"Why The US Is Not Leaving Iraq" ( hint: war profits not democracy)

[leftchick]

This is one of the best articles I have ever read on the huge profits being made on the Iraq war and the plans by the war profiteers for even more coflicts and "sophisticated colonialism" they call "reconstruction".


Why the US Is Not Leaving Iraq

http://www.payvand.com/news/07/jan/1109.html

<snip>

In light of fact that by now almost all of the factions of the ruling circles, including the White House and the neoconservative war-mongers, acknowledge the failure of the Iraq war, why, then, do they balk at the idea of pulling the troops out of that country?

Perhaps the shortest path to a relatively satisfactory answer would be to follow the money. The fact is that not everyone is losing in Iraq. Indeed, while the Bush administration’s wars of choice have brought unnecessary death, destruction, and disaster to millions, including many from the Unites States, they have also brought fortunes and prosperity to war profiteers. At the heart of the reluctance to withdraw from Iraq lies the profiteers’ unwillingness to give up further fortunes and spoils of war.

<snip>

Such concerns are secondary to the booming business of war profiteers and, more generally, to the lure or the prospects of controlling Iraq’s politics and economics. Powerful beneficiaries of war dividends, who are often indistinguishable from the policy makers who pushed for the invasion of Iraq, have been pocketing hundreds of billions of dollars by virtue of war. More than anything else, it is the pursuit and the safeguarding of those plentiful spoils of war that are keeping US troops in Iraq.

<snip>

It is crucially important that public attention is shifted away from the confining official narrative of the war, parroted by the corporate media and political pundits, to the economic crimes that have been committed because of this war, both in Iraq and here in the United States. It is time to make a moral case for restoring Iraqi oil and other assets to the Iraqis. It is also time to make a moral case against the war profiteers’ plundering of our treasury, or tax dollars. To paraphrase the late General Smedley D. Butler, most wars could easily be ended—they might not even be started—if profits are taken out of them.<14>

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. plunderers

do we have to 'rape' and plunder other countries to survive. I bet you we don't. They had to in the old days. Bush is spending all his time in the middle east while China is eating our lunch (economically speaking).

[leftchick]

2. “Advocates of War Now Profit from Iraq’s Reconstruction:”

a huge part of the problem and a very hard cycle to break, if ever. :(

<snip>

The fact that powerful beneficiaries of war dividends flourish in an atmosphere of war and international convulsion should not come as a surprise to anyone. What is surprising is that, in the context of the recent US wars of choice, these beneficiaries have also acquired the power of promoting wars, often by manufacturing “external threats to our national interest.” In other words, profit-driven beneficiaries of war have also evolved as war makers, or contributors to war making.<9>

The following is a sample of such unsavory business–political relationships, as reported by Walter F. Roche and Ken Silverstein in a 14 July 2004 Los Angeles Times article, titled “Advocates of War Now Profit from Iraq’s Reconstruction:”


• Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey is a prominent example of the phenomenon, mixing his business interests with what he contends are the country's strategic interests.



• Neil Livingstone, a former Senate aide who has served as a Pentagon and State Department advisor and issued repeated public calls for Hussein's overthrow. He heads a Washington-based firm, GlobalOptions, Inc. that provides contacts and consulting services to companies doing business in Iraq.



• Randy Scheunemann, a former Rumsfeld advisor who helped draft the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 authorizing $98 million in U.S. aid to Iraqi exile groups. He was the founding president of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Now he's helping former Soviet Bloc states win business there.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. Iran will be next for the 'reconstruction efforts'

all paid for by foreign investors.

however, when they ask for a draft things might not pan out?

[Double T]

4. The military industrial complex and wall street won't be happy till they have bankrupt our nation.

How long will it be before 'WE' are endorsing what's left of our paychecks over the dod and pentagon.

[leftchick]

5. he adresses that here as well....

<snip>

A time-honored proverb maintains that wars abroad are often continuations of wars at home. Accordingly, recent US wars abroad seem to be largely reflections of domestic fights over national resources, or public finance: opponents of social spending are using the escalating Pentagon budget (in combination with drastic tax cuts for the wealthy) as a cynical and roundabout way of redistributing national income in favor of the wealthy. As this combination of increasing military spending and decreasing tax liabilities of the wealthy creates wide gaps in the Federal budget, it then justifies the slashing of non-military public spending—a subtle and insidious policy of reversing the New Deal reforms, a policy that, incidentally, started under President Ronald Reagan.

[Double T]

6. bushco is one national disgrace after another..............

neocons must be totally eradicated from our political system and government