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Today's Topics:
1. Iraq,and Trade Unions (Muhamed Ali)
2. The Hidden 2001 Plan to Carve-up Iraq (John Churchilly)
3. [Peace&Justice] Scary Reading Deep In the Duelfer Report | Disasters Depicted
as Triumphs (IRC Communications)
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Message: 1
Subject: Iraq,and Trade Unions
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 15:15:52 +0100
From: "Muhamed Ali" <Muhamed.Ali@DELETETHISHackney.gov.uk>
To: <newsclippings@casi.org.uk>
[ Presenting plain-text part of multi-format email ]
Dear colleagues,
Enclosed are two news items pertaining to
the above issue.
1.Union fury at Stop the War coalition's sectarianism
Patrick Wintour, Kevin Maguire and Michael White
Saturday October 23, 2004
The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1334187,00.html
2. Comment
_____
We are nobody's pawns
Iraqis need international solidarity, not support for violence
Abdullah Muhsin
Saturday October 23, 2004
The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1334289,00.html
Regards,
Muhamad
London Borough of Hackney may exercise its right to intercept any communication on its networks -
for more information see
http://www.hackney.gov.uk/email_disclaimer.html
--__--__--
Message: 2
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 18:07:52 -0700 (PDT)
From: John Churchilly <meso999@DELETETHISyahoo.com>
Subject: The Hidden 2001 Plan to Carve-up Iraq
To: iraq@yahoogroups.com
http://gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=3D383&row=3D0
--------------
Adventure Capitalism - The Hidden 2001 Plan to
Carve-up Iraq
TomPaine.com
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
by Greg Palast
<quote>
"But in March 2003, the general ( Garner )made his big
career mistake. In Kuwait City, fresh off the plane
from the United States, he promised Iraqis they would
have free and fair elections as soon as Saddam was
toppled, preferably within 90 days"
--------------
Why were Iraqi elections delayed? Why was Jay Garner
fired? Why are our troops still there? Investigative
reporter Greg Palast uncovers new documents that
answer these questions and more about the Bush
administration=92s grand designs on Iraq. Like
everything else issued during this administration, the
plan to overhaul the Iraqi economy has corporate
lobbyist fingerprints all over it.
In February 2003, a month before the U.S. invasion of
Iraq, a 101-page document came my way from somewhere
within the U.S. State Department. Titled pleasantly,
"Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Growth," it
was part of a larger under-wraps program called "The
Iraq Strategy."
The Economy Plan goes boldly where no invasion plan
has gone before: the complete rewrite, it says, of a
conquered state's "policies, laws and regulations."
Here's what you'll find in the Plan: A highly
detailed program, begun years before the tanks rolled,
for imposing a new regime of low taxes on big
business, and quick sales of Iraq's banks and
bridges=97in fact, "ALL state enterprises"=97to foreign
operators. There's more in the Plan, part of which
became public when the State Department hired
consulting firm to track the progress of the Iraq
makeover. Example: This is likely history's first
military assault plan appended to a program for
toughening the target nation's copyright laws.
And when it comes to oil, the Plan leaves nothing to
chance=97or to the Iraqis. Beginning on page 73, the
secret drafters emphasized that Iraq would have to
"privatize" (i.e., sell off) its "oil and supporting
industries." The Plan makes it clear that=97even if we
didn't go in for the oil=97we certainly won't leave
without it.
If the Economy Plan reads like a Christmas wishlist
drafted by U.S. corporate lobbyists, that's because it
was.
From slashing taxes to wiping away Iraq's tariffs
(taxes on imports of U.S. and other foreign goods),
the package carries the unmistakable fingerprints of
the small, soft hands of Grover Norquist.
Norquist is the capo di capi of the lobbyist army of
the right. In Washington every Wednesday, he hosts a
pow-wow of big business political operatives and
right-wing muscle groups=97including the Christian
Coalition and National Rifle Association=97where
Norquist quarterbacks their media and legislative
offensive for the week.
Once registered as a lobbyist for Microsoft and
American Express, Norquist today directs Americans for
Tax Reform, a kind of trade union for billionaires
unnamed, pushing a regressive "flat tax" scheme.
Acting on a tip, I dropped by the super-lobbyist's
L-Street office. Below a huge framed poster of his
idol ("NIXON=97 NOW MORE THAN EVER"), Norquist could not
wait to boast of moving freely at the Treasury,
Defense and State Departments, and, in the White
House, shaping the post-conquest economic plans=97from
taxes to tariffs to the "intellectual property rights"
that I pointed to in the Plan.
Norquist wasn't the only corporate front man getting a
piece of the Iraq cash cow. Norquist suggested the
change in copyright laws after seeking the guidance of
the Recording Industry Association of America.
And then there's the oil. Iraq-born Falah Aljibury
was in on the drafting of administration blueprints
for the post-Saddam Iraq. According to Aljibury, the
administration began coveting its Mideast neighbor's
oil within weeks of the Bush-Cheney inauguration, when
the White House convened a closed committee under the
direction of the State Department's Pam Wainwright.
