Have things really gotten that bad? → U.S. government is cruel, despotic, a threat to people → threat to world peace → imperialist in deed (some call it “sovereignty”)

I got to thinking today about the legal excuse for the war — how Bush & co. insist that they didn’t need to get UN authorization or join a UN force to invade Iraq. They say that the UN had already authorized such an invasion with previous resolutions, and that the US could go at it alone or with a coalition of the willing at its leisure.

So I’m imagining this alternate universe in which back in , while US troops were massing in Kuwait and feverish negotiations were going on between Washington and Ankara… Russia invaded Iraq, supported by a global coalition including China, France, Canada, Liechtenstein, Malta, Barbados, Andora, Nauru, Tuvalu, Freedonia, Palau, Vatican City and San Marino. Or maybe Iran and Syria in a grand alliance to uphold the UN’s relevance.

Even if, as it is claimed, the UN authorized the use of force against Iraq, it never uniquely deputized the US. Russia would have been just as justified. I somehow doubt that our native hawks would have breathed a sigh of relief and been thankful that someone else was doing the dirty work.

Baghdad, — The U.S. executive selected by the Pentagon to advise Iraq’s Ministry of Oil suggested that the country might best be served by exporting as much oil as it can and disregarding quotas set by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.… Iraq’s resumption of oil exports under a new government would expose OPEC to considerable uncertainty. Iraq has the world’s second-largest proven oil reserves. Flows of Iraqi oil to the world market unconstrained by OPEC quotas could further erode the cartel’s already limited ability to set prices and might even trigger a price war, eating into the profits of its member countries. Such an outcome would surely delight the Bush administration as well as buyers of gasoline in the United States, the world’s largest oil consumer.

Baghdad, Iraq, — In an abrupt reversal, the United States and Britain have indefinitely put off their plan to allow Iraqi opposition forces to form a national assembly and an interim government by . Instead, top American and British diplomats leading reconstruction efforts here told exile leaders in a meeting that allied officials would remain in charge of Iraq for an indefinite period, said Iraqis who attended the meeting. It was conducted by L. Paul Bremer, the new civilian administrator here.

London (AFP) — Finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is not vital to justify the decision by London and Washington to invade the country, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Wednesday.

Washington — The search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could take years to complete, a senior Pentagon official told Congress . The testimony by Douglas Feith, under secretary of Defense for policy, was the most pessimistic appraisal yet by a top Bush administration official of one of the White House’s key justifications for the invasion of Iraq.

And so, with remarkable speed and clarity, the cynical predictions of the peace movement have come to pass. The joker in the hemp sandals and the “no blood for oil” placard had things pegged a lot more truly than the suit-and-tie from the State Department on MSNBC. But if you just stick your fingers in your ears and hum the theme to Survivor really really loudly, you can bypass the cognitive dissonance and go directly into red-white-and-blue denial.

In The Nation, Naomi Klein reports on how the U.S. is planning to hand over “sovereignty” to the people of Iraq — complete with the quotation marks:

As the “handover” approaches, Paul Bremer has unveiled a slew of new tricks to hold on to power long after “sovereignty” has been declared.

Some recent highlights: At , building on his Order 39 of , Bremer passed yet another law further opening up Iraq’s economy to foreign ownership, a law that Iraq’s next government is prohibited from changing under the terms of the interim constitution. Bremer also announced the establishment of several independent regulators, which will drastically reduce the power of Iraqi government ministries. For instance, the Financial Times reports that “officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority said the regulator would prevent communications minister Haider al-Abadi, a thorn in the side of the coalition, from carrying out his threat to cancel licenses the coalition awarded to foreign-managed consortia to operate three mobile networks and the national broadcaster.”

The CPA has also confirmed that after , the $18.4 billion the US government is spending on reconstruction will be administered by the US Embassy in Iraq. The money will be spent over and will fundamentally redesign Iraq’s most basic infrastructure, including its electricity, water, oil and communications sectors, as well as its courts and police. Iraq’s future governments will have no say in the construction of these core sectors of Iraqi society. Retired Rear Adm. David Nash, who heads the Project Management Office, which administers the funds, describes the $18.4 billion as “a gift from the American people to the people of Iraq.” He appears to have forgotten the part about gifts being something you actually give up. And in the same eventful week, US engineers began construction on fourteen “enduring bases” in Iraq, capable of housing the 110,000 soldiers who will be posted here for at least . Even though the bases are being built with no mandate from an Iraqi government, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy chief of operations in Iraq, called them “a blueprint for how we could operate in the Middle East.”

The US occupation authority has also found a sneaky way to maintain control over Iraq’s armed forces. Bremer has issued an executive order stating that even after the interim Iraqi government has been established, the Iraqi army will answer to US commander Lieut. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. In order to pull this off, Washington is relying on a legalistic reading of a clause in UN Security Council Resolution 1511, which puts US forces in charge of Iraq’s security until “the completion of the political process” in Iraq. Since the “political process” in Iraq is never-ending, so, it seems, is US military control.

In the same flurry of activity, the CPA announced that it would put further constraints on the Iraqi military by appointing a national security adviser for Iraq. This US appointee would have powers equivalent to those held by Condoleezza Rice and will stay in office for a five-year term, long after Iraq is scheduled to have made the transition to a democratically elected government.

