Adventure Capitalism - The Hidden 2001 Plan to Carve-up Iraq

[Guest guest]

Wed, 27 Oct 2004 12:46:53 -0400

palast

 

 

Subject:Adventure Capitalism - The Hidden 2001 Plan to Carve-up Iraq

 

 

 

 

Adventure Capitalism - The Hidden 2001 Plan to Carve-up Iraq

TomPaine.com

 

 

by Greg Palast

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

 

Why were Iraqi elections delayed? Why was Jay Garner fired? Why are

our troops still there? Investigative reporter Greg Palast uncovers

new documents that answer these questions and more about the Bush

administration's grand designs on Iraq. Like everything else issued

during this administration, the plan to overhaul the Iraqi economy has

corporate lobbyist fingerprints all over it.

 

---

 

In February 2003, a month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a 101-page

document came my way from somewhere within the U.S. State Department.

Titled pleasantly, " Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Growth, "

it was part of a larger under-wraps program called " The Iraq

Strategy. "

 

The Economy Plan goes boldly where no invasion plan has gone before:

the complete rewrite, it says, of a conquered state's " policies, laws

and regulations. " Here's what you'll find in the Plan: A highly

detailed program, begun years before the tanks rolled, for imposing a

new regime of low taxes on big business, and quick sales of Iraq's

banks and bridges—in fact, " ALL state enterprises " —to foreign

operators. There's more in the Plan, part of which became public when

the State Department hired consulting firm to track the progress of

the Iraq makeover. Example: This is likely history's first military

assault plan appended to a program for toughening the target nation's

copyright laws.

 

And when it comes to oil, the Plan leaves nothing to chance—or to the

Iraqis. Beginning on page 73, the secret drafters emphasized that

Iraq would have to " privatize " (i.e., sell off) its " oil and

supporting industries. " The Plan makes it clear that—even if we

didn't go in for the oil—we certainly won't leave without it.

 

If the Economy Plan reads like a Christmas wishlist drafted by U.S.

corporate lobbyists, that's because it was.

 

From slashing taxes to wiping away Iraq's tariffs (taxes on imports of

U.S. and other foreign goods), the package carries the unmistakable

fingerprints of the small, soft hands of Grover Norquist.

 

Norquist is the capo di capi of the lobbyist army of the right. In

Washington every Wednesday, he hosts a pow-wow of big business

political operatives and right-wing muscle groups—including the

Christian Coalition and National Rifle Association—where Norquist

quarterbacks their media and legislative offensive for the week.

 

Once registered as a lobbyist for Microsoft and American Express,

Norquist today directs Americans for Tax Reform, a kind of trade union

for billionaires unnamed, pushing a regressive " flat tax " scheme.

 

Acting on a tip, I dropped by the super-lobbyist's L-Street office.

Below a huge framed poster of his idol ( " NIXON— NOW MORE THAN EVER " ),

Norquist could not wait to boast of moving freely at the Treasury,

Defense and State Departments, and, in the White House, shaping the

post-conquest economic plans—from taxes to tariffs to the

" intellectual property rights " that I pointed to in the Plan.

 

Norquist wasn't the only corporate front man getting a piece of the

Iraq cash cow. Norquist suggested the change in copyright laws after

seeking the guidance of the Recording Industry Association of America.

 

And then there's the oil. Iraq-born Falah Aljibury was in on the

drafting of administration blueprints for the post-Saddam Iraq.

According to Aljibury, the administration began coveting its Mideast

neighbor's oil within weeks of the Bush-Cheney inauguration, when the

White House convened a closed committee under the direction of the

State Department's Pam Wainwright. The group included banking and

chemical industry men, and the range of topics over what to do with a

post-conquest Iraq was wide. In short order, said Aljibury, " It

became an oil group. "

 

This was not surprising as the membership list had a strong smell of

petroleum. Besides Aljibury, an oil industry consultant, the secret

team included executives from Royal-Dutch Shell and ChevronTexaco.

 

These and other oil industry bigs would, in 2003, direct the drafting

of a 300-page addendum to the Economy Plan solely about Iraq's oil

assets. The oil section of the Plan, obtained after a year of

wrestling with the administration over the Freedom of Information Act,

calls for Iraqis to sell off to " IOCs " (international oil companies)

the nation's " downstream " assets—that is, the refineries, pipelines

and ports that, unless under armed occupation, a Mideast nation would

be loathe to give up.

 

---The General Versus Annex D---

 

One thing stood in the way of rewriting Iraq's laws and selling off

Iraq's assets: the Iraqis. An insider working on the plans put it

coldly: " They have [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz coming

out saying it's going to be a democratic country … but we're going to

do something that 99 percent of the people of Iraq wouldn't vote for. "

 

In this looming battle between what Iraqis wanted and what the Bush

administration planned for them, the Iraqis had an unexpected ally,

Gen. Jay Garner, the man appointed by our president just before the

invasion as a kind of temporary Pasha to run the soon-to-be conquered

nation.

