Buying Up Iraq
Amal Sedky Winter, Ph.D.
amalsed@comcast.net
11/29/2003

        I am an Arab American woman. My mother-was a Scots English
fourth generation Californian, my father an Egyptian of Turkish
heritage. I went to British schools and, although I was born in Egypt, I
have lived in the United States since I was sixteen years old. To make
sense of all these contradictory influences, I learned early in my life
to observe my environment, compare my observations to those of others,
and form my own conclusions. These are the personal observations I made
in on my three-week mission to Iraq in the fall of 2003.
        Let me start with what General. F. S. Maude, commander of the
British forces, said when he captured Baghdad in 1917:
         "Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as
conquerors or enemies, but as   liberators. Your wealth has been
stripped of you by unjust men. ... The people of Baghdad        shall
flourish under institutions which are in consonance with their sacred
laws. ... The Arab      race may rise once more to greatness!"
Although General Maude made this comment almost a century ago the Arab
world did not rise to greatness under British colonial rule. Arab
countries were artificially divided so their resources, specially their
oil, could be fuel the great economic progress of the West at the
expense of their own economies. It is not accidental that, in spite of
its natural resources, the Arab world lags so far behind America and
Europe. Talking heads not withstanding, Iraq is different from Germany
and Japan. Like the rest of the Arab world it remembers a long bitter
history of Western colonialism.
I was against our invasion of Iraq although some in the Arab American
community were for it. Along with millions of other Americans, I
expected that the United States invaded Iraq with oil on its mind. After
all, the Iraqis had had the audacity of controlling 'our' oil just
because it was flowing underneath 'their' sand. I suspected it was
following the neo-conservative agenda exemplified by Wolfowitz, Perle,
and Feith who called for an invasion of Iraq long before September 11th,
2001. This agenda is based on forsaking the past American policy of
stability and containment in favor of one based on continuous
instability and maintaining power through preemptive wars. I knew,
because the Bush Administration said as much, that the invasion of Iraq
was seen as a way to bolster Israel's military control of the Middle
East. I also knew the Israelis would use the hysteria of war to expand
into the Palestinian territories they occupy.
I was against our invasion of Iraq because I knew Iraq's history well
enough to realize that if we went in we would have to stay. The
country's boundaries were carefully designed by the British with the
approval of the League of Nations to surgically slice up the Kurdish
lands between the Turks, the Persians and the new Iraq to ensure that
post-World War I British domination of the Middle East would not be
contaminated by the existence of a viable nation state in its midst. It
was designed to ensure ongoing tensions between opposing religious,
ethnic and tribal groups, and to prevent easy access for Iraqis to the
waters of the Gulf. Given the fractured and fractious nature of the
country, pounded into political submission by the ruthless totalitarian
Saddam Hussein regime, I did not see how the United States could succeed
in its stated postwar goals: to reconstruct the Iraqi infrastructure,
establish a legitimate democratically elected government, declare
victory, and leave.
        When the International Federation for Election Systems (IFES)
invited me to join its Pre-Election Assessment Mission to Iraq, I had to
face both my Arab and American ambivalence about assisting in an immoral
and ill-conceived occupation. I finally decided to accept the IFES
invitation to do a strictly technical assessment which might get the
United States keep its promise to return the country to its people and
depart. The IFES team consisted of a dozen international electoral
experts from Canada, Denmark, Italy, Norway, Poland, and the United
States. I was the only woman. I am a clinical psychologist, affiliated
with Psychologists for Social Responsibility and the Arab American
Institute from the time these organizations started in the early
eighties. I have been a political party delegate, served in an elected
position and run for public office several times. I have been a
consultant for the United States Department of State, IFES, and the
National Democratic Institute in various Middle Eastern countries. The
fact that I speak Arabic is invaluable to my work in the Arab world but
this was my first pre-election assessment.
