Baghdad Year Zero
Written By
Klein, Naomi
The tone of Bremer’s tenure was set with his first major act on the job:
he fired 500,000 state workers, most of them soldiers, but also doctors,
nurses, teachers, publishers, and printers. Next, he flung open the
country’s borders to absolutely unrestricted imports: no tariffs, no duties,
no inspections, no taxes. Iraq, Bremer declared two weeks after he
arrived, was “open for business.”
U.S. and Britain must “comply fully with their
obligations under international law including in
particular the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and
the Hague Regulations of 1907.”
But Bremer didn’t give up. International law prohibits occupiers from
selling state assets themselves, but it doesn’t say anything about the
puppet governments they appoint. Originally, Bremer had pledged to
hand over power to a directly elected Iraqi government, but in early
November he went to Washington for a private meeting with President
Bush and came back with a Plan B.
http://www.harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html