*Ø* Blogmanac | Bush's Crumbling Authority in Iraq

By Robert Fisk

"What UN member would ever contemplate sending peace-keeping troops to Iraq now? The men who are attacking America's occupation army are ruthless, but they are not stupid. They know that President George Bush is getting desperate, that he will do anything – that he may even go to the dreaded Security Council for help – to reduce US military losses in Iraq. But yesterday's attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad has slammed shut the door to that escape route.

"Within hours of the explosion, we were being told that this was an attack on a 'soft target', a blow against the UN itself. True, it was a 'soft' target, although the machine-gun nest on the roof of the UN building might have suggested that even the international body was militarising itself. True, too, it was a shattering assault on the UN as an institution. But in reality, yesterday's attack was against the United States.

"For it proves that no foreign organisation--no NGO, no humanitarian organisation, no investor, no businessman – can expect to be safe under America's occupation rule. Paul Bremer, the US pro-consul, was meant to be an 'anti-terrorism' expert. Yet since he arrived in Iraq, he has seen more 'terrorism' than he can have dreamt of in his worst nightmares – and has been able to do nothing about it."

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De Mello knew sovereignty, not security, is the issue
"His shocking death makes it safe to report his regrets that the Americans did not understand Iraqi feelings properly - though he probably told them himself in private. He saw the US rocket attacks on the house where Saddam Hussein's sons were hiding as 'overkill' because it would have been better to put them on trial. He initially described Paul Bremer, the US head of the coalititon provisional authority, as a 'true neo-con who does not care about getting international legitimacy' for what the US did. Later he felt Bremer had begun to change."

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