Riches keep the US in Iraq (part 1 of 3)

[donsu]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IA17Ak09.html


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In light of the fact that by now almost all of the factions of the ruling circles, including the White House and the neo-conservative warmongers, 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. 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.

Pentagon contractors constitute the overwhelming majority of these profiteers. They include not only giant manufacturing contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing, but also a complex maze of more than 100,000 service contractors and subcontractors such as private army or security corporations and "reconstruction" firms. <1> These contractors of both deconstruction and "reconstruction", whose profits come mainly from the US Treasury, have handsomely profited from the Bush administration's wars of choice.

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Large Pentagon contractors have been the main beneficiaries of this windfall. For example, a 2004 study by the Center for Public Integrity revealed that, for the 1998-2003 period, 1% of the biggest contractors won 80% of all US defense contracting dollars. The top 10 received 38% of all the money. Lockheed Martin topped the list at $94 billion, Boeing was second with $81 billion, Raytheon was third (just under $40 billion), followed by Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics with nearly $34 billion each. <2>

Fantastic returns to these armaments conglomerates have been reflected in the continuing jump in the value of their shares or stocks on Wall Street: "Shares of US defense companies, which have nearly trebled since the beginning of the occupation of Iraq, show no signs of slowing down ... All the defense companies - with very few exceptions - have been doing extremely well with mostly double-digit earnings growth ... The feeling that makers of ships, planes and weapons are just getting into their stride has driven shares of leading Pentagon contractors Lockheed Martin Corp, Northrop Grumman Corp and General Dynamics Corp to all-time highs ..." <3>

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For example, MPRI, one of the largest and most active of these firms, which "has trained militaries throughout the world under contract to the Pentagon", was founded by former US Army chief of staff Carl Vuono and seven other retired generals. The fortunes of these military-training contractors, or modern-day mercenary companies, like those of the manufacturers of military hardware, have skyrocketed by virtue of heightened war and militarism under Bush. For example, "The per-share price of stocks in L3 Communications, which owns MPRI, has more than doubled." <5>

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For example, an investigative on-the-ground report from Iraq, sponsored by the Institute for Southern Studies and titled "New Investigation Reveals Reconstruction Racket", showed that despite "billions of dollars spent, key pieces of Iraq's infrastructure - power plants, telephone exchanges and sewage and sanitation systems - have either not been repaired or have been fixed so poorly that they don't function".

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Last summer, in the lull of the August media doze, the Bush administration's doctrine of preventive war took a major leap forward. On August 5, 2004, the White House created the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, headed by former US ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual. Its mandate is to draw up elaborate "post-conflict" plans for up to 25 countries that are not, as of yet, in conflict. According to Pascual, it will also be able to coordinate three full-scale reconstruction operations in different countries "at the same time", each lasting "five to seven years". <11>

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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 the US 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>
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we are a bunch of dopes if we let this continue

if we let this continue we deserve to have to work more then one job just to survive and we deserve rotten health care

[OneBlueSky]

1. the largest heist in the history of humankind . . .

between the theft of Iraqi riches, the theft and misallocation of American tax dollars, and the "missing" trillions, the entire Iraq enterprise undoubtedly adds up to the biggest ripoff ever . . . nothing else even comes close . . .