Politics

   On Thursday, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a Senate panel that the United Nations “can’t be in charge.” He suggested that Russia, France and Germany could contribute to postwar reconstruction by writing off Iraq’s debts.
       Iraq owes Russia and France about $8 billion each, mostly for sales and contracts concluded in the 1980s, when Iraq was at war with neighboring Iran and had friendly relations with most other countries. Russia, then as the Soviet Union, was the major supplier of arms to the Iraqi military.
       But Wolfowitz, one of the main advocates of the campaign to overthrow Saddam, also said that France would have to “pay some consequences” for its opposition to the U.S. invasion, especially for opposing NATO assistance to Turkey.
[MSNBC]

This all comes down to the very reason (the real reason) that we liberated Iraq. It had nothing to do with oil, it had little do to with WMD, and even less to do with Saddam. It is about winning the support of Arab nations across the world. Wolfowitz (who architected the plan long ago) wants to do with Iraq what we did to Japan after WWII. If all goes well, Iraq becomes a central player in the Middle East and has a booming economy on top of a US built democracy. Arab nations look at Iraq and begin to see what is possible when democracy is established, and sentiments toward the US, who made it all possible, quickly change. Ambitious, yes, but it is the only truely good plan for winning the support of the Arab world that I have seen. If the U.N. plays a major role in the post war Iraq, then it really puts a damper on the plan... I for one like the plan... the one without the U.N. (who didn't want to help in the first place).