Iraq's day of reckoning

[JoFerret]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1223975,00.html

On June 30, President Bush has promised a full transfer of sovereignty will take place; but will the new government really be independent?

Adam Roberts
Tuesday May 25, 2004
The Guardian

On June 30, the formal status of Iraq as a territory under foreign military occupation is due to end. The coalition provisional authority (CPA) under the proconsulship of Paul Bremer will cease to exist, replaced by a new interim Iraqi government. From that day the US will have not a proconsul, but an ambassador, John Negroponte, currently the US representative at the UN. The plan is that the new arrangements will have the seal of approval of a UN security council resolution; a draft text was presented yesterday.
However, when Iraqis wake up on July 1, outside involvement in the administration of the country will not have ceased. Huge numbers of foreign troops and advisers will remain. Will their activities still be subject to the standards laid down in the laws of war, most particularly the 1949 Geneva conventions?

On May 20, Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, said: "We intend for this interim government ... to be sovereign. It is the interim government that is replacing Bremer and the coalition provisional authority, not Ambassador Negroponte." Powell went on to point out that the transfer has been happening gradually; 13 ministries are already operating more or less independently.

The main parties involved have chosen to call the change a "transfer of sovereignty"; on May 19, President Bush spoke of "our strategy to transfer full sovereignty to the Iraqi people". A banner on the CPA website today proclaims "37 days to Iraqi sovereignty". But the proposition that on June 30 there will be a "transfer of sovereignty" is questionable; those claiming to transfer Iraqi sovereignty do not possess it.

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[cyclezealot]

1. Anyone think the power does not reside with an occupying army?

How foolish to think otherwise. The power really rests with whoever is the General in charge.

[saigon68]

2. Odilo Globocnik

As well as being responsible for SS and police matters in Lublin, Himmler appointed Globocnik as his "Plenipotentiary for the Construction of SS- and Police bases in the former Soviet areas" in July 1941. His base commanders were: Georg Michalsen (for Riga), Kurt Classen (Bialystok and Minsk), Hermann Höfle (Mogilew), Richard Thomalla (Starakonstantinow, Zwiahel and Kiev). Hermann Dolp was also prominent in the construction of these bases at Minsk and Mogilew. Globocnik and these five SS officers played a leading part in Aktion Reinhard one year later.

Globocnik was responsible for
- the final liquidations of the Warsaw and Bialystok ghettos.
- resettling a large number of Poles, particularly around Zamosc, under the guise of ethnic cleansing. Appointed by Himmler as head of the SS company OSTI (Ostindustrie GmbH), he was in charge of 45,000 Jewish labourers in forced labour camps camps like Trawniki and Poniatowa.
- the network of bigger and smaller work camps in the Lublin district, including the KZ Majdanek

[NMDemDist2]

3. read the UN document we proposed today

the Iraqi get pretty much nothing

snip Reaffirm the authority of the U.S.-led multinational force “to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq including by preventing and deterring terrorism.”

The resolution was introduced Monday at a closed-door meeting of the U.N. Security Council. Council ambassadors heading into the meeting, who had received advanced copies of the draft, reacted positively.

You can read the whole document from a link here

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5046836/