Monday, June 28, 2004

Bremer: I believe my work here is done

From the Progress Report:

Before flying off into the sunset, Bremer "issued a raft of edicts revising Iraq's legal code." The new rules – which will be difficult, if not impossible, to overturn – will "restrict the power of the interim government, and impose U.S.-crafted rules for the country's democratic transition." Controversially, Bremer empowered an appointed electoral commission to "eliminate political parties or candidates." Another last minute edict gave "U.S. and other Western civilian contractors immunity from Iraqi law while performing their jobs in Iraq" – a provision that outraged many Iraqis because it "allows foreigners to act with impunity even after the occupation." Bremer also capped the tax rate at 15 percent, amended an industrial-design law to protect microchip designs, and stipulated the use of car horns be permitted in "emergency conditions only."

..A new report by Christian Aid – a non-profit that seeks solutions to poverty – reveals that Bremer left Iraq "without having properly accounted for what it has done with some $20 billion of Iraq's own money," accumulated from oil sales. The actions of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) appear to violate U.N. resolution 1483, which mandated that "Iraq's oil revenues should be paid into the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), that this money should be spent in the interests of the Iraqi people, and [that it] be independently audited." Bremer did not even appoint an auditor until April 2004, and the report is not expected until mid-July – long after the CPA has been dissolved. In the meantime, the CPA has refused to provide even basic information about how the money is being spent. Christian Aid also notes that a "majority of Iraq's reconstruction projects have been awarded to U.S. companies, which charge up to 10 times more than Iraqi firms."


P.S.

A new report by Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy concludes that the United States "is now vulnerable to strategic reversal in the region."


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