Bremer accused of interfering with vote

Bremer accused of interfering with vote


Paul Bremer, the US administrator for Iraq, has ordered the Iraqi Governing Council to delay nominating a president for a caretaker government that will take power in July.

Mr Bremer, who heads the Coalition Provisional Authority, intervened personally when the council was on the verge of holding a vote to ratify its choice - Ghazi Ajil Yawer, a young tribal leader who is critical of the US occupation. Mr Bremer and the United Nations envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, support the former foreign minister, Adnan Pachachi, for the largely ceremonial post.

"Bremer came in and read them the riot act," a Governing Council aide said. Ala Hashimi, a member of the Dawa Party, who was present at Sunday's meeting, said: "Bremer interfered and postponed the vote."

Mr Bremer and Mr Brahimi are trying to exert control over an unwieldy process in which representatives on the US-backed Governing Council are jostling for posts. Council members asserted themselves on Friday by presenting Iyad Allawi, a Shiite Muslim and former Baath party member with close ties to the CIA, as their unanimous choice for prime minister.

more...


http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/31/1085855500318.html

didnt we see this from hard line right wing sepratist in florida in 2000? I am not surprised...are they going to used diebold in iraq?

would look good, even assuming he could do it!

coming from. Directly from the White House.

I hate to keep saying this, but the Iraqi people have a history thousands of years older than ours, and they've seen all this occupation crap over and over. Somehow the occupier always loses in the end. It may take time, but that's what exactly what will happen again.

What's so stupid is that bush* & co. are totally of the lessons of history. No western power has survived in the Middle East, and the death of any empire (country) always comes when it is stretches itself too far. Look at the Romans, the British, Napoleon, the Soviet Union, etc.

Bush made one of history's biggest mistakes, he bit off way more than he could chew, and this country will pay for it. He is the most hated man on earth at this time, and so he is isolated. (I say bush* although I mean the whole crowd of nincompoops that got us into this mess.) He insulted the UN and everyone else, and now he's on his knees begging them to bail his ass out of his mess. And he's put the noose around his own neck with the June 30th deadline.

As the old Chinese curse goes 'may you live in interesting times'.

:shrug:

Six days ago our Fearless Leader said that the UN, through Brahimi, was going to select a group of technocrats with no political ambitions to run the temporary government until elections. In other words, no IGC members expected to rule.

That disintegrated by Friday.

Now, Bremer is interfering in the IGC's selection process. So, not only has the original policy failed, but we're screwing with the failure.

Another well executed foreign policy by our Fearless Leader.

:grr: How sad is this? My word. Have they no conscience? Your Democracy will work OUR way or no way.

Shocked I am. Truly shocked! :crazy:

But who really has all the juice? Blackwill's rarely mentioned (so far) and has been named recently as the US pick for Ambassador in Iraq but his involvement isn't new. His pull earns a rare mention in today's NYT:

snip>
Instead of fashioning the kind of savvy compromise for which he is known, Mr. Brahimi appears to have folded, acquiescing to the desires of the Americans, who were promoting Dr. Alawi. While American officials maintain that Dr. Alawi was Mr. Brahimi's choice, people close to Mr. Brahimi say he reluctantly endorsed him only after American officials aggressively recommended him.

One person conversant with the negotiations said Mr. Brahimi was presented with "a fait accompli" after President Bush's envoy to Iraq, Robert D. Blackwill, "railroaded" the Governing Council into coalescing around him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/31/international/middleeast/31IRAQ.html?hp

In Dec, Debka wrote (not exactly mainstream, but other sources follow to bear it out, to an extent):

snip>
It is a well-kept secret in Washington and Baghdad that the silver-haired, bespectacled Blackwill (whose name is often misspelled Blackwell), actually outranks Bremer. He was entrusted with providing the President with a direct assessment feed on the situation in the Red Zones – or Iraqi areas – as well as on the performance level of the US-appointed Iraq Governing Council and of Bremer himself.
snip>
As Bush’s new man in Baghdad, the ambassador particularly asked for a low-profile and backroom role, leaving Bremer as America’s front man in dealings with Iraq’s communal leaders. But the last word rests with Blackwill as it does with regard to the US command.

http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=740

a little more background
snip>
If Scowcroft, who co-authored a book with the elder Bush and is considered his alter ego in the world, has now surfaced as a major consultant of Bush the Younger, then a triumvirate of Daddy's Boys -- family fixer James Baker, supposedly off to alleviate Iraqi indebtedness, Robert Blackwill, now sitting somewhere in the White House helping Condoleezza Rice coordinate Iraq policy, and Scowcroft -- are all back in town. Since Baker's recent high-profile travels around the world on the debt-relief question, he seems to have mysteriously dropped from sight.

http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?pid=1232

snip>
Blackwill was one of Bush's team of foreign policy advisers when he ran for office in the 2000 presidential campaign. And the former ambassador's relationship to Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, was cemented when they both served as Soviet experts during the collapse of the USSR in the last Bush administration.

http://www.afghania.com/print.php?sid=3778

He's responsible for Afghanistan's reconstruction and look how well that's going!
snip>
Moreover, reports say that a new coordinator for Afghan policy may be appointed at the National Security Council. A key name floated for that role is Robert Blackwill, a former ambassador to India.

http://wwww.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/0/c3a74c739c9b139bc1256d880056b1b8

snip>
Robert Blackwill, a former ambassador to India, will run the group overseeing the creation of political institutions in Iraq as well as directing the stabilisation of Afghanistan, the newspaper added.

http://quickstart.clari.net/qs_se/webnews/wed/bl/Qiraq-us-afghanistan.RXbZ_DO6.html

Baker stayed with Blackwill when Baker made a secret trip to India to secure support for the Iraq attack and a partner for oil-
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/04/18_Khilafah.html

speculation, but I can't vouch for this source :):

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Culture and Components
Directorate of Intelligence

http://intellit.muskingum.edu/analysis_folder/analysiscrits.html

Davis, Jack. "A Policymaker's Perspective on Intelligence Analysis." Studies in Intelligence 38, no. 5 (1995): 7-15.

This article is based on the author's interviews in 1991-1993 with Ambassador Robert D. Blackwill. As summed up by Davis, Blackwill's belief is that, "to meet their responsibilities in promoting the national interest, intelligence professionals have to become expert not only on substantive issues but also on serving the self interest of policy professionals by providing specialized analytic support."

Blackwill assessed DI analysts thusly: "They were experts on their subjects. They were responsive to my needs. And they did not leak my confidences to the press." Nevertheless, policymakers "do not as a rule know what intelligence analysts can do for them."
--------------------------

And I don't know the particulars of this group either but this puts him squarely in a Baker-like shadow game:

snip>
I don't know the particulars of the group that did the following profile but several of the details match other articles- Blackwill has been in the foreign service for 22 years, working under Kissinger, Haig and Schultz.

However, some observers allege that Mr. Blackwill was actually an officer of the CIA, who worked under the cover of the US Foreign Service. They cite the following grounds for their allegation:

* He started his career as a Peace Corps volunteer. In the 1960s, officer-recruits to the CIA started their career in the Peace Corps.

* He had functioned as the Executive Assistant to the US Ambassador in London, a post which, in the past, used to be held by the CIA station chief in London.

* He coordinated the running of training courses in the Kennedy School of Government for the officers of the CIA's Directorate of Analysis....lots more on him at this link........

http://www.saag.org/papers3/paper216.htm