        A pre-election assessment is an extremely technical piece of
work but its basic structure is easy to understand. It must determine
what a country has in terms of processes and mechanisms to support
democratic elections. For example, does it have accurate voter
registries? In the case of Iraq, most government records were destroyed
but there were food ration cards linked to a database. Does the country
already have a constitution?  Iraq had a constitution but it was one
that allowed a totalitarian regime to remain in power. The assessment
investigates the processes by which a new constitution can be written.
Voting sites and procedures and processes for the selection and training
of election monitors have to be established in order for citizens to be
confident their votes are accurately recorded and counted. My portion of
the IFES assignment included assessing the condition of the media and
Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in terms of their respective
capacities to inform the populace on the election issues and educate
them in the mechanics of casting their votes. I would also investigate
Iraq's capacity to establish long-term, civic education and democracy
curricula and develop democratic civil institutions in the future.
        My first Arab American identity crisis arrived with my blue
flak-jacket on the morning of my first day in Iraq. I could see the
Iraqi drivers and hotel attendants in the courtyard leaning against
parked cars watching to see what I would do when my security 'shooter'
tried to help me on with it. Foolish as my denial was, my Egyptian half
could not imagine having to protect myself from my Arab brethren with a
flak jacket. With a glance at the 'gawkers' I threw it in the back seat
of the SUV, preferring to shot than embarrassed.
        My second crisis was in the 'up-scale' shopping area not far
from our hotel. Accompanied by our mandatory 'shooter' a 6'6" African
American who stood out like a sore thumb in the streets of Baghdad, I
took two of my young American colleagues for a quick shopping trip. It
was evening, the shops were open although poorly lit, and although it
was far from the ordinary bustling of a Middle Eastern market area,
there were people in the streets. An open bed military truck drove by
full of armed American soldiers. The Iraqi children waved at them, the
adults scowled. They scowled at me, too, even when I reached out in
Arabic to the children by their sides. Cringing at the rebuffs, I
remembered the broad smiles that greeted me in Palestine and the people
in Jordan, Qatar and Kuwait who chuckled at my Egyptian Arabic, sang
Egyptian songs in musical solidarity, and engaged me in long
conversations. I wondered if the Iraqi's considered me a collaborator.
I wondered whether it was the body-guard, or my American colleagues,
that turned them away. I wondered how I would have been greeted if I had
come to Iraq when the Iraqi Center for Research and Strategic Studies
(ICRSS) conducted its first survey of Iraqi public opinion. Two thirds
of Iraqis described the CPA as liberators one month after the coalition
forces entered Baghdad. Only one third of the population saw them as an
army of occupation. It says something about the CPA policies that within
three months, these proportions were completely reversed.
        As I conducted my share of the pre-election assessment, I tried
to figure out what happened to turn the Iraqi's against us so quickly. I
met with high ranking members of the Coalition Provisional Authority
(CPA), the defacto government of Iraq, and members of the 25 person
Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) appointed by the CPA which must approve
their every move. The IGC is composed mostly of Iraqi exiles returning
with the occupying powers. Only two of its members are 'internal' Iraqis
and only two are women. The returning Iraqi exiles, men who lived abroad
for 10 to 35 years, like Ahmad Chalabi who left Iraq as a child in 1958,
have been given a disproportionately large role in the transitional
process by the CPA but are disliked and distrusted by the local Iraqis
who had to suffer under Saddam. Local Iraqis believe the exiles enjoyed
the 'good life' in the West and returned, rich and powerful-allied with
the occupying forces-to become the new ruling elites. The fact that
Chalabi, under indictment in Jordan for embezzling $30 million dollars,
has been Rumsfeld's principle advisor does not lend the CPA-or the
IGC-the legitimacy they seek.
        I met with the heads of political parties like SCIRI, the newest
and largest Shi'a party, and Dawa al Islameya, the oldest and most
deeply rooted one. And I met with Kurdish leaders. Every party
headquarter building is guarded by members of its respective armed
militias. I also talked with university professors, social researchers,
journalists, waiters, drivers and people in the street and traveled to
the towns of Basra and Nasireyah. Everyone emphasized the importance of
insuring security and employment before political issues could be
addressed.
