Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq Author is Fresh Air today. Whaddya think

Question

That is to say he is being interviewed on Fresh Air today. You should catch the show when ever it is on in your area. For those who don't know, Fresh Air is a radio show carried on NPR. To find listing, check here npr.org

Answer 1

I will only read books that totally support my views. Any other books are all LIES! Lies I say! My leaders would never do anything that wasn't pure and exactly what they tell me. The people making money on this war would gladly do it for nothing if you asked them too. Billions of dollars won't corrupt people in any way. Gotta run - Rush is on!!

Answer 2

I think it's the same tired old crap we've been hearing since 1991 when you freaks were out in droves screaming about "no blood for oil". You were wrong 15 years ago, you're wrong today...

Answer 3

I think you should get a life, and do something to reflect your convictions other than rambling on a chat site.

Answer 4

Nobody is gonna hear it cause its NPR.

Answer 5

Load of crap in my opinion.

Answer 6

i wish you had told us who the author is, asker, but it's good of you to share the lead with us.

i have a feeling you might be very interested in this piece below, written by Conceptual Guerilla. it's kinda long, but an easy, enjoyable read. (there IS a word or two some might find objectionable.) (although more objectionable by far is wanton, unjust destruction and killing, don't you think?)

it's called "A Marshall Plan for Iraq":

Looking at it purely from the standpoint of politics, the war in Iraq should have been a slam dunk for George W. Bush. The "war" part of the war lasted six weeks. Saddam's army crumbled. American casualties were less than 200, and many of those were the result of accidents, and not enemy fire. As for Saddam Hussein, the guy really was an odious fellow -- the perfect villain for Dubya to whoop up on. As for the cooked intelligence, and even the failure to find those WMD's, nobody outside of the progressive community gave a rat's *** -- provided of course, that the war was quick, and our soldiers were home for Christmas. In that circumstance, the war would have been a triumph for Bush, with virtually no downside for anyone who wasn't already planning to vote against him.

That is why in March 2003, I simply moved on to talk about other things. I couldn't see any value in continuing to protest a war that was a done deal. I assumed that the war wouldn't last long, and would be off the front page long before the 2004 election -- plenty of time for the public to forget Dubya's "triumph," such as it was, and focus on the wreck he was making of the domestic economy.

It didn't happen that way, of course. Perversely, if the war had gone the way Rumsfeld predicted, complete with flower throwing crowds of grateful natives, Dubya might have lost the following year. Sure, the war hadn't gone quite as advertised, but the full dimensions of the neocon failure were yet to be fully understood. The famous Downing Street memo was still under wraps. Scooter Libby wouldn't be indicted for another year. The New York Times knew about the FISA wiretapping scandal, but wouldn't publish the story for another year. Meanwhile, the war served to distract the public from the deep structural problems of the US economy. In fact, the war is STILL distracting them.

The perverse political benefits for the Republicans continue to accrue. In fact, the war in Iraq has turned into a complete foreign policy disaster. Iraq is like the tar baby, the US playing "Brer Bear," with our hands and feet stuck to it. We can't stay in Iraq. Our presence there just fuels the insurgency, tempting US military forces to sink into complete barbarism in order to quell that insurency -- which of course, will just make it worse.

We can't leave, either. Of course, we absolutely CAN "just leave," but we cannot avoid the consequences of this collossal blunder. Anyway you slice it or reframe it, leaving Iraq tomorrow is a "defeat." The insurgency will still be there, and will undermine the present "democratic government." Eventually, the Shiite majority will assert itself, create a Taliban style regime, and align itself with Iran. The weaknesses of American military strength are already on full display. We theoretically have the capability to fight a two theater war, but we obviously don't really. We don't have the extra forces to send into Iraq to "kick butt" -- which would make matters worse, in any event. We've bankrupted ourselves between tax cuts and flushing money down the Iraqi toilet. Once we acknowledge the defeat we've pretty much already suffered, our prestige and standing in the international community will be severely damaged -- if not completely destroyed.

It gets worse. The longer we stay, the worse it gets for us. But here's the kicker. No national political leader can advocate "just leaving." That is tantamount to advocating "defeat." You're right, if you observe that the defeat is a done deal. But the one who says it, loses. "I told ya so," never engenders the warm fuzzies in the heart of the person you told. You may have been right, but he still resents your ***. Can you say "Jane Fonda?" To this day, there are Vietnam veterans who would string her up if they ever got their hands on her. To this day, there are millions of Americans who erroneously attribute the loss in Vietnam to domestic opposition to the war. So it will be in the case of Iraq.

