Hawkish lawyer to oversee Iraqi ministries
The Pentagon selects group to take power
Brian Whitaker
Friday April 4, 2003
The Guardian
A Pentagon lawyer who sought to have US citizens imprisoned indefinitely without charge as part of the war on terrorism will supervise civil administration in Iraq once Saddam Hussein is removed. Michael Mobbs, 54, who will take charge of 11 of the 23 Iraqi ministries, is one of several controversial appointments to the Pentagon-controlled government-in-waiting being assembled in a cluster of seaside villas in Kuwait.
Other top-level appointees include James Woolsey, a former CIA director with Israeli connections, who has long pursued a theory that Saddam Hussein, rather than Islamic militants, was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York.
Another is Zalmay Khalilzad, who once symp-athised with the Taliban but later changed tack.
During the Reagan administration, Mr Mobbs worked at the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, where he became known for his hawkish views on national security and American-Soviet relations.
On these issues he was closely aligned with the assistant defence secretary at the time, Richard Perle, who is widely regarded as chief architect of the war. Mr Mobbs later joined a Washington law firm in which Douglas Feith - now under secretary for policy at the Pentagon - was a partner.
In his role as a legal consultant to the Pentagon, Mr Mobbs has been working behind the scenes to help determine the legal fate of terror suspects and other detainees held by the US military in Cuba and Afghanistan.
He was also author of what has become known as the "Mobbs declaration", a document presented to the US courts on behalf of the Pentagon claiming that the US president has wide powers to detain American citizens alleged to be enemy combatants indefinitely.
The former CIA director James Woolsey is expected to be handed a senior role in the post-Saddam government, according to sources close to the planning process.
Mr Woolsey sits on the advisory board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a connection likely to arouse hostility in Iraq.
Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, a former Pentagon and state department official, has been appointed as the government-in-waiting's "special envoy" to the Iraqi opposition.
His main task is to organise a conference of 250 prominent Iraqis, the equivalent of the loya jirga in Afghanistan.
In 1997, he contributed to an article in the conservative Weekly Standard, which called for regime change in Iraq under the headline "Overthrow him".
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