| President Bush has several times reiterated his pledge that full authority will be given over to the Iraqi Governing Council on June 30. That target date was set in November, at about the high-water mark of our military operation.
It was thought a sensible thing to do. The decision took reasonable account of the perspectives of the day. One consideration was to allay the apprehension that our actions were imperialist in design -- that we were in Iraq to squat down more or less permanently over the oil fields, or at least that we proposed to govern Iraq about the way Gen. Douglas MacArthur governed Japan, which he did for four years.
Something has got into Mr. Bush's formulation of that June 30 promise. His reiteration of it has taken on a moral tone. He speaks of the date now as though to act on it were an obligation of conscience, not to be trifled with.
But the difficulty is now plain. We cannot turn over government to the Iraqi council on June 30 in good conscience. The developments of the last week make it inconceivable that we should do so:
The old concern that Shiites and Sunnis would fire up sectarian hostility to dismember the state is taking a back seat to the concern that they are forgetting their differences in order to fight jointly -- for the expulsion of the American military.
Our program to train an Iraqi peacekeeping constabulary is in disarray. Many Iraqis trained and pressed into duty fled from the onrush of dissenters and terrorists, in some cases joining with them. There were reports of trucks and cars designated as equipment for Iraqi police which, in the pell-mell of midweek, were turned over to, or taken by, the terrorists for use in their anti-American war.
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