ABSTRACT
It will be recalled that reference had been made in Chapter 1 to the language of article 58 of the TAL. 1 While more will be said about article 58 in Chapter 5—the present chapter focusing instead on four other specific provisions of that Law—it should be noted that the TAL itself was the transitional law that the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) had put in place in early March 2004. The CPA itself assumed control in Iraq within weeks of the removal of Saddam Hussein from power; its tenure basically spanning the time from late April 2003 to June 28, 2004. Without dwelling on all the interesting details surrounding the establishment of the CPA and the creation of the TAL, it warrants observing that the CPA was not the first administrative authority designed to fill the governmental gap left by the removal of Saddam. Indeed, in January 2003, a couple of months prior to the US-led invasion of Iraq in March of that same year, there had been established within the US Department of Defense the so-called Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), with retired Lieutenant General Jay Garner, who had experience in providing assistance to northern Iraqis in the wake of Gulf War I in 1991, placed in the position of senior leadership. 2 Though the ORHA was supplanted by the CPA in the latter part of April 2003, Gen. Garner remained in Baghdad, at least for a few short weeks thereafter, to assist in the transitioning of presidential envoy, former US Ambassador to the Netherlands, L. Paul Bremer III, to head of the CPA.
