| Wednesday, May
12, 2004
The first thing the new Iraqi government should do is
go to the World Court and sue the UN as an organization and Kofi Annan
personally for the $10 billion or so the UN allowed to be stolen from the
Oil for Food program....
And I have a question from a friend:
I'm curious whether any correspondent has
strong impressions/actual evidence of just what was going on behind the
scenes during that really bizarre sudden firing of Garner and his
replacement by Bremer, and which factions were involved for what reason.
Some accounts seem to indicate that the neocons fired Garner, but now there
are claims that Powell's anti-neocon people dumped Garner. Some people say
Garner was incompetent, but others say Bremer was incompetent and actually
responsible for disbanding the army. Don't have any particular relative
opinion of the two men: perhaps both were incompetent, perhaps neither.
One claim has been that Garner was opposed to "privatizing" the Iraqi
economy via lucrative contracts to Chalabi, his horde of corrupt relatives,
Halliburton, etc., and that's what did him in. Seems possible, but who
knows.
I'll certainly be very interested in reading the reviews of the avalanche of
"How We Lost Iraq" books that are doubtless currently being written.
I have heard several versions. And the questioner has many friends among
both neo-cons and the government; that he would ask says a lot.
And from the Washington Post,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
articles/A13065-2004May9.html
here is Intelligence Operation FreeStyle:
Ahmad Naje Dulaimi, a waiter at a restaurant in
Baghdad's Adhamiya neighborhood, was arrested in the middle of the night of
July 18. He had once worked for the Iraqi Olympic Committee, which was run
by Hussein's son, Uday, and used as a cover for political persecution.
Dulaima was a long-distance freestyle swimmer
on the Iraqi national team. A neighbor had informed U.S. soldiers of his
affiliation, he said, and suggested to U.S. troops that he was a member of
Hussein's militia, Saddam's Fedayeen.
"I had an Olympic Committee card in my wallet,
but I told them I was a swimmer," said Dulaimi, a lanky 23-year old with
floppy hair and acne. "I guess the Americans believed their spy."
Within days, the informant, a well-known
religious figure in the neighborhood, was killed for working with U.S.
troops, Dulaimi said.
Dualimi's 11-month imprisonment began in the
interrogation rooms of the Adhamiya Palace, a former Hussein villa now being
used by U.S. troops. He spent the first night in the T-shirt and shorts he
was sleeping in at the time of his arrest, but he was also hooded, with his
hands and feet bound by plastic cuffs.
For two days, he consumed only a cracker and
several sips of water, he said. On the third night, he was interrogated by
two U.S. soldiers, a man and a woman, who were assisted by a Kuwaiti
interpreter. The male soldier strode into the interrogation room, Dulaimi
said, and immediately urinated on his head.
"They asked me about Baathists in the
neighborhood, if there were officers, who sold weapons, and who were
Fedayeen. I told them I knew nothing," said Dulaimi, who also spent time in
Camp Bucca and Abu Ghraib before he was freed on Thursday, according to his
release papers and prison identification bracelet. "They said, 'We know you
are innocent, but we want information from you. You know these people.' "
Now that ought to work, right? I am sure those
troops feel proud of themselves. Where in hell was the adult supervision?
From the same article:
Some American and Iraqi commentators attribute
the growth of the insurgency to the decision in May of last year by L. Paul
Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq, to dissolve the Iraqi
military.
The decision was another step in the
dismantling of Hussein's government, once dominated by members of the Baath
Party. But it had a practical effect of leaving an estimated 400,000 men
with military training without jobs. U.S. commanders worried about the
consequences, which Iraqis sympathetic to the U.S. project now say have
turned out worse than any of the Americans expect
Now there's an understatement...
COPYRIGHT MATTERS: I have opened a special
page for this since it is long, and dull to those who are not
especially interested. I'll put up a summary here for everyone another
time.
If you have time, you may find this interesting:
------------
http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/
main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/05/12/waust12.
xml&sSheet=/news/2004/05/12/ixworld.html
Australia acts to refloat island's sinking fortunes By Nick Squires in
Sydney
(Filed: 12/05/2004)
Another tale of the new order and global economy.
Wednesday TOP
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