Emperor Bush and the Neocon Utopia in Iraq

Bush Reveals True Reasons for War

Bennet Kelly, HuffPost [excerpts]
From the start of the occupation, the Bush administration has shown little
regard for Iraqi sovereignty and international legal prohibitions against
making significant changes to the legal and political institutions of an
occupied country. Instead, the administration pursued what, former World Bank
chief economist Joseph
Stiglitz characterized as "an even more radical form of shock therapy than
pursued in the former Soviet world," as it completely reshaped Iraq's legal
and economic regime to turn it into a Club Med for corporate interests.
The shock therapy was administered by Paul Bremer, who headed the Coalition
Provisional Authority, through 100 separate Orders which suspended all tariffs
and import fees (Order 12); immunized foreign contractors (Order 17); calls for
the sale of 200 state owned enterprises through 40-year ownership licenses
(Order 39); allowed foreign corporations to fully own Iraqi businesses and
remove profits tax free (Order 39); cut corporate income taxes by two-thirds
through a 15 percent flat tax (Order 49) and even restricts Iraqi farmers from
using certain seeds without paying a license fee to seed suppliers such as
Monsanto (Order 81).
The Bush administration also has ignored Congressional restrictions on the
use of government funds "to exercise United States control over the oil
infrastructure or oil resources of Iraq," as the State Department recently
assisted the Big 5 oil companies in winning rights to develop some of Iraq's
largest oilfields. Soon they will join Halliburton and others who have made
billions off the war while protected by our troops.