US begins the process of 'regime change'

The Observer ^ | Sunday April 6, 2003 | Ed Vulliamy in New York and Kamal Ahmed

[LisaAnne]

The US is ready to install the first leg of an interim government for the new Iraq as early as Tuesday, even while fighting still rages in Baghdad, officials said yesterday. America's readiness to establish the first stages of a civil administration to run post-war Iraq comes at lightning speed and constitutes a rebuff to European ambitions to stall on the process until some kind of role for the United Nations is agreed.

It was reported yesterday that the National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has also ruled out any key role for the UN.

The decision to proceed with an embryonic government comes in response to memoranda written by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week, urging that the US begin to entrench its authority in areas under its control before the war is over.

Pentagon officials told The Observer that the administration is determined to impose the Rumsfeld plan and sees no use for a UN role, describing the international body as 'irrelevant'.

The proposal is due to be discussed by George Bush and his closest security officials when he returns from this week's Northern Ireland war council with Tony Blair.

But according to US offi cials in Doha, elements of an embryonic new government will be established in the southern port of Umm Qasr, taken by coalition forces during the first days of the war.

It will be installed by the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, under the former US army Lieutenant General Jay Garner, and answerable to the Pentagon.

'What we are going to start trying to do, even before the fighting is over in Iraq, is to move to the areas in Iraq that are relatively peaceful, places like Umm Qasr, and to start moving [the office of reconstruction] into Iraq,' the official said. 'It is a fair assessment to say that this is the first step to set up a civil administration in Iraq.'

The decision is a rebuff to European diplomats who pleaded with US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday to allow for a UN role.

By brushing the UN aside at such an early stage, the move also places Tony Blair - whose own preference is for a UN role - in a difficult situation ahead of his meeting with Bush this week.

Rumsfeld presented two memoranda to the White House last week, urging the President to begin setting up government institutions in areas under US control. He said the new organs could install Iraqis returning from exile under the tutelage of American civilians answerable to General Garner.

But his plan has been opposed even within the administration. Colin Powell is known to favour a military government established after victory is assured, prepared to nurture an Iraqi government centred around citizens resident in Iraq, rather than exiles sponsored by neo-conservatives in the Pentagon.

General Garner is already set to make his media debut in Kuwait tomorrow as the man whom the US has named to be Iraq's temporary post-war civilian administrator.

The US viceroy of the Southern region will be retired General Buck Walters; one of three governors slated to minister the new Iraqi provinces.

The others are General Bruce Moore in the largely Kurdish north and former U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine based in Baghdad, governing the central region

[LisaAnne]

Pentagon officials told The Observer that the administration is determined to impose the Rumsfeld plan and sees no use for a UN role, describing the international body as 'irrelevant'.

I particularly like that part. :o)

[SevenofNine]

YEAH BABY

RUMMY PLAN for Iraq LOVE THAT Lisa

Rack ittttt

So who going be new dude in charge not Tommy Franks probably one of US colonals not him

He need back in USA

[annyokie]

Me too!

[Maigret]

former U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine based in Baghdad

Somebody please tell me this isn't the same gal who stuck it to the CIA and the FBI when they were trying to investigate the Cole?

[LisaAnne]

No, not Tommy Franks. I cannot remember the name that was talked about before the war. I believe he is a general that speaks a number of Arabic languages. I'll see if I can find that article.

[Great Dane]

Good news, keep the UN out, if they were to be let in, it would take 12 years for them to make their first decision.

[Oorang]

You've put up some great photo's lately. This one is choice!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Me too!

OFFICIAL BUMP(TOPIC)LIST

[Oorang]

Ambassador Barbara K. Bodine
(former) U.S. Ambassador to Yemen

Barbara K. Bodine, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, is currently Diplomat in Residence at the University of Southern California, Santa Barbara. She last served as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Yemen. During her posting in Sanaa, the U.S.S. Cole was bombed in a terrorist attack. In 1999, she negotiated for hours to release three Americans kidnapped in Yemen. In 2001, a flight carrying Ambassador Bodine and 90 other passengers from Yemen was hijacked mid-flight. The plane was diverted to Africa, where it landed without further incident.

After initial tours in Hong Kong and Bangkok, Ambassador Bodine has spent her career working primarily on Southwest Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. She has twice served in the Bureau of Near East Affairs' Office of Arabian Peninsula Affairs, first as Country Officer for the Yemenis, then as Political-Military officer for the peninsula. She later served as Deputy Office Director. Ambassador Bodine has also had assignments as Deputy Principal Officer in Baghdad, Iraq, and as Deputy Chief of Mission in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion and occupation in 1990. She was awarded the Secretary of State's Award for Valor for her work in occupied Kuwait.

