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which is supported on the grounds of needing to have security, which only the US can provide, for some unknown reason.

Bremer makes the case that the raison d'etre of the occupation was to get rid of Baathist influence, the repressive regime of the past, which committed atrocities against the majority Shia population. Thus it is reasonable for them to want to make the Shi the dominant element. In truth, the US could play no role in Iraq if everyone were against the invasion. The US would have to give the Shia the spoils to get its cooperation. The Sunni obviously would not want to cooperate because they are the big losers. So the US has basically taken sides in a civil war political situation, overturning an old order for an new one. Such would not be possible in Iran, for example, because the population there is much more homogenous and 99% of the people would oppose an invasion. In Iraq, the US basically said, OK, we will let the Shia rule and we will kept he Kurds from bolting by giving them veto power. The Sunnis however can go to hell, apart from symbolic representation.

Unfortunately, if we assume that Bremer and the Bush administration really believed in democracy, that it could produce freedom by some deux ex machina, the reality is much more complex. We cannot rely upon majority rule to sort out conflicting interests. Only negotiations that lead to a national consensus can do this.

Allawi now warns that various forces are aligned politically around various militias that form the real basis for political power. And so it is a fiction that there is a new Iraqi army, NIA, that has any real independent power. The old army vanished as soon as its political base, the personal authority of Saddam Hussein, was removed. Will the NIA be any different once the US leaves?

Indeed, the whole new Iraqi government is entirely a fiction because there is no working consensus that includes all political elements.

One of the biggest mistakes of Bush-Bremer, in reality Feith-Wolfowitz and Cheney-Rumsfeld, was that they refused to seriously negotiated with the old regime. If they had, then there would have been no need for a war at all. Bremer talks like that the leadership of the Baath party could be abolished while its rank and file included in the new political process, as if they were not really believing in what they fought for.

Bremer's role was that of political manipulator, to formulate a basis for a new political order. He describes his role so openly in such terms,

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