Is this what you want when you support the US occupation of Iraq?

[Karmadillo]

If you want something better than what's described in the article below, do you think it is realistic to expect it will be achieved under US control? I think it was Jonathan Schell who said the war took the best options for Iraq off the table, but UN occupation (without a US presence except for the funding to fix what we broke) with a rapid transition to some form of self-government may be the best of the remaining options. Given the uses to which the requested $87 billion will be put by the Bush Administration, it's hard for me to see why Democrats shouldn't be unanimous in their opposition. The troops should come home, not for our benefit, but for the benefit of the Iraqi people.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/sep2003/bush-s24.shtml

Bush at the UN—a war criminal takes the podium
By Bill Vann
24 September 2003

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In the meantime, the gangster regime in Washington intends to carry out the systematic plundering of Iraqi wealth, while using military force to suppress a growing movement of national resistance.

The Bush administration’s plans were spelled out over the weekend, when Washington’s handpicked finance minister in the Iraqi Quisling regime unexpectedly unveiled a blueprint for the country’s economic development.

This economic “reform” package—made public at the International Monetary Fund-World Bank meeting in Dubai and signed into law by Washington’s proconsul in Baghdad, Paul Bremer—amounts to a US plan for the wholesale privatization of the Iraqi economy. It imposes investment, trade and tax policies geared entirely to the interests of US multinationals at the expense of the Iraqi people.

The precedent for this plan is the kind of disastrous economic “shock therapy” introduced in the former Soviet Union more than a decade ago, leading to the plummeting of living standards for the vast majority and the creation of a wealthy criminal elite. In Iraq, however, the process is to be carried out at the point of a US gun, with the assurance that the overwhelming share of profits will be reaped by politically connected American corporations like Halliburton and Bechtel.

The plan calls for the privatization of everything from electric power, to hospitals and a myriad of state-owned industries. This process would inevitably involve a form of brutal triage, in which those few industries considered profitable would be taken over by US corporations, with the rest shut down and their workers thrown onto the scrap heap.

It allows for 100 percent foreign ownership in all sectors, save natural resources, and reduces trade tariffs to a minimum. Foreign companies would be guaranteed full and immediate remittance of all profits, dividends, interest and royalties.

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