Explaining Iraq to Ann Coulter fans

[yurbud]

I posted this on the Ann Coulter board in response to the usual tripe about how swell things are going there.

The thread:
http://post.news.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?action=m&board=37447170&tid=ucacwhatwouldreagando&sid=37447170&mid=962&n=1

Post I was responding to:

Funny how the amount of schools and hospitals we have built over there never makes the "Times". Or how we have flooded their job market with jobs, or given Iraqi women equal rights, etc.........

I guess those arent stories?

If you google any of those topics, you'll see that they largely aren't being covered because they aren't happening.

The rebuilding contracts have gone primarily and almost exclusively to American companies who have made only minimal and peripheral use of Iraqis.

Women are in a panic about the constitution because it will provide them LESS rights than the current situation. The Bush people don't care as long as the Iraqis dont' get any ideas in their head about guaranteeing health care, education, or that the Iraqis oil belongs to them, and isn't the Bush administration's to privatize and sell off.

Perhaps most importantly is that even if those good things were happening, if a school was being built, a woman got the vote, and a plane bombed your neighbors house or took him away with a bag on his head all on the same day, which would get your attention and which would you remember?

Did somebody start a new job on 9/11 or get good medical care in a London hospital on 7/7? Gee, why did we only hear the BAD news about those days? Maybe because violence has a bad way of getting your attention and keeping it. Bush has brought this to the people of Iraq.

Our soldiers do want to do the right thing and help people there, I've met ones who've told me. They also confirm that civilian rebuilding contractors aren't doing shit.

What really tells the story is Iraqis opinion of us being there. Last spring, the Bush appointed Coalition Provisional Authority polled the Iraqis and found that

41% wanted us to leave immediately, and 45% more wanted us to leave after the January 2004 elections.

82% said they viewed us as occuppiers rather than liberators.

http://wid.ap.org/documents/iraq/cpapoll_files/frame.htm

There is a simple reason why we are still there then, the oil. Greg Palast of the BBC got the documents and talked to key players including our first colonial governor of Iraq, Gen. Jay Garner and GOP strategist Grover Norquist.

A Brief summary of the state department economic plan:

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.

http://gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=383&row=1

On film on the BBC, Norquist said referring to the privatization plan he helped author:

"The right to trade, property rights, these things are not to be determined by some democratic election."

You can see a timeline of the planning to seize Iraq's oil at http://www.gregpalast.com/iraqmeetingstimeline.html

If you don't like my sources, simply google iraq oil privatization.

Given the Bush administration's willingness to lie to your face, as they did most recently about warnings about a hurricane hitting New Orleans, you would do well to get in the habit of verifying the things you hear on talk radio , Fox News, and those unsourced emails about how wonderful the reconstruction of Iraq is going. Whenever you hear something that sounds too good to be to true, from Pat Robertson healing you through the TV, Tony Robbins making you rich, or Bush making fewer Arabs hate us and want to kill us in terrorist attacks by killing their mothers, and brothers, and children, check to see that it's true before you invest your money, life, or the reputation of your country.

[acmejack]

1. Superb!

nt

[sam sarrha]

2. Mentioning ann coulters name gives me the opportunity to post this LINK>>>

http://www.straponvets.com :spray: :rofl: