QUOTE OF THE DAY
Symbols of sovereignty must be returned to the Iraqi people through their government. The republican palace is one of the most important symbols, it must be returned to the Iraqi people.
-- Ahmad Chalabi, speaking to the New York Sun's Eli Lake, about the "International Zone" (a.k.a, the "Green Zone"), which sits in the center of the Baghdad, and his plan to open the heavily-guarded compound to city residents.
Chalabi evidently told Lake that he had "accepted an informal nomination to be prime minister" from "prominent members" of the United Iraqi Alliance list, the Shia slate which emerged victorious after the January 30 elections.
One can't help agreeing with Chalabi about the Green Zone, and especially the Presidential Palace. This structure--an unholy combination of Babylonian dimensions and Arabian kitsch, its construction and maintenance costs wrung from the blood of the Iraqi people--is the perfect symbol for Saddam's brutal psyche. No better fate could befall it than transformation into offices for the new Iraqi government and a museum dedicate to the victims of the fallen regime.