Needlenose

Looks like getting a new government on its feet in time for Dubya to use it as a 2004 campaign prop isn’t going so well in that other country we invaded, either, as the New York Times is reporting for tomorrow’s paper:

The chairman walked out of the loya jirga on Tuesday as nerves began to snap on the 17th day of the grand council, gathered here to draw up a new constitution for Afghanistan.

The chairman, Sebaghatullah Mojadeddi, an elderly professor of Islam, suddenly walked out of his office and went home after speaking on the phone to President Hamid Karzai in the early afternoon.

The loya jirga was already at a standstill, with at least 100 delegates boycotting the voting on final amendments in protest at what many called government interference, and all the political leaders had converged on Mr. Mojadeddi’s office.

. . . The debate in its final stages has turned away from the hot topics of Islam, women and human rights, and centered on the struggle for power between the two main ethnic groups: the Pashtuns, who once more feel themselves in the ascendant, and the Tajiks, who have dominated Kabul since the fall of the Taliban.

The rivalry heated up when the Tajik camp accused the chairman and his deputies of rewriting parts of the constitution without consultation and of ignoring their proposed amendments. Sheik Muhammad Asif Mohseni, a Shiite mujahedeen leader, complained that five items agreed to by the working committees were omitted from the final draft.

. . . Mr Mojadeddi promised to work them into the draft, according to Dr. Muhaiuddin Mehdi, a delegate from Kabul who was in the group.

Then in a telephone call with President Karzai the chairman apparently cracked, Dr. Mehdi said. “On one side there is pressure from you and the other side it is the delegates’ views,” he told the president. “I cannot continue any longer.”

Mr. Mojadeddi left for home and returned only when Vice President Abdul Karim Khalili and Foreign Minister Abdullah went to his home to fetch him back, Dr. Mehdi said.

How lovely that, judging from the “there is pressure from you” remark, our handpicked President who looks so good in those jaunty caps is lobbying people to falsify supposedly democratically written documents. And just think, this is the same process the U.S is hoping to visit on Iraq in its best-case scenario (i.e., if they can get their own act together in time while avoiding pressure for full elections).

If only they’d worked out the kinks in this script before the curtain went up.

I haven’t been convinced that this was the best path, but it’s official, as Reuters reports:

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft will step aside from the politically charged investigation into a leak related to the Iraq war and the Justice Department will name a special prosecutor, department officials said on Tuesday.

The officials gave few details, saying only that Ashcroft was stepping down from the investigation and it would now be headed by the U.S. Attorney in Chicago, Patrick Fitzgerald.

Further details are expected at a 2 p.m. news conference.

The Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into who had disclosed the identity of a CIA officer whose husband had challenged President Bush’s claims about Iraq’s weapons threat.

Disclosing the identity of a clandestine intelligence officer is a federal crime as is leaking classified information to the media.

My doubts about whether this development would be good news were based on the question of how politically biased the special prosecutor would be. And so, the question to be asked now is, who is Patrick Fitzgerald?

A quick Google search shows him to be a gung-ho prosecutor (which I guess is desirable) in Illinois who has agressively pursued cases on both sides of the political spectrum, filing charges against the Republican ex-governor as well as close associates of the Democratic mayor of Chicago.

The only real black mark I could find is that he does appear to be part of the right-wing legal network — as shown by his participation in a Federalist Society debate, arguing in support of the Patriot Act.

But at least he’s not Ken Starr. And the simple act of Ashcroft stepping aside in his favor communicates even to people who don’t follow the news that this is in fact a serious legal case.

Update: Fitzgerald is also a close friend of Ashcroft’s deputy secretary, the similarly not-obviously-political James Comey, who probably appointed Fitzgerald.

This morning’s batch of Iraq stories from major newspapers gives a few more swift kicks to the notion — previously ridiculed here but still being promoted in supposedly respectable corners — that lurching forward into an invasion with no postwar planning was actually a good plan.

For example, the best thing (perhaps the only thing) we can do to create goodwill over there is to spend money rebuilding the country. But as the Boston Globe reports, because our initial Calvinball approach to awarding contracts was designed for allowed so many blatant ripoffs, complaints have crippled the process:

The Pentagon has frozen new funds approved for Iraqi reconstruction amid growing allegations of corruption and cronyism associated with the rebuilding process.

. . . The freeze will almost certainly mean the United States will not issue new contracts until well after the initial Feb. 1 target date.

The Pentagon’s decision to delay Iraqi reconstruction is another setback for a process already hobbled by political insecurity and, increasingly, concerns over corruption and misconduct. The success of the US-led bid to remake Iraq politically depends largely on efforts to reverse the country’s chronic unemployment by repairing it economically.

. . . Bids for 26 contracts were to be submitted by Jan. 5. But that date has been postponed indefinitely.

Meanwhile, because the U.S. invaded with too few troops to secure the country and then compounded its error by disbanding Iraq’s army, it’s trying to compensate by hurriedly creating new Iraqi police and paramilitary forces. The Washington Post takes a skeptical look at the laughable training and screening process that has resulted:

According to investigations over the past four months by a newly formed internal affairs unit at the Interior Ministry, more than 200 Iraqi policemen in Baghdad have been dismissed and dozens of others have had their pay slashed for crimes ranging from pawning government equipment to extortion and kidnapping.

In addition, roughly 2,500 people on the payroll of the Facilities Protection Service, which guards government buildings, either do not exist or have not been showing up to work, investigators say. And a number of Border Patrol officers have been disciplined for accepting bribes in exchange for allowing people without proper identification to enter Iraq.

In a profile of ongoing anti-U.S. resentment in Fallujah, the Los Angeles Times shows how helpful the new Iraqi police are in assisting Americans against the guerrilla resistance:

Local police, too, remain reluctant to challenge the insurgents, many of whom are relatives. Capt. Ahmed Suleiman, who runs a police station in suburban Fallouja, said every time U.S. forces ask his men to join in a search for guerrillas, he must politely decline.

“We tell them, no, we can’t do that,” Suleiman said. “The moujahedeen would say we are collaborators. You work with the Americans, you die.”

Speaking of which, perhaps with a little more forethought, all those billions of dollars we’ve been spending to deal with an imaginary terrorist threat in Iraq would have been used to alleviate the real dangers in Pakistan — which, unlike Iraq, has nuclear weapons (not to mention a history of exporting nuclear technology) and is chock full of al-Qaeda members and sympathizers. The New York Times explains how the latter are putting a political squeeze on the military ruler there, a nominal ally of the U.S. … when they’re not trying to assassinate him, anyway:

The general now faces an “in-built contradiction,” said Mr. Rizvi, that will start showing strains soon: “On one hand it is clear he has to go against extremist Islamist groups, but he is in coalition with religious parties that support Al Qaeda and Taliban-like elements.”

Indeed, some elements in the coalition are perhaps allied to — and certainly sympathetic to — the militant groups now under scrutiny for trying to kill the president. They gained record support in elections last year after General Musharraf weakened mainstream secular political parties, which he apparently saw as a more direct threat.

. . . Equally unnerving is the prospect that the militants may be working with members of the security forces, whether the army or the police. Twice now potential assassins have effectively penetrated the president’s security cordon and identified which of multiple motorcades he was traveling in.

As others have noted, Pakistan falling into the direct or indirect control of Islamic radicals would be an almost unthinkable disaster for U.S. interests. Is it still so great that we don’t seem to have the slightest plan to prevent it, or deal with the (perhaps literal) fallout if it happens?

Update: I didn’t realize it when I posted, but the New York Times has more on this exact subject, as does See Why? (which is where I found the link).