        It wasn't difficult to see that the Coalition Authority has
concentrated on revitalizing the oil-fields rather ran insuring the
minimal level of day-to-day security to which the average Iraqi was
accustomed. Most Iraqis have known nothing but the terrorizing Ba'athist
regime, the horrors of eight years of the Iran-Iraq war followed by the
Gulf War, and ten years of harsh economic sanctions but there was always
strict internal security. In my view as a psychologist, the violence and
looting that broke out after the bombings were predictable indications
of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the face of post-war chaos.
Without the strict security, roaming gangs were breaking into local
residences, mafia-types were extracting protection money from
shop-keeper, and politically motivated violence was increasing. Women
are staying home from work and shopping and children are being kept home
from school to escape the violence created by thugs and criminals which
Saddam released before the invasion, Ba'ath supporters who are
intimidating the populace to reduce potential support for the
occupation, personal and tribal vendettas, and foreign forces coming
through the suddenly porous borders of Kuwait, Syria and Iran.
        After the need for physical security, the Iraqis I talked most
stressed the need to solve the problem of 60% to 70% unemployment the
occupation created by firing employees of the military, police and civil
services. Kids are begging in the street to support their families while
their well-educated parents sweep at its rubble. A good percentage of
the 70% of Iraqis under the age of 30 are young men who have AK-47s and
no jobs.
        The Iraqis expectations of what and how fast the CPA can deliver
the physical and social infrastructure the population needs may be
unreasonably high. They are used to rule by edict and the forced
mobilization of labor and resources, proud of how quickly they
reconstructed Baghdad after the Gulf War, and cannot believe that a
country as rich and powerful as the United States cannot get the Iraq
back on its feet immediately. I saw the effects of the uncannily
accurate bombing of "Operation Shock and Awe" during the twenty minute
ride to the CPA headquarters in Saddam's Baghdad Palace. Most of the
government buildings we passed stood intact amongst the rubble. One of
them had been set ablaze by indiscriminate looters during the
'liberation' of Iraq and was streaked with smoke. The feathery black
lines radiating from the blown out windows looked like eye-lashes. The
Ba'ath Party Headquarters had been bombed but only one side of the
building had collapsed, its southern entrance demolished. In the
northern entrance, an elegant chandelier hung straight and almost
undisturbed. Few of the private homes appeared damaged. Fancy homes
built with sandstone and marble which must once been polished to a
high-gloss are now run-down and dusty. Their deterioration seems due not
so much to the recent bombing but to the forced neglect created by the
past ten years of economic sanctions. Piles of garbage gather stinking
along the inner roads where refuse collection has yet to be resumed. I
can understand why Iraqis are asking for sanitation like repairing the
sewers so the Tigris is not full of human excrement, for public health
measures like clean water and electricity and the jobs accompany these
services.
        The roads of Baghdad were clogged with cars and donkey carts
because civilian traffic is continually diverted to make way for
interminable convoys of military tanks and Humvees. Trips which used to
take twenty minutes take well over an hour and a half but everyone has
to make way for us. Our unmarked SUV goes where ever it wants to go: the
wrong way on one-way streets, against traffic at the roundabouts, over
the curbs and down the sidewalks. I wondered how many Iraqis in their
ten-year old Volkswagen Passats were angered by our arrogant disregard
of traffic rules. We drove through streets covered with rubble: piles of
bricks, scattered oil cans, rolls and rolls of razor wire, and lots and
lots and lots of dust. Our Suburban passed the frequent check-points
with just a wave of our 'shooter's' hand because Custer Battles, the
security company that employs him, has a big contract to man roadblocks
and guard facilities such as the Iraqi Airports.
        As we drove to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), I
tried to see beyond the city's current difficult conditions, imagined
watered lawns, foliage in street dividers and roads cleared of
post-conflict debris. Reluctantly, I concluded that, though it has an
excellent system of roads, overpasses, and roundabouts, modern Baghdad
is not a particularly beautiful city. The public buildings that radiate
from Saddam's Palace are each bigger and more oppressive than the last
and the regime seems to have invented a dark, heavy art-form of its own.
