Before leaping on his departing helicopter, the US coalition head Paul Bremer signed the final order - number 100 - in a stream of edicts that will continue to have legal force under the interim regime and that are likely to bind a future democratically elected government. They include a law restricting some candidates, particularly those associated with the militias, from standing in the elections scheduled for next January. Another edict, only signed last weekend, gives US and other foreign civilian contractors legal immunity while performing their work in Iraq. Some of these laws could in theory be rescinded, though Mr Bremer has written the rules, which make the process very difficult. He has also made a series of appointments to influential positions for five-year terms and has required that Mr Allawi's choice of national security and intelligence chiefs will also run for five years. If one considers, too, the massive US diplomatic presence for a project that, as described by ambassador John Negroponte "will take many months and many years", not to mention the mostly US military presence over which Iraq will have no veto, then the transfer of sovereignty is - to no one's great surprise - strictly limited.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,1249468,00.html