Escape from Baghdad

The country that U.S. authorities are hastily handing over to the Iraqis is more of a bloody mess than ever.

By Eric Boehlert

June 29, 2004 | This time there was no "Mission Accomplished" banner flying high.

Forsaking public, self-congratulatory speeches, the much-anticipated transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi people did not take place among pomp and circumstance, nor was it captured for history by a throng of journalists. Instead, the transfer occurred nearly in secret inside a well-secured building behind the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, witnessed by a handful of participants in the five-minute service. Coming off a weekend of unending violence, during which more than 100 Iraqis were killed by terrorists protesting the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the pageantry of a ceremony on June 30 suddenly seemed less inviting to both the United States and its Iraqi partners in the interim government, and the transfer of power was quickly moved up to Monday.

It was just the latest U.S. plan for the Iraqi occupation to go awry. That sovereignty is being passed to Iraq against a backdrop of violence so extreme that martial law is being seriously discussed by the new Iraqi government highlights how poor the postwar conditions are and how big of a challenge the new government faces. Indeed, the handover occurs as a wide range of foreign policy experts have concluded that the plan to invade Iraq as well as the postwar-construction phase have failed on nearly every front.

"The violence is going to be the biggest problem. That, and the country breaking into civil war," says James Bamford, author of the new book "A Pretext to War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies."

"The dissolution of the [Coalition Provisional Authority] and the transfer of power to Iraq are long overdue and a good thing," says Chris Toensing, editor of the Middle East Report. "But I'm not sure Iraq is any further along the road toward general recovery."

Symbolically, Monday's handover clearly had more meaning in Washington, where President Bush, facing reelection, is anxious to distance himself from the woes -- and responsibilities -- of Iraq, than it had in Baghdad, where Iraqis continue to struggle with an ever deteriorating security situation, regardless of which government is deemed to be in charge.

"The Iraqi people have their country back," President Bush declared in Istanbul, Turkey, where he is attending a NATO summit. "We have kept our word." Ordinary Iraqi citizens and others critical of the U.S. occupation, however, suggest that the violence-riddled country Bush has handed back to Iraqis is in far worse condition than it was before the war. As one Baghdad literature student told a reporter over the weekend, "The security situation seems to be getting worse day by day. Our lives are much worse than in the time of Saddam."

"I think many Iraqis, outside those of Kurdistan, would say they're getting a worse country back than they had before the invasion," adds Toensing. "It's utter chaos."

"We have heard over and over again that Iraq is turning the corner," Steven Cook, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted Monday during an online discussion hosted by the Washington Post. "First, when the statue of Saddam was pulled down in Firdous Square, we were told that there would be a relatively smooth occupation. After the insurgency began, the administration believed that once Uday and Qusay Hussein were killed, stability would return. When that didn't happen, Americans were led to believe that once Saddam was apprehended, the situation in Iraq would improve. Now, it is the handover of sovereignty. I certainly hope things will improve, but a variety of factors -- notably, the continued insurgency -- are a great cause for concern."

Here's a small portion of an AP weekend dispatch that describes the unrestrained, yet commonplace violence that continues to haunt Iraq:

"A taxi apparently filled with weapons and ammunition blew up a street about 250 yards from one of the political party offices that was attacked earlier, witnesses reported. Elsewhere, insurgents killed two Iraqi National Guardsmen in an ambush in Mahmoudiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad. A police officer was also killed in a separate attack Saturday, said the director of the Mahmoudiyah general hospital, Dawoud al-Taei. A car bomb exploded Saturday in the Kurdish stronghold of Irbil, injuring the culture minister of the pro-American Kurdistan Democratic Party and killing his bodyguard and injuring 18 people -- four of them children."

The notion that the newborn Iraq government will be able to root out powerful insurgents, even though 138,000 U.S. troops have failed at that task over many months, strikes many observers as fantasy. "I think their chances are 20-to-80 for success," says Toensing.

Next page: The transfer of power comes at a time when a majority of Americans say the war in Iraq was a mistake