The roundabouts are filled with huge, romanticized, Soviet-style
sculptures of fierce-looking soldiers with arms cast as thick as Arnold
Schwarzenegger's. They aim their rifles at the skies, protecting
large-hipped women who pour water from bottomless jugs.
        The CPA is the defacto government of Iraq. Housed in Saddam's
Baghdad Palace, it is surrounded by a Green Zone of maximum security.
The Palace's classically Islamic dome is dominated by four identical
busts of Saddam Hussein. The heavy-nosed faces scowl down from under
strange looking helmets. I wonder if the sculptor deliberately designed
these busts to look like Josef Stalin. The parking lot across the road
was a pile of dust surrounded by coils of razor wire. I tramped through
the rubble of what must once have been the official gardens in 120
degree heat. The blazing sun had already turned the dusty sky almost
white and the sweat running down my face was gritty.
        Fortunately, the Palace was air-conditioned. An ornate
chandelier hangs from the inside foyer's marble-faced dome. The doors
are covered with panels of hammered gold. The walls and floors are
inlaid marble: bold geometric patterns of brown and black lines
punctuated with rectangles of deep russet red. The scale is deliberately
gigantic and ultimately oppressive but Gold-gilt fake Louis XIV
furniture, black swivel desk chairs and cheap laminate desks are pushed
against the walls in a chaos of contradictory styles. Speckled gray
Formica-topped tables overflowed from the central mess-hall. Men and
women in uniform sit, three and four to a table, eating chicken
fricassee, grilled cheese sandwiches, hamburgers and fries off paper
plates that seem incongruously out of place in a Palace.
        The Palace's CPA's headquarters houses Baghdad Central whose
structure parallels what had once been the government of Iraq. This
includes ministries such as justice, education, and planning, headed by
Americans and staffed by returning Iraqi. They receive funds in the form
of grants from the CPA but, like the Iraqi Governing Council, have no
independent administrative power. Because the CPA insists on complete
de-Ba'athification (as though that could be achieved without
disenfranchising three quarters of the population) it is hard pressed to
bring Iraqi institutions up to snuff. The United States chose to believe
that Iraqis would continue to operate their civil institutions under CPA
occupation even after it dismantled the police forces and the military
and removed all Ba'athists from their jobs. But Saddam appointed only
Ba'athists to government ministries and people were forced to join the
Ba'ath Party before they could teach, work at a bank, or contract with
the government for work. The Ba'athists who controlled the government
apparatus scrambled off the sinking ship, melting into the population of
25 million Iraqis, as soon as Saddam fell. The CPA must have deluded
itself into believing it could remove Saddam and the Ba'athists and
leave the civil infrastructure intact.
        I was told that the CPA arrived in Iraq with neither Arabic
speakers nor translators. I can't quite believe that but I can vouch for
the fact that very few CPA people speak Arabic and almost none of them
can communicate with Iraqis outside the Palace. The CPA has no real
communication with local Iraqis. Its staff seldom leaves the compound
and, when it does, it goes through the streets in heavily guarded
convoys. Other than a few cellular phones and some walkie-talkie radios,
there are no phone lines. The CPA is floundering as it tries to
administer a country it does not understand while its military patrols
disgruntled civilians by shouting at them from the high turrets of their
Bradley tanks.
        Trying to rebuild a country, when you are policing its civilians
and fighting an escalating guerilla war, is a daunting task at best but
the United States has boxed itself into an impossible position. Having
justified its war on Iraq as measure that would bring liberation and
Western-style democracy to Iraq, it needs Iraq to conduct elections as a
fig-leaf to justify its occupation and allow it to step away from the
impossible task of governing what may now have become an ungovernable
country. And, the Bush Administration wants the Iraqi elections to be
held before the American presidential ones. But, the Iraqi political
scene contains several irresolvable contradictions.
