Meet Your New Bosses, Same As Your Old Bosses

U.S. military commanders have ordered a halt to local elections and self-rule in provincial cities and towns across Iraq, choosing instead to install their own handpicked mayors and administrators, many of whom are former Iraqi military leaders … “In a postwar situation like this, if you start holding elections, the people who are rejectionists tend to win,” [Proconsul] Bremer said. “It’s often the best-organized who win, and the best-organized right now are the former Baathists and to some extent the Islamists.” … Ten weeks into the occupation, the cities and towns outside of Baghdad are largely administered by former Iraqi military and police officers and people who had close ties to the Baath Party. Iraqi generals and police colonels, for example, are now mayors of a dozen cities, including Samarra, Najaf, Tikrit, Balad and Baqubah.