The proffered evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the British intelligence confusion, and the fuzzy and now non-existent connections to both al-Qaeda and the 9-11 acts of terrorism, are increasingly straining the Bush administration’s tortured arguments justifying the desperate need for a regime change in Iraq. The pressure on the administration is mainly in the form of partisan attacks from Democrats suggesting that the reasons for the unprovoked invasion have been narrowed down to only removing an evil dictator from power.
Recent revelations that the U.S. air attacks on Iraq included napalm incendiary devices, weapons banned in a 1980 U.N. treaty the U.S. did not sign, have created additional problems for the administration, further calling into question the implication that Saddam and Iraq posed a “clear and present danger.” The Pentagon first denied the use of napalm, according to the UK’s The Independent on their website in an August 10th article by Andrew Buncombe. The article entitled “US admits it used napalm bombs in Iraq,” quoted a Pentagon spokesman who offered that all napalm was destroyed as of April 4, 2001. Later, the Pentagon admitted that they used incendiary devices, but the reason they originally denied describing them as “napalm” was because the formula was slightly different in that it used a different petroleum distillate. This evokes a disquieting similarity to the fact-parsing yellowcake misspeak placed at the doorstep of British intelligence.
Top American administrator, Paul Bremmer, has offered that intelligence made available to him indicates that returning Iraqi militants are chiefly responsible for the escalating violence. An article posted on MSNBC.com on August 10th, “Bremer: Terror group back in Iraq,” quotes Bremmer telling the New York Times “that hundreds of fighters from Ansar al-Islam, a militant organization that the United States had sought to destroy during the war, had escaped to Iran and then slipped back into Iraq after the cessation of major combat.” Of course, such revelations might satisfy some concerns relative to the continuing loss of life amongst the American military eager to return home and to escape both the continuing hostilities and 120-plus degree heat. Reports of disillusionment on the part of members of the military serving there are on the rise.
“Regime change” is being rapidly displaced by a severe attitude change, not only on the part of the military, but also amongst the families of service personnel concerned for their well-being and safety. The dissembling attack rationale comes into focus even more so against the conspicuous absence of a clearly defined exit strategy.
In a CNSNews.com article by Lawrence Morahan posted August 14, “Military Families Call for Withdrawal of Troops From Iraq,” reports of mounting pressure to “bring the troops back home” typifies the discontent that is becoming more vociferous by the day. Morahan identifies a group calling themselves “Military Families Speak Out,” comprised of service family members and veterans articulating these very concerns. Co-founder Nancy Lessin is quoted as saying: “We believe very strongly that the reason that we’re over there had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction and had nothing to do with links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, that it was in fact about oil markets and empire building. That’s not what we should be doing.”
These aspects of the Iraqi “regime change” are tips of an iceberg of mistrust that the Bush administration is astonishingly mismanaging. Add to this the redacted 28 pages from the Kean 9-11 Commission report and we have reasons for a much more intensified focus on the Iraqi invasion reiterating inquiries as to its basic need in the first place.
Curiously, it appears that the final phases of the Iraqi war, namely reconstruction, lead us to the origins of intervention based upon the politics connected with the region, nation building and corporate intrigue. Bechtel and Halliburton, the corporate giants quickly and easily postured by the Bush administration as the corporate beneficiaries for the postwar reconstruction of Iraq, stand to reap millions in profits from the billions of dollars in reconstruction contracts let to them.
Bidding on federal contracts is always a complex undertaking considering acquisition and legal barriers to promote fairness and to prevent collusion between the public and private sectors. But even a cursory analysis of the Bechtel and Halliburton contracts shows a definite preferential selection by the Bush administration. And Vice-president Dick Cheney’s solid ties to Halliburton are well known. What is less known are the ties that Bechtel has to Iraq. Both corporations are strategically positioned for the potentially lucrative conversion of Iraqi petroleum assets as well the reconstruction profits.
In the August issue of Government Executive magazine, writer Shawn Harris, in his excellent article entitled, “Remaking Iraq,” delves into the many-faceted considerations and implications that led to the Bush administration’s selection of Bechtel and Halliburton. Harris offers, “Rebuilding Baghdad and the rest of Iraq is indeed a hot business opportunity. In the wake of the U.S. invasion, the American government will spend billions of dollars restoring the country’s electricity, repairing its roads and airports and tapping its oil reserves, the second-largest in the world, which have remained underdeveloped for years.”
Harris continues, “To complete one of the most ambitious government undertakings in 50 years, the Bush administration is handing almost all responsibility for rebuilding the country and revitalizing its economy to a select group of corporations.” Harris explains the financial arrangements involved in the reconstruction effort, stating that occupation force head Bremmer has control over “seed money” in the amount of $7 billion consisting of “appropriations, frozen Iraqi assets and U.S. currency found squirreled away inside the walls of Saddam Hussein’s palaces.” Harris continues, “But, ideally, Iraqis would supply the rebuilding funds from their national birthright, an estimated 112.5 billion barrels of oil reserves.”
