Our
operation Iraqi liberation, aka O.I.L.
Karl
Kalman
Many
people probably still feel that our mission
into Iraq was to free it's people from an
evil dictator that was strongly believed
to have "weapons of mass destruction"
and that we did the right thing by lifting
the decade long sanctions we put on the
people of Iraq to punish it's evil regime.
Putting sanctions on Iraq probably didn't
stop Hussein from thinking twice about buying
their three luxury car every year.
If
Saddam Hussein was living such a luxurious
life, why would he take up terrorism and
kill 3000 Americans? Was there a connection
between him and Bin Laden? If there was
a connection, there is no proof.
The
European Commision promised that they would
offer $250 million at a donor conference
scheduled at the end of October in Madrid.
At the meeting, Rumsfeld is expected to
ask for more contributions and reiterate
that the effort to reconstruct Iraq would
cost somewhere between $50 million and $75
million. But the United Nations sources
quoting the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund put the figure at closer to
$35 billion over the next four years.
On
May 22, the U.N. Security Council passed
a resolution ending sanctions on Iraq. Significantly,
the resolution gave the U.S. decision making
power over how the oil funds would be used
with regard to relief, reconstruction, disarmament
and "other purposes benefiting the
people of Iraq." [Colum Lynch, "U.S.
to Propose Broader Control Of Iraqi Oil,
Funds" Washington Post, May 9, 2003.]
On
May 4, Philip Carroll was named to head
an advisory board to the Iraqi oil ministry.
Carroll was chief executive officer (CEO)
of Shell Oil, the U.S. arm of Royal Dutch/Shell
in the 1990s, and subsequently became head
of the construction giant Fluor, a company
he ran until 2002. Carroll still owns substantial
stock in both of these corporations. He
is not known as an Iraq oil specialist and
apparently had never been to the country
prior to his appointment. [Michael Renner,
"The Other Looting," Foreign Policy
In Focus, July 2003.]
When
Dick Cheney left his position as secretary
of defense under Bush Sr. he went to work
for the Pentagon to study how the defense
department can significantly cut costs by
privatizing much of it's non-combat activities.
When President Clinton was elected to office,
Cheney quickly got the job as CEO of Halliburton
Inc. Knowing the kind of connections Cheney
had, he significantly increased Halliburton's
military contracts. Even before the first
shot was fired in the invasion of Iraq the
Pentagon had secretly awarded Halliburton
a two-year, no-bid contract to put out oil
well fires and to handle other unspecified
duties involving war damage to the country's
petroleum industry, a contract that was
worth $7 billion. It's just not Halliburton
that's playing this game. The San Francisco
based company Bechtel, who donated $166,000
to the national Republican Party committees
in the last election cycle, is also expected
to gain hundreds of millions of dollars
in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion.
These
military contracts should have been made
public for auctioning and competitive bidding
to save the taxpayers money, but given the
circumstances, the government's excuse was
that "in times of emergency, when national
security is involved, the government is
allowed to bypass normal procedures and
award contracts to a single company, without
competition." Other countries that
we have asked aid for aren't contributing
much because they're not stupid. They know
exactly what is going on and we cannot blame
them for little involvement. They probably
don't want to invest into American companies
that will benefit Bush and his friends.
We cannot blame the terrorists or suicide
bombers in Iraq for their anger towards
Bush because they're not stupid foreigners
who can't understand English. They know
exactly who our governor is and what kind
of vehicle he drives.
Karl
Kalman is a business finance major at Cal
State Long Beach.
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