Iraqis are grateful for the ouster of Saddam, universally reviled as a criminal whose principal legacy is "mass graves."

At the same time, the recurring attacks against Coalition forces find virtually no support among Iraqis, despite signs that some Iraqis’ patience with the occupation is wearing thin.

Iraqis want foreign military forces to depart, yet many are also very worried that if Coalition forces leave too soon, Iraqis will turn on one another and there will be widespread violence.

Iraqis are excited about their newfound freedoms, yet anxious that too much freedom may lead to chaos. Many Iraqis want to be sure that there are "rules" and "limits" in the new democracy that emerges in Iraq.

There is broad support among average Iraqis for creating space and respect for Iraqis to practice their own individual religion.

There is strong support for a woman’s right to vote, but Iraqis are divided on the question of whether women are qualified to hold senior leadership positions in politics and government.

Even as they rejoice in the demise of Saddam Hussein, the people of Iraq are still encumbered by much of the vitriolic propaganda he drummed into them over the past decades. Despite Iraqis’ hatred for Saddam, they still believe much of what he told them. Absent a vigorous, persuasive information campaign -- on behalf of the CPA, the new Governing Council, or even on the virtues of political democracy itself -- this distorted worldview will shape the way Iraqis interpret events and rumors.

Political parties and civil society organizations are forming each day, dozens of new media outlets have emerged, and Iraqis have opportunities to express themselves more openly than they have in decades. Still, a great deal needs to be done to foster the development of a knowledgeable citizenry capable of exercising its rights with some wisdom.

If men and women across the country come to believe their voices will be heard and their basic needs met in a new Iraq, then the liberation of the country from Saddam may yet lead to the establishment of a recognizably democratic country.

We had to stop the session in Karbala briefly when one woman wept at the mention of Saddam Hussein’s name -- she said that Saddam had her son killed right before her eyes. The list of the regime’s crimes seems endless.

Out with the old and in with the new, Iraqis are saying. They have high hopes about what the new government will provide, though several participants express dismay that the formation of an Iraqi government was delayed for a while.

Iraqis are ready to move beyond their grisly past and build a new country based on the rule of law and some form of democratic rule. Although Iraqis’ feelings about democracy combine excitement, fear, and concern for defending their culture, there is a consensus for the basic elements of a democratic system: a society governed by fair rules, and not the ruthless authoritarianism they knew under Saddam; a government that listens and is responsive to citizens, rather than Saddam’s closed system of government which responded only to the interests of a select few; and a government that creates opportunities for all to share in the country’s wealth, rather than a corrupt government that stole the country’s wealth and built palaces while average Iraqis got the bare minimum.

In an interview today in New York, Mr. Chalabi professed gratitude to the Bush administration for toppling Saddam Hussein's government, but his specific proposals were directly at odds with the policies Washington is pursuing in Baghdad and at the United Nations. He demanded that the Iraqi Governing Council be given at least partial control of the powerful finance and security ministries, and rejected the idea of more foreign troops coming to Iraq.
Mr. Chalabi has sent representatives to France and Germany to discuss putting Iraqis back in charge under a new United Nations mandate that would end American control of the occupation, even if American troops remain in Iraq. His aides say he also plans to tell the Senate that the United Nations could save billions of dollars on Iraq's reconstruction by allowing an Iraqi administration to handle it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/23/international/middleeast/23CHAL.html

I wonder why Ahmed Chalabi has suddenly started demanding the US turn over sovereignity to the Iraqi governing council immediately... just as the French started doing the same.  Coincidence?  I doubt it.  I wonder whether our wandering allies have offered him a little incentive?  As current President of the Council, does Chalabi assume he'd be able to keep the title in the long term?  Is THAT what the French offered him? Though he DID bring the INC to the table, many still question his appointment to the governing council.  How will Jordan be able to deal with him as its President?

AMMAN, August 17 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A group of 21 Jordanian MPs are to call on Washington to extradite Ahmad Chalabi, a key U.S.-ally on the Iraqi Governing Council, to serve out a 22-year prison sentence for fraud, Amman press reports said Sunday, August 17.
In a public motion, 21 MPs called for an extraordinary session of parliament to discuss Chalabi's involvement in financial irregularities and his extradition to Jordan via Interpol in order to serve his sentence, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said. Chalabi, leader of the U.S. picked Iraqi National Congress, a pro-Western anti-Saddam Hussein faction which provided troops for the U.S.-led war, built and lost a banking empire in Jordan in the 1980s.
After he fled the country in 1989, he was convicted in absentia of fraud and embezzling 288 million dollars from Petra into Swiss bank accounts.
Jordanian MPs now want him to face a second trial, on additional charges of defrauding the central bank and Petra clients of 900 million dollars.
http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2003-08/17/article12.shtml

I think we need to keep a close eye on Dr. Chalabi.  As President Bush said in his speech to the UN, first Iraq needs to write a Constitution, then have elections, and only THEN can power be truly handed over to the duly-elected government. 

