PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Iraq doublespeak pronouncements Orwellian in their defiance of reality

Bush's series of statements stand at almost surreal odds with the truth.
'Iraq will be free, Iraq will be independent,' he promised, just as soon as the 'transfer of sovereignty' is complete on June 30.
But look at the reality. On July 1 Iraq will still have up to to 130,000 foreign troops on its soil as well as 14 'enduring' US military bases. Every move of the new authority - with no democratic mandate whatsoever - will be subject to the approval of a 'US embassy' which will administer some $18.4 bn in reconstruction funds and be the largest such mission in the world.
Iraqi infrastructure, from the electricity grid to the courts, will be reshaped and run out of the embassy. Iraqi industry will be on sale to foreign ownership and the Iraqi military will still take its orders from the US commander.
So June 30 will not be a handover of 'sovereignty' at all, and Iraq will be neither 'free' nor 'independent', at least not according to any common-sense definition of those terms. Yet Bush and Blair continue to speak of the end of June as if it was Iraqi independence day.
And that's nothing compared with the rest of the Bush-Blair show. Behold the comedy of the president's declaration that 'our coalition has no interest in occupation'. Or the prime minister's insistence that no 'outside' forces will be allowed to determine Iraq's future - as if the US and British armies are not outside forces doing precisely that.
These are examples of doublethink to rival Bremer's exquisite remark to an American interviewer earlier this month that the Iraqi resistance is made up of people who 'think that power in Iraq should come out of the barrel of a gun. That's intolerable and we will deal with it'.