This is a very important moment, this is a true step towards the better and safer Iraq than what existed before...A new governmental process set up to implement democratic initiatives, and a woeful day for terrorists and insurgents who want none of this...Too bad. I am happy and proud for the Iraqi people...They now (for the first time in many, many years) have legitimate leadership...Leadership by their own people is the culmination of efforts by several groups, and the transitional process has not been easy, and will continue to not be easy, but this step will only encourage Iraqis to take more initiative in properly dealing with the insurgents and terrorists, and for Iraq to be recognized at a later time to be in tune with the rest of the legitimate world... New Iraqi President Named; IGC Dissolved Tuesday, June 01, 2004 BAGHDAD, Iraq — The Iraqi Governing Council was dissolved Tuesday as a new president and prime minister took their positions in Iraq's government. "We Iraqis look forward to being granted full sovereignty through a Security Council resolution to enable us to rebuild a free, independent, democratic and federal unified homeland," new President Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer (search) told a press conference. A senior Bush administration official hailed the appointment of a new government and said the Coalition Provisional Authority would remain sovereign until June 30 to help the new leadership phase in. President Bush scheduled an 11:30 a.m. EST news conference in the Rose Garden to publicly comment on the event. The official also confirmed to reporters that the council, in office since July, had voted to dissolve immediately to allow the new government to get up and running. He also said the new Cabinet would begin negotiations on the status of U.S. and other coalition forces in Iraq after June 30 "fairly soon." "The Governing Council dissolved itself today. It no longer exists," Mahmoud Othman, who has been appointed a minister of state in the new line-up, told Reuters. The official said the Bush administration was pleased with the selection of Itad Allawi (search) as prime minister and al-Yawer as president, despite reports that the Americans favored former Foreign Minister Adnan Pachachi (search) as head of state. "It is committed to a democratic and stable Iraq and is filled with competent and honest individuals," the official said. "It is diverse and broadly representative of Iraq. He denied America had a favorite for the presidency, saying U.S. officials here "went back to Washington for guidance" and was told that "either of them would make an excellent president for Iraq." "We lobbied for neither one," he said, although several Governing Council members said that was not the case. Allawi announced the government line-up on Tuesday. Adil Abdel-Mahdi, an official of a powerful Shiite political party, was named finance minister; Hazem Shalan al-Khuzaei became defense minister; and Thamir Ghadbhan took over as oil minister. The new Minister of Industry, Hajim al-Hassani, told Arabic satellite news station Al-Jazeera that as of Wednesday there would be "no more American coordinators to impose their will on Iraqi ministries." "The ministries can make use of their available expertise but the final decision will be an Iraqi one," he said. U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi (search), who announced al-Yawer's appointment, was flanked by the new president and prime minister as he offered "sincere congratulations and best wishes on the success of their mission." "I think that the people of Iraq will be praying all over the country for the success of their mission which aims at starting the rebuilding of the new Iraq," Brahimi said. Al-Yawer called the selection of a new government as a step toward "full sovereignty" for the Iraqi people. Allawi said Iraqis "are starting our march toward sovereignty and democracy." On Friday, the far more powerful post of prime minister went to Iyad Allawi, a U.S.-backed Shiite Muslim with military and CIA connections. All sides had wanted the presidency to go to a Sunni Muslim Arab. Iraqi officials had said Allawi was chosen because he was considered the best choice to cope with the deteriorating security situation. The next Iraqi government must negotiate the legal basis under which the 135,000 American troops and other coalition forces will remain here under a sovereign Iraqi government. As word of al-Yawer's appointment was announced, a car bomb blew up outside the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (search), which is located just outside the green zone headquarters of the U.S.