http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0412-08.htm On April 6, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz spelled it out: There will be no role for the United Nations in setting up an interim government in Iraq. The US-run regime will last at least six months, "probably...longer than that." And by the time the Iraqi people have a say in choosing a government, the key economic decisions about their country's future will have been made by their occupiers. "There has got to be an effective administration from day one," Wolfowitz said. "People need water and food and medicine, and the sewers have to work, the electricity has to work. And that's a coalition responsibility." The process of getting all this infrastructure to work is usually called "reconstruction." But American plans for Iraq's future economy go well beyond that. Rather, the country is being treated as a blank slate on which the most ideological Washington neoliberals can design their dream economy: fully privatized, foreign-owned and open for business. (...) Some argue that it's too simplistic to say this war is about oil. They're right. It's about oil, water, roads, trains, phones, ports and drugs. And if this process isn't halted, "free Iraq" will be the most sold country on earth. (...) But while Patten may find US unilateralism galling and Tony Blair may be calling for UN oversight, on this matter it's beside the point. Who cares which multinationals get the best deals in Iraq's post-Saddam, pre-democracy liquidation sale? What does it matter if the privatizing is done unilaterally by Washington or multilaterally by the United States, Europe, Russia and China? Entirely absent from this debate are the Iraqi people, who might--who knows?--want to hold on to a few of their assets. Iraq will be owed massive reparations after the bombing stops, but without any real democratic process, what is being planned is not reparations, reconstruction or rehabilitation. It is robbery: mass theft disguised as charity; privatization without representation. A people, starved and sickened by sanctions, then pulverized by war, is going to emerge from this trauma to find that their country has been sold out from under them. They will also discover that their newfound "freedom"--for which so many of their loved ones perished--comes pre-shackled with irreversible economic decisions that were made in boardrooms while the bombs were still falling. They will then be told to vote for their new leaders, and welcomed to the wonderful world of democracy.
Just how interested was "Old" Europe in the plight of the Iraqi people? Not very judging by their reluctance to deal with Saddam Hussein. The people weren't dancing in the streets because they were now getting cable tv.
Oh yes, 'the saving of the Iraqi people' bit. Most of those that wanted war didn't give a flying one about how the Iraqis were living either. It was used as a back-up argument after the original one about WMD's and the like, didn't convince enough people.
It's OK for France, Germany & Russia to have motives for NOT getting rid of Saddam Hussein. But without any concrete evidence, the Question American crowd is SURE that this war was fought for oil. You really hate democracy & freedom, don't you?
I never mentioned oil. I just said that this new found caring attitude of the pro-war people is a little tiring since it was just a filler excuse, since the main one involving Iraq being involved in terrorism in the future, didn't work with all they'd hoped it would. I'm just pointing out facts here. Yes, yes I do. So because I question the US-led motives for invading, and because I'm not entirely caught up in the spin that said this war was being fought primarily for the Iraqi people - I'm now against freedom. I've got to give it to you guys - you're good. I don't mind that the Iraqis have more freedom than they know what to do with (apart from the looting thing that is...), I just don't like being made to feel that it was one big humanitarian effort all along (in an attempt to make all those awful anti-war protesters feel bad about themselves)- when anyone with half-a-brain could see and knows, that it wasn't.
To be honest I don't know what I find more tiresome, the pro-war crowd saying that anyone who isn't pro-war wishes that Saddam had won, or the anti-war crowd unquestionably repeating every single possible link between this war (or any war) and evil corporate globalisation.
it will be a free Iraq, and not a "free Iraq." How can they say that? Saddam's regime did things i don't even want to think about. And what we have brought to Iraq isn't freedom? Kiss my ass
I don't think that anti-war people wish that Saddam had won. I just think that protesting served as a group anti-Bush jerk-off for many involved. The anti-war protest has been all about Bush since day 1 and little about Hussein and his atrocities.
Well, since the war wasn't about "Hussein and his atrocities," why would the anti-war crowd feel compelled to address that issue in particular?