A Plan for Privilege and Power
Harry Goslin July 22 2003


The American people, no longer treated to a steady diet of "embedded" reporting, are beginning to realize the true cost of the government's nice little war to make the Middle East safe for Zionists, bankers and multi-national corporations.
The number of American soldiers killed and maimed continues unabated. Morale among the troops is waning, the president's support is dropping, and warmongers like von Rumsfeld are finding it increasingly difficult to bully their way through press conferences and interviews. 
Now that the Iraqi house of cards is on the verge of collapsing, the War Department has embarked on a damage control campaign. A five-member panel commissioned by the Secretary of War and the viceroy of Iraq recently released its report on the progress of "rebuilding" in Iraq. 
The report details what is being done to establish security, economic development and social stability. It offers suggestions for what should be done to accelerate the rebuilding of Iraq. The consequences for not heeding the advice of the report is expressed in dire terms. According to CNN, the report "warns that 'the potential for chaos . . . is becoming more real every day' unless the U. S.- backed Coalition Provisional Authority moves quickly." Given what we see on the news every day, perhaps the report should have also offered its own definition of "chaos."
The report is short, only fifteen pages long. The brevity of the panel's recommendations for such a daunting task, indeed, one whose proponents would argue the success of which could determine the long-term security of not only the Middle East but the United States as well, suggests that this panel had a "heads-up" of what to look at before they got to Iraq, how to assess it, and how to stroke the solutions to minimize public scrutiny. It's not in the report's details where the evil lies, but what's open for interpretation.
According to the report's findings, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) should move to increase public safety. It was observed that security forces were "not visible enough at the street level," nor were they "sufficiently agile." Perhaps the number of American soldiers killed in guerilla attacks on the streets has dampened field commanders willingness to give the Iraqi resistance more targets to "service." In addition, military forces occupying Iraq are largely trained to use "sledgehammer" tactics against the enemy: when hit with a twig, retaliate with a baseball bat. To make military forces more agile might compromise the size and scope of their operational capabilities.
The report recommends recruiting Iraqis to fill increased security needs so that CPA forces can be freed up to serve in other areas where they are needed more, perhaps to help provoke more border confrontations with Syria or invade Iran. Recruiting Iraqis may prove to be easier said than done. With the daily attacks on American soldiers now frequently taking the lives of their Iraqi interpreters and assistants, any Iraqi seen as securing the foothold of the enemy in Iraq is likely to increase his chances of suffering a violent and grizzly death.
In order to promote economic development, the report recommends a "massive micro-credit program in all provinces." Even without the destruction wrought by a prolonged economic embargo and "shock and awe" bombing, the report claims Iraq's "infrastructure and service delivery mechanisms have suffered decades of severe degradation and under-investment." Enter international bankers and multi-national corporations. One will create the money and "lend" it to Iraq, while the other will soak it up through reconstruction contracts handed out by the U. S. government. 
The security of these loans and contracts will be threatened from the start. The risks associated with "investing" in such a volatile environment will not be born by the bankers and corporations, though; they will be born by the U. S. citizen in the form of higher taxes and inflation and U. S. soldiers in the form of blood. Troops will remain in Iraq for years, not to provide security and a transition to "democracy", but to safeguard the profits of bankers and corporations.
So that the Iraqi people will always be apprised of what's being done in their behalf, the report recommends improved communications "between Iraqis and the Coalition Provisional Authority through marketing and walk-in centers, and among staff members with regular town meetings and interactive meetings." In other words, the CPA should constantly disseminate propaganda reminding the Iraqis how much better life is under the Coalition than under Saddam. Even if many Iraqis initially reject it, history teaches that if you say it loud and often, they will eventually come to accept it as true.
The report makes an apparent appeal to "decentralized" control in Iraq, recommending "more freedom from Washington on financial matters." The end game? By the time the Iraqi Governing Council takes over from the CPA, they would have already been thoroughly corrupted by the economic powers that control the money, manpower and other resources of Iraq - an exclusive grant of economic privilege from the U. S. government. These economic powers will be immune from outside interference or competition, allowing them to plunder the remaining wealth of Iraq at will. 
Finally, the five-member panel that wrote the report is a coterie from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank not unlike Donald Rumsfeld's favored Defense Policy Board. Their mission statements are similar and their memberships reflect a balance of ex- public servants from both sides of the aisle with a common thread: support for statism, planned and regulated markets, and proactive foreign policy through pre-emptive military strikes. By choosing an "independent" panel to make his report, Rumsfeld's intent was to provide cover and a sense of legitimacy for the continuation of the Bush administration's plan for Iraq and the Middle East. 
Regardless of how many troops fall in Iraq, the administration and its masters will always find ways to rationalize the "sacrifice." In the end, to them it's just one more cost of doing business.


Previously by this author: 'Continuity of Government' Perpetuates Rule by Elitists
Harry Goslin welcomes your comments at realpatriot64@hotmail.com.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/analysis_goslin.html

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