During an unprecedented speech to the entire world last night President Bush assured the Iraqi people that “If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you.”

He went on to declare “In free Iraq there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near.”

In the short term – after the death and destruction that will accompany the war – an interim government will be established in Iraq. That government will be comprised of three administrative regions, which on paper will look very much like the current map of Iraq. Former US Generals will administer two of the regions – essentially the same areas that are the northern and southern no-fly zones today. Barbara Bodine, former U.S. ambassador to Yemen, will administer the third, central region including Baghdad. Over all of them will be the head of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, former US Army Lieutenant General Jay Garner.

Mr. Garner has significant baggage. He was responsible for the deployment and evaluation of the experimental Patriot Antimissile Missile System during Gulf War I. He worked closely with the Israeli Defense Force to assess the success of the system. Some might say a little too closely. Following the war, having retired from military service, Mr. Garner served as president of SY Coleman, a division of defense contractor L-3 Communications. The company specializes in missile defense systems – the same systems that have been fast-tracked for deployment around the US without testing by October of next year.

Is this the man we really want calling the shots in Iraq during an occupation? Can he be trusted to protect Iraqi oil from scheming corporations and governments and uphold President Bush’s assertion that they are “a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people”?

Mr. Garner will lead Iraq’s interim government, but someone much more disturbing will likely lead Iraq after the US occupation: Nizar al-Khazraji.

Nizar al-Khazraji, the former Iraqi Army Chief of Staff, is suspected of war crimes against Iraqi Kurds in the 1980’s. Up until Monday, March 17 2003 he was under house arrest in Denmark. That country had dared to prosecute Nizar al-Khazraji for war crimes despite strong US diplomatic efforts to spare him the burden of having to face trial for his alleged crimes against humanity. He has since disappeared.

In short, Iraq will be ruled by an unscrupulous agent of the US Department of Defense for the foreseeable future, and then the reigns of power will be handed over to one of the chief architects of Saddam Hussein’s regime of terror.

This is what liberation means to our administration.

Labels: dod, George W. Bush, gulf war, iraq, Jay Garner, missile defense