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    there is no reconstruction..., 2004-10-18 10:39:24 | Main | stolen honor, smarmy hacks..., 2004-10-21 12:48:14

    Operation Iraqi... Whatever:

    what we already know and have known for a long time, much like the steady flow of new reports on WMD, reconstruction, humane treatment of all detainees, et. al., is the extent of post-conflict planning. We know that there was none, just as there were no WMD, no reconstruction, no human treatment of all detainees, etc. Knight-Ridder provides us another new report on the extent of post-conflict planning:

    In March 2003, days before the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, American war planners and intelligence officials met at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina to review the Bush administration's plans to oust Saddam Hussein and implant democracy in Iraq.

    Near the end of his presentation, an Army lieutenant colonel who was giving a briefing showed a slide describing the Pentagon's plans for rebuilding Iraq after the war, known in the planners' parlance as Phase 4-C. He was uncomfortable with his material — and for good reason.

    The slide said: "To Be Provided."

    Meaning "to be improvised", like good boy scouts, in which you wing the creation of "markets" by contracting through the beltway's revolving door no-bid projects, undermining the existing labor laws and attacking the unions, and tossing the entire state-socialist economy into the IMF/WTO matrix, effectively handing the country over to the global corporate class to do with as It pleases: as it turns out It pleases to keep its distance, unless some easily grafted public funding in return for low expectations lures it in. The privatization of 200 Iraqi state firms with 100% foreign ownership in Iraqi companies outside the petrol industry, the full repatriation of profits, and the a 15% cap on corporate taxes simply wasn't enough. Then you wonder blankly, after all these humanitarian projects, why they can't turn the electricity on, why the sewer systems still aren't functioning, and why the unemployment rate has risen to 50 percent.


:: posted by buermann @ 2004-10-18 13:24:49 CST | link





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