Bollettino

"...war is at us, my black skin, war is at hand from today to tomorrow"-- Paul Bogle


In response to the perennial question War, what is it good for? we have an answer, from WSJ's Alan Murray. Murray writes a weekly column, Political Capital. In this week's column, he gives us a glimpse of the exciting work being done in D.C. Yes, it looks like Iraq is going to benefit not only from democracy, but from a speeded up version of the Reagan revolution!

Throwing off the trammels of the government. Letting the magic of the marketplace do its, uh, magic. Murray gives us historic scenes; Grover Norquist "working on intellectual property laws for a free Iraq.' Undersecretary Treasury secretary John Taylor drafting Iraq's new tax laws. Peter Fisher, yet another undersecretary, writing new securities laws. In fact, the Iraqi democracy has almost everything going for it, except Iraqis. This is a minor lacuna; no doubt, Chelabi is working on rubber stamping Grover's work. . Murray keeps his euphoria under control, but just barely... I mean, we are talking about Iraq becoming the Middle Eastern "Hong Kong!" Great things are in the offing, obviously.

Now, this could all be messed up. Natives have a tendency not to take the long view. Sure, they'll take our food and water, but then they get to resenting the American companies that are exclusively tapped to rebuild their country and begin skulking about with Uzis. As Grover Norquist would say, if he had the time, a free Iraq needs a transition period... yes, to gain the benefits of responsible freedom.

The ardor Murray describes is feverish, and a bit scary. Especially if you are an Iraqi with your own opinions about intellectual property law. Iraq's open moment will come and go before we see it.
D.C., of course, doesn't want us to see it. If the Democrats can shake off their apparent terminal state of stupor, maybe they should say something about that.

Bollettino

The traditional Greek tragic tetralogy would be ended with a fourth play, a mock tragedy, or satyr play. In the age of the speeded up News cycle, we've put them all on together. Thus, while all eyes are turned to the meatmaster's demise in Baghdad, at home the HealthSouth satyr play is strutting its stuff. And what stuff! Cornpone fraud, served hot and piping, just like Enron used to make it! Except that Richard Scuchy was no Ken Lay. And just as in Enron Rex, there's the accounting and investment banking auxilliaries forming a little chorus. The NYPost publishes a blaring, tabloid style glimpse of UBS Warburg's healthcare and biotech unit, led by Ben Lorello, which basically floated HealthSouth. It is interesting to compare the genteel tone of the NYT's Ben Lorello story and the Post's. The NYT titles its story, Conflict Issue Over Analyst's Deal. This is muffling your scoop in gray flannel indeed. The Post, on the other hands, screams UBS' OWN GRUBMAN. The parallel isn't quite Plutarchian, since it is unclear who plays the role of Grubman, here: Lorello or analyst shill Howard Capek, who kept HealthSouth at a buy when all around were otherwise suspecting that the robbers had taken the safe.

Meanwhile, we've heard a rumor that Scrushy is in hiding. Or in flight. Forbes, last week, published a piece that summarized what Scrushy is facing:

"Under the insider trading charges, the SEC is seeking as much as $743 million from Scrushy, including the return of profits, civil penalty and interest.

The Department of Justice will not settle for just financial penalties in this case, legal experts predicted.

"Federal sentencing guidelines would call for extremely harsh penalties," Nolan said. "There is almost a guarantee of substantial prison time."

Maris said Scrushy could be looking at 10 years behind bars.

"I think we are in a climate where the investing public is expecting to see corporate wrongdoers begin to do something other than pay back portions of the money they have wrongfully gotten," he said."

If Scrushy the satyr debouches into some Caribbean haven, Vesco-like, don't be surprised. Who knows, he might turn up next in Havanna, on the right hand of el jefe.

Bollettino

Chalabi has made his maiden speech. Supposedly he views himself as another Charles DeGaulle, leading the Free French into Paris. That is, if DeGaulle were willing to sell Paris to Walt Disney, and settle for a constitution written by George Patton.

The Independent carries a story about Chalabi's "I have returned" moment:

"The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has reportedly proposed to President George Bush that an interim Iraqi authority composed of exiled leaders should be installed quickly in the southern part of the country, partly to deflect international criticism that the US wishes to remain in control of Iraq indefinitely.

