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The truth behind the reconstruction of Iraq
A designer regime, concocted behind closed doors by Pentagon and State Department planners, is now being imposed on Iraq with great speed and without any kind of popular consent.
Counterpunch.org
May 13, 2003
http://www.counterpunch.org/levich05132003.html
KICK THEIR ASS AND TAKE THEIR GAS:
Democracy Comes to Iraq
By Jacob Levich
One month after the fall of Baghdad, the US has successfully liberated the people of Iraq from meaningful involvement in decisions about their own future.
A designer regime, concocted behind closed doors by Pentagon and State Department planners, is now being imposed on Iraq with great speed and without any kind of popular consent. Iraq's nascent "democratic transition government" is window-dressing for a military dictatorship charged with insuring that US policy goals -- especially the disposition of Iraq's vast petroleum reserves -- are protected from any troublesome outbreaks of democracy.
As journalist Naomi Klein recognized weeks ago, the Iraqi people will not be granted authority until fundamental and probably irrevocable features of the New Iraq are locked in place.
The essentials of the US blueprint for post-invasion Iraq were known to legislators by February 2003, when Undersecretary of State Douglas Feith outlined administration policy goals in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Feith drew on months of planning by a White House committee chaired by Iran-Contra perjurer Elliott Abrams, as well as input from Establishment intellectuals and a series of closed-door meetings sponsored by the State Department's "Future of Iraq" program.
Further details of the blueprint were disclosed early this year to key Iraqi expatriates like White House favorite Ahmad Chalabi, the career dissident and convicted felon who is Bush's man in Baghdad. The highhandedness of US plans alarmed even Chalabi, who partially summarized them in a February 19 Wall Street Journal op-ed:
"[T]he plan ... calls for an American military governor to rule Iraq for up to two years. ... The occupation authorities would appoint a 'consultative council' of handpicked Iraqis with non-executive powers and unspecified authority, serving at the pleasure of the American governor. The occupation authorities would also appoint a committee to draft a constitution for Iraq. After an unspecified period, indirect elections would be held for a 'constituent assembly' that would vote to ratify the new constitution without a popular referendum."
At no point in this democratic transition, it should be noted, will the Iraqi people actually be permitted to vote.
Events of the past month suggest that the US is following its blueprint to the letter. Iraq is now controlled by a military occupation government known euphemistically as the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. Its chief, former Lt. General Jay Garner, is de facto Viceroy of Iraq. (In a decision dictated partly by public relations considerations, Garner will soon be replaced in this role by a civilian, Kissinger crony L. Paul Bremer III. According to The New York Times, Bremer is being installed in order to "lessen the appearance of a military occupation." Like Garner, however, he will be reporting to US Central Command.)
On April 15 and 27, the US convened official gatherings of handpicked Iraqi "delegates" in Ur and Baghdad. The meetings took place in halls encircled by US armored vehicles. Participation was by US invitation only; representatives from Iraq's left-wing, fundamentalist, and nationalist parties were systematically excluded; ordinary citizens seeking to observe democracy in action were barred from the hall. White House envoy Zalmay Khalilzad presided.
On May 4, Garner announced that he had appointed the "consultative council" mentioned by Chalabi. Although Garner implied that the council's makeup reflected the sentiments of the Baghdad conference, the nine members turned out to be the usual suspects: prominent Iraqi dissidents, mostly expatriates, who have been on the US payroll for years. Despite his evident unpopularity at all levels of Iraqi society, Chalabi is among them.
Garner further announced that the US is beginning the plan's next phase, the selection of a constituent assembly. With surprising frankness, he described this puppet body as "a government with an Iraqi face on it that [will be] totally dealing with the coalition."
Again, no elections will be held, but teams of Iraqi ex-dissidents close to the US are fanning out across the country to recruit amenable local officials and leaders. Recent disclosures suggest that their loyalty may well be secured through blackmail and bribery.
