MER Article

9 March 2004

News, Views, & Analysis Governments, Lobbies, & the Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know

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IRAQ - CONFRONTATION DELAYED

"Then a Shia on the Governing Council - where everyone is handpicked by the
Americans - speaks those words that always fill me with dread in the Middle East
because they always turn out to be wrong. 'We have reached an agreement.' "

"The decision gives the Defense Department a much larger role in shaping the reconstruction of Iraq.

The Pentagon currently controls Iraq through its mainly civilian proxy, the Coalition Provisional
Authority, which is led by Iraq's U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer.... Now, U.S. officials said,
the CPA's Program Management Office will probably stay on after Iraqis take power, and
will answer to the U.S. Army's offices in Washington."

Mid-East Realities - MER - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 9 March 2004:
     What symbolism of history.   The Americans and their Iraqi Council managed to find the old desk that King Feisal used to sign the British agreement that enthroned him in Baghdad after World War I, after all the broken promises for 'Arab nationhood' of that era, after the Paris 'Peace Conference' now known as 'the peace to end all peace'.   Few seem to recall however the fate of that British-created Hashemite throne -- quite literally dismembered and dragged through the dusty streets in the violent revolution decades later. And then came the long era of Baath Party rule and Saddam Hussein -- himself originally supported and promoted by the Americans until, with Israel's pushing, they turned on him.
      Now imposing another 'historic' agreement signed on the very same desk the Americans have in reality set up the coming confrontation with the Iraqi majority led by Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani. Sistani has already declared the American-imposed 'interim constitution' illegitimate.   And while the Americans keep loudly proclaiming that 'sovereignty' will be 'transfered back' to the Iraqis by 30 June, that's hardly what they actually mean.
       For Washington has no serious intention of letting Iraq be free and independent or truly sovereign for that matter.   The intention in fact is quite clearly otherwise -- to establish a compliant and complicitous U.S.-backed regime just plausibly short of puppet status.
      After all the CIA is busy fast building its largest foreign headquarters in Baghdad. Already CIA, special-forces, and Mossad types are rampant throughout the country. And the uniformed American military is digging in as well. Only Bremer himself may personally be departing on 1 July, he and the neocons already pushing for him to replace Colin Powell at Foggy Bottom if they can manage it.
      Meanwhile of course American 'defense industry' corporations are raking in the billions and heading for the all the oil and petrodollars of the era they now want to bring about -- the 'new world order' first spoken of by Bush I.
      And so when Sistani and the growing throngs of Iraqi nationalists move in one way or another to assert majority rule over the 'new Iraq' and to 'ask' the Americans -- whom Sistani personally and oh so symbolically has refused to even meet -- to leave...well that's when the shit is going to hit the fan so to speak.
      Bush and Company want to put this time of reckoning off till after the November election. They may succeed...they may not.

IT'S THE SAME OLD IRAQ, JUST A TINY BIT
WORSE THAN IT WAS LAST MONTH'

ROBERT FISK in Baghdad

The Independent (UK) - Monday, March 8, 2004
EACH TIME I return to Iraq, it's the same, like finding a razor blade in a
bar of chocolate. The moment you start to believe that "New Iraq" might work -
just - you get the proof that it's the same old Iraq, just a little tiny bit
worse than it was last month.

At the border yesterday morning it was all smiles. Passport formalities would
be over in minutes. But $ 10 (pounds 5.40) would help. It did. That's what we
used to do under Saddam - they are the same Iraqi officials, just not up to
their previous standards of venality - but soon, no doubt, we'll be up to $ 15,
or more.

The bombed road bridge on the Baghdad highway has been repaired - despite the
murder of the owner of the company rebuilding it five weeks ago. There's a
three-mile convoy of new American troops humming westwards along the motorway -
you can tell the new units because their Humvees and armour are forest green;
the invasion tanks are in desert yellow - and all seems well until we stop to
chat to the sheikh of the little mosque by the last petrol station before
Ramadi. He says there are three "Ali Baba" cars waiting. They crashed into a
civilian car and sent it spinning off the highway into the desert. We drive on at 110mph.

The radio - BBC Arabic service, Iranian radio in Arabic, anything rather than
the one run by the occupation authorities - announces a settlement with Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani over the constitution that's supposed to be signed
this morning. Iraq's leading Shia cleric doesn't want the Kurds to have a veto
over the permanent constitution and wants more Shias on a five-person council.
Then a Shia on the Governing Council - where everyone is handpicked by the
Americans - speaks those words that always fill me with dread in the Middle East
because they always turn out to be wrong. "We have reached an agreement," he
said. "There is going to be very good news very soon." Well, we shall see.

Baghdad is yellow and grey under a fierce wind and, with sinking heart, I see
more walls. The massive concrete ramparts around Paul Bremer's consular
headquarters, the hotels of westerners, of the Governing Council, of every American
barracks are familiar. Now government ministries are to be hidden behind
concrete. And woe betide those Iraqis who work for the Americans as translators
and fail to heed warnings about "collaboration". Three of them ignored the
threat. One, a Christian, was shot dead in her car in the Zeyouna quarter, a second
wounded with her, their driver also was shot dead.

