IRAQ: UPRISING

Juan Cole: Fallujah Bloodbath threatens US-Appointed Iraqi Government with
Collapse
(Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan)

AP reported that the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) issued
a demand early on Saturday that the US cease its military action against
Fallujah and stop employing "collective punishment."

Not only has what many Iraqis call "the puppet council" taken a stand
against Bush administration tactics in Iraq, but individual members are
peeling off. Shiite Marsh Arab leader Abdul Karim al-Muhammadawi
suspended his membership in the council on Friday. A Sunni member, Ghazi
al-Yawir, has threatened to resign if a negotiated settlement of the Fallujah
conflict cannot be found. Old-time Sunni nationalist leader Adnan
Pachachi thundered on al-Arabiya televsion, "It was not right to punish all the
people of Fallujah, and we consider these operations by the Americans
unacceptable and illegal."

For him to go on an Arab satellite station much hated by Donald
Rumsfeld and denounce the very people who appointed him to the IGC is a clear
act of defiance. There are rumors that many of the 25 Governing Council
members have fled abroad, fearful of assassination because of their association
with the Americans. The ones who are left appear on the verge of
resigning.

This looks to me like an incipient collapse of the US government of
Iraq.
Beyond the IGC, the bureaucracy is protesting. Many government workers
in
the ministries are on strike and refusing to show up for work,
according to
ash-Sharq al-Awsat. Without Iraqis willing to serve in the Iraqi
government, the US would be forced to rule the country militarily and
by
main force. Its legitimacy appears to be dwindling fast.