The article cites in great detail the past engineering feats of Bechtel and Halliburton, which include for Bechtel the Hoover Dam, the Washington, D.C. subway, San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit, manager of Boston’s “Big Dig,” and the Britain-to-France Chunnel. Halliburton’s Kellogg, Brown & Root division projects include the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the world’s first offshore oil-drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico, NATO Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, and others. Clearly, the administration cannot be faulted for selecting such highly qualified engineering and construction firms to manage the massive project.
Outstanding qualifications notwithstanding, both firms had heavy ties to Iraqi assets even before the first Gulf War hostilities with Iraq. “In December 1983, Donald Rumsfeld, then serving as Middle East envoy for President Reagan, sat down for a meeting with Saddam Hussein. The pair talked for an hour and a half in Baghdad, covering a range of issues, including Iraq’s war with Iran and a proposal by a U.S. company to build a pipeline from Iraq to the port of Aqaba in Jordan. Hussein had been interested in the project for some time, wanting to keep up with oil exports by his enemy, Iran. But he had recently dropped the idea, fearing that Israel might bomb the line before it was built [completed],” writes Harris.
An article originally published in March 1994 in the Rothbard-Rockwell Report posted August 14th on LewRockwell.com entitled “The Neocons Bring Down Bobby Ray,” by the late Murray Rothbard, might shed some light on Saddam’s paranoia. Rothbard wrote: “In early 1981, Israel suddenly bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor. Puzzled, [Bobby Ray] Inman, then deputy head of the CIA, realized that Israel could only have known where the nuclear reactor was located by having gotten access to U.S. satellite photographs. But Israel’s access was supposed to be limited to photographs of direct threats to Israel, which would not include Baghdad. On looking into the matter, [further], Inman found that Israel was habitually obtaining unwarranted access to photographs of regions even farther removed, including Libya and Pakistan.”
Again Harris: “Rumsfeld had discussed [the pipeline] security problem in an earlier meeting with Hussein’s deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, and broached ‘some of the kinds of arrangements that might be necessary and desirable to increase security’ of the pipeline, according to a State Department cable sent to Washington after their conference. Upon hearing this news, and having learned that a U.S. construction company had floated a proposal, Hussein’s interest was rekindled.”
It is at this point that the involvement of both Bechtel and the U.S. State Department in negotiations for the construction of the pipeline became most promising. “The Reagan administration pressed the Iraqis to accept the pipeline proposal and lobbied the U.S. Export-Import Bank to finance it. Senior State Department officials argued that the pipeline was vital to U.S. political and economic interests. ‘[Export-Import Bank] financing would signal our belief in the future viability of the Iraqi economy and secure a U.S. foothold in a potentially large export market,’ Richard Murphy, then the assistant secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, wrote to then-Under Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger,” relates Harris.
Harris then sheds light on the impending fallout: “Even when negotiations turned sour, after State publicly condemned Iraq for using chemical weapons against Iranian troops, the department cabled Rumsfeld that the door hadn’t closed on the deal, and that administration officials had tried to impress this upon their Iraqi counterparts. In the end, the project collapsed. Iraq and Jordan said the ultimate proposal did not meet their expectations. Bechtel lost a piece of business that by one estimate would have been worth $2 billion.”
It seems that Hussein and Iraq lost faith in the United States due to his fear of American/Israeli relations. It should be recalled, that the State Department’s mixed signals to Hussein concerning his documented intentions to stop Kuwait from slant-drilling Iraqi oil reserves ignited the border dispute that resulted in the first Gulf War. Harris points out that the Gulf War and the subsequent long-term imposition of sanctions against Iraq caused both Bechtel and Halliburton to discontinue all further commercial plans with Hussein. But Harris points out that Halliburton maintained a presence in Iraq through two French subsidiaries between 1998 and 2001, “which reportedly had more than $73 million in oil service contracts with Hussein’s government under the U.N. oil for food program.”
The early frustrations and bad fortune experienced by Bechtel and Halliburton have now come full circle, and in having done so, might serve to explain the need for the “regime change.” Shane Harris presents the relevancy as follows: “In 1998, a number of officials involved in the pipeline negotiations co-signed a letter to President Clinton, urging him to overthrow Hussein because, they argued, by using chemical weapons he had shown himself to be a threat to regional security. Members of the Pentagon’s new Iraq policy group, as well as Rumsfeld, also signed the letter, which asked the president to use frozen Iraqi assets to fund an insurrection in Iraq.”
Considering the reconstruction windfall now available, Harris states: “After years of trying to establish a foothold in Iraq, the companies now might be better positioned than ever. With the Hussein regime dismantled…Bechtel and Halliburton exert powerful influence over the future Iraqi bureaucracy.” Combined with fears of Saddam strengthening ties with Europe and of the euro replacing the dollar as a basis for the international petroleum market, the regime change dynamics take on a more understandable dimension. But that makes the observations of opponents of the war, along with the increasing discontent of military personnel stationed in Iraq, all the more credible.
What is needed is a quick exit strategy for the American military, and an even quicker regime change that puts Iraqis in charge of their own national destiny. And if we don’t come to realize this shortly, the gathering storm of violence, domestic unrest, and partisan jousting, will come crashing down upon the Bush administration impacting dramatically the 2004 political scene.
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”