But in an interview, Mr Chalabi said he believed that US forces would need to remain in Iraq for at least two years before the situation was sufficiently stable for an Iraqi security force to police the country. He said it was essential that fair elections were held and that a democratic government was elected before the US forces pulled out.

"I'm not prepared to give a time frame. But we expect to have a constitution ratified within two years," he said in the interview last Thursday at a fortified complex in the Kurdish-controlled mountains of north-eastern Iraq before he flew to Nasiriyah."

A thumbsucker in the Globe includes, as does every story about Chalabi, the always interesting information that Chalabi is wanted in Jordan for fraud. The fraud charge is considered tres declasse by Chalabi's supporters, who always raise a stink when it is mentioned in, say, Congress. The Globe contains at least one hilarious graf illustrating Chalabi's brilliance:

"MIT-educated economist, Chalabi impresses friends and foes alike with his keen grasp of Iraqi and Islamic history. A London-based consultant recalled how the dissident once launched into a vivid dinnertime narrative of the seventh-century battle in which an army of the caliphate massacred a small band of revolutionaries led by Husayn, the son of the Prophet Mohammed's nephew. ''Chalabi is a secular Muslim, but he was as emotional as a cleric,'' the consultant said."

A keen grasp, eh? The story of Husayn's martyrdom is as obscure to Shi'a as, say, the story of the birth of Jesus is to Iowa Lutherans.

We have come to the endgame in this phase of the War. The real struggle, right now (the one, that is, without those pesky Iraqi civilian casualties piling up in the streets -- which figure neither in the calculus of meat machine Saddam, far gone in his pataphysical phase, nor the American press, which has lavished more ink on the rescue of one American POW than on all the crushed bodies of Iraq combined), is between the State Department and the Pentagon -- and the Pentagon's implantation of Chalabi is obviously a pre-emptive strike. Arab Gateway's Iraqi opposition site features a handy scorecard of all your favorite Iraqi revolutionary groups. Make your bets today!

Bollettino

The open moment




"Skepticism about American postwar plans is rising even among some of the Iraqis whom the U.S. favors. Adnan Pachachi, 79, Iraq's Foreign Minister from 1966-67 and a possible top leader in a new government, launched an effort on Mar. 30 to head off a colonial-style administration. "Very soon there will be a void in the power structure of Iraq, and Iraqis should fill that void," Pachachi told BusinessWeek. "It is not in the interest of the U.S. to prolong its military presence. Their soldiers will be exposed to greater danger as time goes on."

A chilling prediction, perhaps, which few in Washington would have heeded just a short time ago. But it's time for the U.S. to come to grips with what it doesn't know about Iraq. That attitude adjustment won't turn postwar Iraq into a model republic. But it may keep those surprises from multiplying. "

We are definitely in an open moment. But alas -- to look at the pressure exerted from the anti-war movement is to see blindness. To look at the Bush administration is to see monomania. And to look at Blair is to see .... well, Blair, in whom no man of sense could vest any hope. Saddam has turned into a pure meat machine, a maw for shredding Iraqi lives. The war goes on there, of course -- blood and human beings and all, even if they are not American POWs, merely Baghdadis -- but the real war has definitely geared up: the one between the State Department and the Pentagon. The Pentagon has made a strike against Powell with the shipping of Chelabi's INC to Southern Iraq. Supposedly they are going to embrace their brothers, and tell them of the good things coming under Proconsul Smilin' Jay Garner. The joys, the joys! Privatizing the oil industry, enjoying the Iraqocentric (and oh so coincidentally Pentagon approved) foreign policy of the various geriatric American military men who will fill that ministry, und so weiter. The Wash Times is onto the the involutions of this bureaucratic struggle:

"...the State Department has been working with Adnan Pachachi, a former Iraqi government minister now in his 80s who has been living in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates. Mr. Pachachi, a Sunni, was nominated Feb. 28 � at a meeting in northern Iraq attended by State Department and White House officials � to be part of a leadership council that would succeed ruler Saddam Hussein.
"There's a deep and messy war in the administration, and it's in the weeds" � hard to see and harder to figure out, said one Republican congressional aide.
Working feverishly to set up a post-Saddam government is President Bush's special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, the man behind the rebuilding of Afghanistan."