According to the new York Times, the US has provided Chalabi's gang with a blackmail kit in the form of documents taken from the Ba'ath Party and Iraqi secret police archives, described as "incendiary material in a region where under-the-table payoffs to buy protection, loyalty or silence are the seamy side of political life." The existence of a bribery program is not openly acknowledged, but can be inferred from leaks surrounding the April 10 assassination of US-sponsored Shiite cleric Abdul Majid al Khoei in Najaf. Shortly after his death, US intelligence sources revealed that Khoei had been provided with $13 million to buy the loyalty of Shiite leaders.
These, then, are the sordid realities behind President Bush's recent declaration that the "we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people." And while the White House issues platitudes about democracy, anti-US street demonstrations, which arguably represent democracy in its purest form, are being put down by lethal force.
On April 15, soldiers opened fire on a crowd hostile to the US-imposed governor in Mosul, killing at least 10 people and injuring as many as 100. On April 29 and again on April 30, US troops machine-gunned protestors in the town of Fallujah, killing at least 15 Iraqis and wounding more than 75 in massacres reminiscent of the British firings in colonial India. An unmistakable message is being sent.
What's at stake? In a word, oil. Indeed, a swift and sweeping restructuring of Iraq's petroleum-fueled economy is already well underway.
Acting unilaterally, the U.S. has moved to radically restructure Iraq's oil industry on the model of a Western private corporation, with a chief executive and a management team, vetted by American officials, who would answer to a "multinational" board of advisers. Oil production is now under the control of former ExxonMobil executive Gary Vogler, who has publicly warned Iraq's indigenous oil ministers not to make any decisions without the approval of allied forces.
All this is a prelude to the privatization of Iraqi petroleum. Speaking for the State Department-sponsored Oil and Energy Working Group, Kurdish oil consultant Dara Attar says openly that Iraq is "going to 'demonopolize' the oil, inviting foreign companies to invest directly in development of new oil fields." According to another working group member, former Iraqi oil minister Fadhil Chalabi, the US will then pull Iraq out of OPEC. The defection from OPEC of the nation with the world's second-largest oil reserves could effectively destroy the organization, eliminating once for all the threat that oil-producing states may set the agenda for their own future.
Meanwhile, a careful reading of mainstream news stories suggests that the US is quietly foisting upon the people of Iraq a regimen of economic "shock therapy" reminiscent of the neo-liberal reforms that devastated Central European economies during the 1990s.
Acting on the advice of the US Treasury Department, CENTCOM has replaced the Iraqi dinar with the US dollar -- wiping out the savings and pensions of the Iraqi people at one blow. Simultaneously, the system of price controls by which Saddam's government kept food, electricity, and other necessities affordable has been abolished. Eventually a new dinar will be issued, but only after the US has set up a new central bank and "stabilized" the economy under Treasury Department supervision.
This stabilization will likely take the form of a wholesale, institutionalized looting of national wealth. The US has determined that the Iraqi people themselves, through the sale of their petroleum, will be made to finance repair of the immense infrastructural and social damage caused by two wars and a decade of punitive sanctions. This money will flow to well-connected US corporate giants like Halliburton and Bechtel, which have already been awarded no-bid contracts totaling nearly $2 billion. Ironically, the same defense-related firms that reaped huge profits from the destruction of Iraq will now benefit from its reconstruction.
Additionally, the Iraqi people will be expected to honor nearly $300 billion in foreign debt left over from the Saddam years -- or at least, that portion of the debt owed to the US, UK, and other supporters of the war. Servicing of these debts will likely require further privatization of assets -- in practice, a firesale of commonly held national assets to foreign private investors.
By the time Iraqis are granted some semblance of self-government, their country will already have been reduced to the status of a Third World debtor nation -- incapacitated, brutalized, beggared, and therefore pliable enough to accommodate both international corporate interests and a massive, permanent US military presence.
Yet if history is any guide, the people of Iraq will not submit meekly to this latest form of tyranny. Resistance will escalate, and so will repression.
