[Mb-civic] Adventure Capitalism

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Adventure Capitalism
Greg Palast 
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/adventure_capitalism.php 
October 26, 2004
Why were Iraqi elections delayed? Why was Jay Garner fired? Why 
are our troops still there?Investigative reporter Palast uncovers new 
documents that answer these questions and more about the Bush 
administration’s grand designs on Iraq. Like everything else issued 
during this administration, the plan to overhaul the Iraqi economy 
has corporate lobbyist fingerprints all over it. You expected the oil 
industry lobbyists, but Grover Norquist?
Greg Palast is an investigative reporter and author of The New York 
Times best seller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. His new film, 
"Bush Family Fortunes: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," was 
released this month in DVD. For a trailer, see 
http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm
In February 2003, a month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a 101-
page document came my way from somewhere within the U.S. State 
Department. Titled pleasantly, "Moving the Iraqi Economy from 
Recovery to Growth," it was part of a larger under-wraps program 
called "The Iraq Strategy."
The Economy Plan goes boldly where no invasion plan has gone 
before: the complete rewrite, it says, of a conquered state's "policies, 
laws and regulations." Here's what you'll find in the Plan:A highly 
detailed program, begun years before the tanks rolled, for imposing a 
new regime of low taxes on big business, and quick sales of Iraq's 
banks and bridges—in fact, "ALL state enterprises"—to foreign 
operators. There's more in the Plan, part of which became public 
when the State Department hired consulting firm to track the 
progress of the Iraq makeover. Example: This is likely history's first 
military assault plan appended to a program for toughening the 
target nation's copyright laws.
And when it comes to oil, the Plan leaves nothing to chance—or to 
the Iraqis. Beginning on page 73, the secret drafters emphasized 
that Iraq would have to "privatize" (i.e., sell off) its "oil and supporting 
industries." The Plan makes it clear that—even if we didn't go in for 
the oil—we certainly won't leave without it.
If the Economy Plan reads like a Christmas wishlist drafted by U.S. 
corporate lobbyists, that's because it was.
>From slashing taxes to wiping away Iraq's tariffs (taxes on imports of 
U.S. and other foreign goods), the package carries the unmistakable 
fingerprints of the small, soft hands of Grover Norquist.
Norquist is the capo di capi of the lobbyist army of the right. In 
Washington every Wednesday, he hosts a pow-wow of big business 
political operatives and right-wing muscle groups—including the 
Christian Coalition and National Rifle Association—where Norquist 
quarterbacks their media and legislative offensive for the week.
Once registered as a lobbyist for Microsoft and American Express, 
Norquist today directs Americans for Tax Reform, a kind of trade 
union for billionaires unnamed, pushing a regressive "flat tax" 
scheme.
Acting on a tip, I dropped by the super-lobbyist's L-Street office. 
Below a huge framed poster of his idol ("NIXON— NOW MORE THAN 
EVER"), Norquist could not wait to boast of moving freely at the 
Treasury, Defense and State Departments, and, in the White House, 
shaping the post-conquest economic plans—from taxes to tariffs to 
the "intellectual property rights" that I pointed to in the Plan.
Norquist wasn't the only corporate front man getting a piece of the 
Iraq cash cow. Norquist suggested the change in copyright laws after 
seeking the guidance of the Recording Industry Association of 
America.
And then there's the oil. Iraq-born Falah Aljibury was in on the 
drafting of administration blueprints for the post-Saddam Iraq. 
According to Aljibury, the administration began coveting its Mideast 
neighbor's oil within weeks of the Bush-Cheney inauguration, when 
the White House convened a closed committee under the direction of 
the State Department's Pam Wainwright. The group included 
banking and chemical industry men, and the range of topics over 
what to do with a post-conquest Iraq was wide. In short order, said 
Aljibury,"It became an oil group."
This was not surprising as the membership list had a strong smell of 
petroleum. Besides Aljibury, an oil industry consultant, the secret 
team included executives from Royal-Dutch Shell and 
ChevronTexaco. These and other oil industry bigs would, in 2003, 
direct the drafting of a 300-page addendum to the Economy Plan 
solely about Iraq's oil assets. The oil section of the Plan, obtained 
after a year of wrestling with the administration over the Freedom of 
Information Act, calls for Iraqis to sell off to "IOCs" (international oil 
companies) the nation's "downstream" assets—that is, the refineries, 
pipelines and ports that, unless under armed occupation, a Mideast 
nation would be loathe to give up.
The General Versus Annex D
One thing stood in the way of rewriting Iraq's laws and selling off 
Iraq's assets: the Iraqis. An insider working on the plans put it 
coldly: "They have [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz coming 
out saying it's going to be a democratic country 
 but we're going to 
do something that 99 percentof the people of Iraq wouldn't vote for."
In this looming battle between what Iraqis wanted and what the 
Bush administration planned for them, the Iraqis had an unexpected 
ally, Gen. Jay Garner, the man appointed by our president just 
before the invasion as a kind of temporary Pasha to run the soon-to-
be conquered nation.
