Arab News Editorial

Some words stick in the throat. “Abu Ghraib” stuck in the throat of President George W. Bush when he spoke to a US Army college of his vision for the future of Iraq. As well it might. The president twice fumbled the name of the notorious prison when he promised that if the Iraqi government which takes over on June 30 wished it, America would tear it down and build a modern, maximum security facility in its place.

What he failed to realize is that Abu Ghraib is not a symbol of the brutal depravity of Saddam’s dictatorship — there are plenty of other reminders of those horrors. It is rather the place where America betrayed its own ostensible aims in Iraq and destroyed the last vestiges of hope that ordinary Iraqis had in the coalition.

Now we are coming to the endgame of all Washington’s blunders. The US and UK have tabled a draft resolution in the UN Security Council which appears to give far greater sovereignty than was expected to the Iraqis come June 30. As Bush made clear in his speech, the Coalition Provisional Authority is to be dismantled totally. Still, coalition forces would remain in Iraq in support of the Iraqi authorities for at least a year, after which the situation would be reviewed.

The degree to which the Iraqi administration will be able to control the operations of these forces and also the issue of immunity for coalition forces from prosecution in local courts are yet to be settled.

The French reportedly believe that foreign forces should only stay in Iraq until the elections next year. Washington and London will almost certainly argue that this is far too soon to leave the new Iraqi government to stand against what Bush characterizes as “the terrorist menace”. Yet it is not difficult to believe that secretly the Americans and their allies would welcome such a deadline. For all his brave words about “seeing the task through”, Bush has run out of ideas. His major concern now is saving his administration from electoral defeat in November, and for that he needs a face-saving escape from Iraq.

The greatest sleight of hand in his speech came when he protested that he had always sought to involve the United Nations. It suits him now to forget the contempt with which he treated the UN in the run-up to the invasion. He needs someone now to whom he can hand over the problem of Iraq. The unexpected degree of sovereignty proposed for the Iraqi interim administration up until the elections is also suspect. This way, Bush will have somewhere else to shift the blame for subsequent security failures. If the Iraqis veto any US-planned military operations against militants, Washington will be able to claim that despite its best advice, its hands were tied.