[Mb-civic] Two Different and enlightening views on Iraq after 3 years

Mon Mar 20 21:29:42 PST 2006

Bush Didn't Bungle Iraq, You Fools
THE MISSION WAS INDEED ACCCOMPLISHED
by Greg Palast
for The Guardian

20 March 2006 

Get off it. All the carping, belly-aching and complaining about George
Bush's incompetence in Iraq, from both the Left and now the Right, is just
dead wrong. 

On the third anniversary of the tanks rolling over Iraq's border, most of
the 59 million Homer Simpsons who voted for Bush are beginning to doubt if
his mission was accomplished. 

But don't kid yourself -- Bush and his co-conspirator, Dick Cheney,
accomplished exactly what they set out to do. In case you've forgotten
what their real mission was, let me remind you of White House spokesman
Ari Fleisher's original announcement, three years ago, launching of what
he called, 

         "Operation
          Iraqi
          Liberation." 

O.I.L. How droll of them, how cute. Then, Karl Rove made the giggling boys
in the White House change it to "OIF" -- Operation Iraqi Freedom. But the
101st Airborne wasn't sent to Basra to get its hands on Iraq's OIF. 

"It's about oil," Robert Ebel told me. Who is Ebel? Formerly the CIA's top
oil analyst, he was sent by the Pentagon, about a month before the
invasion, to a secret confab in London with Saddam's former oil minister
to finalize the plans for "liberating" Iraq's oil industry. In London,
Bush's emissary Ebel also instructed Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, the man the
Pentagon would choose as post-OIF oil minister for Iraq, on the correct
method of disposing Iraq's crude. 

And what did the USA want Iraq to do with Iraq's oil? The answer will
surprise many of you: and it is uglier, more twisted, devilish and devious
than anything imagined by the most conspiracy-addicted blogger. The answer
can be found in a 323-page plan for Iraq's oil secretly drafted by the
State Department. Our team got a hold of a copy; how, doesn't matter. The
key thing is what's inside this thick Bush diktat: a directive to Iraqis
to maintain a state oil company that will "enhance its relationship with
OPEC." 

Enhance its relationship with OPEC??? How strange: the government of the
United States ordering Iraq to support the very OPEC oil cartel which is
strangling our nation with outrageously high prices for crude. 

Specifically, the system ordered up by the Bush cabal would keep a lid on
Iraq's oil production -- limiting Iraq's oil pumping to the tight quota
set by Saudi Arabia and the OPEC cartel. 

There you have it. Yes, Bush went in for the oil -- not to get MORE of
Iraq's oil, but to prevent Iraq producing TOO MUCH of it. 

You must keep in mind who paid for George's ranch and Dick's bunker: Big
Oil. And Big Oil -- and their buck-buddies, the Saudis -- don't make money
from pumping more oil, but from pumping LESS of it. The lower the supply,
the higher the price. 

It's Economics 101. The oil industry is run by a cartel, OPEC, and what
economists call an "oligopoly" -- a tiny handful of operators who make
more money when there's less oil, not more of it. So, every time the
"insurgents" blow up a pipeline in Basra, every time Mad Mahmoud in 
Tehran
threatens to cut supply, the price of oil leaps. And Dick and George just
LOVE it. 

Dick and George didn't want more oil from Iraq, they wanted less. I know
some of you, no matter what I write, insist that our President and his
Veep are on the hunt for more crude so you can cheaply fill your family
Hummer; that somehow, these two oil-patch babies are concerned that the
price of gas in the USA is bumping up to $3 a gallon. 

No so, gentle souls. Three bucks a gallon in the States (and a quid a
litre in Britain) means colossal profits for Big Oil, and that makes
Dick's ticker go pitty-pat with joy. The top oily-gopolists, the five
largest oil companies, pulled in $113 billion in profit in 2005 --
compared to a piddly $34 billion in 2002 before Operation Iraqi
Liberation. In other words, it's been a good war for Big Oil. 

As per Plan Bush, Bahr Al-Ulum became Iraq's occupation oil minister; the
conquered nation "enhanced its relationship with OPEC;" and the price of
oil, from Clinton peace-time to Bush war-time, shot up 317%. 

In other words, on the third anniversary of invasion, we can say the
attack and occupation is, indeed, a Mission Accomplished. However, it
wasn't America's mission, nor the Iraqis'. It was an Mission Accomplished
for OPEC and Big Oil. 

********** 
Chaos Accomplished
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on March 20, 2006, http://www.alternet.org/story/33768/

In a speech at George Washington University, Bush touted the 
"remarkable progress" made by the United States:

In less than three years, the Iraqi people have gone from living under 
the boot of a brutal tyrant, to liberation, to sovereignty, to free elections, 
to a constitutional referendum, and last December, to elections for a 
fully constitutional government.

Yet, a snapshot of Iraq today reveals a country that is miles from 
anything recognizable as a "road to progress."

At the end of last year, Iraqis had 11 percent less electricity and 36 
percent less potable water than before the 2003 invasion. The number 
of Iraqis with sewer access has fallen by 90 percent, and oil output is 
down by more than 20 percent. A poll in mid-2004 found that seven out 
of 10 Iraqis see the U.S. as "occupiers," not "liberators." A more recent 
survey (PDF) showed that almost half of all Iraqis support armed 
attacks on U.S. troops. And this weekend, former Iraqi interim Prime 
Minister Iyad Allawi told the BBC that Iraq was smack in the middle of 
a civil war.

That is the essential truth of what we have wrought in Iraq.

Last week 200 more bodies were found in and around Baghdad, 
dumped in bunches. Many of the corpses had their hands tied behind 
their backs and had been killed by a single bullet to the head. The New 
York Times reported "widespread suspicion" that "most were victims of 
Shiite death squads who went on a quiet but steady killing spree after 
a bomb attack on a Shiite market in Baghdad one week ago."

The political process that the war's supporters tout is at an impasse. 
December's elections were essentially an ethnic or sectarian census of 
Iraq's population; Iraqis voted for lists of anonymous candidates from 
their own "tribe." Names of candidates were withheld for their own 
protection.
Four months after those elections, the ministers have failed to form a 
government. Despite the efforts of U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad 
-- who appears to be an unusually competent appointee for this 
administration -- the factions remain deadlocked.

Last week, members of Iraq's Parliament finally sat down to negotiate 
after months of wrangling over the issue of federalism. The issue has 
been a deal-breaker so far; Shiites and Kurds want powerful regional 
governments, while the Sunnis who make up the heart of the 
insurgency fear that such an arrangement would cut them off from the 
lucre of Iraq's vast oil deposits. The meeting lasted just half an hour, 
adjourning after the ministers argued bitterly over the wording of the 
government's new loyalty oath.

According to a report by the International Crisis Group (PDF), power is 
concentrated in the hands of parties that have militias. "With no central 
apparatus that can rely on its own non-partisan security forces to stand 
in the way of parties and militias holding ethnic, sectarian and even 
separatist agendas, the most likely outcome is the gradual erosion or 
perhaps disintegration of the state," the report said.
In the face of these ugly developments, there's been a significant shift 
in rhetoric from the administration and its dwindling ranks of 
supporters. The hawks are trying to distance themselves from the 
consequences of the war they championed. The continuing violence 
and disarray we can expect in the coming years will be the Iraqis' fault, 
not a result of American hubris.

We no longer hear the "Pottery Barn" maxim famously uttered by 
former Secretary of State Colin Powell: "You break it, you buy it." After 
the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, which set off a wave 
of back and forth sectarian violence, President Bush suggested that 
while continuing United States military support is crucial, Iraqis must 
take the lead in forming a unified state.

While we reject the Pottery Barn theory as a justification for keeping 
U.S. troops in Iraq, dodging our responsibility for the tragedy being 
lived by Iraq's civilians every day is cowardly and wrong. Sectarian 
tensions certainly simmered under the dictatorship of Saddam 
Hussein, but the low-level, irregular civil war plaguing Iraq today is a 
conflict largely of our making. If one were to sit down and consciously 
map out how best to ignite such a conflict, one would be hard-pressed 
to do a better job than the Bush administration has done.

It wasn't just the neoconservatives' dismissal of the State Department's 
exhaustive post-war planning, nor the rejection of top army officials' 
estimates of the number of troops needed to establish stability after the 
invasion. The so-called political process itself was always based on 
American domestic politics rather than sound nation-building.

After the administration's original justifications for the war were proven 
false, the emphasis shifted to the rhetoric of "democratization." From 
that point, the building of an Iraqi state was shaped by Karl Rove's 
political apparatus and not the experience learned in other post-conflict 
situations. A power-sharing government -- in which different groups are 
guaranteed certain offices and ministries -- was rejected, despite the 
fact that such arrangements have been used following intra-state 
conflicts from Cambodia to Mozambique. Worse yet, the 
administration insisted on an overarching program of "de-
Ba'athification," which left many mid-level Sunni officials unemployed 
and humiliated -- and still armed to the teeth.

What is harder to quantify is the degree to which incompetence, graft 
and cronyism has contributed to support for Iraqi insurgents. While the 
administration's backers speak of the great progress being made in 
reconstructing a war-torn country, the Pentagon's own Inspector-
general warns (PDF) that, with nearly all of the $30 billion allocated 
already spent, there remains a dramatic "reconstruction gap."
That's the reality 35 months after the president stood before a banner 
reading "Mission Accomplished" and thanked "all of the citizens of Iraq 
who welcomed our troops and joined in the liberation of their own 
country."

For three long and disastrous years, the administration has continued 
to put that sunny spin on the havoc it has wrought. As long as that 
obstinate state of denial persists, we have little reason to hope for 
anything better before we face the war's fourth anniversary. 

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"A war of aggression is the supreme international crime." -- Robert Jackson,
 former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor

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