The real deal on Iraq now and past

[yodajazz]

I know that you are all busy, but this article gives the truest account of the ideas which led to the Iraq war, along with an assessment of the current situation. By understanding this article, some important corallaires come from this. There is no mention of all of a "war on terror" in this article. Instead, the real issues of oil production, and establishing Iraq as a 'client state' are discussed. These things are in on-going negotiations so their so understand thier importance is essential to know what is going on in today's world.

John McCain's campaign manager did say that this campaign is not about the issues. So that shows that their strategy will be to avoid the issues. That is why this article is important. We may not even hear this discussed at all during this election season. I have heard about these negotiations in the news, but this article gives real depth as to what is happening now, and also some history.


http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=13428

Blessing to you all.

[Cuchulain]

Thanks for the great article, yodajazz. I'm sure Bush and co. are shocked, just shocked, that Iraq doesn't want to allow the total rape of their country to further US military and corporate interests. Bush spying? Whoda thunk it, hehe. The oil deals were a joke all along.

I was surprised that the article you linked mentioned Iraqi oil worker unions. As part of the 'great neocon economic experiment in Iraq' Paul Bremer wanted to privatize everything and revived a Hussein era law outlawing unions. I did a little research and found out that the oil workers pretty much said "fuck you" to that and organized anyway. They've been so successful that the Iraq govt. has recently dumped that law. Like Joe Biden says "organize, organize, organize".

'The honey theory of Iraqi reconstruction stems from the most cherished belief of the war's ideological architects: that greed is good. Not good just for them and their friends but good for humanity, and certainly good for Iraqis. Greed creates profit, which creates growth, which creates jobs and products and services and everything else anyone could possibly need or want. The role of good government, then, is to create the optimal conditions for corporations to pursue their bottomless greed, so that they in turn can meet the needs of the society. The problem is that governments, even neoconservative governments, rarely get the chance to prove their sacred theory right: despite their enormous ideological advances, even George Bush's Republicans are, in their own minds, perennially sabotaged by meddling Democrats, intractable unions, and alarmist environmentalists.

Iraq was going to change all that. In one place on Earth, the theory would finally be put into practice in its most perfect and uncompromised form. A country of 25 million would not be rebuilt as it was before the war; it would be erased, disappeared. In its place would spring forth a gleaming showroom for laissez-faire economics, a utopia such as the world had never seen. Every policy that liberates multinational corporations to pursue their quest for profit would be put into place: a shrunken state, a flexible workforce, open borders, minimal taxes, no tariffs, no ownership restrictions. The people of Iraq would, of course, have to endure some short-term pain: assets, previously owned by the state, would have to be given up to create new opportunities for growth and investment. Jobs would have to be lost and, as foreign products flooded across the border, local businesses and family farms would, unfortunately, be unable to compete. But to the authors of this plan, these would be small prices to pay for the economic boom that would surely explode once the proper conditions were in place, a boom so powerful the country would practically rebuild itself.

The fact that the boom never came and Iraq continues to tremble under explosions of a very different sort should never be blamed on the absence of a plan. Rather, the blame rests with the plan itself, and the extraordinarily violent ideology upon which it is based.'
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/09/0080197

[PapaGrande]

Naomi Klein doesn't know shit about economics. There is nothing laissez-faire about the war in Iraq, or the neo-con political philosophy.

[PapaGrande]

I know that you are all busy, but this article gives the truest account of the ideas which led to the Iraq war, along with an assessment of the current situation. By understanding this article, some important corallaires come from this. There is no mention of all of a "war on terror" in this article. Instead, the real issues of oil production, and establishing Iraq as a 'client state' are discussed. These things are in on-going negotiations so their so understand thier importance is essential to know what is going on in today's world.

John McCain's campaign manager did say that this campaign is not about the issues. So that shows that their strategy will be to avoid the issues. That is why this article is important. We may not even hear this discussed at all during this election season. I have heard about these negotiations in the news, but this article gives real depth as to what is happening now, and also some history.


http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=13428

Blessing to you all.

Wake up, campaigns are rarely about issues. You think Obama is really about "the issues", with all his sloganeering about "hope" and "change" and class warfare rhetoric, LOL, you need help.

