A COLONY BY ANY OTHER NAME...

By Mumia Abu-Jamal

[Col. Writ. 6/2/04]

With a change of name, amid pomp and ceremony, the group formerly known as the Iraq Governing Council has announced the naming of almost all of its members (20 out of 22, at last count) to the new Interim Government of Iraq.

With the Oil Minister notably among the first appointed, the US government went out of its way to point to the supposed 'independence' of the group, by their selection of a guy who wasn't the US favorite to lead as president of the Interim government.

Lost in this 'appointment', however, is the fact that *all* of the people in the interim government, just as the IGC itself, were themselves appointed by the U.S. Overlord of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer.

Are they independent?

They are independent, if only of the Iraqi people they are supposed to 'represent.' They depend, however, on the US imperial army, for their very lives.

Two members of the IGC have been slain in the past several months, and few of them feel safe enough to mingle with the people they claim to govern. Ghazi al-Yawer, the president-select of the interim government, and his fellow ministers are about as safe among their people as Hamid Karzai, the US-selected president of Afghanistan, is outside of the capital of Kabul (which is to say, not at all).

The fact of the matter is, one may change the name of a thing, but not change its essence. As the great English playwright, William Shakespeare asked, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose; By any other name would smell as sweet." Call it the Iraq Governing Council; or the Iraq Interim Government; isn't it still a puppet government, under the thumb and whim of the Americans? If not Bremer, then, an assorted bunch of US generals; if not them, then the US Ambassador. They call the shots.

How can any alleged government be 'independent', when its territory is overrun by a foreign army, almost 150,000-strong, over which it exercises no authority whatsoever?

This is a puppet government, an occupation government, as false, as illegitimate as the Vichy regime over Paris under the boots of the Nazis during the 2d World War.

The US didn't go to Iraq to 'establish democracy.' It hasn't 'established democracy' in Dade, Seminole, or Alachua Counties, in Florida. It hasn't 'established democracy' in its colony of Puerto Rico, where these so-called 'citizens' cannot vote in national general elections, and have a 'representative' in the US House, who cannot vote on the floor! It hasn't 'established' a single true democracy in over a century in Latin America, having instead supported the most brutal and savage dictatorships known to man or woman.

The US is in Iraq because beneath its roiling sands, in the belly of the nation, lies dark, viscous pools of petroleum. It's all about crude, y'all -- black gold, 'Texas tea', that is -- oil.

That's what it's all about. That's all it's ever been about.

The Interim Government serves, not at the pleasure of the Iraqi people; but at the behest of the US Empire. They can be as easily dismissed as former favorite, Ahmed Chalabi's stipend from the CIA was removed. The Iraqis will be under the automatic M-16s of helmeted, camouflaged Americans for some time to come.

The US will stage-manage the upcoming elections, much as the Bush Regime stage-managed those here, to insure the outcome they desire.

Let us remember the words of a "senior U.S. official" to their former puppet, Chalabi: "We can bring the full force of U.S. power to bear against him." "He should not forget that," the "official" added. [Washington Post (Wk. ed.), 5/31--6/6/04, p. 5].

That message was not for Chalabi alone, but for all on the strings, of the Puppet Masters.