Birthing a new government...
Category: News Commentary...
Posted Thursday, April 10, 2003 at 07:18 PM [GMT-6]

Busy day...just now catching up on some of the recent events in Iraq. I find it fascinating to contemplate just how one might go about establishing a new government in a place like Iraq...almost as fascinating as considering how easily the old one was brought down. ("Easy" being, of course, a relative term, and not one to be used without giving due recognition to the blood shed and lives lost to achieve the goal.)

The Iraqi National Congress is getting a lot of press, pro and con. I'm not well enough informed on the background issues to have an opinion, but I do wonder what it would be like to get a phone call, and hear the voice on the other end of the line say something like, "pack your bags, buddy; we want you to help us create a new democratic government in one of the key countries in the Middle East." Akeel Taee got just such a call about a week ago. And now the work is beginning in earnest, not just as an exercise in contingencies or possibilities. Heady times, these.

Even the most well-informed and perceptive among us are still occasionally struggling to make sense of it all. I found this quote in the online transcript of today's State Department briefing, as spokesman Richard Boucher tried to explain our official position regarding Turkish and Kurdish involvement in northern Iraq:

MR. BOUCHER: We consider the Turkish -- we consider terrorists to be terrorists, and we still consider the terrorists to be terrorists. And we consider those who are not terrorists, not to be terrorists. And we still don't consider them terrorists. That's as clear as I can make it.

Given the pace of change — revolutionary, one might say — in recent days, it's good to hear such things and realize that not everything is different.