Facing The Unknown
Still more violence in Iraq--and lots more questions
Early on in yet another miserable week in Baghdad, America's dashing proconsul issued an admittedly tentative but determinedly upbeat assessment of the way things were going. The flames of the conflicts west and south of the Iraqi capital had been temporarily damped down, and an uneasy military standoff had taken their place. That prompted Paul Bremer to announce that things, suddenly, seemed "relatively stable." Bremer, sadly, spoke too soon. Hours later, a series of suicide bombings in the southern city of Basra had Bremer not only eating his words but voicing the fear of nearly everyone in Iraq that the violence may continue to escalate as the June 30 deadline nears for handing over limited sovereignty to Iraqis. U.S. intelligence officials suspect the bombings may be the work of al Qaeda associate Abu Musab Zarqawi. "Let's not give the terrorists a victory," Bremer implored, "by being able to derail the process that was agreed to."
If anyone could actually remember what the process was, besides the apparently immutable fact of the June 30 handoff, he or she wasn't saying. And last week, more than ever, there was about the American-led venture in Iraq a decidedly schizophrenic quality. As the corpses were cleared from the streets of Basra, American marines outside Fallujah were warning that a bloody assault on the heavily armed insurgents within the city was virtually "inevitable." The prediction, and the continued standoff near the Shiite holy city of Najaf, added more vitriol to Iraqi criticisms of the American occupiers and had even independent observers remarking that the three-week-long uprising had reduced parts of Iraq to the levels of last summer's postwar lawlessness. Riding the tide of bad news, Spain and Honduras announced their troops were pulling up stakes and heading home, as the Bush team worked to shore up its other coalition partners.
In Washington, however, the talk was of peace. Sort of. There was nothing wrong with Iraq, senior Bush administration officials said, that couldn't be managed with a few more troops and dollars. How much, of course, was apparently anyone's guess. Already, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has extended the tours of 20,000 troops by an additional three months. But Gen. John Abizaid, the overall commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, may decide he needs more, in which case Rumsfeld, who has been saying for months that more troops aren't the answer, now says he'll send more. All clear? As for the money, Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's deputy and an intellectual godfather of the Iraq venture, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that yes, well, the Pentagon would be coming back to Congress seeking funds to pay for both the increased combat operations and the increase in troop levels. Estimates range as high as $70 billion. Wolfowitz, like Rumsfeld, has also been telling anyone who would listen over the past year that more troops weren't the answer in Iraq.
Then, of course, there's the little matter of that June 30 deadline. With less than 10 weeks to go, everyone from Bremer to Rumsfeld to Wolfowitz is projecting a "what, me worry?" attitude. The Alfred E. Neuman impressions are all the more remarkable for the fact that no one--literally no one--can say just to whom the Americans are going to hand over governing authority. The deadline is tight, but President Bush, who spent much of the time before the war dissing the United Nations and much of the time since acting as if it didn't exist, has suddenly changed his tune. Now, Lakhdar Brahimi, a soft-spoken septuagenarian diplomat who is the U.N.'s top gun in Iraq, is the repository of all wisdom, it seems. Brahimi has a plan for a new caretaker government, Bush has pointed out, and that's whom America's going to hand off power to. But there are just a few catches. Bush makes clear that there will be limits on the new government's powers and that U.S. forces will remain the final authority on security matters. And even Brahimi can't say exactly what this new government would look like. Yes, it will have a president, a prime minister, and two vice presidents, or maybe two deputy prime ministers (the details remain to be worked out). And, yes, it will be counseled by a conference of as many as 1,000 Iraqis. George W. Bush promised Iraqis democracy, and if Brahimi's concept works, even without elections, it looks as if they'll be getting at least a version.
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