on reversing de-baathification:
Members of the ruling Baath party, many of them Sunni Arabs, were purged from the country's ministries and military in an aggressive de-Baathification program initiated by then US administrator Paul Bremer and, later, misconstrued by the new Shiite political elite to serve their ambitions.
(...) Several Iraqi officials say that the Shiite-dominated parliament has already decided to water down a de-Baathification reform bill sent to it last month by Mr. Talabani and Maliki to render it meaningless. Others say that even if lawmakers were to pass it as is, it would, contrary to claims by the Bush administration, have little impact on promoting reconciliation because it's too late. "It looks to be a little late. It has become very tough," says Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish parliamentarian close to Talabani. "Even after the hanging of Saddam [Hussein], there are those who have become tougher and say 'nothing Baathist will come back.' "
(...) The commission has de-Baathified some 16,500 Iraqis. After Bremer first enacted the policy, about 140,000 former Baath members were kicked out of jobs. Just over 100,000 low-level Baathists were later returned to their jobs.
(...) Ms. Hmoud was fired from her job in September 2003. She, like millions of her compatriots, had simply joined the Baath Party out of economic expediency. But, she says, she is losing hope that she will be de-Baathified soon. In the meantime, to make ends meet, she has set up a candy shop in an abandoned store in northern Baghdad where she had come with her family to flee sectarian violence in their own neighborhood. "I am utterly convinced now that this commission is a sham and that the only Baathists that are returned to work are the ones that pay bribes or have someone to back them," she says. The irony is that more than 20 years ago Ms. Hmoud and her sister helped a neighbor escape Hussein's henchmen. He was wanted for membership in Maliki's then banned Shiite political party.
(...) Mr. Lami says that while the work of his commission is now focused on the fate of just 21,500 former Baathists – out of 12 million Iraqis who ranged from sympathizers to active members – the body must continue to exist to make sure all government institutions are cleansed of the Baath Party's "totalitarian" ways. "Baath, not Al-Qaeda, is Iraq's biggest enemy," he says.
(...) While most lawmakers backed the commission's work, he says, some Iraqi politicians were "misguided" in their effort to link reconciliation to the commission's work and that the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) parliamentary bloc, to which Maliki belongs, must remember that it was only able to sweep into power because of an anti-Baath platform.
(...)