We don't intend to rebuild Iraq on the Marshall Plan model...do the research, less people have water, electricity, sewage service, and adequate food supplies than before the invasion and occupation.

This is not to say that we haven't paid for those things, because we have...the problem is that those who we paid to do it (Halliburton and Bechtel, predominately) have failed to meet their contract obligations...repeatedly...and still pocketed the money.

The Administration response to the wholesale failure of those who we paid to rebuild the infrastructure? Extend the deadlines, reduce the obligations (without reducing the payments), and award further contracts.

Part of the reasons given by Bechtel and Halliburton, and their subsidiaries, for their failures to meet their contract obligations include being unfamiliar with the workings of the infrastructure there, and an inability to find parts to repair most of the water works.

Hundreds of thousands of folks that are familiar with the infrastructure, however, weren't allowed to participate in the reconstruction... and are unemployed, or worse, have joined the insurgency. Those people, of course, are the Iraqi people themselves...the ones we were nominally there to "liberate".

Instead, Halliburton and Bechtel imported thousands of American workers...often at ridiculous wages...to do the work that the Iraqi people not only could do better, but the Iraqi people really needed the work.

I read yesterday that American truck drivers are making $8,000 per month driving oil trucks there...that figure was from 2003...who knows what they're paying them now.

(When I say "what they're paying them now", what I mean to say is what we, the American taxpayer, are paying them now)

Guess who built the water, sewer, and telecommunications systems that we are unable to find parts for, or fix?

The French, Germans, and Russians.

Since they are forbidden from war profiteering by Bush, since they were not among "the willing", we can't get the parts.

Liberated? Yeah, we got Saddam, so I guess they've been liberated from that.

However, they've also been liberated from pesky things like food, electricity, water, sewer systems, and telecommunications...not to mention any means to support themselves, since they are forced to sit by idly while American contractors struggle with building the infrastructure.

Is this how we expected to "win their hearts and minds"? Perhaps we ought to have started with their stomachs, or air conditioners, or toilets...and their hearts would have followed.

Instead, we have made the very people we "liberated" desperate...is it any wonder why they prefer joining the insurgency? The longer and longer we are there, the more and more of them get desperate...thereby increasing our justification to stay there longer.

Idiocy...but not really, since that was the plan all along.

Iraqi infrastructure is all being sold off to private companies...guess how many of them are owned by Iraqis? I'll give you three guesses, and the first two don't count...

Dictator Paul Bremer has also written numerous fiats regarding the wholesale privatization of all Iraqi infrastructure...by the time we're done fixing it, Iraqis will be buying water, electricity, and sewage treatement from Halliburton...and many, if not most, will not be able to afford it.

Occupying countries usually act on some of the rhetoric they spew about "liberating" the people...we, however, have given it nothing but lip service.

Besides giving all the infrastructure to American companies, there are no requirements that they hire Iraqis, no requirements that they even invest any of the exorbiant profits they make back into the country we are "saving"...they are free to export all the wealth back to their bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, or Switzerland.

So far, privatization of the oil fields themselves has been kept out of the greedy hands of Big Oil...but BO has its fingers in everything but the extraction, and contrary to popular belief, fostered by the Bush Cabal, Iraqi exports of oil to the U.S. are among the highest barrel counts EVER...yet, we are paying $3.25 at the pump, BO is posting astronomically high profits...and all the money is being bled right out of Iraq.

Hearts and minds? Pshaw...we'll bleed Iraq dry, put all its resources in the hands of greedy American companies, many of which have current and former Directors IN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION...and once the contracts to take their oil are ironclad, we'll pull out and let them kill each other.

We'll have a permanent military presence there to protect "our" oil...but the Iraqi people, devestated by the destruction of their society and economy, will be allowed to shoot and bomb the Hell out of themselves.

So long as the oil flows, and the money goes to Bush Supporting Corporations, then all is good under this Administration's agenda.

Purely political? Come on, you're smarter than that...it's not about liberation, or politics.

It's about the money.

Fish on...

Todd
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Team Flying Super Ditch Pickle