 

Garner's an old Iraq hand who performed the benevolent autocratic

function in the Kurdish zone after the first Gulf War. But in March

2003, the general made his big career mistake. In Kuwait City, fresh

off the plane from the United States, he promised Iraqis they would

have free and fair elections as soon as Saddam was toppled, preferably

within 90 days.

 

Garner's 90-days-to-democracy pledge ran into a hard object: The

Economy Plan's 'Annex D.' Disposing of a nation's oil industry—let

alone redrafting trade and tax laws—can't be done in a weekend, nor in

90 days. Annex D lays out a strict 360-day schedule for the

free-market makeover of Iraq And there's the rub: It was simply

inconceivable that any popularly elected government would let America

write its laws and auction off the nation's crown jewel, its petroleum

industry.

 

Elections would have to wait. As lobbyist Norquist explained when I

asked him about the Annex D timetable, " The right to trade, property

rights, these things are not to be determined by some democratic

election. "

Our troops would simply have to stay in Mesopotamia a bit longer.

 

---New World Orders 12, 37, 81 and 83---

 

Gen. Garner resisted—which was one of the reasons for his swift

sacking by Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld on the very night he

arrived in Baghdad last April. Rummy had a perfect replacement ready

to wing it in Iraq to replace the recalcitrant general. Paul Bremer

may not have had Garner's experience on the ground in Iraq, but no one

would question the qualifications of a man who served as managing

director of Kissinger Associates.

 

Pausing only to install himself in Saddam's old palace—and adding an

extra ring of barbed wire— " Jerry " Bremer cancelled Garner's scheduled

meeting of Iraq's tribal leaders called to plan national elections.

Instead, Bremer appointed the entire government himself. National

elections, Bremer pronounced, would have to wait until 2005. The

extended occupation would require our forces to linger.

 

The delay would, incidentally, provide time needed to lock in the

laws, regulations and irreversible sales of assets in accordance with

the Economy Plan.

 

On that, Bremer wasted no time. Altogether, the leader of the

Coalition Provisional Authority issued exactly 100 orders that remade

Iraq in the image of the Economy Plan. In May, for example,

Bremer—only a month from escaping out Baghdad's back door—took time

from fighting the burgeoning insurrection to sign orders

81— " Patents, " and 83, " Copyrights. "

Here, Grover Norquist's hard work paid off. Fifty years of royalties

would now be conferred on music recording. And 20 years on Windows code.

 

Order number 37, " Tax Strategy for 2003, " was Norquist's dream come

true: taxes capped at 15 percent on corporate and individual income

(as suggested in the Economy Plan, page 8). The U.S. Congress had

rejected a similar flat-tax plan for America, but in Iraq, with an

electorate of one—Jerry Bremer—the public's will was not an issue.

 

Not everyone felt the pain of this reckless rush to a free market.

Order 12, " Trade Liberalization, " permitted the tax- and tariff-free

import of foreign products. One big winner was Cargill, the world's

largest grain merchant, which flooded Iraq with hundreds of thousands

of tons of wheat. For Iraqi farmers, already wounded by sanctions and

war, this was devastating. They could not compete with the U.S. and

Australian surplusses dumped on them. But the import plan carried out

the letter of the Economy Plan.

 

This trade windfall for the West was enforced by the occupation's

agriculture chief, Dan Amstutz, himself an import from the United

States.

Prior to George Bush taking office, Amstutz chaired a company funded

by Cargill.

 

There's no sense cutting taxes on big business, ordering 20 years of

copyright payments for Bill Gates' operating system or killing off

protections for Iraqi farmers if some out-of-control Iraqi government

is going to take it away after an election. The shadow governors of

Iraq back in Washington thought of that, too. Bremer fled, but he's

left behind him nearly 200 American " experts, " assigned to baby-sit

each new Iraqi minister—functionaries also approved by the U.S. State

Department.

 

---The Price---

 

The free market paradise in Iraq is not free.

 

After General Garner was deposed, I met with him in Washington. He had

little regard for the Economy Plan handed to him three months before

the tanks rolled. He especially feared its designs on Iraq's oil

assets and the delay in handing Iraq back to Iraqis. " That's one fight

you don't want to take on, " he told me.

 

But we have. After a month in Saddam's palace, Bremer cancelled

municipal elections, including the crucial vote about to take place in

Najaf. Denied the ballot, Najaf's Shi'ites voted with bullets. This

April, insurgent leader Moqtada Al Sadr's militia killed 21 U.S.

soldiers and, for a month, seized the holy city.

 

" They shouldn't have to follow our plan, " the general said. " It's

their country, their oil. " Maybe, but not according to the Plan. And

until it does become their country, the 82nd Airborne will have to

remain to keep it from them.

 

 

For the interview with Jay Garner and more details of The Plan, see

" Bush Family Fortunes: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, " out this

month on DVD. Watch a segment: http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm

====================