Bremer, arriving in Baghdad with a mandate to restore order and security, is a counterterrorism specialist who favors hardline measures, including "targeted killings." So the near future isn’t hard to guess: dissenters will be jailed, "disappeared," assassinated, or simply mowed down with automatic weapons.
They will of course be branded as recalcitrant Saddamists, Iranian spies, and al-Qaeda terrorists. Given what we know about the goals and nature of the occupation government, it might be more accurate to call them freedom fighters.
**************************************************
Jacob Levich (jlevich [at] earthlink.net) assisted the Research Unit for Political Economy in the preparation of Behind the Invasion of Iraq (Monthly Review Press 2003). He is a writer, editor, and activist based in Queens, New York.
May 13, 2003
http://www.counterpunch.org/levich05132003.html
KICK THEIR ASS AND TAKE THEIR GAS:
Democracy Comes to Iraq
By Jacob Levich
One month after the fall of Baghdad, the US has successfully liberated the people of Iraq from meaningful involvement in decisions about their own future.
A designer regime, concocted behind closed doors by Pentagon and State Department planners, is now being imposed on Iraq with great speed and without any kind of popular consent. Iraq's nascent "democratic transition government" is window-dressing for a military dictatorship charged with insuring that US policy goals -- especially the disposition of Iraq's vast petroleum reserves -- are protected from any troublesome outbreaks of democracy.
As journalist Naomi Klein recognized weeks ago, the Iraqi people will not be granted authority until fundamental and probably irrevocable features of the New Iraq are locked in place.
The essentials of the US blueprint for post-invasion Iraq were known to legislators by February 2003, when Undersecretary of State Douglas Feith outlined administration policy goals in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Feith drew on months of planning by a White House committee chaired by Iran-Contra perjurer Elliott Abrams, as well as input from Establishment intellectuals and a series of closed-door meetings sponsored by the State Department's "Future of Iraq" program.
Further details of the blueprint were disclosed early this year to key Iraqi expatriates like White House favorite Ahmad Chalabi, the career dissident and convicted felon who is Bush's man in Baghdad. The highhandedness of US plans alarmed even Chalabi, who partially summarized them in a February 19 Wall Street Journal op-ed:
"[T]he plan ... calls for an American military governor to rule Iraq for up to two years. ... The occupation authorities would appoint a 'consultative council' of handpicked Iraqis with non-executive powers and unspecified authority, serving at the pleasure of the American governor. The occupation authorities would also appoint a committee to draft a constitution for Iraq. After an unspecified period, indirect elections would be held for a 'constituent assembly' that would vote to ratify the new constitution without a popular referendum."
At no point in this democratic transition, it should be noted, will the Iraqi people actually be permitted to vote.
Events of the past month suggest that the US is following its blueprint to the letter. Iraq is now controlled by a military occupation government known euphemistically as the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. Its chief, former Lt. General Jay Garner, is de facto Viceroy of Iraq. (In a decision dictated partly by public relations considerations, Garner will soon be replaced in this role by a civilian, Kissinger crony L. Paul Bremer III. According to The New York Times, Bremer is being installed in order to "lessen the appearance of a military occupation." Like Garner, however, he will be reporting to US Central Command.)
On April 15 and 27, the US convened official gatherings of handpicked Iraqi "delegates" in Ur and Baghdad. The meetings took place in halls encircled by US armored vehicles. Participation was by US invitation only; representatives from Iraq's left-wing, fundamentalist, and nationalist parties were systematically excluded; ordinary citizens seeking to observe democracy in action were barred from the hall. White House envoy Zalmay Khalilzad presided.
On May 4, Garner announced that he had appointed the "consultative council" mentioned by Chalabi. Although Garner implied that the council's makeup reflected the sentiments of the Baghdad conference, the nine members turned out to be the usual suspects: prominent Iraqi dissidents, mostly expatriates, who have been on the US payroll for years. Despite his evident unpopularity at all levels of Iraqi society, Chalabi is among them.
