The idiot establishment media is playing along with Bush (as usual) and pretending that the "handover" date has significance beyond the shuffling of a few legal documents.
Fact is, nothing much will change. The decidedly non-liberal Wall Street Journal makes this clear as day:
Haider al-Abadi runs Iraq's Ministry of Communications, but he no longer calls the shots there. Instead, the authority to license Iraq's television stations, sanction newspapers and regulate cellphone companies was recently transferred to a commission whose members were selected by Washington. The commissioners' five-year terms stretch far beyond the planned 18-month tenure of the interim Iraqi government that will assume sovereignty on June 30.
The transfer surprised Mr. Abadi, a British-trained engineer who spent nearly two decades in exile before returning to Iraq last year. He found out the commission had been formally signed into law only when a reporter asked him for comment about it. "No one from the U.S. even found time to call and tell me themselves," he says.
As Washington prepares to hand over power, U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer and other officials are quietly building institutions that will give the U.S. powerful levers for influencing nearly every important decision the interim government will make.
In a series of edicts issued earlier this spring, Mr. Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority created new commissions that effectively take away virtually all of the powers once held by several ministries. The CPA also established an important new security-adviser position, which will be in charge of training and organizing Iraq's new army and paramilitary forces, and put in place a pair of watchdog institutions that will serve as checks on individual ministries and allow for continued U.S. oversight. Meanwhile, the CPA reiterated that coalition advisers will remain in virtually all remaining ministries after the handover.
In many cases, these U.S. and Iraqi proxies will serve multiyear terms and have significant authority to run criminal investigations, award contracts, direct troops and subpoena citizens. The new Iraqi government will have little control over its armed forces, lack the ability to make or change laws and be unable to make major decisions within specific ministries without tacit U.S. approval, say U.S. officials and others familiar with the plan.
There it is. In black and white. So why are idiot reporters acting as though June 30 is significant?
what did jon stewart say?
something like, "the occupation will end, and after June 30, it'll just be a bunch of Americans standing around with guns..." paraphrasing
Iraqis fail to regain control of oil revenue By Ahmed Janabi- Monday 24 May 2004, 16:26 Makka Time, 13:26 GMT The latest Iraqi attempts to recover control of the country's oil revenues from the United States appear to have hit a dead end with a special delegation being rebuffed in its bid secure UN help. ... "A daylight robbery is going in Iraq. I have first hand information from sources in al-Bakr port in southern Iraq, and in the Turkish port of Jihan, confirming that three million oil barrels are being taken out of Iraq on a daily basis" al-Dulaymi said.
"Oil sale contracts only go to the Iraqi oil ministry for signing. They cannot say a word about them; not to mention the fact that there are many sealed contracts which the Iraqi ministry of oil is not notified of."
Even with the disconnect between what this administration says and what is happening on the ground in Iraq is jarring. I've always felt that the June 30th handover date was nothing more than a PR stunt. The only question I have...how many more deaths will Americans accept before reality sinks in?