Those credentials aren't exactly gold. Here's a recent AP story about Afghanistan:


"The soldiers and police who were supposed to be the bedrock of a stable postwar Afghanistan have gone unpaid for months and are drifting away.At a time when the United States is promising a reconstructed democratic postwar Iraq, many Afghans are remembering hearing similar promises not long ago.Instead, what they see is thieving warlords, murder on the roads, and a resurgence of Taliban vigilantism.

"It's like I am seeing the same movie twice and no one is trying to fix the problem," said Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghanistan's president and his representative in southern Kandahar. "What was promised to Afghans with the collapse of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was delivered? Nothing. Everyone is back in business."

Bollettino

Speaking of my omniscience, he modestly said... We were talking to a friend a couple of days ago about the debt that Iraq owes. And we said that given the amount, and the inability of Iraq to get out of that amount without significant imput from the American taxpayer, surely there will be a move to declare Saddam's debts null and void. Which will be a little hard to explain, since up until now, every nation that has emerged from a dictatorship has had to pay the debts accrued by the dictator. A policy supported vehemently, up until now, by the US government.

Well, congratulations to the New Yorker's Suriowieki to figure out that it was time to, uh, change the rules -- a tune which we are confident will soon turn into a chorus in the press. Since Surowiecki is, to put it mildly, a lackey for the most unbridled laissez faire policies this side of the Irish famine, the twist he undergoes is pretty humorous.

First, Suriowiecki quotes the polyvalent precedent of the liberation of Cuba which the US effected by an invasion that, at least, had the formal excuse that Americans could believe that they were attacked first. Cuba had a mountain of debt. The US, taking over the island, took over the debt. The US repudiated the debt on the grounds that it was unjustly accrued.

Now for the parallel case:

"In 1979, when Saddam Hussein took power, Iraq�thanks to the oil boom of the seventies�had a foreign surplus of about thirty-five billion dollars. A decade later, after the war with Iran, it had a foreign debt of some fifty billion dollars. And today, after more war and a dozen years of missed interest payments, the country owes, by many estimates, more than a hundred billion dollars. Its creditors, which include Kuwait, Bulgaria, and the Korean conglomerate Hyundai, are already jockeying for position to be repaid after the war."

Well, this isn't a situation that would normally stir the bowels of compassion in a man of Suriowiecki's iron trust in the terms of international finance. Yet he makes an uncharacteristically humane argument:

"Even if the Iraqi people could afford to pay back Saddam�s debts, it�s hard to see why they should. Most of the money that Iraq borrowed in the past twenty years went either to Saddam�s military misadventures in Iran and Kuwait or to his internal security apparatus. Asking the Iraqi people to assume Saddam�s debts is rather like telling a man who has been shot in the head that he has to pay for the bullet.

"Oddly, though, that�s pretty much what international custom seems to require. Lenders and borrowers still believe that debt belongs to a state, not to a regime. As a result, only a handful of countries have ever repudiated their debts. Even when tyrannical regimes have been deposed�Somoza in Nicaragua, Mobutu in Zaire, the apartheid system in South Africa�their successors have dutifully, if reluctantly, assumed their debts."

Notice -- this is a matter of "international custom." It has nothing whatsoever to do with official US policy over the last thirty years -- a policy that has benefited the biggest loaners, who just happen to be American banks and institutions. I wonder if the fact that these aren't the biggest creditors to Iraq has anything to do with Surowiecki's sudden concern for Iraq's fiscal health?

The obvious problem here is that "international custom" just might get a little upset over the US wiping the slate clean of debt Iraq owes in order for the US not to have to transfer the tremendous amount of money they would have to transfer in order to fullfill the promise to "reconstruct' Iraq. Surowiecki, of course, is aware of precedent, so he immediately separates out cases like, uh, Argentina, where no wiping of the slate is possible:

I"t might be time to change all that and consider an old idea that has recently been resurrected: the doctrine of odious debts. First articulated in the twenties by a former tsarist minister named Alexander Sack, the doctrine holds that a country is not responsible for debts incurred by a �despotic regime� and used for purposes �contrary to the interests of the nation.� Both criteria have to be met for the debt to be considered odious. (In other words, profligate Argentina couldn�t repudiate its debt, because it�s a democracy.)""