I heard a guy on NPR talking about how in times of trouble and uncertainty America looks to superheros (he had written a book on superman I think), and he made an interesting observation about this election. More than "the issues" people are looking for a hero, McCain is obviously playing the role of the War Hero, but Obama is playing to fill the role of hero himself (more as the outsider/underdog who takes on a corrupt system type of here). I had not though about the election from that respect before here this, anyway, character is always an issue, maybe the number 1 issue. People are far more emotional about presidential candidates than they care to admit.


Antiwar is a pretty good site, Justin Raimondo is my favorite writer there.
This is a great article for all the Obama apologists here:

Is Obama the 'Antiwar Candidate'?

In case you don't want to read the article, the answer is NO.

[Cuchulain]

Hmm, her bio says she was a Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics...

Has a laissez-faire market ever truly existed? Cons meddle in the market to favor big corporations and call it that. Good old Milt Friedman would probably call the neocon economic plan in Iraq laissez-faire, but to misquote Rush Limbaugh "he's dead. His policies live on, but we're in the process of doing something about that". Of course Scumbaugh was actually talking about the great FDR, but it's fun to twist his words around.

BTW, 'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism' by Ms. Klein was a good read.

[hippifried]

Has a laissez-faire market ever truly existed?

Yes. It's called the "black market" today.

[PapaGrande]

Hmm, her bio says she was a Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics...

Has a laissez-faire market ever truly existed? Cons meddle in the market to favor big corporations and call it that. Good old Milt Friedman would probably call the neocon economic plan in Iraq laissez-faire, but to misquote Rush Limbaugh "he's dead. His policies live on, but we're in the process of doing something about that". Of course Scumbaugh was actually talking about the great FDR, but it's fun to twist his words around.

BTW, 'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism' by Ms. Klein was a good read.

Miliband Fellow is not an academic position, she is a journalist and I highly doubt she has any economic background beyond econ 101, if even that. I have not read the Shock Doctrine, although I have heard a lecture she gave on it. From that and her other writings its clear to me that she has a fundamental misunderstanding of even basic economics.

What we have in the US is plutocracy, or corporatism as some call it, basically a system where big government and big business are closely aligned. This is a system favored by both Republicans and Democrats.
Just because neo-cons believe in slightly less taxation and regulation does not make them champions of free markets, they are clearly not.

[Cuchulain]

What we have in the US is plutocracy, or corporatism as some call it, basically a system where big government and big business are closely aligned. This is a system favored by both Republicans and Democrats.
Just because neo-cons believe in slightly less taxation and regulation does not make them champions of free markets, they are clearly not.

I agree with you regarding our current plutocracy and that Rethugnicans are hardly champions of a free market. They DO claim to be, but they meddle in the market to favor big corporations.

Democrats have been forced to take a more populist stance because the 'Republican-lite' thing just wasn't working for them. Liberals regulate the market to favor people. As the Dems have become more liberal(though not nearly liberal enough for me), they are clearly the lesser of two evils and much better for the middle class worker. That's why I vote Democratic.

I have no idea what your background in economics is. I had a basic Keynsian econ course back in college and the rest I've picked up on my own. Ms Klein's opinions seem to reflect what I have been seeing and they make sense to me. Of course, I could be wrong, but I make my best judgement based on what I see and go with it.

[yodajazz]

What we have in the US is plutocracy, or corporatism as some call it, basically a system where big government and big business are closely aligned. This is a system favored by both Republicans and Democrats.
Just because neo-cons believe in slightly less taxation and regulation does not make them champions of free markets, they are clearly not.

I agree with you regarding our current plutocracy and that Rethugnicans are hardly champions of a free market. They DO claim to be, but they meddle in the market to favor big corporations.

Democrats have been forced to take a more populist stance because the 'Republican-lite' thing just wasn't working for them. Liberals regulate the market to favor people. As the Dems have become more liberal(though not nearly liberal enough for me), they are clearly the lesser of two evils and much better for the middle class worker. That's why I vote Democratic.

I have no idea what your background in economics is. I had a basic Keynsian econ course back in college and the rest I've picked up on my own. Ms Klein's opinions seem to reflect what I have been seeing and they make sense to me. Of course, I could be wrong, but I make my best judgement based on what I see and go with it.

I heard a economist say recently that the state of home ownership is a better gauge of the economy than the stock market. I agree with this.

[El Nino]

One of the many truths about Iraq that you will NEVER hear mainstream news talking about. Depleted Uranium much?