Garner's an old Iraq hand who performed the benevolent autocratic 
function in the Kurdish zone after the first Gulf War. But in March 
2003, the general made his big career mistake. In Kuwait City, fresh 
off the plane from the United States, he promised Iraqis they would 
have free and fair elections as soon as Saddam was toppled, 
preferably within 90 days.
Garner's 90-days-to-democracy pledge ran into a hard object: The 
Economy Plan's 'Annex D.' Disposing of a nation's oil industry—let 
alone redrafting trade and tax laws—can't be done in a weekend, nor 
in 90 days. Annex D lays out a strict 360-day schedule for the free-
market makeover of Iraq. And there's the rub: It was simply 
inconceivable that any popularly elected government would let 
America write its laws and auction off the nation's crown jewel, its 
petroleum industry.
Elections would have to wait.As lobbyist Norquist explained when I 
asked him about the Annex D timetable, "The right to trade, property 
rights, these things are not to be determined by some democratic 
election." Our troops would simply have to stay in Mesopotamia a bit 
longer.
New WorldOrders12, 37, 81 and 83
Gen. Garner resisted—which was one of the reasons for his swift 
sacking by Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld on the very night he 
arrived in Baghdad last April. Rummy had a perfect replacement 
ready to wingit inIraq to replace the recalcitrant general. Paul 
Bremer may not have had Garner's experience on the ground in Iraq, 
but no one would question the qualifications of a man who served as 
managing director of Kissinger Associates.
Pausing only to install himself in Saddam's old palace—and adding 
an extra ring of barbed wire—"Jerry" Bremer cancelled Garner's 
scheduled meeting of Iraq's tribal leaders called to plan national 
elections. Instead, Bremer appointed the entire government himself. 
National elections, Bremer pronounced, would have to wait until 
2005. The extended occupation would require our forces to linger.
The delay would, incidentally, provide time needed to lock in the 
laws, regulations and irreversible sales of assets in accordance with 
the Economy Plan.
On that, Bremer wasted no time. Altogether, the leader of the 
Coalition Provisional Authority issued exactly 100 orders that remade 
Iraq in the image of the Economy Plan. In May, for example, 
Bremer—only a month from escaping out Baghdad's back door—took 
time from fighting the burgeoning insurrection to sign orders 
81—"Patents,"and 83, "Copyrights." Here, Grover Norquist's hard 
work paid off. Fifty years of royalties would now be conferred on 
music recording. And20 years on Windows code.
Order number 37, "Tax Strategy for 2003," was Norquist's dream 
come true: taxes capped at 15 percenton corporate and individual 
income (as suggested in the Economy Plan, page 8). The U.S. 
Congress had rejected a similar flat-tax plan for America, but in Iraq, 
with an electorate of one—Jerry Bremer—the public's will was not an 
issue.
Not everyone felt the pain of this reckless rush to a free market. 
Order 12, "Trade Liberalization," permitted the tax- and tariff-free 
import of foreign products. One big winner was Cargill, the world's 
largest grain merchant, which flooded Iraq with hundreds of 
thousands of tons of wheat. For Iraqi farmers, already wounded by 
sanctions and war, this was devastating. They could not compete 
with the U.S. and Australian surplusses dumped on them. Butthe 
import plancarried out the letter of the Economy Plan.
This trade windfall for the West was enforced by the occupation's 
agriculture chief, Dan Amstutz, himself an import from the United 
States. Prior to George Bush taking office, Amstutz chaired a 
company funded by Cargill.
There's no sense cutting taxes on big business, ordering 20 years of 
copyright payments for Bill Gates' operating system or killing off 
protections for Iraqi farmers if some out-of-control Iraqi government 
is going to take it away after an election. The shadow governors of 
Iraq back in Washington thought of that, too. Bremer fled, but he's 
left behind him nearly 200 American "experts," assigned to baby-sit 
each new Iraqi minister—functionaries also approved by the U.S. 
State Department.
The Price
The free market paradise in Iraq is not free.
After General Garner was deposed, I met with him in Washington. He 
had little regard for the Economy Plan handed to him three months 
before the tanks rolled. He especially feared its designs on Iraq's oil 
assets and the delay in handing Iraq back to Iraqis. "That's one fight 
you don't want to take on," he told me.
But we have. After a month in Saddam's palace, Bremer cancelled 
municipal elections, including the crucial vote about to take place in 
Najaf. Denied the ballot, Najaf's Shi'ites voted with bullets. This 
April, insurgent leader Moqtada Al Sadr's militia killed 21 U.S. 
soldiers and, for a month, seized the holy city.
"They shouldn't have to follow our plan," the general said. "It's their 
country, their oil." Maybe, but not according to the Plan. And until 
it does become their country, the 82nd Airborne will have to remain 
to keep it from them.

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