Global Eye - Best Laid Plans

[acmavm]

http://www.tmtmetropolis.ru/stories/2003/12/19/120.html

By Chris Floyd

<snip>

One of the constant refrains we hear from the malcontents carping about George W. Bush's triumphant crusade in Iraq is the charge -- the canard -- that the president and his crack team of advisers "had no plan" for the post-war period, that they've stumbled from crisis to crisis, changing policies without rhyme or reason, or have even "plunged off a cliff," as erstwhile war-hawk Newt Gingrich declared last week.

But to anyone not blinded by partisan ideology or irrational Bush-hatred, the evidence clearly shows that Team Bush has always had a very specific plan for remaking Iraq -- and is following it faithfully to this very day.

<snip>

That's why the occupation seems such a shambles. The stated policies don't really matter; they're just window dressing for the master plan. Thus they can be discarded the moment they're no longer politically expedient. What matters is getting the strongman in place -- Saddam 2.0, a more obedient, more presentable, less quirky upgrade, who will "invite" a lasting American military presence and uphold Bush's arbitrary decrees granting foreign corporations a stranglehold on the Iraqi economy.

Now, is this an evil plan, conceived in ignorance and arrogance, predicated on the war crime of military aggression, an act of terrorism on a scale than bin Laden could only dream of? You bet. But let's be fair: it is a plan. You can't say that Bush hasn't got one.

-MORE-

[ithacan]

1. this is REALLY important:

For instance, this month saw perhaps the most significant progress yet toward the fulfillment of Bush's master plan, yet there was not a word about it anywhere in America's media "Establishment." No, Britain's Financial Times and South Africa's Sunday Times provided the unvarnished truth last week.

We refer, of course, to the $40 million contract awarded by occupation authorities to a private security company called Erinys Iraq. This plucky start-up is one of the great success stories of the occupation, having already bagged big money to ride shotgun for Halliburton and Bechtel as they spread their beneficent tentacles throughout the conquered land. Now little Erinys will guard the Holy Grail of the entire invasion project: Iraq's oil industry.

Erinys is a joint venture between a large South African freebooting firm and a few choice Iraqi investors. How choice? They are intimates of Ahmad Chalabi: leader of the Iraqi National Congress exile group, member of the Bush-appointed Governing Council, convicted swindler, darling of the Pentagon -- and the Bush plan's designated tyrant-to-be, the Iraqi face of a compliant, corporate-run colonial outpost in Mesopotamia.

This has been the plan all along: to install a "strongman" in Iraq who can "hold the country together" and protect the imperial flank while America "projects its dominance" over the oil wealth -- and political life -- of the Middle East and Central Asia. There's no great secret here: Team Bush has been talking about it for years in the corporate-funded "think tanks" they inhabited during the Clinton interregnum.

[Old and In the Way]

2. Meet the New Boss, same as the Old Boss

Flash ahead to 2024-

GW Bush,IV announced plans to invade Iraq and depose the evil dictator Ahmed Chalabi. The benevolent King George wants to provide democracy to Iraq and insists that the discovery of a vast new oil field has nothing to do with our decision to help the Iraqi people.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Link to mirror of Financial Times article

The latest dispute between the two men, both members of the Iraqi Governing Council's rotating presidency, erupted after close associates of Mr Chalabi teamed up with Erinys International, a Johannesburg-based security risk consultancy, to train and deploy a 6,500-strong Iraqi force at oil installations. The joint venture, Erinys Iraq, won an $80m (?66m, £46m), two-year contract to protect oil sites across Iraq from sabotage.
...
Erinys Iraq says its security responsibilities will revert to state control at the end of its two-year contract. "The INC played no part in securing the contract," says Faisal Daghistani, a founding partner and director of the company. He says the contract was won fairly in an open tender. Coalition officials, too, deny the INC influenced the decision. "It's simply not true. Erinys' was the best bid," said one.

Mr Daghistani, son of the INC's humanitarian co-ordinator, however, acknowledges Erinys is recruiting US-trained Iraqi Free Forces, who entered Iraq with Mr Chalabi.

Mr Chalabi has responded by accusing Mr Allawi of encouraging foreign interference in Iraq's security. The Jordanian government has won a contract to train 32,000 Iraqi police - money Mr Chalabi says would be better spent in Iraq. While the contract was awarded by the ministry, on advice from the CPA, the interior ministry - under INA leadership - is seen as the beneficiary.

http://warstories.cc/mirror/1071255921.html

So, the contract goes to a company co-founded by the son of one of the INC's top people. The parent company is South African-based, although the 2 people with biographies on Erinys International's website are both ex-British Army. Yet Chalabi says that getting the Jordanian government to train Iraqi police is "encouraging foreign interference in Iraq's security". Of course, the Jordanian government currently wants Chalabi for massive fraud (he's already been convicted), so you can understand he'd be nervous with them training his police force...