Christian Science Monitor -- Plan: US general to run Iraq

The head of the US military's Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks, will rule Iraq in the initial aftermath of a US invasion to overthrow President Saddam Hussein.

"To be kind, it is unworkable. Either reason will prevail, or time will demonstrate to the authors [of the US plan] the error of their ways," says Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi. "I really shudder to think."

A US civilian coordinator, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, is already presiding over committees of US bureaucrats preparing to address humanitarian relief, reconstruction, and civil administration - all part of a planning effort authorized by President Bush on Jan. 20. General Franks retains overall responsibility for a war and its aftermath.

"Power is being handed, essentially on a platter, to the second echelon of the Baath Party and the [Iraqi] Army officer corps," says Kanan Makiya, an adviser to Mr. Chalabi who discussed postwar Iraq with President Bush on Jan. 10. "It's going to have the opposite effect to what US wants it to have," he adds.

Makiya says with evident disappointment that years of collaborative effort with US officials - including US funding, an act of Congress promoting Iraq's "liberation," and a "democratic principles working group on Iraq" backed by the State Department - are "all down the drain."

But the US approach may increase the comfort level of some US friends in the Arab world, who preside over autocratic regimes and who may be uneasy with an effort to create a Western-style democracy in their midst.

This is not creating democracy - unless the US pours as much money into Iraq and as much time as we did in Japan and Germany.