The group included banking and chemical industry men,
and the range of topics over what to do with a
post-conquest Iraq was wide. In short order, said
Aljibury, "It became an oil group."
This was not surprising as the membership list had a
strong smell of petroleum. Besides Aljibury, an oil
industry consultant, the secret team included
executives from Royal-Dutch Shell and ChevronTexaco.
These and other oil industry bigs would, in 2003,
direct the drafting of a 300-page addendum to the
Economy Plan solely about Iraq's oil assets. The oil
section of the Plan, obtained after a year of
wrestling with the administration over the Freedom of
Information Act, calls for Iraqis to sell off to
"IOCs" (international oil companies) the nation's
"downstream" assets=97that is, the refineries, pipelines
and ports that, unless under armed occupation, a
Mideast nation would be loathe to give up.
The General Versus Annex D
One thing stood in the way of rewriting Iraq's laws
and selling off Iraq's assets: the Iraqis. An
insider working on the plans put it coldly: "They
have [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz coming
out saying it's going to be a democratic country =85 but
we're going to do something that 99 percent of the
people of Iraq wouldn't vote for."
In this looming battle between what Iraqis wanted and
what the Bush administration planned for them, the
Iraqis had an unexpected ally, Gen. Jay Garner, the
man appointed by our president just before the
invasion as a kind of temporary Pasha to run the
soon-to-be conquered nation.
Garner's an old Iraq hand who performed the benevolent
autocratic function in the Kurdish zone after the
first Gulf War. But in March 2003, the general made
his big career mistake. In Kuwait City, fresh off the
plane from the United States, he promised Iraqis they
would have free and fair elections as soon as Saddam
was toppled, preferably within 90 days.
Garner's 90-days-to-democracy pledge ran into a hard
object: The Economy Plan's 'Annex D.' Disposing of a
nation's oil industry=97let alone redrafting trade and
tax laws=97can't be done in a weekend, nor in 90 days.
Annex D lays out a strict 360-day schedule for the
free-market makeover of Iraq. And there's the rub: It
was simply inconceivable that any popularly elected
government would let America write its laws and
auction off the nation's crown jewel, its petroleum
industry.
Elections would have to wait. As lobbyist Norquist
explained when I asked him about the Annex D
timetable, "The right to trade, property rights, these
things are not to be determined by some democratic
election." Our troops would simply have to stay in
Mesopotamia a bit longer.
New World Orders 12, 37, 81 and 83
Gen. Garner resisted=97which was one of the reasons for
his swift sacking by Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld on the very night he arrived in Baghdad last
April. Rummy had a perfect replacement ready to wing
it in Iraq to replace the recalcitrant general. Paul
Bremer may not have had Garner's experience on the
ground in Iraq, but no one would question the
qualifications of a man who served as managing
director of Kissinger Associates.
Pausing only to install himself in Saddam's old
palace=97and adding an extra ring of barbed wire=97"Jerry"
Bremer cancelled Garner's scheduled meeting of Iraq's
tribal leaders called to plan national elections.
Instead, Bremer appointed the entire government
himself. National elections, Bremer pronounced, would
have to wait until 2005. The extended occupation
would require our forces to linger.
The delay would, incidentally, provide time needed to
lock in the laws, regulations and irreversible sales
of assets in accordance with the Economy Plan.
On that, Bremer wasted no time. Altogether, the
leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority issued
exactly 100 orders that remade Iraq in the image of
the Economy Plan. In May, for example, Bremer=97only a
month from escaping out Baghdad's back door=97took time
from fighting the burgeoning insurrection to sign
orders 81=97"Patents,"and 83, "Copyrights." Here,
Grover Norquist's hard work paid off. Fifty years of
royalties would now be conferred on music recording.
And 20 years on Windows code.
Order number 37, "Tax Strategy for 2003," was
Norquist's dream come true: taxes capped at 15 percent
on corporate and individual income (as suggested in
the Economy Plan, page 8). The U.S. Congress had
rejected a similar flat-tax plan for America, but in
Iraq, with an electorate of one=97Jerry Bremer=97the
public's will was not an issue.
Not everyone felt the pain of this reckless rush to a
free market. Order 12, "Trade Liberalization,"
permitted the tax- and tariff-free import of foreign
products. One big winner was Cargill, the world's
largest grain merchant, which flooded Iraq with
hundreds of thousands of tons of wheat. For Iraqi
farmers, already wounded by sanctions and war, this
was devastating. They could not compete with the U.S.
and Australian surplusses dumped on them. But the
import plan carried out the letter of the Economy
Plan.
This trade windfall for the West was enforced by the
occupation's agriculture chief, Dan Amstutz, himself
an import from the United States. Prior to George
Bush taking office, Amstutz chaired a company funded
by Cargill.
