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The Corporate Sacking Of Iraq

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http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/19894/

 

The Corporate Sacking Of Iraq

By Jim Hightower, AlterNet

Posted on September 15, 2004,

http://www.alternet.org/story/19894/

 

If you think that the Bushites had no post-war plan for what they

would do in Iraq after our military ousted Saddam, think again. You

can see their plan in policies that were quietly and autocratically

imposed on the Iraqi people during the reign of Mr. L. Paul Bremmer

III, who was our occupying czar there.

 

While America's media establishment has been focused on the raging war

by Iraqi insurgents and by the Bushites' attempt to enthrone a puppet

government there, the neo-con laissez-faire zealots in the

administration have been gleefully using this ravaged country as their

own ideological playground. For years, these AynRandian theorists have

longed to create their utopia of a corporate state, and they've used

the IMF, World Bank, WTO and other monkey wrenches to try to implement

their theories in Latin America and elsewhere. But they've never had

an entire economy at their disposal... until they grabbed Iraq.

 

While Baghdad was burning, Bremmer arrived. Rather than putting out

the fires, he used them as a distraction to issue decrees that

instantly opened up Iraq to a total corporate takeover.

 

For example, his decrees open all of that nation's public assets to

foreign corporate ownership, and they allow 100 percent of the

country's industries - from banking to food - to be owned by

foreigners. Also, Bremmer ruled that 100 percent of the profits that

foreign investors make in Iraq can now be hauled out of the country -

there's no requirement that any of these profits be reinvested there,

nor do the investors have to pay even a dime in taxes on the profits

they haul away. This isn't " liberation, " as the Bushites like to call

their Iraqi adventure - it's legalized looting... and it's fueling the

continuing anger and armed resistance by the Iraqi people, who're

determined not to have their nation looted.

 

To get this full story, see Naomi Klein's explosive article in

Harper's Magazine. You can read it at www.harpers.org.

 

© 2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/19894/

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