{"id":989,"date":"2004-05-28T18:19:32","date_gmt":"2004-05-29T01:19:32","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2004-05-28T18:19:32","modified_gmt":"2004-05-29T01:19:32","slug":"puppet-council-picks-a-pm-for-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2004\/05\/28\/puppet-council-picks-a-pm-for-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"Puppet Council picks a PM for Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s this game the UN’s Brahimi is playing with the Iraqi Puppet Council? Apparently the Council has “nominated” one of their own, Iyad Allawi, for PM and now reports are coming out that Brahimi “respects”<\/a> their choice. Reuters has gone out <\/a>and interviewed some random Iraqis who scoff at the Puppet Council and Allawi.<\/p>\n

“What is his political experience? I know nothing about him. He lived abroad as an exile. We need someone who lived here who can pull Iraq out of a crisis,” said a hotel manager who declined to give his name.<\/p>\n

“Iraq is the same as it was in the time of Saddam Hussein except now I am afraid of militiamen so I can’t say my name.”
\n[..]
\n“I heard he used to play sports. I think he should really go back to playing sports,” said Seif Gharib, a 20-year-old security guard at Iraq’s Ministry of Defense. “Who is Iyad Allawi?<\/p>\n

Hassan Ali, a policeman, was also dismissive.<\/p>\n

“I reject him,” he said. “Where was he when we suffered under Saddam? Besides I do not recognize the Governing Council.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Isn’t this exactly what they were supposed to avoid by not involving the Puppets? What happened to Brahimi’s idea of selecting “technocrats?” <\/p>\n

Another Reuters story<\/a> is even more bizarre:<\/p>\n

It was unclear how far U.S. officials or Brahimi influenced the choice of a long-time exile known to few Iraqis and whom people in Baghdad said was an outsider they could not trust.<\/p>\n

Brahimi and Iraq’s U.S. governor Paul Bremer endorsed the nomination, Governing Council member Mahmoud Othman said: “We had a meeting with Bremer and Brahimi and they both agreed and congratulated him and were happy about it,” Othman told Reuters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

WTF? I thought this was supposed to be Brahimi’s choice. Was Brahimi unable to find anyone but Puppets who would take the job, especially after yesterday’s Hussain Shahristani debacle?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s this game the UN’s Brahimi is playing with the Iraqi Puppet Council? Apparently the Council has “nominated” one of their own, Iyad Allawi, for PM and now reports are coming out that Brahimi “respects” their choice. Reuters has gone out and interviewed some random Iraqis who scoff at the Puppet Council and Allawi. “What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=989"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}