Garner further announced that the US is beginning the plan's next phase, the selection of a constituent assembly. With surprising frankness, he described this puppet body as "a government with an Iraqi face on it that [will be] totally dealing with the coalition."
Again, no elections will be held, but teams of Iraqi ex-dissidents close to the US are fanning out across the country to recruit amenable local officials and leaders. Recent disclosures suggest that their loyalty may well be secured through blackmail and bribery.
According to the new York Times, the US has provided Chalabi's gang with a blackmail kit in the form of documents taken from the Ba'ath Party and Iraqi secret police archives, described as "incendiary material in a region where under-the-table payoffs to buy protection, loyalty or silence are the seamy side of political life." The existence of a bribery program is not openly acknowledged, but can be inferred from leaks surrounding the April 10 assassination of US-sponsored Shiite cleric Abdul Majid al Khoei in Najaf. Shortly after his death, US intelligence sources revealed that Khoei had been provided with $13 million to buy the loyalty of Shiite leaders.
These, then, are the sordid realities behind President Bush's recent declaration that the "we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people." And while the White House issues platitudes about democracy, anti-US street demonstrations, which arguably represent democracy in its purest form, are being put down by lethal force.
On April 15, soldiers opened fire on a crowd hostile to the US-imposed governor in Mosul, killing at least 10 people and injuring as many as 100. On April 29 and again on April 30, US troops machine-gunned protestors in the town of Fallujah, killing at least 15 Iraqis and wounding more than 75 in massacres reminiscent of the British firings in colonial India. An unmistakable message is being sent.
What's at stake? In a word, oil. Indeed, a swift and sweeping restructuring of Iraq's petroleum-fueled economy is already well underway.
Acting unilaterally, the U.S. has moved to radically restructure Iraq's oil industry on the model of a Western private corporation, with a chief executive and a management team, vetted by American officials, who would answer to a "multinational" board of advisers. Oil production is now under the control of former ExxonMobil executive Gary Vogler, who has publicly warned Iraq's indigenous oil ministers not to make any decisions without the approval of allied forces.
All this is a prelude to the privatization of Iraqi petroleum. Speaking for the State Department-sponsored Oil and Energy Working Group, Kurdish oil consultant Dara Attar says openly that Iraq is "going to 'demonopolize' the oil, inviting foreign companies to invest directly in development of new oil fields." According to another working group member, former Iraqi oil minister Fadhil Chalabi, the US will then pull Iraq out of OPEC. The defection from OPEC of the nation with the world's second-largest oil reserves could effectively destroy the organization, eliminating once for all the threat that oil-producing states may set the agenda for their own future.
Meanwhile, a careful reading of mainstream news stories suggests that the US is quietly foisting upon the people of Iraq a regimen of economic "shock therapy" reminiscent of the neo-liberal reforms that devastated Central European economies during the 1990s.
Acting on the advice of the US Treasury Department, CENTCOM has replaced the Iraqi dinar with the US dollar -- wiping out the savings and pensions of the Iraqi people at one blow. Simultaneously, the system of price controls by which Saddam's government kept food, electricity, and other necessities affordable has been abolished. Eventually a new dinar will be issued, but only after the US has set up a new central bank and "stabilized" the economy under Treasury Department supervision.
This stabilization will likely take the form of a wholesale, institutionalized looting of national wealth. The US has determined that the Iraqi people themselves, through the sale of their petroleum, will be made to finance repair of the immense infrastructural and social damage caused by two wars and a decade of punitive sanctions. This money will flow to well-connected US corporate giants like Halliburton and Bechtel, which have already been awarded no-bid contracts totaling nearly $2 billion. Ironically, the same defense-related firms that reaped huge profits from the destruction of Iraq will now benefit from its reconstruction.