        The Islamists insist that elections for the constitution and a
bicameral house should be held immediately so Iraq can gain a semblance
of self-rule. Iraq's influential chief cleric, Ayatollah Al-Sistani, has
issued a fatwa-a religious directive-that only direct elections are
acceptable and the Islamists expect to win them, handily. Toppling the
Saddam Hussein Ba'athist regime has opened the way for them to come to
power. The Islamists are well-rooted in the body politic. They have
militias. They can count on support not only from Iran but from other
foreign factions pouring into the country. They describe their various
political, organizational, and cultural bureaus and their large
representative Shura council in Western and Islamic democratic ideals
but they do not believe in a separation between state and faith. Having
established themselves in the religious sector in spite of Saddam
Hussein's cruel campaign of oppression against them, they are the only
truly organized political entities.
        The Kurds insists that there should be no elections for anything
before a complete census is taken and adjustments made to correct for
the internal and external diasporas Saddam Hussein created by his
policies. They want the three governorates under their control to be
joined together as a block and then joined to Iraq proper in some form
of federation. This is not acceptable to the Shi'a-after all the Kurds
control the richest of Iraq's oil fields. Factionalism is increasing in
the nascent body-politic, as is common in post-conflict situations. The
Shi'a are splintering into groups that range from the politically
moderate to the religiously fanatical and the two strong Kurdish parties
are experiencing internal struggles. The Ba'athists who melted into the
population did not disappear. Those political parties that are not
directly subsumed by the Islamists or Kurdish political factions are as
much tribal entities as anything else. They, like the larger political
factions, are equipped with militia of their own and positioning
themselves for the up-coming power struggles. As far as I can see, any
faction can trump the elections by boycotting and/or taking up arms.
Once the issue of elections is joined, either in the form of a
Constitutional Convention, or a in the form of general elections, there
will be a surge of violence. Foreign forces are entering the country
from Kuwait, Syria and Iran to further destabilize the country.
Elections are likely to be bloody, at best.
        What will the CPA do then? Divide the country into three as
Leslie Gelb, a former editor and senior columnist for the Times proposed
recently? Gelb was once head of the Council on Foreign Affairs, an
influential Washington think tank close to the heart of the State
Department. He must know this proposal-the north and its oil for the
Kurds, the south and its oil for the Shi'a, and the Sunnis cut-off from
resources in the middle-would correspond with the new strategy of
destabilization. Like the British policy of 'divide and conquer' the
division of Iraq would excuse permanent military intervention and the
justify bases on Iraqi soil to prepare for further wars in the region.
        I was prepared for the political and military ramifications of
the American occupation of Iraq. I was not prepared for the extent to
which CPA policies were facilitating the American corporate buy-out of
the country's infrastructure. My first clue was the initials KBR on the
counter of the buffet table in the Palace mess hall: Kellogg, Brown and
Root-a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp, the company once headed by Vice
President Cheney which received its contract in murky bidding process
endorsed by the Bush Administration. According to the Government
Accounting Office's (GAO) February 1997 study, KBR claimed its operation
in Bosnia would cost $191.6 million. A year later this figure had
ballooned to $461.5 million and the contract has cost the taxpayer $2.2
billion over the last several years. Brown and Root were investigated in
Californian by Michael Hirst, of the United States Attorney's Office in
Sacramento, who litigated the suit on behalf of the government and
alleges, "Whether you characterize it as fraud or sharp business
practices, the bottom line is the same: the government was not getting
what it paid for . . . they exploited the contracting process and
increased their profits at the governments expense." It turns out that
corporations like Bechtel and Halliburton reap guaranteed profits. Their
contracts typically provide full reimbursement of costs plus a 7 percent
profit: the more the companies charge the Pentagon, the more profit they
make. Perhaps that explains why KBR flies in all the food-chicken and
ground meat, lettuce and tomatoes-from the States instead of buying from
the Iraqis.
