So what happened to General Garner. Yanks utter failure to restore law and order or to get on with the process of rebuilding reinforces the fact that they are only good at one thing, invading and killing innocent people. At least the British in Basra are performing better then the yanks. Maybe they should take a lesson from them.
New US boss takes the helm in post-war Iraq](Yahoo is part of the Yahoo family of brands.)
BASRA, Iraq (AFP) - The new US boss of post-war Iraq, Paul Bremer, arrived in the country to take the helm of a troubled administration that has seen much of the country descend into lawlessness and chaos.
Bremer, a career diplomat tapped by US President George W. Bush last week to replace retired US general Jay Garner, touched down in the southern city of Basra on Monday to begin his tenure as the de facto ruler of the country.
He arrived from neighbouring Kuwait with General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Garner.
Myers underscored the US-led coalition’s insistence on eradicating all elements of former leader Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and restoring security to the nation, which has veered close to anarchy since Saddam’s ouster.
“There is absolutely no chance that Saddam Hussein and his Baathist party or those who are following Saddam Hussein are ever going to come to power again in Iraq,” Myers said.
“We are deadly serious about ensuring the stability of Iraq, and the future of Iraq depends on an Iraq that is free of any hint of the former regime.”
**The US-led administration of Iraq has come under blistering criticism over the speed of the rebuilding process and the chaos that has enveloped the nation since Saddam was toppled in Baghdad on April 9.
Many Iraqis still have no running water or electricity. Trash and sewage are rotting in the streets, and armed gangs are terrorising the population.**
“Obviously there’re still a lot of problems throughout the country, and not just Baghdad,” Myers said on Sunday. “Some places are better than others.”
**Bremer arrived one day after the departure of Barbara Bodine, who had been the US administrator for the central Iraq region, which includes Baghdad, under the Pentagon’s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA).
She had been in Baghdad less than three weeks. US officials insisted it was a routine rotation.
Garner had been the civilian administrator of Iraq until Bremer, 61, was named at a hastily arranged White House ceremony last Tuesday.**
ORHA had in recent days been stepping up its campaign to get key goverment ministries restarted.
It distributed tens of thousands of dollars in emergency payments to Iraqi civil servants on Saturday, but the programme had first been announced last month.
ORHA has struggled to set up effective communications with the press and Bodine told the Washington Post she was informed of her new job in a late-night call on a phone that had been installed in her office only hours before.
“By the end of this month, you will see a very different organization,” a senior US official told the Post.
The influential daily said that US officials had indicated concern about being perceived as too heavy-handed as an occupying force in Iraq.
“We came in here hands-off,” the official said. “There was a bit of ambivalence between being an authority and being authoritarian. We were so concerned about being authoritarian that we didn’t exercise authority.”
Basra is under the control of British troops and the rebuilding process here has appeared to go more smoothly and more quickly. Water and power have been re-established in many areas.
Bremer was to meet with British officials responsible for establishing order in the city, while Myers was to meet British commanders and have lunch with their troops.
The US cannot even get their own regime in place in occupied Iraq let alone impose a new one…what a joke.