Profligate Argentina, eh? As we remember it, a lot of Argentina's debt in the eighties went to paying off military equipment bought by the military and paid for by loans from Citicorps. This money went repatriating back to the US by two routes -- since the US is the largest exporter of military hardware in the world. And Suriowiecki's same odious debt NGOs are well aware of that. On the Odious debt site,
Argentina's debts are indeed on consigned to the devil's portion.

"In July 2000, the Argentine Federal Court sent down a landmark ruling that will have far-reaching repercussions for odious debt campaigners worldwide. The court held that a substantial portion of Argentina�s foreign debt is rooted in fraudulent and illegitimate loans amassed during the country�s military period.
"In his decision, Judge Jorge Ballestero held that many loans to Argentina were part of "a damaging economic policy that forced [Argentina] on its knees through various methods . . . and which tended to benefit and support private companies - national and foreign - to the detriment of society and state companies." The ruling puts blame on the shoulders of corrupt civil servants as well as International Financial Institutions such as the IMF."

And here is a report on the situation from Arnaud Zacharie:

"Evidence now exists , resulting from a judicial enquiry over 18 years, following a legal process initiated back in 1982 by a journalist, Alejandro Olmos.; the Argentine debt crisis has its origin in wastage and fraudulent misuse of funds featuring the Argentine government, the IMF, private banks in the North and the American Federal Reserve. That is why the Argentine Federal Court has declared the debt contracted by the Videla regime"unlawful", as being contrary to the legislation and Constitution of the country. The court recommends Congress to employ this judgment to negotiate the cancellation of this execrable debt."

It is interesting that in the course of the War, various liberal claims have been suddenly taken up by conservatives -- such as the idea that the Iraqi sanctions were murderious -- but the idea of debt forgiveness has to be one of the oddest, as well as one of the most self-serving, instances of using progressive notions for imperialist ends. However, we do hope, as this train gets going, that it is hopped onto by the jubilee debt forgiveness people, the Indonesians, the Pakistanis, and many, many others.

Bollettino

Was LI harsh about the intertwining of colonial and financial interests in Iraq in our last post? We have an irrepressible lowness of mind, which gets a sick kick out of reading such items as this, from a column by Hussein Ibish in today's LA Times:

"The management of the port of Umm al Qasr, one of the few places in Iraq under complete Western control, has produced a split between British and American authorities. The British view is that the Iraqi manager, who has been in his position for years, is capable of doing the job. Our government insisted, however, in providing a lucrative contract to run the port to Stevedoring Services of Seattle."

So, of course, we wondered, who is Stevedoring Services? Phillip Mattera, of the Corporate Research Project, tracks down the ideology of this company:

"Stevedoring Services of America (SSA), the contractor chosen for this task, has never worked in a war zone, but it has been in the middle of another kind of struggle: the battle between labor and management in the West Coast ports of the United States. In fact, Seattle-based SSA -- the largest marine terminal operator in the country -- was considered the main corporate culprit in the lockout of dockworkers last fall; the International Longshore and Warehouse Union accused the company of union-busting. �While most employers want to work with us to implement new technologies,� ILWU President James Spinosa said last September, �SSA is undermining negotiations because their primary interest is breaking the union.� ILWU spokesman Steve Stallone was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle as saying� �It�s ideological with these people. They are ideologically anti-union and anti-ILWU.�

SSA has a reputation in the region -- much as a dead rat behind the wall soon gets a reputation in a household. SSA was involved in a dispute in Bangladesh, according to Mattera, that involved a proposal to build a 500 million dollar containerized terminal. When Bangledesh's government seemed unappreciative of SSA's hardball tactics, the US ambassador there operated as a useful company cut-in, uttering a few threats of her own.

The company is privately held. The founder, Jon Hemingway, is, you might have guessed, a Bush man. During the Dockworkers lock-out, the Seattle paper published a little profile of the company. We especially like the trick they pulled in New Zealand --declaring bankruptcy, then reforming and rehiring their workers on a non-union basis. Nice way to violate contract law and get away with it, guys! No wonder President Bush loves ya.

So... it looks suspicious. Luckily, we know Smilin' Jay Garner, the choice of the Iraqi people, would never allow his country to be violated by predatory American companies with ties to the White House. It would just go against his grain.