The Bush-bashers hate it when Iraq is compared to Germany after WWII.  So do I, in a way... we allowed Germany to be rebuilt by committee, instead of running the show as we did in Japan.  And look what a beautiful mess an international body made of Germany.  They gave us East and West Germany, and a Wall in Berlin that became a symbol of oppression.  Is THAT what we want for Iraq?  While keeping the UN from interfering, we've already outstripped the rebuilding of Germany by orders of magnitude.  Consider that it took three years to establish a central bank in Germany... Iraq did it in two months.  It took two years for Germany to field its own police force... Iraq did it in two months as well.  It took over a year for Germany to appoint cabinet positions... but it only took four months in Iraq.

I think it's best for the Iraqis as well as ourselves if we keep the United Nations out of the government processes for a while longer.

On the face of it, wouldn't it have been better from the beginning to have Arabic speaking soldiers in Baghdad, who can relate to the local culture in a way a Westerner can only dream of? How much easier would it have been for the CPA to win hearts and minds, if they had more Arabs delivering their message? Having Muslim troops stationed in a Muslim country makes sense, doesn't it? A Saudi Arabian officer, or a Jordanian trooper would be much easier to trust than one with the Stars and Stripes on his uniform, right?
Wrong. Evidence on the ground suggests that the absence of Arab involvement in Iraq is actually not a bad thing at all. The truth is that most Iraqis would rather have an American dominated force here, than an Arab one.
In contrast, the US spilled the blood of its own people to liberate them from Saddam's tyranny. No matter how bad things are here right now, friends, colleagues and relatives assure me that with the pressure of living under the old regime gone, life is one hundred percent better.
http://www.iraq-today.com/news/editorial/00009.html

A month ago, they ran another editorial by Sarmad S. Ali containing a diatribe against those attacking Coalition forces:

I'm glad most of the Iraqi people seem to understand what the US and our coalition partners have done for them. As more of them feel able to voice their opinions every day, soon we may not have to rely on the New York Times editors sitting at ther desks to tell us how they feel the Iraqi people feel.  

Whatever reasons individual nations, and even individual people, may have had for supporting the removal of Saddam Hussein from power, it was a good and necessary thing to do.  For the Iraqi people, it was the only "reason for war" that really mattered a damn.

Where are the weapons of mass destruction Saddam admitted he had only a few short years ago? Only the most naive or rabidly anti-American Bush-basher would claim they never existed, since UNSCOM as well as every intelligence service in the West had hard evidence on top of Iraq's admissions. Certainly the thousands of Kurdish dead at Anfal found out Saddam had chemical weapons. (http://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqanfal/) The only questions were: how MUCH? what KINDS? Now, we have a new one: where are they NOW?

Now, our intelligence sources can disclose exclusively that the relocation of Iraq’s WMD systems took place between January 10 and March 10 and was completed just 10 days before the US-led offensive was launched against Iraq. The banned arsenal, hauled in giant tankers from Iraq to Syria and from there to the Bekaa Valley under Syrian special forces and military intelligence escort, was discharged into pits 6-8 meters across and 25-35 meters deep dug by Syrian army engineers. They were sealed and planted over with new seedlings. Nonetheless, their location is known and detectable with the right instruments. Our sources have learned that Syria was paid about $35 million to make Saddam Hussein’s forbidden weapons disappear. [4 May 2003]
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=482

Mossad (Israeli intelligence service) has been telling us since before the invasion of Iraq began that large amounts of Iraq's illegal weapons were moved out of the country in huge tanker trucks. Liberals commonly have one main response to this news (discounting the usual vitriolic ad hominem responses): "That's stupid! You can see anything moving in that country! Satellites would have seen 'giant tanker trucks' moving around Iraq!"