As a citizen, "opposing the war" is easy -- especially in light of the defeat we've already suffered. Hell, it might be an American's patriotic duty to advocate cutting our losses sooner rather than later. But that's not going to win you any seats in Congress. America is in denial about this -- and will remain so. If you are a Democratic congresscritter or wannabe, opposing the war -- which means engaging in "defeatism" -- is a dicey proposition, at best. You see, constituents of Democrats -- especially Democratic Senators -- aren't composed of a progressive majority. Most ordinary Americans want to see the US "succeed" in Iraq -- and don't want to leave until we do. The guy who tells them the bad news, isn't going to reap much at the polls. That's why the war in Iraq has cost America dearly, but it might not cost the Republicans in Congress much at all.

That's why the Democrats need a plan. Some say we don't. Some say, what with being the "opposition," we can sit on the sidelines, snipe at the Republicans, and win by default. I say that's bullshit. I say that America in Iraq is like Lovell, Haise, and Schweitzer in Apollo 13. If there was one thing Gene Krantz didn't need, it was some asshole telling him, "come on, Gene, they're dead men. Give it up." Contrary to Gene Krantz' declaration, failure was absolutely an option. In fact, it was the likely outcome -- and I expect that several of the engineers and technicians working under him saw it that way. But they didn't dare say it. If you worked in mission control, your job was simple. Whatever you thought in your head, your job was to come up with solutions, not point out the insoluble problems. That's is what leaders do, and its what our Democratic leaders ought to do..

That's the way to make the Republicans lose on this. Its a paradox. The Republicans -- and specifically, the neocon lunatics in the White House -- gave us this problem. They don't lose, as long as Democrats have no alternative. They only lose when the Democrats start offering solutions. Those solutions don't have to work. In fact, those solutions will never be implemented. They just have to be colorable. They just have to point out, in a constructive way, the Republican failures. You don't point directly at Republican failure, you point at the alternative. People will figure out the failure part, all by themselves.

So what's the alternative? That's easy. Undo the Republican policies that created the problem to start with. Obviously, you can't undo the invasion, but that isn't where the trouble started. We had a guy in place in Iraq -- General Jay Garner -- who saw the occupation as a short term affair. His plan was simple. Set up a provisional government, establish some minimal law and order, and get the hell out of there.

Unfortunately for our soldiers, and a whole lot of Iraqi civilians, that was entirely too simple. Rumsfeld, Perle, Abrams and the rest of the PNAC neocons were on a mission from Ghawd. We were going to turn Iraq into a free market showcase. We were going to establish, at long last, an Ayn Randian model of "pure capitalism." That's why they opened the borders to foreign goods, fired hundres of thousands of government employees, and set about privatizing Saddam's state owned industries -- which meant firing tens of thousands of workers, in order to make those industries attractive to foreign investors. As for the infrastructure destroyed in the war, rebuilding it was contracted out to Haliburton, who managed to squander most of the funds for reconstruction on security. It seems the 60% of the workforce who are now unemployed have joined the insurgency. Fancy that.

Get it? The Republicans didn't f**k up the war. They f**ked up the occupation. They had a clean victory, which they pissed away trying to implement a failed ideology. All you have to do to highlight that simple truth, is offer a Democratic alternative based in OUR ideology.

Instead of firing people wholesale, we need to put them to work -- and there is plenty of work to do. The New Deal had a model for this called the Works Projects Adminstration that employed millions of Americans at a time when unemployment was 25%.

Instead of contracting reconstruction out to Dick Cheney's cronies at Haliburton, we need to contract it out to Iraqi construction firms. We needed to use Iraqi concrete for that wall around the "green zone," instead of importing it from Uzbekistan.

Do you want to "privitize" those state owned industries? Noooo problem. Turn them over to the employees, establishing the legal infrastructure for employee owned firms. There is a precedent for this, by the way. Argentine workers took over their abandoned factories, when Argentina's economy imploded a few years ago. Guess what? They made money, and learned a few things about business while they were at it. Corporate America, and it's lackey's in the Argentine government offered no support. And they won't offer any here. Good. It worked in Argentina, and it will work in Iraq -- and corporate American opponents discredit themselves by opposing it.

