You know, every night I go to sleep thinking that the events of the day had pissed me off to such an extent that there was no way I could get more disgruntled at the venality of the Bush administration. And every morning I get up, read the newspapers and wires and I'm inevitably proven wrong.
The White House has said Iraq's oil wealth will be used to pay for its own reconstruction following a U.S. invasion.
"Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is a rather wealthy country," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so there are a variety (of) means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction."
Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. Yes, and why should the Iraqis be forced, in effect, to pay for the bombs that will soon rain down upon their heads? And this nugget from Fleischer: "It is, of course, the intention of the United States government to make certain the people of Iraq are not the victims in a war that would have been started by their leaders."
I stand, mouth agape, at the audacity of the emphasized quote. Last time I checked, Bush was arguing for "pre-emptive defense," which sure sounds like a rationale for starting a war.
But I digress. "Fleischer also pointed out that once Iraq is disarmed and Saddam is out of office, there will be no reason to continue to impose economic sanctions on Baghdad and trade will be reopened with Iraq."
What he actually said was, "Once sanctions are lifted from Iraq, that provides a lot more means for the rebuilding and the reconstruction of Iraq."
This is a exactly what the Iraqi opposition does not want. As Feisal al-Istrabadi, a founding member of the Iraqi Forum for Democracy said last Monday at Columbia, the U.N. should not lift the sanctions but instead suspend them. The ultimate lifting of the sanctions is the incentive for Iraq to truly democratize.
Note that Fleischer didn't say "suspend;" he said "lifted." And the give and take of the press conference yesterday, at which all of this came about, leaves one with the impression that the White House is all about lifting the sanctions as opposed to suspending them. This is a crucial point, obviously, because the sanctions allow for the United Nations to manage the finances of Iraq as a trust. While Saddam has managed to squirrel away billions, by and large the national budget is not fully controlled by his government.
Istrabadi wants to avoid making the provisional government, presumably headed by financier Ahmed Chalabi, "provisional" in the Iraqi sense of the word -- i.e., in power for years and years. (Since 1968, the constitutions governing Iraq have been provisional constitutions and not permanent. Thus, there is no permanent rule of law.) By lifting the sanctions immediately, you grant a temporary government access to billions in oil revenues, presumably to do with what they will.
"You cannot hand over the purse strings of Iraq," Istrabadi warned. "Saddam did not immediately rule by fear. He co-opted the elite during the 1960s and ?70s by drowning them in cash."
So let's look at the smoke signals from Washington and other places:
- Chalabi is in Iraq and prepared to declare a provisional government in Erbil;
- The Kurds (and others) are under the impression that there will be no democracy immediately forthcoming; (Peter W. Galbrait has his thoughts on this subject here. He basically blames the Turks);
- Fleischer's advocacy for lifting the sanctions, in order to get the Iraqi oil wells online quickly so that Iraq can pay for its own reconstruction, will deliver the funds precisely to the people with a shady history financial history and a high stake in remaning in power since they've been in the political wilderness for 20+ years (in the case of Chalabi.)
Fleischer deftly sidestepped just this question of oil money and Iraqi governments in this exchange:
Q If the Iraqi people are going to largely be responsible for paying for their own reconstruction, will they be given a lot of freedom, in terms of how that reconstruction is going to be carried out? Or are we going to kind of guide them and tell them what needs to be done?
MR. FLEISCHER: Well, I think what's going to emerge will be a government of the Iraqi people that comes from both inside Iraq and outside Iraq. There are no shortage of people who are dedicated to a different route for Iraq. And I think also one of the great issues that will be seen -- if this does come to war -- is how, when people have the ability to be free, they exercise that right to be free. The Iraqi people have lived under tyranny and under dictatorship. And as the nations of East Europe have shown us just recently, when the yolk of dictatorship is removed, people's God-given rights to freedom emerge. And the President believes that that will be the case in Iraq.
Fleischer's dodge and the previous points add up a weak puppet government easily controlled, dependent upon the United States and democractic in name only. Hardly the beacon of freedom to the rest of the Middle East that the White House claims Iraq can become. But then, a beacon of freedom and self-determination doesn't fit neatly with the administration's plans for the region.
quite. I want to know exactly what the U.S. plans for Iraq, and, more specifically, who is going to pay for it? Where do people see Iraq in one year, five years, ten years? Will the Iraqi people still be liable for debts incurred by Saddam Hussein: a leader they never voted for (a classic trick of the world bank?)? The pro-war lobby act under the assumption that nothing could be worse than what they are going through at present….but this ignores a number of facts. Specifically that Saddam Hussein’s paranoia is a sign of weakness not of strength, and the huge pressures on Middle Eastern states at the moment to democratise…pressures which can only go stronger. Saddam is 65……an old man in some cultures. The pro-war lobby act seem to think that without outside invasion, Saddam will remain in power for ever, but this is clearly not true, and is the sort of thing that people said about Eastern Europe in the mid ‘eighties.
Arnaud de Borchgrave, UPI’s Editor at Large wrote Friday from Jordan:
“A group of American anti-war demonstrators who came to Iraq with Japanese human shield volunteers made it across the border today with 14 hours of uncensored video, all shot without Iraqi government minders present.
Kenneth Joseph, a young American pastor with the Assyrian Church of the East, told UPI the trip “had shocked me back to reality.”
