Thursday, June 19, 2014

The Grand Wazoo of Baghdad

In the June 15th Wall Street Journal, L. Paul Bremer comes out of his closet of self imposed obscurity to write an editorial shifting blame for the current situation in Iraq to the Obama administration. He glosses over the events that he was the major force in setting in motion as if they never happened.  He went public on CNN on June 16th in an interview with Erin Burnett to make same claim and claim the war and the Iraqi government in place after the fall of Saddam was a success that was somehow bungled when Obama honored the agreements made by the Bush administration by with drawing our troops. Just a few facts to start with:
Sunni and Shi’a lived side by side in Iraq, and there was no al-Qaida there before the U.S. invasion. These neoconservative imperialists exploited tribal divisions, as colonialists usually do. They picked a gangster Shi’a president, Nuri al-Maliki, who persecuted Sunnis.
On the other hand, they bribed Sunni warriors, who had been killing Americans, to form the “Sunni Awakening,” which has now morphed into the vicious army of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Our ally Saudi Arabia still funds them.
His excellency and his ever present posse
If that's where he wants to go, perhaps he should answer a few questions and face up to the fact that because he was an official appointed by George Bush's insane government of an out of control fear driven corrupt war mongering nation, a nation which considers it self to powerful to be held accountable and beyond normal moral considerations, he hasn't as of yet been tried for War Crimes in the Hague.  Sure, the entire Bush/Cheney neo con crew is responsible, but this is the guy who is directly responsible for much of the present strife in Iraq and the middle east. After all, He was appointed the ViceRoy of Iraq, The Grand Wazoo of Baghdad.
Maybe L. Paul could begin by explaining the bizarre accounting techniques that made billions of dollars vanish with out a trace. Well, there are traces and trails that end in private bank accounts and into the pockets of the militants now attacking Iraq.  More than $70 billion was wasted training the inept Iraqi army that just stripped off its uniforms and fled at its first challenge – money that could have been spent helping our wounded veterans.
Here's a fairly damning interview from yesterdays' Democracy Now with Amy Goodman with Lakhdar Brahmi, who was the UN special envoy to Iraq at the time of Bremers  dictatorship...he details the events and ridiculous decisions by Bremer to dismantle the Iraqi Army as well as the games, playing the various factions off against each other, that led to the opening of the gates of Al Qaeda influence and the roots of the present situation in Syria and Iraq.
Most Americans have never heard Bremer's 100 orders discussed and how they led to the destruction of Iraq. In the volume of orders, he destroyed Iraq's agricultural infrastructure and gave control to multinational corporations and legally required the Iraqis to use GMO seeds.
He took away Iraqi ownership of their economy and industry and placed every aspect under the control of American financial institutions. He literally destroyed Iraq, by sowing the seeds of the present factional hatred and ongoing strife. He literally destroyed the economy, stole the money that was for the reconstruction, lost it to the opposition, opened the doors for Al Qaeda and filled the pockets of his buddies... And now he wants us to ignore what he already did and do it again. Bremer should have been imprisoned or executed long ago, but now he wants another fuckin' medal......

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