The hand off of power to Chalabi (in essence) with the US troops still doing ht elifting (and dieing) is
scheduled for June.
Steve Gillard and others have already pointed out how this is shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic, because the US troops will still have to be in country to prop up this "government" with Chalibi and crew being the face of the government.
Gillard nails it with:
Any talk of turning over Iraq to Iraqis should be seen for what it is, the Ahmed Chalabi installment plan. Can you imagine this White House turning over Iraq to someone like Sistani? Not in this lifetime. When they talk of handing over power, it's a not too clever disguise to hand over power to Chalabi or another pro-American puppet.They'll give him an Army and 50K American troops and tell him to keep power.
This will, I am quite sure, lead to Shite/Sunni balkanization and uprisings. We are setting up a Lebanon like Iraq.
As needlenose's blog put it:
By delaying genuine, full elections until after the so-called transitional leadership will have been established with the protection of tens of thousands of "invited" U.S. troops, perhaps bolstered by international forces -- the geniuses behind this scheme clearly think they can outfox Ayatollah al-Sistani and his millions of Shiite followers, swindling them out of an opportunity to take over immediately.
This is the roll-out of the huge lie Bush and company will use.
They will either cut and run, and Iraq will implode.
Or Chalibi and crew will become the puppet front for our continued occupation and control of Iraq, and the siege will grow and the Shitte, Sunni, Kurd divides will tear the country apart and target the occupation (US Troops and the puppet gorvenment) first and formost.