Our Defense Department and our State Department have spent the last decade or more supporting various exile groups. Common sense would have told them that this was, at best, a self-limiting option. But who would expect a bureaucRAT to have any common sense?

Who are these exiles?

• People who were in power when the Baathists took over 35 years ago
• People in power who were kicked out when Saddam took over 25 years ago
• People in power who fell out of favor with Saddam over the years
• Children of people who used to be in power
• Religious theocrats

The people of Iraq view them as carpetbaggers. Never mind who has the support of Don Rumsfeld or Colin Powell. Who has any support among the current residents of Iraq? Why would the people of Iraq vote to install an old band of crooks and thugs just because they escaped to America thirty years ago?

Any exile group, Cuban, Iraqi, Irish, Palestinian, generally represents the former power structure and is first and foremost intent on restoring themselves to power. Arafat invokes the "right of return" primarily because he doesn't want them all returning to the West Bank and making trouble for his "wealth gathering" activities. The good old days the Cubans in Miami long for are Batista, the Mob, and dirt poor peasants. The fellows mournfully singing IRA songs in South Boston bars aren't welcome home by the Sinn Féin Gaelic. They represent a competition that the current thugs don't need.

The installation of exiles as a government in Iraq does not serve the Iraqi people. Sure, they're less thuggish than Saddam. But who do you think is maintaining those militias? Every one of the members of the Governing Council is connected to an armed group and are just waiting for July 1.

As much as I hate to agree with a UN guy, he has the right idea. The interim government, which will rule until elections, has to be of and for the Iraqi people, and not the favorite sons of the bureaucRATS in Washington. The notion that they may be thugs but they're our thugs is outmoded and unAmerican. Let's make the effort, including the stumbles that will happen, to give the Iraqis every chance at real freedom. Let's stand firm against the bureaucRATic games and minor league thuggery and probvide them with an interim government they can be proud of and build their country with.