April 07, 2004
Aloft in Iraq
There are reports from Iraq that:
At the end of March, building on his Order 39 of last September, 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 licences the coalition awarded to foreign-managed consortia to operate three mobile networks and the national broadcaster."
Somehow, this doesn't sound like an independent Iraq is in the works. When is the United States Congress going to address these plans for the permanent occupation of Iraq?