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now as gone as he is "That was the flag of Israel,"
hissed one
Mid-East
Realities - MER - www.MiddleEast.Org - 1 July 2004:
One really has to wonder just how competent these American neocons
really are beyond all the imagery, flag-waving, and sloganeering.
Just what were Paul Bremer and his neocon handlers back at the Pentagon
and the White House thinking when they tried to plant that new
blue-striped flag in Iraq where it was quite literally thrown up and
out pretty quickly. Oh yes, the formerly enthroned "Iraqi Governing
Council" had its fingers all over the new flag as well...in the
beginning that is. Remember them? Well...that's pretty much the same
bunch of guys who more recently reconstituted themselves, with all that
high-price p.r. help the Americans have given them, to become what is
now known as the "Interim Iraqi Government". But if these guys have
been making policies and decisions about the future of Iraq and the
Middle East in the same way they did about a new Iraqi flag....well
then their chaos, incompetence, corruption, and miserable failures all
need be underscored even more that we had previously realized. And
that is saying a lot!man on Baghdad's Saddoun Street. "Another occupier." |
Iraq reverts to Saddam-era flag
Officials of the reopened Iraqi Embassy raise the Iraqi flag at Iraqi
Embassy on 18th and P streets in NW Washington DC, yesterday.
THE WASHINGTON TIMES - 30 June 2004: BAGHDAD — Shortly after the interim government of Iraq was installed on
Monday morning, a huge flag was hoisted atop a 10-story building at the
edge of central Baghdad's green zone, visible to the traffic-trapped
motorists nearby. But it was not the blue, white and yellow banner
introduced with some fanfare in April by the Iraqi Governing Council.
Nor was it the simple red, white, black and green flag that flew over
Iraq before the rule of Saddam Hussein. With no formal announcement or
decision, Iraq's new leaders, like its history-obsessed people, appear
to have embraced the Saddam-era flag — the traditional standard as
amended by the dictator shortly after the 1991 Persian Gulf war with
the words "God is great" scrawled across its face in Arabic. The same
flag was raised over the new Iraqi Embassy in Washington yesterday by
Ambassador-designate Rend Rahim and an aide. The flag revealed in
April, with pale blue stripes on a white field that reminded many
Iraqis of the Israeli flag, appears to have been abandoned with neither
comment nor lament. "I don't think that flag ever had legs," conceded a
U.S. official involved in preparations for Monday's transfer of
authority to the new Iraqi government. U.S. military officials had
assumed after the 2003 war that the old flag — without the writing —
would again fly over government buildings as it had since the early
20th century. They were as surprised as anyone when the Governing
Council in April introduced the new white flag with three bars running
under an Islamic crescent. Two blue strips were to reflect the Tigris
and Euphrates rivers and the yellow band to symbolize the Kurdish
minority, according to officials at the flag's formal introduction.
Hameed al-Kafaei, the chief spokesman for the Iraqi Governing Council,
said the design had been chosen from among 30 entries by a committee of
council members. "This flag represents the democracy and freedom of the
new Iraq, where the old one represented killing and oppression and
dictatorship [of Saddam]," he said in April. But the designer,
London-based artist Rifat al-Chaderchi, told the London Independent
newspaper that he was not aware of a contest and simply had been asked
to design a new flag by his brother, a Governing Council member. The
introduction of a new flag infuriated many exhausted Iraqis, who
already had gone a year with increasingly violent streets and fewer
than 12 hours a day of electricity. "That was the flag of Israel,"
hissed one man on Baghdad's Saddoun Street. "Another occupier." Nor
does there seem to be much interest in reverting to the pre-Saddam
flag, based on informal conversations and the few small flags and
decals available for purchase in Baghdad shops. "Of course, [the 'God
is great' banner] is the right flag," said Marguerite Gorgis, a woman
whose name and uncovered hair indicate she is a Christian. "What can be
a greater protection than God?" The Iraqi people always have had a
strong sense of national pride — a trait exploited by Saddam through
the bountiful use of pageantry, monuments and rhetoric to unite a
multicultured people and quell religious and ethnic divisions. The
colors of the traditional flag, which were retained by Saddam, over the
years have been adopted by many neighbors as the colors of Arab
nationalism. The United States, for its part, has been careful in the
past 15 months to avoid the trappings of occupation, making sure that
the only U.S. flags visible in Iraq were the patches on the right
shoulders of U.S. soldiers. For the first time yesterday, newly arrived
Ambassador John D. Negroponte raised the Stars and Stripes over the new
U.S. Embassy in Baghdad in a modest ceremony paralleling the Iraqi
ceremony in Washington. "Whenever one is able to reopen an embassy of
course it is a high privilege, but nowhere more so than here in Iraq,"
Mr. Negroponte said shortly before dusk last night. "These have been a
long, difficult 13 years [since the 1991 Gulf war], and now there is a
new Iraq to explore, the likes of which has no precedent in the history
of this ancient land," he said. "Our presence, our outreach and our
insight into Iraq's political life, its economy and its society will be
crucial to shaping a new era in bilateral relations." http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040701-120730-9756r.htm
Please forward MER articles to others in their entirety with proper attribution. We welcome your comments and information in the new MER FORUM. MID-EAST REALITIES www.MiddleEast.Org Phone: (202) 362-5266 Fax: (815) 366-0800 Copyright © 2004 Mid-East Realities, All rights reserved |
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Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2004/7/995.htm |