Additionally, the Iraqi people will be expected to honor nearly $300 billion in foreign debt left over from the Saddam years -- or at least, that portion of the debt owed to the US, UK, and other supporters of the war. Servicing of these debts will likely require further privatization of assets -- in practice, a firesale of commonly held national assets to foreign private investors.
By the time Iraqis are granted some semblance of self-government, their country will already have been reduced to the status of a Third World debtor nation -- incapacitated, brutalized, beggared, and therefore pliable enough to accommodate both international corporate interests and a massive, permanent US military presence.
Yet if history is any guide, the people of Iraq will not submit meekly to this latest form of tyranny. Resistance will escalate, and so will repression.
Bremer, arriving in Baghdad with a mandate to restore order and security, is a counterterrorism specialist who favors hardline measures, including "targeted killings." So the near future isn’t hard to guess: dissenters will be jailed, "disappeared," assassinated, or simply mowed down with automatic weapons.
They will of course be branded as recalcitrant Saddamists, Iranian spies, and al-Qaeda terrorists. Given what we know about the goals and nature of the occupation government, it might be more accurate to call them freedom fighters.
**************************************************
Jacob Levich (jlevich [at] earthlink.net) assisted the Research Unit for Political Economy in the preparation of Behind the Invasion of Iraq (Monthly Review Press 2003). He is a writer, editor, and activist based in Queens, New York.
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Is there any chance that the international community will not co-operate with this grand larceny? Is there any chance that GWB will be impeached before the thieves have finished?
Probably not, but we can hope.
those "no blood for oil" signs made me so mad when i first saw them. i guess i was hoping that the war was about something more than that, something that wasn't so simple and petty. and now i sit here, nauseas, because i was wrong... so very wrong.
How do you folks believe this bullshit?
Didn't any of you read the articles about the US Army having to print dinars with the pictures of Hussein on them - because that was the only plates they have to use until new ones are produced?
Duh - they are still using dinars! The monetary system has not been changed - the thread is pure bullshit!
And how about this from LA Times (not known as a neocon paper LOL!)
Iraqi Capitalists Ready to Make a Quick Dinar
By Los Angeles Times
Jun 17, 2003 - 08:41:26 am PDT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Inside the marble-tiled lobby of the Hotel Ekal, investors carrying side arms are negotiating business deals. A mile or so away, two brothers are installing one of this capital's first Internet cafes. Above the entrance to the House of Elegant Bodies, a poster of a pumped-up Arnold Schwarzenegger lures potential U.S. patrons.
The reconstruction gold rush has begun.
While the Pentagon-run Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance gradually gets a grip on Iraq's postwar needs eight weeks after Baghdad fell to allied forces, the private side of rebuilding is proceeding at breakneck speed -- without much in the way of government involvement, official supervision or international approval.
"Get ORHA out of the way," said Rubar Sandi, an Iraqi American investment banker who began leasing property and launching commercial ventures almost as soon as the smoke cleared. "Let the business community do this. They know what to do and how to rebuild."
The reconstruction effort of officials, consultants and contractors affiliated with ORHA, which recently changed its name to the Coalition Provisional Authority, is expected to consume tens of billions of dollars over a period of several years.
But for the untold number of independent businesses, investors and would-be entrepreneurs operating independently of ORHA, a deal can be negotiated, approved and put into effect between afternoon tea and 11 p.m. curfew.
"A lot of people see they can sell their property, get cash, buy some products and sell them, make quick money," said 37-year-old Karam Hasan, who is trying to sell his Al Arz barbershop -- if the price is right.
Sometimes the two tracks of reconstruction collide.
Sandi, the merchant banker, came to Iraq with plans to install a cellular telephone network and launch a commercial airline. He said he had a telecom vendor ready to start installing towers and relay stations. He had arranged to lease several jetliners and hire former Iraqi Airways pilots, crews and ground personnel to begin twice-weekly flights from New York to Baghdad.
But ORHA had other ideas, said Sandi, who founded the U.S.-Iraq Business Council in Washington, D.C., and participated in the State Department's pre-war Future of Iraq rebuilding project.
