BY NUH GONULTAS
TERCUMAN- Columnist Nuh Gonultas comments on the Bush administration’s appointment of Paul Bremer as the head of Iraq’s interim government. A summary of his column is as follows:
While everyone was widely expecting that retired US Lt. Gen. Jay Garner would be the figure overseeing Iraq’s transition to ‘democracy,’ quite surprisingly, George W. Bush has now appointed L. Paul Bremer, an anti-terrorism expert, to head the country’s interim regime. The rumor has it that Washington’s change of heart resulted from a well-publicized rift between the US State Department and the Pentagon. The Bush administration already knew that Garner was a weapons dealer with ties to Israel, and so hardly the right person to settle the delicate balances of the nation. Indeed, it would be a grave mistake to give the reins of US-occupied Iraq to this man. The appointment of an anti-terrorism expert like Bremer becomes even more telling when one realizes that US designs in Iraq have far-reaching implications for the entire Middle East region.
Bremer, 62, once chaired an anti-terrorism commission in the US, and was part of a group which fully a year-and-a half before the Sept. 11 attacks prepared a report warning of a ‘grave terrorist threat.’ The report predicted that in the not-too-distant future, the US could fall prey to a devastating terrorist attack rivaling the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
The US is now moving to abandon its bases in Saudi Arabia and no longer needs Turkey’s military assistance. Iraq is the new staging ground for US forces in the Middle East. But what does all this mean? Bush’s choice of a retired anti-terrorism expert rather than an ex-military man gives us clues to the answer to this question: The US’ top priority in Iraq is not the country’s reconstruction but rather gaining an extensive foothold in the region, under the guise of the war against terrorism, so as to be able to besiege all the countries of the Middle East. According to Bremer, to prevent new terrorist attacks against the US, countries such as Libya and Iran must be strictly controlled and kept under constant pressure.
The appointment of Bremer to a position over Garner is a positive development for Turkey, since Bremer supports keeping a chokehold on the terrorist group PKK/KADEK. For example, I remember him saying last year that the Netherlands must ban the PKK in their country, and that if Amsterdam continued to pursue a tolerant attitude towards the PKK and similar groups, US-Dutch relations could suffer severe damage.
We must wait and see what the new regime in Iraq under Bremer will bring to the region in general, and Turkey in particular.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION