It's a piece of cake .. butt, who's paying for it?
Ether St. Vying
Guesss ....
This is SO surprising ... NOT.
My favourite lines from the article below:
So, Iraqis will pay for fixing the damage wrought by the Americans.
And preferably pay it to American corporations.
Hooyeah!
St. Ether
------------
Divvying up the war booty in Iraq
HAROON SIDDIQUI
America invaded Iraq because, George W. Bush said, Saddam
Hussein posed a danger to America. So America will pay for the
war, won't it? Not necessarily.
Who will verify the weapons of mass destruction that America will
"find" in Iraq? United Nations inspectors, right? Wrong.
Who will control post-Saddam Iraq? The U.N., under a trusteeship,
no? No.
The 1991 Gulf War, which cost $60 billion, was paid for almost
entirely by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which had invited the
American forces in. Having marched in uninvited this time, America
does not have anyone to pay the big bills. Yet.
"I expect we will get a lot of mitigation, but it'll be easier after
the
fact than before the fact," Deputy Defence Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz told Congress long before the start of the war.
Consider President Bush's recent request to Congress for a $75
billion war appropriation as merely bridge financing.
The money will be recovered from future Iraqi oil revenues. Or from
those for whom the neighbourhood has been made safe from
Saddam, principally Israel and Kuwait. Don't be surprised if the
Kuwaitis are leaned on for protection money.
Who should organize relief work in Iraq?
The United Nations, say Tony Blair and Colin Powell. But Bush,
vice-president Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld et
al are not keen. They think the U.S. military can handle
humanitarian aid and look good doing it.
But 13 leading relief agencies, including Oxfam and Doctors Without
Borders, refused to enter Iraq under any authority but the U.N.'s. So
America supported last week's 45-day extension of the U.N.'s oil for
food program, suspended when the war began.
Who should pay for the aid?
The U.S. Agency for International Development has an idea: Tap
into the $8 billion oil for food escrow account.
So, Iraqis must pay for the humanitarian crisis caused by the United
States.
Who will be the Lakhdar Brahimi of Iraq? He is the U.N. special
envoy co-ordinating relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction work in
Afghanistan.
No one, if Bush has his way.
He has named a former American general to be the military governor
of post-war Iraq. Jay Garner, head of the Pentagon's new Office of
Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, is already in Kuwait,
waiting to enter Iraq.
But America and Britain do want the U.N. to bless his rule.
"The important thing is that we end up with something that is
U.N.-endorsed," said Blair.
So, having violated the will of the U.N., America wants the U.N. to
legitimize its illegal invasion — and bless its post-war governor.
But Washington does not want the U.N. to do any post-conflict
nation building of the sort it has done in the post-Cold War era.
James Baker, secretary of state to former president George W.H.
Bush, confirmed that yesterday.
Speaking in Toronto, he said the U.S. would oppose a U.N.-led
"cumbersome and politicized administration" in post-war Iraq.
Translation: Butt out.
General Garner will thus keep political control until he puts in place
a puppet government. Along the way, he will ensure that Americans
have first dibs at the war booty.
Under the oil-for-food program, the U.N. was supervising Iraqi
agencies supervising the pumping of about 2 million barrels a day for
revenue of about $13 billion a year. We can guess who will control
the production and the revenue from now on — the U.N. or the
U.S.?
The bigger honeypot is the reconstruction of the entire Iraqi
infrastructure. That's about a $100 billion job.
Who will pay for that?
International law requires "occupying belligerents" to repair the
damages caused in a conflict. But the Bush administration wants the
funds to come principally from Iraqi oil revenues.
So, Iraqis will pay for fixing the damage wrought by the Americans.
And preferably pay it to American corporations.
Back in February — when Bush was ostensibly working for a
peaceful solution through the U.N. — his administration called for
bids to rebuild a post-war Iraq. It restricted the bidding to U.S.
companies, contrary to the procurement rules of the World Trade
Organization.
Criticism forced Halliburton, Cheney's former employer, to pull out
of the bidding.
But Bechtel and other benefactors of the Republican party are very
much in the running, to the chagrin of British corporations.
Among Garner's other jobs, he will have to settle the issue of the
$170 billion outstanding Iraqi reparations to Kuwait from the 1991
war. Plus the $60 billion Iraqi foreign debt, mostly to Russia. Which
is why, it was said, Russia has been behaving the way it has,
opposing American intervention.
But the spectacle of America jockeying for preferential financial
arrangements in every aspect of post-war Iraq is jarringly at odds
with the declared noble mission of liberating Iraqis and introducing
much-needed freedom and democracy to the region.
RBB
Don't you just love demoncracy.
leo sgouros
RBB wrote:
> Not to mention what compagny got the first contract for rebuilding Iraq.
>
> Don't you just love demoncracy.
a company got a contract to rebuild Iraq?
Thats a tall order.
Since no matter who does the rebuilding I will see no profit from it
financially, I can only hope for a good result and an Iraq that takes
hold of its future and tries to make something of itself.
Then I wouldnt give a hoot in hell if reanimated Walt Disney did it.And
I would certainly profit from an Iraq that sets the tone for a more
stable international community.Hell I read where in Iran some dude
thought it was "divine vengeance"!
http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=4/7/03&Cat=2&Num=006