Sandi quoted ORHA officials as telling him that they would confiscate any telecommunications equipment that he tried to install. If he tried to launch commercial air service, his planes would be grounded, they said. Those areas of reconstruction are subject to high-level approval, and remain off limits to upstarts for now.
"They are not facilitators," he said of ORHA officials. "They are not helpful. They are nothing but a bunch of bureaucracy."
Sandi put his telephone and airline plans on hold. Instead, he teamed up with a local partner, hired about 300 Iraqis and began providing security, transportation, catering, translation and professional services to visiting executives. He leased four hotels, including the 280-room Al Sadir and 200-room Hotel Baghdad, which he plans to develop into full-service business centers.
Sandi greets visitors in the Ekal, a smaller hotel that has become the temporary nerve center of his reconstruction network. Armed guards check IDs and issue passes. Above the elevators are two clocks, each bearing a new sign: One says "Baghdad," the other "Texas."
Life in reconstruction's fast lane is not without risk. Business schemes that appeared flawless might grow warts on closer inspection. Competition can be cutthroat. Capital can dry up. Vendors and purchasers can renege on agreements. Trusted partners can turn out to be thieves.
Hasan, the barber, thought he could turn a quick dinar by purchasing what was described to him as a solid silver jewelry box from the palace of Saddam Hussein's son Uday. He bought the box, but it turned out to be a plated product of dubious origin, worth considerably less than he paid.
Hareth Zahawi, a subcontractor who has been attempting to line up reconstruction work for native Iraqis, was discussing a possible alliance with a Kuwaiti firm, only to learn that the company was using information obtained from Zahawi to cut its own deal with the coalition. "They tried to sideline us," Zahawi said. "It's a serious risk."
Some experts express concern that free-market capitalism, while efficient at channeling money to its most productive use, might be too much, too soon for a country struggling to emerge from decades of failed central planning.
Nearly 500,000 Iraqis are losing government paychecks as the coalition dismisses Saddam's military forces, dissolves his Information Ministry and removes Baath Party loyalists from other agencies. Thousands more might join them as inefficient state-operated industries fall by the wayside.
Iraq's emaciated private sector will suffer casualties too. Some experts predict that home-grown merchants, traders, builders and service providers will be squeezed out by foreigners with more experience, deeper pockets and closer ties to the United States and its allies.
Still, for every economic hand wringer, there is at least one cowboy capitalist ready to tame the new frontier.
"It's like Texas in 1879," said Ihsan Hussein Ali, who was not sure why he chose to cite that year in particular. "There are no rules."
Hussein Ali and his younger brother Ghassan, both engineers, are ready to escort fellow Iraqis from the 19th century to the 21st. They are preparing to open three Baghdad Internet cafes, where patrons ready to spend $3 to $4 an hour will be able to cruise the Web and catch up on e-mails.
They were planning to hook up 20 PCs to satellite receivers inside the first cafe, a small outlet affixed to the Baghdad Hotel.
Before the war, the brothers were helping a Jordan-based trading operation bring oil field equipment and other industrial goods into Iraq under the United Nations "oil-for-food" program, which is being shut down. So they figure it's time to look for other opportunities.
Didn't any of you read the articles about the US Army having to print dinars with the pictures of Hussein on them - because that was the only plates they have to use until new ones are produced?
Duh - they are still using dinars! The monetary system has not been changed - the thread is pure bullshit!
And how about this from LA Times (not known as a neocon paper LOL!)
Iraqi Capitalists Ready to Make a Quick Dinar
By Los Angeles Times
Jun 17, 2003 - 08:41:26 am PDT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Inside the marble-tiled lobby of the Hotel Ekal, investors carrying side arms are negotiating business deals. A mile or so away, two brothers are installing one of this capital's first Internet cafes. Above the entrance to the House of Elegant Bodies, a poster of a pumped-up Arnold Schwarzenegger lures potential U.S. patrons.
