From the rubble, the US wants to build a democracy in Iraq, writes Conor O'Clery
At the Pentagon yesterday, the US Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, listed several war aims. The final item was "to help the Iraqi people create the conditions for a rapid transition to representative self-government".
The job of reconstruction will be formidable. The first tasks for the US-led forces on "the day after" will be to find offices in the rubble of Baghdad for the military and civilian administrators who will rule a conquered Iraq.
The US commanding officer in the Gulf, Gen Tommy Franks, will move in to take command of the country. US officials have gone to considerable lengths to discourage comparisons to Gen Douglas McArthur, who acted as supreme commander of Japan for many years after the second World War. The plan for Iraq is that Gen Franks will work with a civil administrator, retired Gen Jay Garner to restore the infrastructure and quickly hand over to a new Iraqi government. Gen Garner and a team of US officials are already in the Gulf waiting to follow the troops to Baghdad.
Symbols of the old regime will be destroyed as the Americans "de-Saddamise" Iraq. The Iraqi currency, the dinar, which features Saddam Hussein, will be scrapped and replaced with either a new dinar or the US dollar.
"Whatever it is it will not have Saddam Hussein's picture on it," a US official said. While the "power ministries" such as the military, intelligence and foreign affairs, will remain under American control for many months, perhaps years, the US plans a rolling transfer of authority to an "Iraqi Interim Authority". This will be made up of Iraqis from all the country's major tribal, ethnic and religious groups," Ms Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser told al-Jazeera television last week.
Afghanistan is the model, not Japan. The Iraqi authority would be "kind of like the Afghan Interim Authority, that would be a group of Iraqis who could exercise administrative and other authority" quickly, she said.
The White House has not worked out the details. Mr Bush has signed off on broad concepts, not operational principles, US officials said.
"We seek an Iraq that is democratic, an Iraq that's unified, an Iraq that has its territorial integrity, an Iraq that is multi-ethnic, an Iraq that has no weapons of mass destruction, and an Iraq that is at peace with its neighbours," said State Department official Mr Marc Grossman, at a foreign press briefing this week. "We would intend to stay as long as this takes, but not one day longer."
Returning Iraqi exiles would play a major role in running the country, under the Future of Iraq Programme. "We've brought together large number of free Iraqis to work with us in all of these areas, education, health, water, sanitation, electricity, shelter, transportation, the rule of law, agriculture, communications, economic and financial policy," he said.
At every opportunity US officials emphasise - as Mr Rumsfeld did again yesterday - that the invasion is not a grab for the country's huge oil reserves.
"Iraq's oil belongs to the Iraqi people, and any action that we would take in that area is solely for their benefit," Mr Grossman said. "The structure and the future and how Iraqi oil is dealt with are matters for Iraqis, not matters for the United States."
He said much would depend on whether the oil ministry was run by "Saddam Hussein's cronies" or technocrats who could continue the industry.
The US will try to involve the UN in nation-building to utilise their expertise in humanitarian aid.
Mr Bush said in the Azores that he would seek a new UN resolution that would affirm Iraq's territorial integrity, ensure rapid delivery of humanitarian relief, and endorse a new administration.
This means a new UN Security Council fight as French President Jacques Chirac said yesterday that he would not support such a resolution.