Dubya thinks the U.S. should hand over sovereignty to Iraq on , no matter what. Kerry thinks this may be too early and the U.S. should be flexible on the date and wait until greater stability can be assured before returning sovereignty to the Iraqis.

Is this what you’ve been hearing on the news?

Here’s what’s going on: The Bush campaign has built a Bush “brand” that is associated with bold, decisive, confident, unambiguous leadership. It’s working pretty well for them. The Kerry campaign is trying to build a Kerry “brand” of a leader who is incisive, deliberate, cautious, realistic, and practical.

Both teams, I’m guessing, are counting on things continuing to go bad in Iraq. The Bush team hopes that the worse it gets, the more people will want a leader with his brand. The Kerry team hopes that people will get frustrated with the cowboy thing and want somebody with a cooler head in charge.

And so they take their positions on the sovereignty handoff. And so the issue gets framed: “do we hand over sovereignty then or wait for a more auspicious time.” And so the pundits debate.

And so the facts of the matter get lost. Because no “sovereignty” is being relinquished at all. In what will surely be a ceremony full of pomp, well-timed for live coverage in the U.S. news media, one U.S.-selected group of Iraqis will have their positions of quasi-authority dissolved and another set will be brought in. The new set won’t have any more “sovereignty” or democratic legitimacy than the last, but expect the U.S. news media to frame the ceremony the same way the politicians do.

More words of wisdom from Under the Same Sun:

You know you’re “fully” sovereign when the U.S. and the U.K. bicker amongst themselves on whether or not you’ll have any bit of say over military operations carried out against your own citizens, on your own soil, by foreign occupation troops that are not subject to your laws. The icing on your sovereignty comes when you’re told these unlimited extraterritorial powers are granted to the occupation troops, the departure of which you are not allowed to demand, because they are, well, acting in self-defense.

Learn more about this “full sovereignty” from the folks at the Wall Street Journal:

Haider al-Abadi runs Iraq’s Ministry of Communications, but he no longer calls the shots there. Instead, the authority to license Iraq’s television stations, sanction newspapers and regulate cellphone companies was recently transferred to a commission whose members were selected by Washington. The commissioners’ five-year terms stretch far beyond the planned 18-month tenure of the interim Iraqi government that will assume sovereignty on .…

In a series of edicts issued earlier this spring, Mr. Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority created new commissions that effectively take away virtually all of the powers once held by several ministries. The CPA also established an important new security-adviser position, which will be in charge of training and organizing Iraq’s new army and paramilitary forces, and put in place a pair of watchdog institutions that will serve as checks on individual ministries and allow for continued U.S. oversight. Meanwhile, the CPA reiterated that coalition advisers will remain in virtually all remaining ministries after the handover.

In many cases, these U.S. and Iraqi proxies will serve multiyear terms and have significant authority to run criminal investigations, award contracts, direct troops and subpoena citizens. The new Iraqi government will have little control over its armed forces, lack the ability to make or change laws and be unable to make major decisions within specific ministries without tacit U.S. approval, say U.S. officials and others familiar with the plan.

Imagine for a moment what someone in Iraq is going to think an American means by words like “freedom” or “democracy” once she knows what Americans mean when they say “full sovereignty.”

And, from the growing Adventures in “Sovereignty” file — this report from today’s Guardian: “Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shia leader whose militiamen have been fighting the US occupation forces in several Iraqi cities, was banned yesterday from standing in Iraq’s forthcoming democratic elections.” Banned by who? U.S. democracy chaperone Paul Bremer, that’s who.

From Iraq: The Bungled Transition by Peter Galbraith — The New York Review of Books :

On of this year, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, the US-appointed administrator for Iraq, staged an elaborate signing ceremony for Iraq’s Transitional Administrative Law (TAL). In a gesture intended to recall the closing of the Philadelphia constitutional convention, Bremer laid out twenty-five pens so that each member of the Iraqi Governing Council could sign a document intended to serve as Iraq’s interim constitution. The Bush administration said the TAL would be a “road map” to the preparation of a permanent constitution. It hailed the TAL as unprecedented in the Middle East for its extensive human rights protections, its concern for the status of women, and its independent judiciary.

At the same time it was choosing Allawi as prime minister, the Bush administration effectively jettisoned the TAL.

Zeynep Toufe at Under the Same Sun notices something about that “freedom” coming to Iraq:

This one is from the L.A. Times:

At five heavily guarded entry points to the city [Fallujah], military interrogators are selectively asking returning residents whether they have heard of the upcoming election and, if so, which, if any, candidates they support.

First a foreign occupying army levels your city. Then they tell you that you can’t be in your own hometown without ID cards issued by them and that there will be fingerprinting and retina scans. Then they claim it’s so that there can be “elections” free of coercion. Then their military interrogators question you on your vote as you try to return to what’s left of your house.

David Swanson caught this bit of news about the U.S.’s base Iraq policy:

When the House and the Senate pass similar but not identical bills, they create a conference committee to work out the differences. When they both passed amendments to the “emergency supplemental” spending bill stipulating that none of the money could be used to build permanent bases in Iraq, the conference committee, behind closed doors this week, resolved that non-difference by deleting it.

Ain’t that just the way you learned about how Congress works back in your civics class? Doesn’t it just make you feel like exporting Democracy?