The reconstruction gold rush has begun.
While the Pentagon-run Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance gradually gets a grip on Iraq's postwar needs eight weeks after Baghdad fell to allied forces, the private side of rebuilding is proceeding at breakneck speed -- without much in the way of government involvement, official supervision or international approval.
"Get ORHA out of the way," said Rubar Sandi, an Iraqi American investment banker who began leasing property and launching commercial ventures almost as soon as the smoke cleared. "Let the business community do this. They know what to do and how to rebuild."
The reconstruction effort of officials, consultants and contractors affiliated with ORHA, which recently changed its name to the Coalition Provisional Authority, is expected to consume tens of billions of dollars over a period of several years.
But for the untold number of independent businesses, investors and would-be entrepreneurs operating independently of ORHA, a deal can be negotiated, approved and put into effect between afternoon tea and 11 p.m. curfew.
"A lot of people see they can sell their property, get cash, buy some products and sell them, make quick money," said 37-year-old Karam Hasan, who is trying to sell his Al Arz barbershop -- if the price is right.
Sometimes the two tracks of reconstruction collide.
Sandi, the merchant banker, came to Iraq with plans to install a cellular telephone network and launch a commercial airline. He said he had a telecom vendor ready to start installing towers and relay stations. He had arranged to lease several jetliners and hire former Iraqi Airways pilots, crews and ground personnel to begin twice-weekly flights from New York to Baghdad.
But ORHA had other ideas, said Sandi, who founded the U.S.-Iraq Business Council in Washington, D.C., and participated in the State Department's pre-war Future of Iraq rebuilding project.
Sandi quoted ORHA officials as telling him that they would confiscate any telecommunications equipment that he tried to install. If he tried to launch commercial air service, his planes would be grounded, they said. Those areas of reconstruction are subject to high-level approval, and remain off limits to upstarts for now.
"They are not facilitators," he said of ORHA officials. "They are not helpful. They are nothing but a bunch of bureaucracy."
Sandi put his telephone and airline plans on hold. Instead, he teamed up with a local partner, hired about 300 Iraqis and began providing security, transportation, catering, translation and professional services to visiting executives. He leased four hotels, including the 280-room Al Sadir and 200-room Hotel Baghdad, which he plans to develop into full-service business centers.
Sandi greets visitors in the Ekal, a smaller hotel that has become the temporary nerve center of his reconstruction network. Armed guards check IDs and issue passes. Above the elevators are two clocks, each bearing a new sign: One says "Baghdad," the other "Texas."
Life in reconstruction's fast lane is not without risk. Business schemes that appeared flawless might grow warts on closer inspection. Competition can be cutthroat. Capital can dry up. Vendors and purchasers can renege on agreements. Trusted partners can turn out to be thieves.
Hasan, the barber, thought he could turn a quick dinar by purchasing what was described to him as a solid silver jewelry box from the palace of Saddam Hussein's son Uday. He bought the box, but it turned out to be a plated product of dubious origin, worth considerably less than he paid.
Hareth Zahawi, a subcontractor who has been attempting to line up reconstruction work for native Iraqis, was discussing a possible alliance with a Kuwaiti firm, only to learn that the company was using information obtained from Zahawi to cut its own deal with the coalition. "They tried to sideline us," Zahawi said. "It's a serious risk."
Some experts express concern that free-market capitalism, while efficient at channeling money to its most productive use, might be too much, too soon for a country struggling to emerge from decades of failed central planning.
Nearly 500,000 Iraqis are losing government paychecks as the coalition dismisses Saddam's military forces, dissolves his Information Ministry and removes Baath Party loyalists from other agencies. Thousands more might join them as inefficient state-operated industries fall by the wayside.
Iraq's emaciated private sector will suffer casualties too. Some experts predict that home-grown merchants, traders, builders and service providers will be squeezed out by foreigners with more experience, deeper pockets and closer ties to the United States and its allies.
