Joshuah Bearman

UN v. Halliburton

Will the old-school nativists and New American Century interventionists finally shut the fuck up about how Kofi Annan is a venal monster and international elitist bureaucrat at the helm of a power-hungry  and corrupt UN? It's bullshit. Conservatives get so shrill about the blue helmets, they sound like goddamn Larouchies half the time, and I wouldn't wish that on anybody. My advice to them: calm down, wipe the spit from the corner of your mouth, and read the exhaustive audit commission, which found no bribery, corruption or other improprieties, other than improper oversight of contractors. (And we all know the Republicans never hire questionable contractors.) The commission, by the way, is led by Paul Volcker, former Fed honcho and Chairman of the Trilateral commission, so the audits can't be accused of being internationalist cover-ups.

Speaking of contractors, I'm sure the privatizers and unilateralist howlers all think that Halliburton and it's subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root would have done a better job administering Iraq's Oil For Food program. I mean, look at the great example they're setting in Iraq now, where both entities are under investigation for defrauding the US Government in Iraq -- during wartime! (Remember the $61 million fuel and $27.4 million dinner bill?) Or Bechtel, responsible for a $1billion in cost overruns in the Big Dig, and currently executing a contract for twice that amount to rebuild infrastructure in Iraq. Small coincidence, then, that 2003 was a banner year for Bechtel? No corruption there! And certainly the inquiry by the Iraqi Government Council -- seems there may yet be some sovereignty left over there -- into Halliburton's bribing its way into the lion's share of reconstruction contracts will turn up nothing. 

It's Official

They've stopped even looking for WMD's in Iraq.

And since we can't seem to get enough about torture these days, this is interesting too. But the real killer is here, literally, as Newsweek uncovered a plan by the Pentagon to exercise the "Salvador Option" in Iraq by creating secret death squads to help quell the insurgency. That always works! Donald Rumsfeld has explicitly used El Salvador as a model for Iraq before. Recall that US-sponsored government forces were responsible for killing tens of thousands of people, like those at El Mozote.

Iraq: Told You So -- Again

Another December 24th story that got little coverage: an official historian of the Iraq war who also  served as a war planner in the campaign put together a study concluding that there was no plan to win the peace in Iraq, which of course, means there was no plan to win the real war. These guys didn't even create a formal Phase IV plan -- the post-combat operations to stabilize the country, create a peaceful transitional authority, etc. -- until seven months after the fall of Baghdad. By which time, the initiative was gone, the insurrection begun, and the situation already FUBAR. Duh.