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Scandals continue to break about the massive
misappropriation of U.S. funds in the occupation of Iraq. The British Guardian reported Jan. 25: “The US
state department’s gross mismanagement of a multibillion-dollar
contract for training Iraqi police has left US funds vulnerable to
waste and fraud, a watchdog said today.
“In a scathing report, Stuart Bowen, the special inspector
general for Iraq reconstruction, strongly criticised both the state
department and DynCorp International, the firm that won the $2.5bn
(£1.5bn) contract in 2004—the largest awarded by the state department.”
DynCorp is one of the mercenary corporations spawned by
the privatization of the U.S. military, along
with the notorious Blackwater (now renamed “Xe” in attempt to distance
itself from its ill fame). It is also a major contractor in Afghanistan. The article
continued: “Members of Congress said the latest findings cast doubt on
DynCorp’s ability to handle similar contracts in Afghanistan.
“’I don’t have any confidence that they’re doing a better
job there. … If we don’t correct this immediately, we are going to be
having the same conversation a few years from now,’ said Senator Claire
McCaskill, the Democratic chairman of the Senate subcommittee on
contracting oversight.”
The mercenary outfits represent a level of privatization that
exceeds the worst examples of war profiteering in the golden age of the
capitalist monopolies in the Spanish-American war, when more U.S. soldiers were
killed by defective supplies than by enemy bullets. In those days, the
profiteers were only suppliers, not private armed forces as they are
now.
However, the older form of corrupt war profiteering has
apparently also flourished in the occupation of Iraq. The British
Independent reported
Jan. 23: “Hundreds of people have been killed in horrific bombings in Iraq after a British
company supplied ‘bogus’ equipment which failed to detect explosive
devices.
“The head of the company, which has made tens of millions
of pounds from the sale of the detectors, has now been arrested and the
British Government has announced a ban on their export to Iraq.”
The article continued: “... questions were being raised
last night about why action had not been taken sooner on the supply of
the detectors which leading weapons specialists had condemned months
ago as ‘useless and dangerous.’ The equipment—which operates on a
‘dousing’ principle and has no electronic components—was also sold to Pakistan, Lebanon and Jordan, all countries
suffering deaths and injuries through terrorist bomb attacks.”
Questions may have been raised but it is unlikely that
there will be any answers, because the firm in question, like the war
profiteers in general, undoubtedly had powerful political connections
who will continue to protect themselves if they are unable any longer
to defend their protégés. The people who suffered from this corruption
are raising a huge outcry.
“Iraqi families who have suffered in the blasts last night
condemned their own government as well as the British authorities for
allowing the extraordinary security failure. Among the attacks that the
detectors, it is claimed, had failed to prevent were suicide bombings
in October last year which killed 155 people and blasts two months
later which resulted in 120 more deaths.”
The business of “security” has been a bonanza for capitalist
profiteers. About 15 percent of all construction contacts given to U.S. firms in Iraq, for example,
have gone to “security,”
usually benefiting mercenary outfits like Blackwater and DynCorps. The corrupt
construction and “security” companies have so far been the major
beneficiaries of a U.S. war effort
expected to cost more than a trillion dollars, and which has cost more
than 4000 American lives.
The U.S. war on Iraq was motivated
by the hope of getting control of Iraqi oil, as top U.S. officials have
admitted. But the hatred that the brutal war has engendered in the
Iraqi people has put in doubt any material or political gain for the U.S. Even the
government that arose in the shadow of the occupation cannot ignore the
feelings of the overwhelming majority of the people over which it
aspires to rule.
The Washington
Post reported
Dec. 13: “Chinese, Russian and European companies won the right this
weekend to develop major oil fields in Iraq, while U.S. firms made a
paltry showing at auctions that represent the first major incursion of
foreign oil companies into Iraq in four
decades. The companies that secured 10 contracts in auctions held over
the weekend and in June stand to profit handsomely, but they are taking
a significant gamble.
“Iraq has the
third-largest proven crude reserves in the world, but the country
remains perilous; it suffers from chronic corruption and acrimonious
politics that have prevented the passing of new laws to regulate the
sector.
“Of the seven U.S. companies that
registered for the auctions, only one emerged as the leading partner in
a consortium that won a contract. Another U.S. company has a minority
stake in a contract. China’s state-owned oil company has a major stake
in two contracts. Russian firms are parties in two others. European
firms made a strong showing. Royal Dutch Shell, Italy’s Eni, British
Petroleum and Norway’s Statoil got deals. Companies from Malaysia and Angola were parties to
five winning bids.
“Oil analysts say the outcome was surprising, considering
that U.S. oil companies
have long yearned to work in Iraq.”
In fact, the contracts held by foreign competitors of U.S. oil companies
were abrogated by the U.S. occupation in
its initial period. But sabotage and bombings by insurgents reduced the
production of Iraqi oil fields to a trickle for many years.
The Washington
Post noted
that it was probably this experience that dissuaded the U.S. companies from
bidding:
“Security concerns, underscored by coordinated bombings
Tuesday, and the threat of political instability as the U.S. military
withdraws probably gave American oil executives pause, analysts said.”
Even the U.S. client Iraqi
government obviously fears to be seen giving away Iraqi oil to foreign
companies. It is offering only service contracts to the oil companies,
not ownership of the oil. And the service contracts awarded have
included a per barrel price that is only about half what the oil
companies wanted.
Furthermore, as the U.S. hold on their
country weakens, the ruling Shiite theocratic politicians are steadily
edging closer to Iran. The U.S. needs
Sunni politicians as a barrier to a reconciliation between majority
Shiite Iraq and Shiite Iran. But recently a large number of Sunni candidates
for the upcoming parliamentary elections have been disqualified under
the accusation that they were accomplices of the Saddam Hussein regime.
The Jan. 28 issue of the British Economist reported
that the banning of the Sunni candidates was the result of an
initiative by Ahmed Chalabi, who was a protégé of the CIA when he led
an exile organization opposed to Saddam Hussein. He spent most of his
adult life as an exile. After he returned to the country he quickly
became discredited. And he lost his credibility also with U.S.
officials, since the intelligence he offered proved false. But once
spurned by the U.S., Chalabi turned
to the Iranian regime for support.
The Economist speculated
that the banning of the Sunni candidates got “a wink” from the Iranians.
Overall, the United States seems to have
won no reliable allies in Iraq, except perhaps
for the Kurdish nationalists, who were threatened with extermination by
Saddam Hussein. U.S. oil companies have gotten juicy contracts in Iraqi
Kurdistan (netting a top U.S. diplomat a payoff of $100 million, by the
way), but this area is a landlocked northern enclave. The oil fields in
southern Iraq, near the Gulf port of Basrah, are the
richest.
Thus, the greatest U.S. imperialist
adventure since World War II has ended in massive losses for the United States. And the
politicians that rule the U.S. for the corporations (who themselves
have profited, at the expense of the U.S. economy) refuse to extricate
the country from the entanglements they and their like have gotten it
into. Only direct pressure from the American people through
mobilization independent of the corporations’ twin parties can stop the
drain on the country resulting from such imperialist adventures and
forestall even greater losses in the future.
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