The Peace Will Be More Important Than The War

NYTimes - Friedman - Come The Revolution:

To read the Arab press is to think that the entire Arab world is enraged with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and to some extent that's true. But here's what you don't read: underneath the rage, there is also a grudging, skeptical curiosity — a curiosity about whether the Americans will actually do what they claim and build a new, more liberal Iraq.

"If it backfires," Mr. Kamel concluded, "if you don't deliver, it will really have a big impact. People will not just say your policies are bad, but that your ideas are a fake, you don't really believe them or you don't know how to implement them."

In short, we need to finish the peace better than we started the war.

WashPost - After The War

"We all thought we were going to be in there by now. Instead of throwing things together in a week, we've had a lot more time to think about it."

Three officials have been named to administer areas of Iraq: Bruce Moore, a retired general, in the north; Barbara Bodine, the former U.S. ambassador to Yemen who served in Baghdad in the 1980s, for the central region, including Baghdad; and Buck Walters, another retired general, in the south. Three other Garner deputies are in charge of broad areas -- humanitarian assistance coordinated by George Ward, a former U.S. Marine and ambassador to Namibia; reconstruction by Lewis Lucke, a veteran of USAID; and civil administration by Michael Mobbs, a Reagan-era arms negotiator and Pentagon legal adviser.

Differences between the Pentagon and State Department over the team's composition have affected officials who were on their way to the region. It is not known whether the dispute will further slow the group's work.

Participants are developing plans for taking over Iraq's 23 government ministries, with a key U.S. adviser supervising work along with Iraqi exiles. Experts from Treasury are deciding how best to scrap the Iraqi currency -- featuring likenesses of Hussein -- and replace it, at least temporarily, with the U.S. dollar.

LATimes -- White House Divided Over Reconstruction but Pentagon Winning

At a meeting scheduled Thursday in Brussels, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell plans to tell his European and NATO counterparts that the Bush administration wants United Nations assistance with humanitarian and reconstruction projects, and possibly a stabilization force, but seeks no help in re-creating Iraq politically, U.S. officials said. The Pentagon has championed this approach.

"We're on the verge of further alienating allies," said [a high placed] official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "And it looks like we're going to do exactly what we promised we wouldn't — take small groups of exiles with limited influence in Iraq and bring them in as the bulk of a transition government."

Common Dreams - UK Guardian -- It Will End in Disaster

This is an ambitious plan and history is not on the US side.

BBC - British Government - Iraqis Will Govern After The War

Better check with Washington about that.

HeraldSun -- Australian PM claims the UN will have a role after Bush meeting.

Sure, a role, like a messenger to report back to the UN what the US is doing.