Donors wanted

Herbert Docena reports on BushCo's "Plan C" to get other countries to help foot the bill for Iraq's "reconstruction". (Plan A: Iraq pays for itself out of its oil revenues. Plan B: American taxpayers pay for it with an $87 billion grant.)

The US calculated the country's oil revenues could underwrite Iraq's reconstruction - before guerrillas started blowing up the pipelines. Now the Bush administration is being forced to assume the lion's share of the cost, with whatever additional funding it can wheedle and extort from allied governments, who are under pressure from their own business lobbies eager to grab a slice of a privatized Iraqi economy.

...In [the Madrid] donors' conference, the US will be asking the "international community" to finance an occupation it can no longer afford on its own.

But Docena doesn't think it will be such an easy task.

As a recent Financial Times editorial put it, "Washington is in a mess in Iraq, and needs help from its friends. The friends are prepared to assist, but they will demand a price."

The price comes in the form of a long sought-for guarantee giving the donor countries a crack at the multi-billion dollar business opportunities in Iraq - an access to the ground floor where the action is. With the recent announcement of plans to sell all but a few of Iraq's crown jewels for dirt-cheap prices, other countries can't afford to miss the post-war garage sale. If they don't want to be locked out, they better pay the entrance fee to be collected personally by Coalition Provisional Authority head L Paul Bremer and US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who are both in Madrid. Also present is US Treasury Secretary John Snow.

Opponents of the war - in particular, France, Germany and Russia - have made it clear they are not ready to forgive and forget and contribute so readily to Iraqi reconstruction.

Call me jaded, but although I suspect they'll play their advantage for all it's worth, in the end they'll opt for a piece of the Iraqi pie.

Docena points out that the money these countries give will be their citizens' money, while the returns on those investments will be collected by corporations. Rightly, he says that this will not be easy to sell to the citizens.

Unless I misconstrued something along the way, that is exactly the same situation we have here. And while Congress is making it appear that they are being careful about the taxpayers' $87 billion by insisting that some portion of it be loans to the Iraqi people, how much in taxpayers' money is tied up in defaulted or outstanding foreign loans right now? If I had to place a bet, I'd put it on the corporations who are getting the business opportunities in Iraq to be swimming in profits long, long before the U.S. taxpayer sees even the hint of a loan repayment. (P.S. are they going to have their arms twisted to accept those loans? And then some time, have a look at Greg Palast's articles on World Bank loans to Third World countries and see if you can still in good conscience wave your free market capitalist flag. Here's one. Get his book.)

As Docena later points out:

Those who will be made to pay are often not aware what their money is being used for and - as the opposition to the war by majorities in almost all countries indicate - will most likely object if they only knew. Those who will profit, however, will have the most to gain from keeping the transactions in the dark.

He breaks it down for us to have a look at who profits:

Smiling McDonald's attendants may start ushering in customers to their branch in Iraq next year - but only after Bechtel had switched back the lights, Halliburton had rebuilt the bridges, Flour had paved the roads, MCI had set up the mobile network system, Research Triangle Institute had trained the managers and bureaucrats, Abt Associates had restored the hospitals, the military-industrial complex and the private armies had restored security, and the multinational force had pacified the resistance.

The Iraqis and the taxpayers who are bankrolling the occupation better not know to whom they're being made to give their checks. Bechtel sold chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein back in the 1980s and had been accused of gross overpricing in Massachusetts and Bolivia. MCI was involved in history's biggest accounting scandal and has totally no experience building cell networks. Halliburton had been accused of inflating costs and had even settled a number of fraud charges. Dyncorp had been accused of covering up sex trafficking. Flour faces a multibillion dollar lawsuit for exploiting black workers and making security guards wear Ku Klux Klan robes to attack their workers.

And who pays: Iraqis, taxpayers, soldiers and civilians.

First, the Iraqis. All of the past and future revenues from the sale of their oil as well as all of their former government's assets deposited anywhere in the world have been turned over to the UN Security Council-created but US-controlled Development Fund for Iraq.

What will be paid to US-chosen contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel - at a price set by these contractors themselves - will be paid out of this fund. Not only that, the fund will also be used by the US Export and Import Bank for extending credit to any US company that hopes to start business in Iraq or that wishes to buy any of the formerly Iraqi-owned corporations that will be sold off by the US as part of Iraq's massive privatization scheme....They will also be paying US investors to take over the corporations that the Iraqi people previously collectively owned, but which will now be sold off without their authorization.

...Bush's budget request for Iraq shows (when compared with actual market prices of these items)...spending $6,000 for a mobile phone that normally costs $495 only per set, $33,000 for a pickup truck that normally costs half that, and $55,000 for a prison bed that usually costs only $14,000. cross-reference

Meanwhile, each American will now be giving away $300 for the continued control of Iraq.

Hey! Isn't that the same amount each family got back from the federal government in the recent great tax cut windfall Bush delivered? No?

According to independent estimates, this total amount is more than enough to wipe all of the budget deficits now plaguing a number of state governments; enough to pay for all of the country's unemployment benefits for two years; seven times what the US federal government spends for low-income schools...

Oh well. Didn't need 'em.

But while the American and the rich countries' taxpayers are contributing cash, others are paying with their lives. According to various estimates, as many as 10,000 up to 30,000 Iraqi civilians have died; more than 100 American soldiers and scores of allied troops have been killed during the war and pacification.

Didn't need them either, I guess.

Read the article for more.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.