Illegitimacy

U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition forces in Iraq: "I don't believe we had an understanding of how bad this country's infrastructure really was. We expected when we came in that this country had a fairly reliable infrastructure across the board, electrical power, water sanitation. [But they were] all totally a wreck...Where are the spare parts? You don't have spare parts. All of the skill sets are gone. We don't have any of that technology left...You need engineers who can understand this and maximize the output. So these are things we really didn't expect when we created this challenge."

"Creating a challenge" is certainly an innovative misnomer for "invading a sovereign nation on false pretenses." Presumably the U.S. intelligence that said Iraq's infrastructure was in good shape came from the same dubious source that said Saddam had massive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.

Ageal Al-Mudhfar, an Iraqi shopkeeper in Najaf, a stronghold of Shiite Muslims, who account for about 60 percent of the Iraqi population: "We should have leaders that we elected and not someone appointed by the Americans."

Paul Bremer, U.S. civilian administrator in charge of the coalition effort to rebuild Iraq:
"This is a country with very little experience in self-government. It was a dictatorship for 35 years...To be successful, political activity has to take place in a constitutional...framework before there can be elections. Premature elections have a high risk of not succeeding. [The United Nations wants to] put the cart before the horse [and] have elections followed by a constitution. We've simply said that's not acceptable. It won't work."

Thus the U.S. is pushing for a national constitution drafted by Washington-appointed (rather than Iraqi-elected) representatives, which would then be followed by national elections. The elected officials would then have to abide by a constitution dictated by U.S. interests, and that those officials and the Iraqi people had no voice in creating. Can you say "illegitimate", Mr. Bremer?