So When Was the Last Time YOU Completed an Occupation 2 Days Early?

Occupying powers don't typically bail out of the country early, but that is what it appears we have done in Iraq. Two days before we were scheduled to formally transfer power, Bremer handed the document of US recognition of Sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government.

It is every pundit's dream to be able to chant, "I told you so" as the world crumbles to dust. Yet few pundits have taken the opportunity with Iraq's soveriegnty. This is an experiment, the outcome of which has not been analysed in any depth, largely because no one can guess what those who do not want a stable Iraq are capable of doing. Nobody wants to see it fail, although there

Last week, five attacks on police stations throughout the country were executed simultaneously, demonstrating the existence of an extensive command/control structure within the opposition, killing over 100 people. Prior to that, most of the attacks in Iraq were one-offs, a bomb here and a missle shoot there, indicating sustained and distributed financial backing to maintain the guerrilla force -- but without centralized command and control, an opposition army cannot affect specific political outcomes, by directing attacks at desireable targets. Now, they have it.


Completely unrelated are these kidnappings of foreigners with threats of beheading them:

• Nick Berg was summarily killed , purpotedly in revenge for abuses at Abu Ghraib.
  
  
• a South Korean was beheaded after his captors demanded Seoul to remove military medics and engineers, and drop plans to send more troops. Seoul refused.
  
  
• The kidnappers of a Marine in Iraq (Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, an American muslim of Middle Eastern origin) demand release of all Iraqi's in "occupation jails".
  
  
• A Pakistani driver, taken in Iraq working for Haliburton , is presently held, his captors asking the Pakistani embassy in Iraq to be closed, and all Pakistani's be banned from going to Iraq.
  
  
• Three Turkish nationals, working in Iraq, are being held, their captors demanding Turkish companies to quit doing business with U.S. Troops in Iraq.
  
  

(Paul Johnson, also the victim of similar grisly murder, was kidnapped in Saudi Arabia, by captors demanding freedom for their comrades-in-arms; similar tactic, completely different goals, and different perpetrators).

It is believed that Berg, the South Korean, the American Marine and the three Turkish hostages were taken by the same group (Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi). However, not all are not being centrally coordinated, and even those which are have differing goals. Post-occupation, these will drop off eventually, and pose no long-term threat to Iraq.

But those five attacks on police stations -- that takes a lot of money, people, secret communications, and a jointly identified goal of people in cities which have never cooperated before. That goal is obviously to destablize the interim government -- which has now been handed power.

An obvious question to ask: were they handed power early because the US expected the attacks to ramp up by June 30 (as we have heard publicly stated), and this could head the attacks off? How could the early handover head the attacks off? Either the interim government has intelligence or police capabilities that the US does not (which seems unlikely) or the US simply washed hands of responsibility early so that, whatever happens in the coming days, it is the Iraqi government's responsibility to deal with it.