Saturday, May 17, 2003

Dumb terrorists in Morocco. Don't they know that if you want to get the attention of Americans you don't launch a vicious, brutal suicide bombing on a Friday night? Friday night is when you do things you don't want Americans to notice. The Bush administration knows that, which is why this story is breaking now:

In Reversal, Plan for Iraq Self-Rule Has Been Put Off

In an abrupt reversal, the United States and Britain have indefinitely put off their plan to allow Iraqi opposition forces to form a national assembly and an interim government by the end of the month.

Instead, top American and British diplomats leading reconstruction efforts here told exile leaders in a meeting tonight that allied officials would remain in charge of Iraq for an indefinite period, said Iraqis who attended the meeting. It was conducted by L. Paul Bremer, the new civilian administrator here.

"It's quite clear that you cannot transfer all powers onto some interim body, because it will not have the strength or the resources to carry those responsibilities out," The Associated Press quoted Mr. Sawers as saying. "There was agreement that we should aim to have a national conference as soon as we reasonably could do so."

...Opposition leaders were "very respectful" to Mr. Bremer and Mr. Sawers, a participant said, "but I think everyone was also pretty forceful about the need to have full sovereignty for the Iraqis." A question they kept posing, he added, was, "Do you want to run this place, or should we?"

No date was set for creating an interim authority, and no details about its powers and functions were discussed in the meeting, the Iraqis said....

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