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Thursday, September 23, 2004 |
Reuters: "The Pentagon has begun tapping into its $25 billion emergency fund for the Iraq war to prepare for a major troop rotation and intense fighting this fall, administration officials said on Tuesday, despite the White House's initial insistence that it had enough money.
Congressional aides and defense analysts said the use of the reserve funds could be an early sign that the Pentagon will run out of money sooner than the White House had expected."
LA Times: "Officially, the U.S. occupation of Iraq ended on June 28, 2004. But in reality, the United States is still in charge: Not only do 138,000 troops remain to control the streets, but the '100 Orders' of L. Paul Bremer III remain to control the economy.
A sampling of the most important orders demonstrates the economic imprint left by the Bush administration: Order No. 39 allows for: (1) privatization of Iraq's 200 state-owned enterprises; (2) 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses; (3) 'national treatment' - which means no preferences for local over foreign businesses; (4) unrestricted, tax-free remittance of all profits and other funds; and (5) 40-year ownership licenses.
Order No. 17 grants foreign contractors, including private security firms, full immunity from Iraq's laws."
Guardian: "At the moment when the prime minister has announced his decision to intensify the war in Iraq and when more British troops may well be sent there, the time has come for new policies to be adopted since we know, in great detail, all the key facts from very authoritative sources.
We know from Paul O'Neill, George Bush's first treasury secretary, that the new president took the decision to invade Iraq when he entered the White House - almost a year before the attack on the twin towers - and that no one in Washington or London really ever believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the atrocity.
The real reason for the invasion was to topple Saddam, seize the oil and establish permanent US bases to dominate the region. And we know that Tony Blair privately shared these objectives, and used the weapons issue to persuade parliament and public.
We also know, from the recent report of the Iraq Survey Group, that Baghdad did not possess weapons of mass destruction. Neither the president nor the prime minister has been concerned to discover that they misled their own people and the world on this question. And it has not led them to reassess their arguments for going to war."
The case for impeachment.
ABCNews: "President Bush, determined to put an optimistic face on deadly conditions in Iraq, said on Tuesday that the CIA was just guessing when it said the war-racked country was in danger of slipping into civil war."
The Godfather knows best (and all).
But it does not end there: "Attorney General Ashcroft and his allies in Congress are taking advantage of the 9/11 Commission report to push an expansion of the powers of the Department of Justice and erode key checks and balances that prevent government abuse."
For Bush, the enemy is inside the borders as well, it's the American people. And because Bush is a usurper, he can only win by cheating: "Millions of U.S. citizens, including a disproportionate number of black voters, will be blocked from voting in the Nov. 2 presidential election because of legal barriers, faulty procedures or dirty tricks, according to civil rights and legal experts."
And who is paying for this mess? The taxpayers, of course, but, mind you, not the major US companies: "Many of the nation's largest, most profitable companies are paying little or no federal income taxes, according to a study released today by Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP)."
11:05:17 AM 
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Guardian: "'Wars, conflict - it's all business,' sighs Monsieur Verdoux in Charlie Chaplin's 1947 film of the same name.
The trigger for the US-led bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 was, according to the standard western version of history, the failure of the Serbian delegation to sign up to the Rambouillet peace agreement. But that holds little more water than the tale that has Iraq responsible for last year's invasion by not cooperating with weapons inspectors.
The secret annexe B of the Rambouillet accord - which provided for the military occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia - was, as the Foreign Office minister Lord Gilbert later conceded to the defence select committee, deliberately inserted to provoke rejection by Belgrade.
But equally revealing about the west's wider motives is chapter four, which dealt exclusively with the Kosovan economy. Article I (1) called for a 'free-market economy', and article II (1) for privatisation of all government-owned assets. At the time, the rump Yugoslavia - then not a member of the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO or European Bank for Reconstruction and Development - was the last economy in central-southern Europe to be uncolonised by western capital. 'Socially owned enterprises', the form of worker self-management pioneered under Tito, still predominated.
The high priests of neo-liberalism were not happy. At the Davos summit early in 1999, Tony Blair berated Belgrade, not for its handling of Kosovo, but for its failure to embark on a programme of 'economic reform' - new-world-order speak for selling state assets and running the economy in the interests of multinationals.
In the 1999 Nato bombing campaign, it was state-owned companies - rather than military sites - that were specifically targeted by the world's richest nations. Nato only destroyed 14 tanks, but 372 industrial facilities were hit - including the Zastava car plant at Kragujevac, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless. Not one foreign or privately owned factory was bombed.
After the removal of Slobodan Milosevic, the west got the 'fast-track' reforming government in Belgrade it had long desired. One of the first steps of the new administration was to repeal the 1997 privatisation law and allow 70% of a company to be sold to foreign investors - with just 15% reserved for workers. The government then signed up to the World Bank's programmes - effectively ending the country's financial independence.
Meanwhile, as the New York Times had crowed, 'a war's glittering prize' awaited the conquerors. Kosovo has the second largest coal reserves in Europe, and enormous deposits of lignite, lead, zinc, gold, silver and petroleum.
As the corporate takeover of the ruins of Baghdad and Pristina proceeds apace, neither the 'liberation' of Iraq nor the 'humanitarian' bombing of Yugoslavia has proved Chaplin's cynical anti-hero to be wrong."
10:33:57 AM
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