-Caveat Lector-
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=383
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/adventure_capitalism.php
"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.' "
Adventure Capitalism - The Hidden 2001 Plan
to Carve-up Iraq
================
by Greg Palast
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
TomPaine.com
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
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