Iraqis are subsidizing their occupiers and the big corporations of their occupiers

At a time when the U.S. insists that the main barriers to reconstruction projects in Iraq are terrorists who know the reconstruction will bring peace and stability, the U.S. is undermining reconstruction by allowing American corporations to take Iraqi money as compensation for lost profits as a result of the prior Iraq war.

Guardian | Why is war-torn Iraq giving $190,000 to Toys R Us? by Naomi Klein (guardian.co.uk, 10/16/04) provides disturbing details.

Since Saddam was toppled in April, Iraq has paid out $1.8bn in reparations to the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC), the Geneva-based quasi tribunal that assesses claims and disburses awards. Of those payments, $37m have gone to Britain and $32.8m have gone to the United States. That's right: in the past 18 months, Iraq's occupiers have collected $69.8m in reparation payments from the desperate people they have been occupying. But it gets worse: the vast majority of those payments, 78%, have gone to multinational corporations, according to statistics on the UNCC website....

But the UNCC's corporate handouts only accelerated. Here is a small sample of who has been getting "reparation" awards from Iraq: Halliburton ($18m), Bechtel ($7m), Mobil ($2.3m), Shell ($1.6m), Nestlé ($2.6m), Pepsi ($3.8m), Philip Morris ($1.3m), Sheraton ($11m), Kentucky Fried Chicken ($321,000) and Toys R Us ($189,449). In the vast majority of cases, these corporations did not claim that Saddam's forces damaged their property in Kuwait - only that they "lost profits" or, in the case of American Express, experienced a "decline in business" because of the invasion and occupation of Kuwait. One of the biggest winners has been Texaco, which was awarded $505m in 1999.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has spent just $29 million on reconstruction projects.

So the U.S. taxpayers have forked out $29 million for Iraqi reconstruction, much of which is actually going to Halliburton. Iraqi taxpayers have forked out $1.8 billion, $18 million of which has gone quite directly to Halliburton. Meanwhile, the Iraqis in many places have no power, safe drinking water, physical security, medicines...

Yet the corporations are making out like bandits. Which they are.

It is just amazing, how unjust this arrangement is.

Aside from election speculation, the hot news story right now is about reservists currently detained for disobeying orders. Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Doubts about US morale in Iraq as troops refuse 'suicide mission'. (guardian.co.uk, 10/16/04) Many of the Guardsmen, who raised concerns about operating a fuel convoy without the routine defensive support they were familiar with, contacted their families back home when they were detained. The story has hit the papers as a result of statements from their families.

Is the U.S. once again paying cash to anyone who will tell them what they want to hear? Morley's World Opinion Roundup item, "Insurgent Zarqawi's Dark Genius" (washingtonpost.com, 10/05/04) quotes foreign papers whose sources say the U.S. is paying people to tell them that so-called terrorist mastermind al Zarqawi is behind every problem that arises.

Didn't the U.S. go through this before? Over WMDs? And didn't that result in some wretched results?

Morley quotes Sami Ramadi's article, "The true face of Iraqi resistance" (guardian.co.uk, 09/30/04) which suggests the U.S. is happily using Zarqawi as a fall-guy regardless of the truth or untruth of the information they have purchased, because it is convenient to have a bad guy.

The occupation forces have admitted that the attacks on them by the resistance rose last month to 2,700. And how many of these 2,700 attacks a month were claimed by Zarqawi? Six. Six headline-grabbing, TV-dominating, stomach-churning moments.

Just as Iraq's 25 million people were reduced, in the public's mind, to the threat from weapons of mass destruction, ready to be unleashed within 45 minutes, the resistance is now being reduced to a single hoodlum.

It is surely more easy to motivate U.S. troops into believing that they are fighting for good and against evil with a convenient bad guy. But if the war they are fighting exists only internally, they will spend all of their time confused and misdirected when they are fighting a different war against rebels with no ties to their imagined villain externally.

Bush keeps saying that everything in Iraq is grand, and that "Peace is on the march." He didn't say what direction it's marching in. Inside besieged Falluja(bbc.co.uk, 10/16/04):

The mood in the city is grim.

It is start of Ramadan, but there is nowhere to celebrate and no food to celebrate with.

Read more on how people are fleeing town.

The raiding of mosques right before a holy period surely isn't good for the morale of Iraqi civilians, either. U.S. hits Sunni hot spots -- 7 mosques raided, Muslim leaders irate over air strike destruction, arrests (sfgate.com, 10/13/04). Interestingly, the US is warning of an increase in violence -- by Iraqis. We should draw no correlation to the new military campaigns by the U.S., apparently.

Interesting comment from this article:

In a separate statement read Friday in Sunni mosques in Baghdad and elsewhere, Fallujah clerics threatened a civil disobedience campaign across the country if the Americans try to overrun the city.

The clerics said if civil disobedience were not enough to stop a U.S. assault, they would proclaim a jihad, or holy war, against all U.S. and multinational forces "as well as those collaborating with them."

They insisted that the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi was not in Fallujah, claiming his alleged presence "is a lie just like the weapons of mass destruction lie."

"Al-Zarqawi has become the pretext for flattening civilians houses and killing innocent civilians," the statement said.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the article now claims that Fallujah was controlled by "radical clerics" (note the plural) now that local religious leaders are planning protests. Funny, until recently, there was only ONE radical cleric. Perhaps they don't want to give up using the title, now that their favorite cleric so labeled is running for mainstream office?

Still not winning hearts and minds: After Recapturing N. Iraqi City, Rebuilding Starts From Scratch (washingtonpost.com, 09/19/04):

"'The citizens are frustrated; everyone is frustrated,' he said. 'My house, for example, has been searched three times, and the last time they were very aggressive. They broke down my door. I was asleep in my house with my children, and suddenly [a soldier] was standing in front of me. I said, 'I am a doctor.' He said, '[Expletive] you.' '"