Bollettino

As the H.G. Wells aspect of the War deepens -- is this the War between the Worlds, or is it the end of the Island of Doctor Moreau? -- it seems to be the case that all of Saddam's horses and all of his men can't put the guy's moustache together again. If, in fact, the war was directed by a double, with the Old Man conveniently buried under the ruins of some bunker, Smilin' Jay Garner should definitely hire that guy in one of the Gunga Din posts the Americans are preparing for a grateful, liberated Iraqi people. In fact, if he has any contacts in the double biz for a Bush look-alike...

Speaking of Smilin' Jay, since Democracy is being determined by American military forces, you would think that we would seek to win hearts and minds with a reality tv show in which four or five ex Ceos of various military hardware companies vied to be proconsul of Iraq. It could be like Survivor. A comic bit could involve all of them trying to speak arabic -- laughter all around, and it will be a two-fer: not only will it show that Americans have a sense of humor about the whole thing, but it will be an invitation to Iraqis to join in the laughter.

Winning their hearts and minds in the fog of war, of the fog of war journalism, is oh so hard. We need, as Rumsfeld might say, to think outside the box, here, guys.

The Republican Guard turned out to be a dud. The fedayeen, on the other hand, is scrapping out there in the countryside, and we doubt that Baghdad's fall is going to put a stop to them. The Guardian's Rory McCarthy reports that the Coalition of the Willing is beginning to understand that the second phase of the war is beginning. This phase does not contain Saddam Hussein. It contains an American occupying force and their consorts, hauled in from the swamps of the Potomac, and eager to make some bucks on the Iraqi frontier.
"If they blend into the city and become sleepers they could generate an enduring, destabilising influence in the aftermath," a senior British officer said. "We can envisage an aftermath in which some of these irregulars might re-emerge to champion some sort of cause."

Before the war few senior officers believed they would face such strong resistance from the paramilitaries ahead of the final battle for Baghdad. In fact, three groups, the Saddam Fedayeen, the Special Security Organisation and the Ba'ath party militia, emerged immediately, even in the very south of the country, as a significant fighting force. Militia groups are still holed up in the southern city of Basra, as well as other towns on the route north, including Nassiriya, Najaf and Kerbala."

The Saddam-ist tendency will do much better without the old man around to bloodily dodder about. And they will certainly gain traction from the resistance to Smilin Jay. Mother Jones reports that there is even a dumpjaygarner web site. Well, that sounded to us like a thing of beauty and a joy for ever, so we clicked on over to it, and signed a letter to dump the guy. The letter goes to George Bush, so there 's no chance it will be heard, or have an effect -- but there's always the possibility leadership doubles will rise up and overthrow him, so we sent it anyway. And finally, The NYT published an extended trawl through the wonderland of Wolfowitz, giving us such tidbits as this:
-- Iraqi freedom fighters (these are tough guys -- they jog on some of toughest paths by the Potomac every day, five miles sometimes) by unanimous verdict, give the information ministers post to Robert Reilly, formerly of the Voice of America.

---Timothy Carney, former U.S. ambassador to Sudan, just seems so right to take on Iraq's Ministry of Industry. Hey, he's just the kind of guy to throw an impartial glance at all those plans to re-build the Iraq we bombed to shit... until he finds, by utter coincidence, an engineering conglomerate with close ties to the Bush administration to do the work!

---Iraqis have long had their eye on Robin Raphel, ex ambassador to Tunisia. Finally a chance to get him to work for them! Yes, in the post of Ministry of Trade. Shi'ites will no doubt be in the dancing and flower throwing mood when Robin ascends to the seat -- they've longed for him, as we all know, for years.

---Ministry of Foreign Affairs was, of course, a tough one. Now, liberals, who no doubt would like some mamby pamby quota system to throw up an Iraqi as Minister for Iraq's Foreign Affairs, are going to grumble. Let em grumble -- the Supreme Court will sort em out! Ha ha! But we know the grateful Iraqi masses can't wait for Kenton Keith to take the reins there. No doubt Keith will be much more understanding, shall we say -- enthusiastic, even -- about what Donald Rumsfeld calls the "so called Occupied Territories."

So, in the words of our Prez himself, "And the liberation of millions is the fulfillment of America's founding promise." So modest, our Bush. The fullfillment of so many dreams -- the starry dreams of Raytheon, of Brown and Root, of Fluor, Inc. -- are embodied in the sturdy of these men and women, standing straight for their companies and their country.