No authority or experience but who needs the peoples' consent when the Iraqi version of Jerry Falwell has your back
Abbas Hussein Zubaidi, a 31-year-old electronics technician who recently proclaimed himself director of Baghdad's Kindi Hospital, has never been to medical school. He has no professional experience. His only claim to power is a one-page edict from Iraq's most influential group of Shiite Muslim scholars, secured under a glass pane, that deputizes him to run the 350-bed facility.
The hospital's doctors want Zubaidi to leave. Fearful that asking him to go could provoke his armed supporters, the doctors have repeatedly asked U.S. officials to remove Zubaidi. But more than a week after the first request was made, they said they have received no definitive response.
"This is the responsibility of the Americans," said an orthopedist. "They are occupying our country. They should be protecting us. Where are they?"
After seeking to project an image of incontrovertible force on the battlefield during the campaign to topple Saddam Hussein's government, U.S. military commanders have done relatively little to crack down on the legions of religious clerics, tribal sheiks and once-exiled opposition leaders who have since grabbed power without permission in postwar Iraq.
The U.S. officials who have been selected to administer postwar Iraq, drawn largely from the Defense and State departments, remain cloistered in the 258-room, marble-floored Republican Palace on the banks of the Tigris River, where they lack working phones or regular e-mail access. Because of security requirements, they can venture outside the gated compound only if they are escorted by gun-toting soldiers in a Humvee. Iraqis cannot enter the palace grounds without a military escort.
It's an interesting article from the Washington Post.
Abbas Hussein Zubaidi, a 31-year-old electronics technician who recently proclaimed himself director of Baghdad's Kindi Hospital, has never been to medical school. He has no professional experience. His only claim to power is a one-page edict from Iraq's most influential group of Shiite Muslim scholars, secured under a glass pane, that deputizes him to run the 350-bed facility.
The hospital's doctors want Zubaidi to leave. Fearful that asking him to go could provoke his armed supporters, the doctors have repeatedly asked U.S. officials to remove Zubaidi. But more than a week after the first request was made, they said they have received no definitive response.
"This is the responsibility of the Americans," said an orthopedist. "They are occupying our country. They should be protecting us. Where are they?"
After seeking to project an image of incontrovertible force on the battlefield during the campaign to topple Saddam Hussein's government, U.S. military commanders have done relatively little to crack down on the legions of religious clerics, tribal sheiks and once-exiled opposition leaders who have since grabbed power without permission in postwar Iraq.
The U.S. officials who have been selected to administer postwar Iraq, drawn largely from the Defense and State departments, remain cloistered in the 258-room, marble-floored Republican Palace on the banks of the Tigris River, where they lack working phones or regular e-mail access. Because of security requirements, they can venture outside the gated compound only if they are escorted by gun-toting soldiers in a Humvee. Iraqis cannot enter the palace grounds without a military escort.
It's an interesting article from the Washington Post.
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