The darkest of all suspicions about Rumsfeld's postwar strategy

Why the Administration may have purposely encouraged looting after the fall of Baghdad.

Over the last four years, I have been personally conflicted over which was more outrageously horrible: the decision to go to war in the first place, or the manner in which postwar planning was executed?  Both were bad, no doubt there.  But there was something said about the latter last night on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher that jolted my emotions.  Let me say that as someone that follows politics on a daily basis, I am rarely shocked.  But what I heard last night personally disturbed me, and will get all of you grinding your teeth.

Remember all the looting throughout Iraq after the US invaded?  Many Pentagon-types concede that the US should have done a better job protecting the Iraqi infrastructure.  Well, according to former U.S. Ambassador Barbara Bodine, one of the three panel guests on the show, the Administration actually wanted there to be mass looting in Baghdad because it would help downsize government.  In other words, Rumsfeld wanted to implement Ronald Reagan's limited government model in Iraq.

So I did some digging on the issue.  I found a 2003 story in The Nation magazine that confirmed this strategy.  It's quite disturbing that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld would want there to be looting.  But it all makes perfect sense:

As the Bush Administration becomes increasingly open about its plans toprivatize Iraq's state industries and parts of the government, Bremer'sde-Baathification takes on new meaning. Is he working only to get rid ofBaath Party members, or is he also working to shrink the public sectoras a whole so that hospitals, schools and even the army are primed forprivatization by US firms? Just as reconstruction is the guise forprivatization, de-Baathification looks a lot like disguised downsizing.

We need to ask ourselves what the purpose was behind Reagan's ideology?  Why do conservative Washington insiders want limited government?  Is it because their brand of government would be more efficient, or because the phrase "limited government" is code for selling democracy to the highest bidder?

Republican leaders want you to think that less government means less spending and more rights for you.  But actually, there will be spending no matter what.  It's just a question of who will be in charge.  Do you want government, which is bound by disclosure laws, to do the work?  Or do you want corporations, whose motives are less about spreading democracy than making a profit on Wall Street?  Oh boy have we been used!

But the main idea is that Rumsfeld wanted this "limited government" model to be implemented.  He tried.  He failed.  Now there is no end in sight.

Comments

[Jon]

I saw Real Time too. While all of the decisions could have been mistakes could also be coldly calculated. Personally I think its a little of both. They thought they could test out all of their wet dreams in Iraq and were arrogant enough not to think that Iraqis are people and would react in ways other than what the "planners" wanted to imagine.

Maybe its just that the war has gone on so long and I tend to expect the least from this group but I wasn't really shocked to hear this theory.One thing did get to me though.

I was incensed by John Mellencamp's "Aw Shucks..." defense of why many Americans are so naive and end up voting for the image of the guy they want to have a beer with. He seemed to really admire these types of people for being trusting even to a fault. Maybe if the USA was a tiny country with a small military and benign foreign policy this idea would be ok. But when literally Billions of lives are affected by the potential votes of our citizens its not cute, charming, or a virtue to be willfully naive.

Bill Maher : "But isn't there something to telling the people, be more cynical?"

John Mellencamp: "I don't want to go though life being cynical."

I'd like to thank Mr. Mellencamp and the people he defends for the Iraq War and all of the other crap that has transpired since 2001.

Sorry about that slightly off topic rant. I just had to get that out.

[Verite]

First time I saw 'looting and pillage' elevated to the realm of "strategy"..
but this was obvious at the time.
Apart from the war crimes involved with targeting civilain infrastructure.. basically a means of eliminating the other foreign inputs.. eg the French mobile phone system.. to replace all with US company/contractor systems.. and also to enhance gwnocide by the destruction of power/water/sewage infrastructure.... and the payout to Vice Cheney's firms to replace this has evaporated as easily and the millions by pallet loads of US bills that were to go from the UN held funds.

Fisk, who was there, reported along these lines in The Independent (UK)

He reported seeing the same people there at the important sites and everything was wrecked except the oil Ministry records.
Some strange evidence may have been planted at the same time (see Galloway)
Of note is the continuing destruction of medical records .. eg at the USUK Falluja massacre.. and the objective here can be to hamper future war crimes charges in the use of WMD against civilians, notably the uranium weopons, so-called "depleted" uranium.

[Bill]

The myth of Republican, conservative, fiscal stewardship exposed further, I'd say. Of the 9 trillion dollar National debt, 70% was accumulated during the Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II administrations. They have alweays been best at being self serving and the Ubber Payback to their true base, the upper 5% of the wealthy. The Cargyle cabal rules, and the rest, Psuedo-Christian bigots included are fools.

[serena1313]

Bush repeats time and again, "We must secure our vital interests in the region," but never qualifies what that means exactly. He talks about establishing democracy in broad terms, but never qualifies that either.

Therefore before discussing democracy in the Middle East necessitates understanding first that Bush defines democracy differently than 98% of the world. And secondly what instituting democracy Bush-style means. Thus from that perspective everything else fall into place -- it begins to make sense.