        The Pentagon's recent huge no-bid contract with Kellogg, Brown &
Root, is classified. The terms are secret. The Bush administration says
that the reason that the KBR contract is a secret is also a secret.
According to Mark Scaramella, the managing editor of the Anderson Valley
Advertiser, there is reason to suspect there are secret contract
provisions, status of forces agreements (SOFAs), holding the United
States liable for any security related losses to American corporations
in Iraq. Under agreements like these, the United States will be
obligated to maintain its military security presence in Iraq for as long
as there is resistance to the military/corporate presence.
        The Iraqis are politically astute and, like most people in the
Middle East, follow political and social events with exquisite
attention. They have one of the highest literacy rates in the Arab
world. George Soros' Open Society reports Iraqi literacy at 71% for men
and 45% for women (down from 85% before the sanctions.) Iraq has 22
universities, 45 vocational colleges and approximately 141,000 schools.
According to the Iraqi Center for Research and Strategic Studies
(ICRSS), thirty-five percent of the Iraqi population listens to at least
one of over 100 radio stations. The CPA has its own Iraqi Media Network
(IMN) with radio and T.V. but less than half the listeners trust what it
as a source of news. Iraqis who receive their news from the radio prefer
BBC Arabic to other stations. Satellite dishes, banned by Saddam, are
sprouting from the roof-tops of affluent and middle-class. According to
the Center's findings, Iraqis who watch the news on Al-Jazeera and
Al-Arabeya trust these sources significantly more than they trust the
CPA's and yet while the CPA flouts the mushrooming of Iraq's access to
satellite T.V. as one of its greatest successes it consistently
threatens to close the news offices of these stations.
        Since the fall of Saddam Hussein 160 newspapers have hit the
stands but most are party-affiliated or supported by religious groups
like Al Mou'tamar and Al Da'wa and are best described as 'party-organs.'
Even the smallest, "one-man" nascent political group publishes a paper.
Some papers, such as the English language Iraq Today are supported by
exiles based abroad. There are no established standards for journalism
practice. Most journalists are unemployed people trying to make a living
by attending meetings, briefings and conferences and reporting on the
proceedings in the hope someone will pay them for their efforts.
        After 35 years of censorship, the Iraqis are now deluged with
news. They are also deluged with rumors. Word of mouth is faster than
email in Iraq. American objectives are examined in the papers, on Arabic
language television, in the street cafes and market places. Iraqi's know
Bush Administration insisted that America was in imminent danger from
Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the
invasion of Iraq. Having found none, the Administration has come up with
the retrospective objectives of liberating the Iraq and opening it up to
free market democracy.
        When it comes to the claim that we came to liberate the country
from the oppressive, near-genocidal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, the
Iraqi's applaud our success. But, now that the euphoria is over, they
are assessing the cost to their personal day-to-day lives. They feel
their basic needs are endangered by the lack of security, social
services and employment opportunities. Many Iraqis told me that although
they expected improvement in a few years time, as far as jobs and
personal security went, their lives had been better under Saddam's
regime.
        The second objective is more complicated. The United States
claims we are opening Iraq to the riches of free market democracy but we
should remain skeptical of its ultimate objectives. A recent United
Nations/World Bank report point outs the underlying contradiction in the
current reconstruction plan: the continued US occupation and the growing
resistance struggle against it make any genuine rebuilding and social
progress impossible. In the same report, the United Nations/World Bank
estimates that, in contrast to the $18.6 billion figure submitted to the
House Appropriations Committee by the Bush Administration, Iraq
reconstruction costs in 2004 do not exceed $9 billion. The Iraqi
Governing Council has questioned the CPA's budget projections. Mahmoud
Othman, a Kurdish member of the council, told the New York Times, "There
is no transparency, and something has to be done about it. There is
mismanagement right and left... A lot of American money is being wasted,
I think. We are victims and the American taxpayers are victims." The
council has charged the CPA with using higher-priced foreign
contractors, mainly Americans, to do jobs that Iraqi businessmen could
perform at less cost.   Congresswoman and Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi
of California, cited the example of a contract of 2 million dollars to a
U.S. firm. When that firm could not deliver, an Iraqi firm completed the
same job, on time and to specification, for $80,000.00. Henry Waxman,
also a California congressman, has accused the Bush administration of
wasting billions of dollars in contracts with Halliburton and Bechtel
''when Iraqi companies could do the work for less''.
