ABSTRACT
On 27 November 2008, the Iraqi parliament voted to accept a new set of treaties marking the effective end of the American occupation and indeed its post-war ambitions for Iraq. The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) sets an unambiguous timetable for all US troops to be out of the country. With a date set for the formal end of the occupation, the scale of the United States’ ambitions to transform Iraq, and its failure, have now become fully apparent. US war aims in Iraq involved nothing less than a complete revolution in the country’s political economy. The removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime was the first and most straightforward part of that plan. However, from Washington’s point of view, for regime change to be sustainable, a second stage of the process would be the complete removal of the old Iraqi ruling elite from the commanding heights of the state. They needed to be replaced by politicians who were much less economically and politically autonomous. This would involve removing any political role for former members of the old regime and minimizing their influence in the coercive and administrative structures of the state. The US occupation also needed to identify and marginalize other indigenous political forces that might destabilize a pro-US agenda.