-run coalition in central Baghdad. Initial reports indicate that two Iraqis were killed and 27 wounded. time. One 1 Iraqi was also wounded in several rocket attacks on the Green Zone that began around 12:15 local time. U.S.: We Had No Preference Council members had angrily accused the American governor of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, of trying to install Pachachi over their opposition. Sources had said earlier that the Americans warned that if the members went ahead and voted for al-Yawer, the United States might not recognize the choice. Al-Yawer, who routinely wears traditional Arab robes and head gear, was sharply critical of the American occupation in a recent television interview, blaming U.S. ineptness for the deteriorating law and order. Al-Yawer also has denounced violence against American and other coalition forces. Brahimi had hoped to complete the selection of the 26-member Cabinet by Monday, but the dispute over the presidency delayed the decision for a day. Brahimi said the two vice presidencies went to Ibrahim al-Jaafari, of the Shiite Muslim Dawa party, and Rowsch Shaways, speaker of parliament in the Kurdish autonomous region in Irbil. Most of the 22-member Governing Council backed al-Yawer, the current council president. A graduate of the Petroleum and Minerals University in Saudi Arabia and of Georgetown University, he is a prominent member of the Shammar tribe, one of the largest in the Gulf region that includes Shiite clans. He enjoys the support of Shiite and Kurdish council members. Coalition spokesman Dan Senor had earlier insisted the Americans have not shown a preference for Pachachi, a claim that many council members dismissed as untrue. Details of the agreement were not clear, but if the Americans had insisted on Pachachi they would have risked a major breach with their Iraqi allies at a sensitive period as Washington prepares to hand control of a still-unstable, war-ravaged country to an untested leadership. Ahmed Pachachi, a relative and an aide to Pachachi, said the 81-year-old former minister was offered the presidency but turned down the post. Adnan Pachachi later told reporters that the president "must have the support of all levels of the Iraqi people and all quarters." He denied that he was the coalition's choice. "I apologize (for turning down the job) for valid reasons and for personal reasons," he said. Allawi later announced his Cabinet. Hoshyar Zebari retained his post as foreign minister and Kurdish official Barham Saleh, who is close to the Americans, was named deputy prime minister for national security affairs. In Mosul, al-Yawer's hometown, crowds swept into the streets to celebrate the news, cheering and firing weapons in the air. American soldiers there appealed for calm. Al-Yawer's appointment comes at a delicate time for President Bush. Facing election in November, he must ensure that Iraqi politicians who take power next month are supportive of American goals in Iraq. With more than 800 U.S. military dead since the Iraq war began in March 2003, Washington is eager to see a government that can tackle the security crisis, including a year-old Sunni revolt in Baghdad and areas north and west of the capital and a Shiite uprising to the south.
at least one columnist, a canadian no less, thinks W schooled the UN with the new iRaqi government. interesting, btw, that everyone ha ignored this thread. i guess good new out of iRaq is just too horrible a scenario for the liberals to contemplate. http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/Comment/Jun04/index216.shtml -- A sovereign Iraq Yesterday, in defiance of all pessimists, Iraq resumed its life as a sovereign country, in a manner no one outside Iraq has the right to gainsay. We have a secular Shia prime minister (Iyad Alawi), and a ceremonial Sunni President (Ghazi al-Yawar). Both are acceptable to all reasonable parties, including the United States. We have a ministry of all the talents, such as they are: with every available regional, ethnic, and religious affiliation. The formal transfer of power from Paul Bremer's occupation authority to the new Iraqi government waits till the end of the month, but with the self-dissolution of the interim Iraqi Governing Council, we have witnessed an effective transfer. From now on, American advisers won't be running Iraqi ministries -- won't dare try -- and allied troops on the ground will be consulting Iraqis before launching new raids on assorted bad guys. Best of all, the region's governments, including nefarious Iran and Syria (up to their eyeballs fomenting trouble within Iraq), will know it's too late to sabotage the hand-off -- because it has already occurred, by surprise, ahead of deadline. No one else will say this, so I will. The Bush administration has handled the transfer of power in Iraq more cleverly than anyone expected, including me. The summoning of the U.N. envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, looked like