Still, for every economic hand wringer, there is at least one cowboy capitalist ready to tame the new frontier.
"It's like Texas in 1879," said Ihsan Hussein Ali, who was not sure why he chose to cite that year in particular. "There are no rules."
Hussein Ali and his younger brother Ghassan, both engineers, are ready to escort fellow Iraqis from the 19th century to the 21st. They are preparing to open three Baghdad Internet cafes, where patrons ready to spend $3 to $4 an hour will be able to cruise the Web and catch up on e-mails.
They were planning to hook up 20 PCs to satellite receivers inside the first cafe, a small outlet affixed to the Baghdad Hotel.
Before the war, the brothers were helping a Jordan-based trading operation bring oil field equipment and other industrial goods into Iraq under the United Nations "oil-for-food" program, which is being shut down. So they figure it's time to look for other opportunities.
I couldn't be more glad after reading this looney conspiracy article that people with beliefs such as Jacob Levich are not in positions of real power at this moment in history. They are simply reduced to writing eloquent, inflammatory pieces on the Internet, carrying signs in city marches, or throwing tantrums on university campuses as the bonafide life-or-death decisions are made elsewhere. It just goes to show once again that fancy language and a sleek presentation is in no way synonymous with truth.
Any knucklehead can come to this conclusion when he sees that Mr. Levich's primary source of information is the New York Times, the publication recently disgraced with instances of its reporters lying and concocting false stories.
From the assertions that Iraq will be "reduced to the status of a 3rd world debtor nation" (the country is already a piece of shit from 20+ years of Saddam's mismanagement and neglect - there is only one way to go and that's towards improvement) to the comical lunacy of envisioning Paul Bremer's CPA administration "mowing down dissenters with automatic weapons fire", these kinds of views and predictions of doom will barely be remembered in the years to come.
Those openly hoping for an American failure in Iraq have to be sorely disappointed that there has been no financial catastrophe in Iraq involving a collapse in currency or hyperinflation. See the attached article.
Any knucklehead can come to this conclusion when he sees that Mr. Levich's primary source of information is the New York Times, the publication recently disgraced with instances of its reporters lying and concocting false stories.
From the assertions that Iraq will be "reduced to the status of a 3rd world debtor nation" (the country is already a piece of shit from 20+ years of Saddam's mismanagement and neglect - there is only one way to go and that's towards improvement) to the comical lunacy of envisioning Paul Bremer's CPA administration "mowing down dissenters with automatic weapons fire", these kinds of views and predictions of doom will barely be remembered in the years to come.
Those openly hoping for an American failure in Iraq have to be sorely disappointed that there has been no financial catastrophe in Iraq involving a collapse in currency or hyperinflation. See the attached article.
For more information:
http://www.usembassy.it/file2003_09/alia/a...
Kuwait foils smuggling of chemicals, bio warheads from Iraq Associated Press
Kuwait City, October 2 Kuwaiti security authorities have foiled an attempt to smuggle $60 million worth of chemical weapons and biological warheads from Iraq to an unnamed European country, a Kuwaiti newspaper said on Wednesday.
The pro-Government Al-Siyassah, quoting an unnamed security source, said the suspects had been watched by security since they arrived in Kuwait and were arrested "in due time." It did not say when or how the smugglers entered Kuwait or when they were arrested.
Kuwait City, October 2 Kuwaiti security authorities have foiled an attempt to smuggle $60 million worth of chemical weapons and biological warheads from Iraq to an unnamed European country, a Kuwaiti newspaper said on Wednesday.
The pro-Government Al-Siyassah, quoting an unnamed security source, said the suspects had been watched by security since they arrived in Kuwait and were arrested "in due time." It did not say when or how the smugglers entered Kuwait or when they were arrested.
You are 100% correct, and eloquent in your comments. Congratulations and thank you for taking the time to dispell the socialist pap that proliferates on these threads from those who whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.
High five!!!
High five!!!
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