There's no sense cutting taxes on big business,
ordering 20 years of copyright payments for Bill
Gates' operating system or killing off protections for
Iraqi farmers if some out-of-control Iraqi government
is going to take it away after an election. The
shadow governors of Iraq back in Washington thought of
that, too. Bremer fled, but he's left behind him
nearly 200 American "experts," assigned to baby-sit
each new Iraqi minister=97functionaries also approved by
the U.S. State Department.
The Price
The free market paradise in Iraq is not free.
After General Garner was deposed, I met with him in
Washington. He had little regard for the Economy Plan
handed to him three months before the tanks rolled.
He especially feared its designs on Iraq's oil assets
and the delay in handing Iraq back to Iraqis. "That's
one fight you don't want to take on," he told me.
But we have. After a month in Saddam's palace, Bremer
cancelled municipal elections, including the crucial
vote about to take place in Najaf. Denied the ballot,
Najaf's Shi'ites voted with bullets. This April,
insurgent leader Moqtada Al Sadr's militia killed 21
U.S. soldiers and, for a month, seized the holy city.
"They shouldn't have to follow our plan," the general
said. "It's their country, their oil." Maybe, but
not according to the Plan. And until it does become
their country, the 82nd Airborne will have to remain
to keep it from them.
For the interview with Jay Garner and more details of
The Plan, see "Bush Family Fortunes: The Best
Democracy Money Can Buy", out this month on DVD. Watch
a segment: http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/adventure_capitalism.php
------------------------
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--__--__--
Message: 3
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 15:45:39 -0600
To: peaceandjustice@lists.riseup.net
From: IRC Communications <communications@DELETETHISirc-online.org>
Subject: [Peace&Justice] Scary Reading Deep In the Duelfer Report | Disasters Depicted
as Triumphs
[ Presenting plain-text part of multi-format email ]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Peace and Justice News from FPIF
http://www.fpif.org/
October 29, 2004
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Introducing two new papers from Foreign Policy In Focus
For Scary Halloween Reading, Dig Deeper into the Duelfer Report
By Michael Roston
America received a frightening jolt when the International Atomic Energy
Agency announced that heavy-duty explosives perfectly suited for terrorist
bombing attacks had gone missing from critical sites in Iraq. But a far
more terrifying revelation was made in the Central Intelligence Agency's
publicly released Duelfer Report on October 6. It took some effort, but
anyone who dug deep enough into this document submitted by Charles Duelfer,
fully titled the Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the
Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction,
found reading far more scary than any of the ghost stories you might hear
this Halloween.
If you thought the missing explosives were bad, just turn to the annex
labeled "Al-Abud Network" buried in the report's third volume. In plain
language, the Iraq Survey Group reports on the activities of insurgents who
worked with a civilian Iraqi chemist to build chemical weapons to use
against Coalition forces. Fortunately, these insurgents foundered before
they were caught by U.S.-led troops. But, the report menacingly warns that
al-Abud is "not the only group planning or attempting to produce or acquire
CBW agents =85 availability of chemicals and materials dispersed throughout
the country, and intellectual capital from the former WMD programs
increases the future threat to Coalition Forces."
So, since we toppled Saddam Hussein for threatening us with WMD that
weren't there, terrorists in Iraq have started working with Saddam's
intellectual dream team to build new WMD to use against American forces?
Michael Roston (mr2302@columbia.edu) is a graduate student at Columbia
University's School of International and Public Affairs and an analyst for
Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org). He previously covered the
issue of Iraqi scientists for the Russian American Nuclear Security
Advisory Council. This article represents his own personal views.
See new FPIF commentary online at:
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0410halloween.html
With printer friendly PDF version at:
http://www.fpif.org/pdf/gac/0410halloween.pdf
For More Information:
Duelfer Report
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/
Bush Administration Disasters Depicted as Triumphs
By Stephen Zunes
Even putting aside the many important legal and moral questions about the
Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq, it has been a disaster even
on practical terms. Mainstream to conservative strategic analysts and
retired generals--along with the majority of career professionals in the
State Department, Defense Department, and CIA--recognize that the invasion
and occupation has made America less secure rather than more secure.
Still, the Bush administration continues to defend its actions and public
opinion polls still show that a majority of Americans trust George W. Bush
more than John Kerry to defend America. This is in large part because,
throughout this fall's campaign, President Bush and Vice President Dick
Cheney have been making demonstrably false and misleading claims about what
motivated administration decisions as well as the results of their actions.
Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice
Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. He is Middle East
editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project (online at
http://www.fpif.org) and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy
and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003) available for
purchase online at http://www.irc-online.org/content/books/zunes.tinderbox.=
php.
See new FPIF Policy Report online at:
http://www.fpif.org/papers/0410gopiraq.html
With printer friendly PDF version at:
http://www.fpif.org/pdf/reports/PR0410gopiraq.pdf
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Produced and distributed by FPIF:"A Think Tank Without Walls," a joint
program of Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) and Institute for Policy
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