very bad news (a poisonous old Arab League chauvinist who brokered the sell-out of Lebanon to Syria in 1982). In grim moments, I believed the Bush people were cynically using him to wash their hands of Iraq, and as it were, dump the quagmire back in the swamp of the U.N. Instead, they froze the ground beneath Brahimi's feet, and skated rings around him, haggling behind his back with Iraq's new political heavyweights to leave him endorsing a fait accompli. If it were not vulgar, I would say the Bushies suckered the U.N. into signing on to the New Iraq through Brahimi. A sovereign, free Iraq which will, incidentally, have a few things to say about the U.N.'s $100-billion "oil-for-food" scam, in due course. Will this new Iraq be plausibly democratic? Too soon to count chickens. An Iraqi government that includes all non-violent factions, with or without elections, is already better than that for which we could have plausibly hoped. Elections on top of this will be gravy. That self-dissolved Governing Council seems to have served its purpose as a public incubator of a new Iraqi political class, wonderfully unlike those in adjoining countries. The Americans have moreover done a superb job of playing politics, intra-Iraqis: a job of horse-trading beyond anything achieved by British imperialists in the past. I didn't agree with all the dirty tricks (and especially not with the CIA's unconscionable settling of accounts with Ahmed Chalabi, getting the Iraqis to raid his headquarters to bring him down to size), but we have a presentably benign government at the end of the day. Real praise ought to be showered on the Iraqis. This new political class -- consisting of returned Sunni and Shia exiles, Kurds, tribal lords, Shia clerical henchmen, and the odd, semi-halal, Baath-party "technocrat", has proved capable of forming workable coalitions whenever something has had to be achieved. If you read your history of American constitutional wranglings in the 18th-century, you will appreciate how far they came in how little time. Can they stand up to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Wahabi terrorists, and Muqtada al-Sadr's Shia blackshirts? Yes, with continuing American help. These are every bit as much America's enemies as Saddam Hussein was, and I daresay the U.S. Marines will continue to oblige. They have done a magnificent job of reducing the numbers of psychopaths loose in Fallujah, Najaf, Kufa, and elsewhere, for much too little praise. On the ground in Iraq, it is obvious from the range of sources the Western media do not bother with, that things are still going exceedingly well. There are more than 8,000 municipalities in Iraq, and serious violence in only five or six. Free elections for local governments have taken place or probably will in most of the others. The foreign troops are already out of sight and out of mind in much of the country, where crops are growing, generators are humming, and people are going about their lives. My philosophy is, we do not know what tomorrow will bring, so let us celebrate today. Iraqis, Americans, allies, and all men of goodwill have reason to be happy about what has been accomplished in Iraq. Pray, pray, it continues. David Warren
Want me to guess their responses? It will go something like this: Our friends on the left will whine "They're nothing more than puppets, just like the Bush administration is of Halliburton." They'll talk about how the great, exalted UN could handle it so much better and how we should have never gone in the first place, etc. They'll talk about how Bush "lied" and we had no reason to go to war because there are/were NO WMDs in Iraq and if you really want to know, those VX gas shells were just left over....yeah....that's the ticket, left over from the Iran/Iraq war. Saddam didn't have any WMD, they were just buried there for no reason.
You're right guys, this is unbelievably good news that I am deliberately ignoring. Why don't you guys do some research on PM Allawi for a bit before you start gloating, I'm sure you'll be amused at what you find. The Atheniraqian (whoops, sorry basso, AtheniRaqian) democracy of your dreams is en route to revamp to save ME politics as we know it. Too bad it will be too late to save W.
This is a fantastic development, and further proof that the coalition is executing on its plan. Were it not for the worldwide media's incredible distortion campaign, it would not be necessary to defend the actions of the coalition troops and their leaders. Sadly, it is. Unfortunately, not many people are publishing positive things about this very positive war. Negativity fits some people's agendas much better -- selfish people who place the world's best interest second to their own partisan desires. I continue to support the actions of our brave soldiers and their leaders.
