25 April 2004

White House Says Iraq Sovereignty Could Be Limited

These diplomats, and some American officials, said that if the American military command ordered a siege of an Iraqi city, for example, and there was no language calling for an Iraqi government to participate in the decision, the government might not be able to survive protests that could follow.

The diplomats added that it might be unrealistic to expect the new Iraqi government not to demand the right to change Iraqi laws put in place by the American occupation under L. Paul Bremer III, including provisions limiting the influence of Islamic religious law.

Democratic and Republican senators appeared frustrated on Thursday that so few details were known at this late stage in the transition process, and several senators focused on the question of who would be in charge of Iraq's security.



In Harry Turtledove's Balance alternate history, the planet gets invaded in 1944 by an alien race with deeply conservative ideas. The alien language has no word for a government independent of their empire so they end up talking about not-empires like the US and Britain. The aliens also go to some lengths to demonstrate to the leadership of the Third Reich that their racial theories are unfounded in fact and get tremendously confused when this produces no change in the Reich's racial policies. But I digress.

The Bush administration is shifting its Iraq policy from fantasy to science fiction. They have invented not-sovereignty. It is laid out in some detail in the transitional adminsitrative diktat.

The areas of sovereignty excised from the not-sovereignty to be handed to Iraq are security, finance, anything covered by a CPA proclamation, and anything covered by a UN resolution. Strangely, because the not-sovereign ITG cannot make laws it will be incpable of changing CPA laws and appointees (yeah, I mean Chalabi).

This top-secret and unsuspected plan was carefully laid out in the CPA's interim constitution a month ago. Did no-one read it?

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