I arrive at my dingy hotel and find that yet another translator is dead. He
worked for an American newspaper and was driving home with his mother and
two-year-old daughter when gunmen with silencers shot all three of them. There's a
rumour that this was a revenge killing. So while we are outraged, we all
secretly and cruelly hope it's revenge, not a collaborator killing, that has
contaminated our hotel.

I lean over my balcony and watch four miserable Iraqis from the Civil Defence
patrolling the road below. One of them is lame. The last man, the lame one,
is walking backwards and staring at the rooftops.

Groceries in Karrada Kharaj, to a vast emporium crammed with the new Iraqi
rich, middle class; the poor can't afford this place. There is fresh Danish
butter, Austrian fruit juice, Perrier by the gallon. And then there are the
cigars. Churchills at a quarter of the price of a European duty free, Cohibas at
less than a third of their cost. Are these part of the untaxed imports with which
the occupation authorities are trying to encourage the economy? Or part of
the loot from Saddam's stores? In the evening, gunfire ripples across Jadriya,
near the university - I hear it away as I write - and two American helicopters
are thundering up in the darkness. I listen to this unreported battle, glad I
didn't buy a bar of chocolate.

At least 10 rockets exploded last night near the Baghdad headquarters of
the Coalition Provisional Authority. There were no reports of casualties. The
Katyusha rockets were fired towards the Convention Centre and the al-Rashid
Hotel. The vehicle from which the rockets were fired blew up.

Pentagon to Oversee Most Spending in Iraq
By JIM KRANE

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP - 8 March) - After a power struggle with the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon has won control over most of a $18.4 billion aid package for Iraq, and rebuilding delayed for a month will start this week, U.S. officials in Baghdad said Sunday.

Much of the enormous aid package - funded by U.S. taxpayers - will go toward 2,300 construction projects over the next four years. Of these, the State Department will oversee as little as 10 percent. But $4 billion of the aid package has been set aside, and spending authority for those funds is still in discussion.

Congress approved the aid in November, but the bickering delayed contracts expected to be approved Feb. 2. The State Department had pushed for control, because it will become the top U.S. agency here after Iraqis are handed sovereignty June 30.

Officials were so frustrated by the delay that the U.S. head of reconstruction in Iraq, retired Rear Admiral David J. Nash, reportedly threatened to resign in December.

Now, the resolution means the U.S. military will have chief control over rebuilding in Iraq, even after its command of the U.S.-led occupation ends, officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Starting this week, about $5 billion worth of contracts are to be awarded to 17 companies for projects in seven various sectors, said Steven Susens, a spokesman for the Program Management Office, which is overseeing the funds for the Pentagon-run U.S.-led coalition authority.

He said 10 more big construction projects will be handed out later this month, and that his office expects to complete 2,300 projects over the next four years.

The decision gives the Defense Department a much larger role in shaping the reconstruction of Iraq.

The Pentagon currently controls Iraq through its mainly civilian proxy, the Coalition Provisional Authority, which is led by Iraq's U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer.

Previously, the CPA's portfolio was expected to be handed to the State Department and run by staff of a future U.S. Embassy here, restricting the U.S. military's role mainly to operating a peacekeeping force.

But now, U.S. officials said, the CPA's Program Management Office will probably stay on after Iraqis take power, and will answer to the U.S. Army's offices in Washington - not Secretary of State Colin Powell.

``We needed an agency that could manage this at the Washington, D.C., level so it was decided that the Army would do this there,'' a CPA official told reporters in a Sunday briefing. He asked that his name not be mentioned.

He also said that - despite rock-bottom wages for Iraqi construction workers - the cost of construction in Iraq is expected to be higher than comparable building work in the United States. Ten percent of the construction funds will be eaten up by safeguarding building sites and workers from attacks by anti-U.S. guerrillas, the official said. Companies will also have to pay to house and feed workers.

Planners expect rebuilding to touch the lives of every Iraqi, providing electric power, clean water and sewage treatment, while fixing the tattered oil industry - all of which have been ravaged by three wars and a dozen years of U.N. sanctions and neglect.

By summer, the flow of dollars is expected to turn Iraq into one of the world's largest construction sites. U.S. officials hope the revitalized infrastructure forms the bedrock for the Middle East's most freewheeling economy.

The aid package amounts to nearly two-thirds of Iraq's annual economic output in 2002, estimated by the World Bank at $28 billion. But only an estimated 20 percent of the funds will be spent inside Iraq - just under $2 billion each in 2004 and 2005. The rest will go to foreign contractors and suppliers.

Already, almost $2 billion has been released for priority projects. More than $800 million is now being spent by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on refurbishing Iraq's tattered oil infrastructure; another $900 million is going to renovate Iraqi military bases and supply new security forces with weapons, uniforms and training.

About $2.2 billion will be handed to U.S. AID, most of which is earmarked for Bechtel, the construction firm that handles most of its rebuilding work, Susens said. The additional funds for Iraq have essentially doubled U.S. AID's 2004 worldwide budget.

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