View 309 May 10 - 16, 2004 (original) (raw)
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
The first thing the new Iraqi government should do is go to the World Court and sue the UN as an organization and Kofi Annan personally for the $10 billion or so the UN allowed to be stolen from the Oil for Food program....
And I have a question from a friend:
I'm curious whether any correspondent has strong impressions/actual evidence of just what was going on behind the scenes during that really bizarre sudden firing of Garner and his replacement by Bremer, and which factions were involved for what reason.
Some accounts seem to indicate that the neocons fired Garner, but now there are claims that Powell's anti-neocon people dumped Garner. Some people say Garner was incompetent, but others say Bremer was incompetent and actually responsible for disbanding the army. Don't have any particular relative opinion of the two men: perhaps both were incompetent, perhaps neither.
One claim has been that Garner was opposed to "privatizing" the Iraqi economy via lucrative contracts to Chalabi, his horde of corrupt relatives, Halliburton, etc., and that's what did him in. Seems possible, but who knows.
I'll certainly be very interested in reading the reviews of the avalanche of "How We Lost Iraq" books that are doubtless currently being written.
I have heard several versions. And the questioner has many friends among both neo-cons and the government; that he would ask says a lot.
And from the Washington Post,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
articles/A13065-2004May9.html
here is Intelligence Operation FreeStyle:
Ahmad Naje Dulaimi, a waiter at a restaurant in Baghdad's Adhamiya neighborhood, was arrested in the middle of the night of July 18. He had once worked for the Iraqi Olympic Committee, which was run by Hussein's son, Uday, and used as a cover for political persecution.
Dulaima was a long-distance freestyle swimmer on the Iraqi national team. A neighbor had informed U.S. soldiers of his affiliation, he said, and suggested to U.S. troops that he was a member of Hussein's militia, Saddam's Fedayeen.
"I had an Olympic Committee card in my wallet, but I told them I was a swimmer," said Dulaimi, a lanky 23-year old with floppy hair and acne. "I guess the Americans believed their spy."
Within days, the informant, a well-known religious figure in the neighborhood, was killed for working with U.S. troops, Dulaimi said.
Dualimi's 11-month imprisonment began in the interrogation rooms of the Adhamiya Palace, a former Hussein villa now being used by U.S. troops. He spent the first night in the T-shirt and shorts he was sleeping in at the time of his arrest, but he was also hooded, with his hands and feet bound by plastic cuffs.
For two days, he consumed only a cracker and several sips of water, he said. On the third night, he was interrogated by two U.S. soldiers, a man and a woman, who were assisted by a Kuwaiti interpreter. The male soldier strode into the interrogation room, Dulaimi said, and immediately urinated on his head.
"They asked me about Baathists in the neighborhood, if there were officers, who sold weapons, and who were Fedayeen. I told them I knew nothing," said Dulaimi, who also spent time in Camp Bucca and Abu Ghraib before he was freed on Thursday, according to his release papers and prison identification bracelet. "They said, 'We know you are innocent, but we want information from you. You know these people.' "
Now that ought to work, right? I am sure those troops feel proud of themselves. Where in hell was the adult supervision?
From the same article:
Some American and Iraqi commentators attribute the growth of the insurgency to the decision in May of last year by L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq, to dissolve the Iraqi military.
The decision was another step in the dismantling of Hussein's government, once dominated by members of the Baath Party. But it had a practical effect of leaving an estimated 400,000 men with military training without jobs. U.S. commanders worried about the consequences, which Iraqis sympathetic to the U.S. project now say have turned out worse than any of the Americans expect
Now there's an understatement...
COPYRIGHT MATTERS: I have opened a special page for this since it is long, and dull to those who are not especially interested. I'll put up a summary here for everyone another time.
If you have time, you may find this interesting:
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http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/
main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/05/12/waust12.
xml&sSheet=/news/2004/05/12/ixworld.html
Australia acts to refloat island's sinking fortunes By Nick Squires in Sydney
(Filed: 12/05/2004)
Another tale of the new order and global economy.