        The 15-member European Union (EU) has called for a "separate and
transparent'' fund to hold the money it donates to Iraq. Former U.N.
Assistant Secretary-General Hans Von Sponeck, previously head of the
Iraq 'Oil for Food Program,' is quoted in October, 2003, by Veterans for
Peace as saying the CPA's Iraqi budget lacks transparency. He claims
this includes a deficit of 2.2 billion dollars supposedly "funded from
committed financial assets" without identifying what these assets are.
''What has happened to the cash the U.S. army captured?" he asks.
"Should it not be identified as income in the 2003 budget? A very large
amount of money -- 925 million dollars -- is identified as 'various
expenditures.' What are these 'various expenditures?' "
        The more I discovered about the corporate buy-out of Iraq the
more upset I became. I was upset as an American-an American taxpayer
happy to support social, medical, and security services. The transfer of
money from the poor and middle-class tax payer into corporate coffers is
a scandalous affront to the American sense of fairness. Corporations are
supposed to pay taxes for the common good, not take collect them for
their own private use. Let us not fool ourselves about 'military
spending.' Functions such supplying food and fuel and munitions,
building barracks and other facilities, and conducting logistical
operations in Iraq have been privatized. The young foot-soldiers who do
the actual shooting and killing may be equipped with more reliable
flak-jackets out of the $66 billion dollars appropriated for the
military but the rest will go to the corporations that supply the
military. The funds appropriated by Congress will go primarily to large
American corporations like Bechtel and Halliburton connected to, or
should I say 'imbedded in,' the Bush administration.
        To top it off, the corporate take-over of Iraq excludes most
Iraqis. The bidding process favors Americans and Europeans over Iraqis
and, while small enterprises are protected by the new law which mandates
51% Iraqi ownership, large ones need only be 30% Iraqi. It would be
interesting to know how many Iraqi exiles with dual citizenship will be
represented as Iraqis in these figures and how long it would be before
the big fish eat the smaller ones.
        There is every reason to expect that a truly democratically
elected Iraqi government will insist on controlling its oil production
and little reason to believe that the United States will allow Iraq to
elect a truly representative government that would do so. But there is
another fundamental contradiction between the Bush Administration's
stated goals and the realities of the Middle East. A recent CIA report,
submitted to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, that U.S.
policy vis--vis Israel is one of the primary reasons for negative
feeling toward the U.S. in the region. The United States cannot tolerate
Arab democracy at the national level because of its unilateral support
of Israel's occupation of Palestine and no freely elected Arab
government will support Israel against the Palestinians. If real
democracy means letting people have a real voice in governing themselves
then there is little hope of this happening in any Arab state, including
Iraq.
        Was my work in Iraq worth anything? The IFES Pre Election
Assessment certainly was. Modesty aside, the IFES assessment will become
the international benchmark for similar projects. But I as far as the
future of Iraq goes, I doubt it will it make a difference in the larger
picture. The United States has its arms around a tar-baby. It cannot
stay-without exacerbating the conditions, increasing the resistance-and
it cannot leave without plunging the country into the chaotic violence
characteristic of a failed state. While I believe the United States can
endorse small civil institutions in Iraq such as those that advocate the
national rights of women, improve health and education, and encourage
local groups to participate in municipal efforts to improve daily
existence it cannot allow the emergence of a true democracy at the
national level.
        To be fair to the Iraqis and ourselves, I believe we must cut a
deal with the international community to rescue us from this situation.
If we taxed the corporations instead of letting them tax us, we could
pay the United Nations for the costs of reconstruction, pay them for
peace-keeping, and pay them to run elections. Then we can get out of
Iraq.


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