Following Kuwait, Ambassador Bodine was the Associate Coordinator for Operations and later served as the Acting Coordinator for Counterterrorism. She went on to serve as the Dean of Professional Studies at the Department's Foreign Service Institute. She has worked on the secretariat staff of Secretaries Kissinger and Vance, and as a Congressional Fellow in the office of Senator Robert Dole. Most recently, Ms. Bodine spent a year as the Director of East African Affairs.

Ambassador Bodine was born in 1948 in St. Louis, Missouri. She earned her B.A. in Political Science and Asian Studies, and graduated magna cum laude from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She received her Master's degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Massachusetts. She also studied at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Department of State's Language Training Field Schools in Taiwan and Tunisia. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and serves on the Board of Directors of the UCSB Alumni Association and on the Advisory Council to the Program on Southwest Asian and Islamic Civilization Studies at the Fletcher School. She was the recipient of the UC Santa Barbara Distinguished Alumni Award in 1991.

[AlaskaErik]

Geez, the headline had me thinking I was about to read the latest on John Kerry.

[annyokie]

Thanks! Here's a cartoon for ya'll:

[SevenofNine]

OOHHHH wait a minute I Think I know who you talking about YEAH that guy OH I can't think of his name he does work for US Miiltary he is very influent in Arabic lanunge

[King David]

Here's some leaflets that are advancing the surrender of the Iraqi troops. Worth a look.

http://www.peteandrews.net/war/leaflets.html

[polemikos]

ditto

Pentagon officials told The Observer that the administration is determined to impose the Rumsfeld plan and sees no use for a UN role, describing the international body as 'irrelevant'.

[FairOpinion]

Do you mean Gen. Abizaid?

From The Washington Times:
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030124-7454848.htm

"The buzz on Abizaid
Pentagon chatter says Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld finally has his own man at U.S. Central Command to supervise a war against Iraq: Army Lt. Gen. John P. Abizaid.

Officials said the hard-charging Mr. Rumsfeld was not always happy with the way Gen. Tommy Franks ran the war in Afghanistan. He has worried that Gen. Franks, chief of U.S. Central Command, will not be innovative enough in waging war against Iraq.

Now, however, Mr. Rumsfeld has plucked a general from the Joint Staff at the Pentagon and sent him to Central Command as Mr. Franks' deputy. In fact, Gen. Abizaid is already at CentCom's warfighting command center in Qatar getting ready to direct a war.

It was an odd move, given that CentCom already had a deputy commander, who is staying at its Tampa headquarters. But it does give Mr. Rumsfeld a deputy in the Gulf region whom he fully trusts.

A favorite of the defense secretary, Gen. Abizaid is a West Point graduate and career infantryman who speaks fluent Arabic, a skill that should help with Persian Gulf allies.

He also speaks German and Italian, a skill that helped when he commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Germany in 1999-2000."

[blam]

"It was reported yesterday that the National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has also ruled out any key role for the UN."

Bravo!

[LisaAnne]

Yes, Gen, Abizaid was the one I was thinking of. Thanks!

[Lucas1]

I NEVER thought I would see the day...where I would be reading stuff like this!!!!! GO USA GO USA GO USA BRAVO BRAVO FREEDOM FOR THESE PEOPLE!!!!! FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


GOD BLESS AMERICA

[Maigret]

And this is what I found online from the New Yorker article on O'Neill, the subject of the Frontline program. I am NOT comforted by the thought of her being part of anything to do with Iraq!

John O'Neill was an F.B.I. agent with an obsession: the growing threat of Al Qaeda.
Issue of 2002-01-14

Excerpt...

O'Neill knew that Yemen was going to be an extremely difficult place in which to conduct an investigation. In 1992, bin Laden's network had bombed a hotel in Aden, hoping to kill a number of American soldiers. The country was filled with spies and with jihadis and was reeling from a 1994 civil war. "Yemen is a country of eighteen million citizens and 50 million machine guns," O'Neill reported. On the day the investigators arrived in Yemen, O'Neill warned them, "This may be the most hostile environment the F.B.I. has ever operated in."

The American Ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine, saw things differently. In her eyes, Yemen was the poor and guileless cousin of the swaggering petro-monarchies of the Persian Gulf. Unlike other countries in the region, it was a constitutional democracy—however fragile—in which women were allowed to vote. Bodine had had extensive experience in Arab countries. During the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait, she had been the deputy chief of mission in Kuwait City, and she had stayed through the hundred-and-thirty-seven-day siege of the American Embassy by Iraqi troops until all the Americans were evacuated.

Bodine, who is on assignment from the State Department as diplomat-in-residence at the University of California at Santa Barbara, contends that she and O'Neill had agreed that he would bring in a team of no more than fifty. She was furious when three hundred investigators, support staff, and marines arrived, many carrying automatic weapons. "Try to imagine if a military plane from another country landed in Des Moines, and three hundred heavily armed people took over," she told me recently. Bodine recalled that she pleaded with O'Neill to consider the delicate diplomatic environment he was entering. She quoted him as responding, "We don't care about the environment. We're just here to investigate a crime."