WTF Is It Now?!?

'This is not sovereignty'
'Nothing will change in Iraq after June 30 - except in the make-believe world of George Bush.'

The plan to "transfer sovereignty" to Iraqis is, of course, another whopper. The irony in this case is that, as all Iraqis remember, this is a farcical repeat of what the British did after World War I when they received a League of Nations mandate to run Iraq. When the lease expired they kept their military bases and dominated Iraqi politics. The British embassy in Baghdad made the key decisions.

After June 30 it will be the US embassy that will play this role and John Negroponte, a tried and tested colonial official, who watched benignly as the death squads created mayhem in Central America, will be the de facto ruler of Iraq. The former CIA agent, Ayad Allawi, who worked as a low-leval police spy for the Saddam regime and was responsible for handing over the names of numerous dissidents, will be the new "Prime Minister". How can even the most naive camp-follower of the American empire regard this operation as a transfer of sovereignty?

- Tariq Ali.