It has become clearly obvious Bush defines democracy as "free"-market economies, privatization and profit. Consistently and systematically Bush has instituted favourable conditions for businesses to thrive. But Democracy is not based on free-market economies or privatizing state-owned resources or thriving businesses. Democracy is based on freedom, liberty and equality. Nothing close to democratic ideals have been established in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere. Even Americans are less free today than before. That is Bush's democracy.

Iraq is a perfect example illustrating Bush's "democracy" where freedom, liberty nor equality exist, but corporations are more powerful. The goal was and still is to privatize Iraq's state-owned businesses, infrastructure, resources and oil.

In order to transform Iraq's economy into a market-economy unfettered and unobstructed necessitated keeping Iraqis distracted fending for their lives which explains why the looting, the chaos and the violence were intentionally not stopped.

However they ran into a glitch when al-Sadr caught on and started publishing information about it in his newspaper. If you re_member it was at that time Rumsfeld shut down Sadr's newspaper claiming it was instigating violence. No one questioned it. No one asked what al-Sadr published that caused Iraqis to revolt. Everyone seemed to just accept it. I think Rummy may have given some lame excuse, but I do not re_member now. Iraqis were hungry and out of work. Instead of hiring Iraqis desperate for work corporations were importing "cheaper" labour.

Privatizing Iraq's oil was also foiled when Iraq's oil union members threatened to strike -- many were arrested. Yet the members have effectively kept contracts (privatizing Iraq's oil) from being signed, so far.

Anyone standing in the way of corporate growth or the privatization of Iraq's resources and enterprise are punished, newspapers are shut down, free speech is squelched, unions are busted, members arrested. Meanwhile Iraq's government rife with corruption continues unabated.

And the rest -- as they say -- is history.

That is Bush's democracy in action.

Basically it was theory put into practice, an experiment that failed -- shocking, but not surprising!

[Read "Bremer's 100 Orders" and PNAC, too].

[Pat Williams]

"As the Bush Administration becomes increasingly open about its plans to privatize Iraq's state industries and parts of the government, Bremer's de-Baathification takes on new meaning. Is he working only to get rid of Baath Party members, or is he also working to shrink the public sector as a whole so that hospitals, schools and even the army are primed for privatization by US firms? Just as reconstruction is the guise for privatization, de-Baathification looks a lot like disguised downsizing."
This reminds one of the Katrina disaster in New Orleans. It would explain much about the gross negligence of Bush and Chertoff. It would explain what has happened since. These are Americans they've been doing this to, albeit the poor and minorities. We have two years of history now. It all falls into place. If that isn't pure evil, I don't know what is.

[Larry]

Yes, apparent to me too at the time. I saw the looting then, and now, as part of the overall attempt to smash and demoralize the Iraqi quasi-socialist state, to make and keep it barefoot and pregnant, so to speak, the easier to rule it and oppress it, and as a culmination of a long-time wet dream desire of the right-wing cadre in the U.S. foreign policy/business establishment to do two things it had coveted since the rise of Nasser in Egypt: To neutralize an Arab nationalist regime, which always stood in the way of having U.S. lackeys put in power; and to gut an indigenous Arab socialist regime that managed to work well enough to upgrade the lives of its people but that prevented imperial-colonial economic control and total commercial penetration (as if it's our 'right' to do so).

In fact, this right-wing foreign policy cadre's fear and loathing of Arab nationalist governments led directly to the U.S. literally beginning the funding and organizing of nascent Islamist groups (in Egypt, for example) that were encouraged to challenge the Arab nationalist regimes from within, simply for the sake of destabilizing them and weakening their resistance to the inflow of Western capital and power. You know how this is all turning out! Also, Israel did the same thing with Hamas beginning in the 1980s, funding and organizing Hamas as an impediment to Arafat's PLO rule, which was the primary Israeli designated enemy at the time. Great plan!

"I don't understand and never will know why such smart people found the get up and go to build so many damned Alamos."

[dick musser]

War Criminals.

[Clemsy]

Very believable. What concerns me the most is that these same people are still in power and still playing the same shell game.

[madone]

It's not just GWB or the right-wing. Or our fascist-leaning media. Why have no Democratic leaders mentioned these privatization plans? Why weren't they telling Americans about Bremer's takeover plans for Iraq? Why haven't they mentioned the Embassy? Have they condemned the secret prisons? Of course not. They voted for the war to begin with. Like the GOP, they appear to be corporate whores - all seemingly ok with murder, torture and theft as long as US corporations profit. Nothing, nothing surprises me anymore with any of these thugs.

[Chief Editor: Todd]

Madone, Democrats didn't mention any of this about Bremer because they lacked a spine. That is how Democrats lose elections. Once they get their spine back, then the Republicans will be out of power. I think blogs are setting a good example for Democrats on how to stand up and be proud of their beliefs.