Where is the money to pay for this going to come from? The same place the billions squandered by Haliburton came from. You. The question is how the money is going to be spent -- and whether it will accrue benefits to the US taxpayer in the long run. As for how the money will be spent, we have a template for this. It was called "the Marshall Plan," and it was a model for how us liberals do "post war reconstruction." In the case of Germany, we didn't just dole out the cash. We also didn't give it to American corporate contractors. We funnelled it into the German banking system, stabilizing their currency. Gernam banks then lent it to German contractors and German industries to finance reconstruction. When those industries repaid it, they repaid it to German banks who relent it. They did this over and over again, relending the same dollars multiple times as German industry got back on its feet. Eventually, some of the money was repaid to the US. Much of it never was -- but who cared. The revitalized German economy became one of our most important trading partners, generating jobs and opportunities that more than paid for the cost of those loans.

But wait, we don't have to write off those loans. The Iraqi's have a resource with which to repay them. It's this black goo that comes out of the ground called "petroleum," and it's selling for 70 dollars a barrel these days. The Bush plan was to invite US oil companies in to pump the oil, and reap all the profits, of course. The insurgents blow up the oil wells as fast as Halliburton can repair them. And why not? It's not like the profits from those wells is going to benefit anybody in Iraq. Here's a better idea. Use that "Marshall Plan" money to finance local ownership of the oil wells, maybe even using some of those employee owned business corporations this plan proposes to set up. Watch how fast erstwhile insurgents come out of the woodwork to cash in on that deal -- paying Halliburton to do the repair work they used to blow up. Once the oil infrastructure is rebuilt, and Iraqi crude is once again flowing through the Strait of Hormuz -- bringing cash and opportunities that are now in the hands of the Iraqi people -- watch how fast ordinary Iraqi's forget all about being "insurgents." The few hardline holdouts -- and there will be a few -- should be easy for the Iraqi police and military to mop up.

Notice the part of the equation totally overlooked by the morons in the White House. You don't build political stability without economic stability. Apparently, the neocons think the Iraqi army -- or our army, for that matter -- can "stand up" and effectively battle the insurgency, while 60% of the country is out of work. Apparently they believe that the new "democratic" government can win legitimacy in the eyes of the Iraqi people, when it can't even furnish drinking water and electricity with any reliability. Apparently these conservatives believe -- and conservatives actually believe this, by the way -- that force and violence alone is what keeps governments in power. Conservatives never seem to have gotten the concept that legitimate governments do things like "promote the general welfare" of their people. The new Iraqi government isn't even thinking about doing that.

Notice something else about this plan for Iraq. It is market oriented -- but nothing like the US government has ever done in Iraq or anywhere else in the third world. "Business friendly" as the US government has used that term means "US corporation friendly." Indiginous development of resources and industry has never been part of our playbook. Rather, we seek to create export platforms for our corporations to manufacture in third world countries. We seek opportunities for our corporations to profit from extracting the mineral and oil wealth of third world countries. We say we believe in "capitalism," but we don't mean homegrown capitalism in places like Argentina, Chile, Mexico, or Iraq. We mean American corporate capitalism, that profits from the exploitation of local labor and resources, and never gets around to developing the local economy. Instead, we send the resources and goods from the third world to the US, and send the profits here, too. None of it ever "trickles down."

That's why this plan is "dead on arrival" when -- or if -- it ever gets to Congress. In fact, the current Iraqi reconstruction plan is business as usual for US policy makers, and their corporate clients. They're not about to start allowing third world governments to develop their resources and industry in a way that builds fully integrated national economies. If we start doing it in Iraq, we'll have to do it everywhere.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't propose it. In fact, the Iraq debacle is a golden opportunity to finally educate average Americans about what exactly their government does in the third world. As I said previously, our economic policies in Iraq aren't out of the oridinary. They're business as usual. Offering a plan at odds with the ordinary corporate development of third world economies provides a needed contrast, showing people exactly how the Bush administration screwed the pooch on this one.

No one can say much about it, either. The Bush administration is hard pressed to say, "that won't work." What with their sterling record of success in Iraq, they're not in much of a position to criticize anybody else's proposal. In fact, Democrats should make sure this remains a "proposal." Offer it, "contract for America" style, as an agenda item for the next Congress. The media will have to cover it, and the Republicans will have to respond to it. Just like that, we're out of the "cut and run" trap, and the Republicans are on the defensive, trying to justify their gross mishandling of the occupation. Every attack they make on our proposal just underscores their own failure. It also puts the onus of responsibility on them, when they finally -- and they will eventually -- decide to "cut and run." They won't be able to blame us. We offered a solution they didn't want to try. When they decide to finally call it quits, they will have only themselves to blame.

And that is the whole point.