Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SecularBull who wrote (436235)	7/30/2003 9:52:24 PM
From: Red Heeler	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

And you swallowed this . . . . Bush lie #16: The Bush administration had a plan for restoring essential services and rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure after the shooting war ended. The question of what the U.S. would do to rebuild Iraq was raised before the shooting started. I remember reading a press briefing in which a Pentagon official boasted that at the time, the American reconstruction team had already spent three weeks planning the postwar world! The Pentagon's first word was that the essentials of rebuilding the country would take about $10 billion and three months; this stood in fairly stark contrast to UN estimates that an aggressive rebuilding program could cost up to $100 billion a year for a minimum of three years. After the shooting stopped it was evident the U.S. had no plan for keeping order in the streets, much less commencing to rebuild. (They are upgrading certain oil facilities, but that's another matter.) There are two ways to read this. The popular version is that it proves what bumblers Bush and his crew really are. And it's certainly true that where the details of their grand designs are concerned, the administration tends to have postures rather than plans. But this ignores the strategic advantages the U.S. stands to reap by leaving Iraqi domestic affairs in a chronic state of (managed, they hope) chaos. Most important, it provides an excuse for the continued presence of a large U.S. force, which ensures that America will call the shots in putting Iraqi oil back on the world market and seeing to it that the Iraqis don't fall in with the wrong sort of oil company partners. A long military occupation is also a practical means of accomplishing something the U.S. cannot do officially, which is to maintain air bases in Iraq indefinitely. (This became necessary after the U.S. agreed to vacate its bases in Saudi Arabia earlier this year to try to defuse anti-U.S. political tensions there.) Meanwhile, the U.S. plans to pay for whatever rebuilding it gets around to doing with the proceeds of Iraqi oil sales, an enormous cash box the U.S. will oversee for the good of the Iraqi people. In other words, "no plan" may have been the plan the Bushmen were intent on pursuing all along. CC