GIGO

I haven't had much - anything, really - to say about the new government in Iraq. As a very general rule, I try to let slip topics that are being widely discussed elsewhere, as this most certainly was, unless I think I have something real to add. But as the first effects of that process are being felt in the negotiations over a new UN Security Council resolution endorsing the US presence in Iraq and the interim government, a few comments are in order.

The first and most important is that the word "new" in that first sentence should have quotation marks around it. The form may be new, but in substance there is little "new" to be found. It is, in fact, pretty much just the US-approved Iraqi Governing Council under a new name with a few offices shifted around. Josh Marshall summed it up nicely a few days ago.

Now that some of the dust has settled, we can see one thing pretty clearly: the IGC basically hijacked the process. The IGC essentially reconstituted as a caretaker government. The new President, Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar, was the current president of the IGC. Hoshiyar Zebari, who was the foreign minister in the IGC, is now the foreign minister under the interim government. Allawi was a member of and choice of the IGC, etc. And so on down the list.

Well, not entirely an IGC hijacking, but certainly an inside deal, as the New York Times has noted:

People close to [United Nations special] envoy [Lakhdar Brahimi] say the choices, especially that of the prime minister, Iyad Allawi, were essentially negotiated between the United States and the Iraqi Governing Council, which the occupation authorities put together last year.

Brahimi, who was supposed to be the point person in nominating people for positions in the interim government,

had originally hoped to form a government of technocrats - people not associated with the main political parties which dominate the Governing Council,

as the BBC put it. Instead, he was pushed aside and basically ignored by both the IGC, whose members wanted to maintain their own power, and the US, busy with employing "heavy-handed methods ... to ensure that the next government was not hostile to American policies in Iraq" in a process a UN diplomat quoted by the New York Times called "a charade."

(So widely was that pressure applied that the US even put up a fuss over the strictly ceremonial post of president because the Council's favored candidate had sometimes been critical of the US occupation.)

This was even as the pathetic Colin Powerless

insisted that the decision on who will lead Iraq after the handover of power rests with the United Nations.

In fact, Brahimi was left with no greater role than offering after-the-fact approval in a sorry attempt to at least look like he was involved - which is probably why, just two days after the members of the "new" government were named, his representative, Ahmad Fawzi, announced

Brahimi had left Iraq for good and would take no further part in its political transition. ...

Brahimi ... was adamant he would not take on any new role in Iraq.

Demonstrating just how thoroughly Brahimi's role was degraded, the BBC also reports that

Chief US administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer attended Friday's session of the Governing Council and congratulated Mr Allawi on his nomination, AP news agency reported.

The UN says Mr Brahimi was not even in the room when Mr Allawi was named by the IGC.

Before he left, Brahimi indirectly acknowledged the strong US role in the selection, describing L. Paul Bremer as "the dictator or Iraq."

He has the money. He has the signature. Nothing happens without his agreement in this country,

he told reporters. Fawzi said the comment was in jest, but added

he didn't say Bremer acts like a dictator, but the fact is Iraq is occupied and Bremer holds the reins of power, command of the security forces and the purse strings.

He is the only man who issues decrees and he's unelected. What do you call that?

So what does this mean for Iraq? For one thing, the continuation of government lacking in legitimacy in the eyes of the people, most of who can be expected to see this simply as a continuation of the IGC (because essentially, it is), this time headed by a man more connected with US and British intelligence than with Iraq. For that very same reason, the interim government is likely to be seen as an American government and any failings, shortcomings, or abuses will be laid at Washington's doorstep. That is, the "new" government cannot count on having any more popular support - and thus on facing any less popular resistance - than the old one.

On a particular point: Much to the relief of Washington, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani offered what AP called a "tacit endorsement" of the interim regime, but rather than it being any kind of endorsement it would better be said that he declined to oppose it. Instead, he urged it to lobby the Security Council for a resolution declaring full sovereignty that would erase "all traces" of the occupation. He also said that the new government

lacks the "legitimacy of elections" and does not represent "in an acceptable manner all segments of Iraqi society and political forces.

"Nevertheless, it is hoped that this government will prove its efficiency and integrity and show resolve to carry out the enormous tasks that rest on its shoulders," al-Sistani said in a statement...

"The new government should get a clear resolution from the U.N. Security Council restoring sovereignty to Iraqis - a full and complete sovereignty in all its political, economic, military and security forms and endeavor to erase all traces of the occupation," al-Sistani's statement said. ...

Al-Sistani said the new government cannot win popular support unless it proves "through practical and clear steps" that it is sincerely trying to achieve those goals.

The draft resolution before the Security Council falls considerably short of that and considering how much negotiating has gone on just to get the US and the UK to proclaim Iraq's control over its own armed forces and its right to ask the occupying troops to leave, the chances that any redrafted resolution would do better are very slim.

I suspect that Sistani, whose political skills seem to be repeatedly underestimated, knows that. By laying out doubts about the new government's legitimacy while suggesting ways it could establish it, he's left himself plenty of room to maneuver in either direction. Sistani, no doubt fully aware of his influence, is cautious in how he uses it, which is to his credit but also to his benefit. To mix a metaphor, his star, temporarily eclipsed by Moqtada al-Sadr's nova, is again in the ascendancy. To really mangle the metaphor, the US (and the re-formed IGC) had better hope it keeps shining on them.

Footnote: Oh my I must be getting on. I completely forgot to mention that there is one real change in the government: Ahmed Chalabi and his cohorts are nowhere to be seen. How do you think that was engineered?

It's just as well for him, though, since according to the BBC in October, 2002, he "discounted the possibility he will take a role in any future government." So he should be relieved and happy now.

I also intended to make the snarky remark that the one advantage of a new old - or is that old new - government is that it resolves the concern about the interim government's lack of legislative authority, since these folks are unlikely to want to go around overruling what they themselves did.