[Futurework] A very, very worried Bush

[Keith Hudson]

If it's any consolation to some FWers, it is obvious that Bush is desperately worried now about the situation in Iraq.

Within days, three astonishing volte faces have been taken:

1. The Americans (via the Iraq oil authority) have given up on the idea of pumping out oil through the northern pipeline that runs through Turkey, and will now attempt to do so through the south. (The oil authority and the oil corporations involved met in London, not Baghdad, for security reasons.)

2. Bush has shifted responsibility for the reconstruction of Iraq from Rumsfeld and the Pentagon towards Condoleezza Rice and her State Department. What makes this even more astonishing is that Bush didn't tell Rumsfeld beforehand, never mind discussing it with him!  (At least the State Department will be able to apply more Arabic experience and infinitely more intelligence to the problems. However, I fear that the situation has already become too complicated for them to sort out.  The nearer the date for the production of the Constitution, the more complicated the environment will become.)

3. Bush has reneged on promises to the Kurds by appearing to accept help from Turkish troops. Thus he risks the whole situation in northern Iraq, which has been generally peaceful, with no vandalism or sabotage, precisely because the Kurds are expecting some sort of almost-independent status from the new Constitution. I cannot think that Bush will be so stupid as to accept the Turkish offer but if he does then I would expect the Kurish region to be as unstable as the Sunni areas of western Iraq.

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I see in today's NYT that the American Army have now lost track of hundreds of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles that were part of the arsenal of Saddam Hussein and captured by the American invasion. The result is that they daren't open Baghdad International Airport to commercial traffic. What glorious incompetence! Apparently army planes have already been shot at by portable weapons but keot secret.

In the months before the invasion I wrote on FW that the Americans would be unable to patrol Baghdad except in tanks. Technically, I have been wrong. But, as more American soldiers continue to get killed almost every day while on patrol, I cannot think that they'll agree to continue for much longer without going out in tanks or armoured vehicles. It will be either mutiny or tanks.

Perhaps Bush has already heard of intimations of this. Perhaps this is the reason why Bush has given Rumsfeld the boot. A possible mutiny by American soldiers would not do Bush's credibility much good in his penultimate election year.

Keith Hudson
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>, <www.handlo.com>, <www.property-portraits.co.uk>