Well, I'm glad you all brought that up. World Tribune.com (http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/), an internet newspaper devoted to international news (and often quoted on The Drudge Report at http://www.drudgereport.com/), recently ran two very relevant stories:

U.S. intelligence suspects Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have finally been located.
Unfortunately, getting to them will be nearly impossible for the United States and its allies, because the containers with the strategic materials are not in Iraq.
Instead they are located in Lebanon's heavily-fortified Bekaa Valley, swarming with Iranian and Syrian forces, and Hizbullah and ex-Iraqi agents, Geostrategy-Direct.com will report in Wednesday's new weekly edition.
U.S. intelligence first identified a stream of tractor-trailer trucks moving from Iraq to Syria to Lebanon in January 2003. The significance of this sighting did not register on the CIA at the time. [25 August 2003]
http://216.26.163.62/2003/ss_iraq_08_25.html

U.S. intelligence agencies are weighing numerous reports that Iraq diverted weapons of mass destruction to Syria and Lebanon to hide them from United Nations weapons inspectors and American forces in Iraq.
In testimony Sept. 16, John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control, referred to reports that Iraqi WMD had been transferred to Syria. "We have seen these reports, reviewed them carefully, and see them as cause for concern," he said. [17 September 2003]
http://216.26.163.62/2003/ss_iraq_09_17.html

Is it still "stupid" to suspect that Saddam secretly moved most, if not all, of his banned weapons out of the country when it became certain the United States would invade, right under the noses of UNMOVIC inspectors headed by Hans Blix? There was no way to tell at the time exactly how much he had, how much was moved, and how much was still left in the country. Iraq was not fully cooperating with the inspections, despite their terrific misdirection of destroying a couple of illegal missiles a day. (Well, it fooled those who desperately wanted to be fooled.) Saddam wasn't exactly declaring his WMD at the border, and those tanker trucks were curiously devoid of signs reading "WMD: 10,000 liters -- CAUTION!"

Soon weapons expert David Kay, heading the Iraq Survey Group (the 1,400-member team searching for WMD production facilities and stockpiles, if any) will deliver his report. Most likely, the only physical evidence Saddam left that was easy to find were those pieces either too big to move, or too expensive to destroy. Then, all eyes will turn to Hezbollah, and Lebanon.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's claims of ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and Al Qaeda terrorists are being tested in federal court, where the family of the FBI's late counterterrorism chief has sued Iraq over the Sept. 11 hijackings.
The wife and children of John O'Neill, who died in the attack on the World Trade Center, allege that Iraq began communicating with Al Qaeda as early as 1992, provided training to Usama bin Laden's warriors and sent intelligence agents to work with the terror network in Afghanistan.
The evidence, the sources said, includes statements by Iraqi defectors and Al Qaeda prisoners that Iraqi intelligence provided Al Qaeda with training in document forgery and chemical and biological weapons in a series of contacts that spiked in 1996, and again after 1998.
O'Neill was one the FBI's top terrorism experts, leading investigations into such attacks as the 2000 USS Cole bombing. He left the FBI shortly before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks over an investigation into his loss of a briefcase with sensitive FBI documents. He accepted a job as chief of security at the World Trade Center in New York City and was in the towers when they collapsed.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,97457,00.html

AT LAST! The O'Neill case may finally prove Saddam's material support and training of the 9/11 hijackers beyond the shadow of a doubt. John O'Neill knew more about al-Qaeda than anyone (well, any non-member), and tried in vain for YEARS to make the Clinton administration listen to the evidence of their involvement with Iraq. He finally left the FBI in 2001 -- and was almost immediately murdered by them, along with so many others in the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. At least the media is paying SOME attention to this case, unlike the case decided against Iraq by Judge Harold Baer on 7 May of this year which they almost completely ignored.  Testimony in that case was given by former CIA director James Woolsey, terrorism expert Dr. Laurie Mylroie, and three of the instructors from Salman Pak, Saddam's terrorism training school about 20 miles southeast of Baghdad. 

Through a translator, [Iraqi defector Sabah Khalifa] Alami described, according to the Wall Street Journal ("The Iraq Connection" by Micah Morrison, 5 Sept. 2002), a daily regimen of exercises on kidnapping, assassination, and -- using a Boeing 707 parked inside the complex -- how to hijack a plane or bus without weapons. He said that a separate group of non-Iraqis were being similarly trained by Saddam's intelligence service, the mukhabarat. Asked about the plane by an interviewer for Front Line [in September 2001], he said "Yes, there's a real whole 707 plane, a whole real plane, standing in the middle of the training area in this camp."
http://edwardjayepstein.com/2002question/salmanpak.htm