new UN mandate is needed by Bush to occupy Iraq: Media igoring this issue:

Fri Nov-09-07 04:42 AM
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Joshua Holland: Iraqi Government Opposes Renewing U.N. Mandate For U.S. Troops
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/67383

The Iraqi Government Opposes Renewing the U.N. Mandate for U.S. Troops

By Joshua Holland and Raed Jarrar, AlterNet. Posted November 9, 2007.

Bush needs the U.N.'s cover to justify the occupation, but the only way he can renew the expiring U.N. mandate is to cut Iraq's frail democracy out of the process.

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The process of renewing the mandate is highlighting the political rift that's divided the country and fueled most of the violence that's plagued the new state. That's the rift between nationalists -- those Iraqis who, like most of their countrymen, oppose the presence of foreign troops on the ground, the wholesale privatization of Iraq's natural resources and the division of their country into ethnic and sectarian fiefdoms, and Iraqi separatists who at least tolerate the occupation -- if not support it -- and favor a loose sectarian/ethnic-based federation of semiautonomous states held together by a minimal central government in Baghdad.

In the United States, the commercial media has largely ignored this story, focusing almost exclusively on sectarian violence and doing a poor job giving their readers and viewers a sense of what's driving Iraq's political crisis. An understanding of the tensions between nationalists and separatists is necessary to appreciate the import of the parliament being cut out of the legislative process and the degree to which doing so hurts the prospect of real political reconciliation among Iraq's many political factions. (We've discussed this dynamic in greater detail in an earlier article.)

The key ingredient to understand is this: The Iraqi executive branch -- the cabinet and the presidency -- are completely controlled by separatists (including Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and secular politicians). But the parliament is controlled by nationalists -- nationalists from every major ethnic and sectarian group in the country -- who enjoy a small but crucially important majority in the only elected body in the Iraqi government.

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