Some of the Iraqis he interviewed on camera “told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn’t start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam’s bloody tyranny. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler. He and his sons are sick sadists.
“Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet first so they could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from foot to head.”
When human shields come back from Baghdad and say Iraqis are going to commit suicide if Americans dont do something, Iraqis would be happy to take profits from their oil to pay for that, rather than chemical or nuclear research. Just my humble opinion…
Nobody is asking Iraq to pay for the bombs, only reconstruction (to Iraq’s eventual design, whatever that is). Damage has been constrained, to the extent possible, to military and regime targets (not civil infrastructure).
If the international community stood behind the United States in unity, perhaps war wouldn’t have been necessary. Perhaps Saddam would’ve seen the writing on the wall and left peacefully.
(Perhaps not, but I wouldn’t so readily dispense with the notion that the divisiveness in the UN encouraged him to go down fighting, taking the Iraqi people with him. A unified front could have prevented war, Dominique. You can’t coddle a brutal tyrant, the only language he understands is intimidation. The anti-war movement led him to doubt force was a certainty, and thereby, caused the use of force they hoped to avoid.)
Saddam may be 65, but he has already groomed his son Housay to take over in his footsteps.
You’re right, nobody expected the fall of regimes in Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany in the 1980’s. Or the 1970’s. Or the 1960’s. Or the 1950’s.
Was Iraq really five years away from the natural collapse of Saddam’s regime, or fifty? If you really saw his fall without war right around the corner, why do you need ask what Iraq will look like in five or ten years? Just look into your crystal ball again.
As for lifting or suspending sactions, its semantic. The sanctions can be lifted and reimposed, if necessary. Carrot for democratization? Howabout U.S. forces leaving Iraq in 12 months, that should be a carrot.
After the UN’s gutless leadership of the past 12 years, why would you want them involved in a new Iraq’s financial accounting? If Iraq is going to grow up, better establish suitable governmental mechanisms for fiscal oversight at rebirth rather than at some later point in time.
On oil, I heard it reported that due to sanctions having limited Iraq’s oil production significantly below capacity, that for Iraq to return to full production would take three years.
As for oil, if you were a poor nation, maybe you’d resort to stealing your oil. If you’re a wealthy nation, you wouldn’t threaten the oil supply (driving prices up) and go to war, when oil prices were already hovering around historic fair value ($22-$27).
Where is the return on that investment when the U.S. is footing a $75 BLN war bill up-front (assuming a brief 30-day war)? How many years of free Iraqi oil is that to break/even?
“As for oil, if you were a poor nation, maybe you’d resort to stealing your oil. If you’re a wealthy nation, you wouldn’t threaten the oil supply (driving prices up) and go to war, when oil prices were already hovering around historic fair value ($22-$27).”
Wealthy nations don’t steal oil, or threaten its supply - then explain to me why Kuwait slant-drills. Has since the 60s, continues to this day. Ask anyone why has worked the wells near the border - or even check our own government’s half-baked denials of the slant-drilling accusation. I have a good friend who did shaft design for those border wells - why were they designed for pumping at an angle, if they were supposed to be drilling Kuwait’s own oil?
Lots of people steal oil, especially when it’s Iraqi. A wide open motherload just waiting for the taking. Pennzoil developed those diagonally-dug Kuwaiti shafts (look at oil services providers for the border fields). And the US never even bothered denying it - just threw out some propaganda hype about the new Hitler, who yesterday was the grandfather of Baghdad. Your love for democracy in Iraq is just a cloak for our national theft.
And yes, you would drive up oil prices if it would not affect your oil prices drastically - because you’re to this day being sold below-market oil from a nation you rushed to defend, whose grubby little hands were covered in blood and oil. So Russia, France, Germany, China and all the nasty little countries who hate this war will pay more more more for oil, increasing across the board their input costs and their cost of goods sold, while we gain competitive advantage with our stolen and below-market because-you’re-a-manly-“liberator” oil.
The pro-war paternalism, sadism and violence is a miserable reflection on our nation - that we must take a stand against the weak to prove that we are strong, that we must kill women to show that we are men.
A shaft straight down drills your oil. A diagonal one drills your neighbor’s field. Exodus 20:17 - Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.
And by the way, Saddam does not have a son named Housay. Uday, perhaps? Or are you referring to some other son?
Saddam’s a nightmare, fine, but so are we. Enough of the high horse already.
“Either you are for us or against us.” - Col. Cathcart to Capt. Yossarian, Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Over five decades before this war, an antiwar writer pretty much gave us the script by which our administration would explain its actions. It’s really quite funny - huge stretches of Bush’s speeches are lifted verbatim from Catch-22. Our government is mocking you all - assuming the American people are just too stupid, or preoccupied, or lazy - to notice. And if that’s the decision we make, then so be it, we get what we deserve.
I see a ship of fools sailing into the Gulf - and my reluctance to climb aboard is not cowardice or hand-wringing but sheer annoyance. An eye for an eye (especially when you don’t even know who put out your eye in the first place, and run around poking whosoever you please) shall turn the world blind, or at least result in only one person left with one eye. Given our military and intelligence track record, it’s a fair postulate that that man will be Osama bin Laden, older and more bitter, laughing at us all as we fumble in the night, at the fools we have permitted ourselves to become.
does anybody know where i can get some war clips