Jay Garner seems acceptable to Israel I should imagine... Of course the plans may have changed by now as this was over a week ago before the war started.
Cheers, Ken Hanly from the daily star (lebanon) Iraq's new rulers wait in the wings As the Bush administration prepares for a new Gulf war, the administrators of post-war Iraq are patiently waiting in the wings. According to Arab press reports this weekend, the American occupation authorities intend to divide Iraq into three zones a northern district that includes Kurdistan, a central one that includes Baghdad, and a predominantly Shiite southern district. Each zone will be run by an administrator reporting to retired army general Jay Garner. He heads the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, the occupation's civil authority. The person slated to handle the central district is former US ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine, the Bush administration's response to Gertrude Bell, who helped govern Iraq for Britain after the First World War. Bodine's resume suggests she is an old style State Department regionalist. Though she received a degree in political science and Asian studies, she later shifted her attention to the Arabian Peninsula, twice serving in the Office of Arabian Peninsula Affairs at the Bureau of Near East Affairs. Bodine was stationed in Baghdad as Deputy Principal Officer, and in 1990 she was deputy chief of mission in Kuwait when the Iraqis invaded. For once the State Department put an ambassador in the right place when she was dispatched to Yemen, a natural link between Asia and the Arab world. Bodine was in Yemen during the USS Cole bombing. A dispute with the FBI, which was investigating the attack, hinted at the kind of person she is. Bodine barred an FBI special agent from returning to Yemen because she was angry at the bureau's heavy-handed presence in the country and its desire to arm agents with rifles and heavy weapons. Press reports suggested that she wanted to assuage Yemeni cultural sensibilities, even though she has defended American intervention through counter-terrorism operations. If Bodine's prospective appointment is designed to reassure the Iraqis of the benign nature of a US occupation, her boss, Jay Garner, will prove a harder sell. Garner famously signed onto an Oct. 12, 2000 statement by the archconservative Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, which praised the Israeli Army for having "exercised remarkable restraint in the face of lethal violence orchestrated by the leadership of a Palestinian Authority that deliberately pushes civilians and young people to the front lines." The statement noted: "We do not claim to be experts in the political affairs of Israel and its neighbors. However, in those travels (to Israel) we brought with us our decades of military experience and came away with the unswerving belief that the security of the State of Israel is a matter of great importance to US policy in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean, as well as around the world. A strong Israel is an asset that American military planners and political leaders can rely on." One passage was revealing: "What makes the US-Israel security relationship one of mutual benefit is the combination of military capabilities and shared political values freedom, democracy, personal liberty and the rule of law." That Garner himself benefited from the security relationship is well known: As president of California-based defense contractor SY Technology, he oversaw the company's work on the US-Israeli Arrow defense system. David Lazarus recently reported in the San Francisco Chronicle that Garner's former company is also working on missile systems the US will use against Iraq. Not only does this appear to be a conflict of interest, it also happens to be peculiar politics. As Ben Hermalin, a professor at UC Berkeley who studies professional ethics, told Lazarus: "You have to wonder what the Iraqis will think of this guy and how much trust they'll place in him." To focus solely on Garner's ties with Israel and US defense contractors might be unfair. The general was also involved in Operation Provide Comfort, the humanitarian effort to help the Kurds after their debacle in 1991, when Iraqi forces swept through Kurdistan. However, it is also clear Garner was chosen because of his friendship with US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It is premature to draw too many conclusions from Garner's and Bodine's appointments. Nor is it yet clear what will happen in the northern and southern occupation districts, which are to be administered by two other retired generals perhaps a sign of US uneasiness with Kurdish and Shiite intentions. However, one cannot help but presume that Bodine will be a comforting but powerless civilian facade for an operation run mainly by the military. That's because authority will probably be concentrated less in Garner's civil administration than in the US military command under General Tommy Franks. However, Franks should feel at ease with three former generals working alongside him. The question, however, is whether the Iraqis will?
