Polish PM: Iraq Nation-Building 'Failed'

[Barrett808]

Polish PM: Iraq Nation-Building 'Failed'
By MATTIAS KAREN, Associated Press Writer

TALLBERG, Sweden - Poland's prime minister said Monday that postwar nation-building efforts in Iraq have "failed totally," but expressed hope that the country's different religious groups can work together to build an independent nation.

Prime Minister Marek Belka, whose country has been a close U.S. ally since the invasion of Iraq, said the United States and its allies made a mistake by basing its postwar plan for Iraq on the same model used for Germany after World War II.

"It failed totally," Belka said at a panel discussion on nation-building at an international forum in Sweden. "Many mistakes, major mistakes, have been committed."

Poland has commanded a multinational force in Iraq since September 2003, although the force's size has shrunk from 9,500 troops to 4,000.

Belka said there were nonetheless reasons for optimism in Iraq, including the success of recent elections.

"The political process is moving on," Belka said.

(more)

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050802/ap_on_re_eu/iraq_nation_building

[sabra]

1. YOU FORGOT POLAND?!?

[Inland]

2. I guess the Polish PM is forgetting Poland! nt

[meegbear]

3. Looks like one country's gonna soon be forgotten

[cliss]

4. I'm curious here -

Mr. Belka said that we used the model for Germany after WW2. What was that model? In what way is Iraq and Germany similar?

I've read several articles that say we had NO plans for post-war Iraq. All we wanted to do was march in, take over the Department of Oil Ministry, and that was that.

This does not match what I've read.

[splat@14]

5. They know something about nation building having

Theirs dismembered enough times. Another coalition member bite thst dust.

[Barrett808]

7. Juan Cole says they cribbed the reconstruction plan straight from 1945

It is certainly true that the Coalition Provisional Authority based its reconstruction plans in Iraq on postwar Germany. They often just had old plans in Germany translated into Iraqi terms. One CPA document, hastily done, talked of the necessity to support the value of "Iraqi deutschmarks."

http://www.juancole.com/2005/08/20-bodies-found-another-5-us-troops.html

[bluedeminredstate]

11. Is this a joke???

Oh. My. God.

These people are criminally stupid in addition to being war criminals and war profiteers - not to mention money losers.
It's hard to believe that "Filegate" occupied the press the way it did when the general public didn't understand what the big deal was, and in Iraq the CPA lost EIGHT BILLION dollars of tax payer money and the press doesn't mention it except in passing. Eight billion dollars is something the American people can understand quite well and it's ignored.
This Poland story will disappear after today. If it's not flattering to the Commander-in-Chief then we don't hear much about it.

:mad:

[Barrett808]

14. Yes, it is galling

I tell myself that when they fall, they will fall hard.

[redqueen]

17. It was obviously just for show...

Those "postwar plans" were likely pulled up and recycled after the end of the "major combat operations".

Idiots... those committing the crimes and those supporting them...

[Barrett808]

19. Naomi Klein has argued convincingly that the post-invasion chaos *was* ...

...the plan. The neocons intended to privatize and rebuild everything, so why not allow looters to strip Iraq to the foundations?

[redqueen]

20. Holy crap...

and I thought they couldn't possibly be more evil. :grr:

[Barrett808]

21. Check it out: "Baghdad Year Zero"

Baghdad Year Zero
Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia
Posted on Friday, September 24, 2004. Originally from Harper's Magazine, September 2004.
By Naomi Klein.

It was only after I had been in Baghdad for a month that I found what I was looking for. I had traveled to Iraq a year after the war began, at the height of what should have been a construction boom, but after weeks of searching I had not seen a single piece of heavy machinery apart from tanks and humvees. Then I saw it: a construction crane. It was big and yellow and impressive, and when I caught a glimpse of it around a corner in a busy shopping district I thought that I was finally about to witness some of the reconstruction I had heard so much about. But as I got closer I noticed that the crane was not actually rebuilding anything—not one of the bombed-out government buildings that still lay in rubble all over the city, nor one of the many power lines that remained in twisted heaps even as the heat of summer was starting to bear down. No, the crane was hoisting a giant billboard to the top of a three-story building. SUNBULAH: HONEY 100% NATURAL, made in Saudi Arabia.

Seeing the sign, I couldn’t help but think about something Senator John McCain had said back in October. Iraq, he said, is “a huge pot of honey that’s attracting a lot of flies.” The flies McCain was referring to were the Halliburtons and Bechtels, as well as the venture capitalists who flocked to Iraq in the path cleared by Bradley Fighting Vehicles and laser-guided bombs. The honey that drew them was not just no-bid contracts and Iraq’s famed oil wealth but the myriad investment opportunities offered by a country that had just been cracked wide open after decades of being sealed off, first by the nationalist economic policies of Saddam Hussein, then by asphyxiating United Nations sanctions.

Looking at the honey billboard, I was also reminded of the most common explanation for what has gone wrong in Iraq, a complaint echoed by everyone from John Kerry to Pat Buchanan: Iraq is mired in blood and deprivation because George W. Bush didn’t have “a postwar plan.” The only problem with this theory is that it isn’t true. The Bush Administration did have a plan for what it would do after the war; put simply, it was to lay out as much honey as possible, then sit back and wait for the flies.

(more)

http://www.harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html

[agincourt]

23. I don't recall hearing,

Germany or Japan selling off their national assets to corporations friendly to Truman after WW2.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

6. 2,000 coalition troop deaths as of today

http://icasualties.org/oif/

[rodeodance]

8. correction--US nation-building has failed.

[wli]

9. ... and the winner of the Iraq war is... Iran!

These idiots shot themselves in the foot, even with all their bad intentions.

[Chicago Democrat]

10. I come from a large Polish town....

Number 2 in the world.

[yowzayowzayowza]

12. He's afraid of a..

bombing campaign similar to the one in London.

[malachi]

13. I hope that PM Belka has cashed the check that he got from the chimp..

How come everyone in the entire world realizes that Iraq is totally fucked and here in the USA it's business as usual? Iraq?

[HuckleB]

15. Well, at least the Poles are starting to get it.

[maxrandb]

16. Freakers Ask. "Why Does this Polish Guy Hate Amurika"?

[VegasWolf]

18. I guess that even the Polish people can figure out what Bush can't!

[joanski0]

22. Are you calling us "dumb Polacks"?

You didn't really mean to say "even the Polish people", did you? :evilfrown:

[lumpy]

25. If the shoe fits.....

Kidding, of course. Hahaha.

[lumpy]

24. Know any Polish jokes?

Looks like Belka got sucked into Bush's non-nation building flam-flam..