 larger than life busts of Saddam’s head from the palace compound.
“I’ve been looking at these for six months,” said Bremer
as the first head was being removed, “so I am delighted to see
them coming down. We’re sick of them.”
In case you might be thinking that the weekend cleaning job at Bremer’s
riverfront mansion might not be the best use of US taxpayer dollars
or that there may be more pressing needs in Iraq like electricity, clean
water and education, there is something you have to understand. Bremer
is just complying with the law. “According to the rules of de-Baathification,
they have to come down,” said Charles Heatly, a spokesman for the
occupation authorities. “Actually they are illegal.”
Remember back in 1998, as the Clinton administration geared up to bomb
Baghdad, when we were inundated with talk of Saddam’s palaces.
How Saddam lived in luxury, while ordinary Iraqis suffered. He had swimming
pools while most Iraqis didn’t have clean water. He was usurping
Iraq’s resources for his own excesses. And on and on.
Bremer and the military commanders he rode into Baghdad with wasted
no time in picking up from where Saddam left off as they swiftly occupied
the dozens of palaces across Iraq. Out went Izzat Ibrahim from the marbled
palace in Tikrit, in came Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of the 4th
Infantry Division. Out went the Republican Guard; in came the marines.
Out went Saddam’s administrative offices; in came Bremer’s.
The US has converted a former Republican Guard resort into, drum roll
please, a resort for US soldiers: Camp Relaxation.
But it is not just the high life in lavish palaces that Bremer shares
with his predecessor.
Iraqi television has gone from airing the ramblings of Saddam and his
deputies to airing the statements of Bush, Bremer, Rice, Rumsfeld, and
a slew of US military commanders. One American soldier working on establishing
the “new” Iraqi media said many of the Iraqi journalists are
referring to the US commanders working with them as “Little Saddams.”
The US has put scores of Saddam’s thugs on the payroll of the new
regime. Many of them kept their same positions, just with a new supervisor:
Uncle Sam. And one of the most striking similarities between Saddam
and Bremer is that neither of them seems too eager to have democratic
elections in Iraq.
In recent weeks, the country’s leading Shi’ite clerics have
dramatically escalated their demands for direct elections of an interim
Iraqi government to take over from the US occupation forces. They want
one person, one vote and an end to the era of US-appointments. They
want the United Nations to organize and oversee the elections. Seems
reasonable enough. The problem is the US doesn’t want elections
if the “wrong” candidates are going to win.
The forces most opposed to direct elections in Iraq are Washington and
the imported “opposition” leaders like the CIA-backed Ahmed
Chalabi. The Shi’ite religious leaders are well aware, as many
analysts have observed, that if elections were held tomorrow, the religious
parties would win. Regardless of their motives, the clerics are calling
for democratic elections and it is the US that is putting up the roadblocks.
Washington and its proxies on the Governing Council say that the country
is too unstable for fair elections because of the risk of attacks on
voters and candidates. They want local caucuses of mostly appointed
representatives to select a national assembly, which would then “elect”
the leadership.
As the Shi’ite leaders have pressed their case for elections, the
US has said that due to a lack of a census, elections would be impossible.
Now, The New York Times reports that US officials have just rejected
a plan for a quick census of the country’s population that would
allow Iraq to hold national elections in nine months.
Followers of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani told the Atlanta Journal
Constitution this week that there may be direct actions if the US prevents
elections. “The time has come for us to get our rights,” said
Sheik Abdel Mehdi al-Karbalayi, al-Sistani’s representative in
the Shiite holy city of Karbala. “I’m not saying there will
be military action. Maybe it will be civilian. But there will be instability.”
Even the current chair of the US-appointed Governing Council, Shi’ite
leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, warned last week that there would be “a
real problem in the country” if the US prevented direct elections.
“It is not possible that a people who spent decades under oppression
and sacrificed so many lives are not allowed to directly participate.”
So far the only political campaigning that has been allowed in Iraq
was George W Bush’s 2 1/2 hour Thanksgiving tour of the Baghdad
airport.
From his palace on the banks of the Tigris, Paul Bremer is starting
to look like Iraq’s version of Katherine Harris. As we learned
in Florida in 2000, elections are not a process; they are a question.
And there is only one right answer. When Saddam held his last referendum
on his presidency late last year, there was just one choice for Iraqi
“voters”: Yes or no. The way things look now, Iraqis may not
even be granted that much of a say in their newly “liberated”
country under Bremer.
But not all is lost. At least Paul got rid of those annoying statues
of his predecessor’s head.
Jeremy Scahill is a producer and correspondent for the nationally
syndicated radio and TV program Democracy Now! He spent most of 2002
reporting from Iraq. He can be reached at jeremy@democracynow.org.
Source: CommonDreams.org
