RoR: Forum

It's an interesting article, Adam, but can you provide your sources?

Thanks,

Michelle

Post 1

Friday, September 19, 2003 - 7:14am

Michelle,

If you mean to ask that I "name names", then the answer, in the interest of a friend's privacy and continued employment, must be no. If, as I hope, you mean to ask whether I verified the facts, the answer is yes. Everything that I was told, except for two illustrative anecdotes, I have verified from other, public sources - as can you, by using Google, as I have. The two anecdotes do not contradict anything in public sources, and are similar to other reports of similar events that have been published. My source was useful in making sense of all of that. If there is anything in my article that you wish to question specifically, I'll be happy to point you to a corroborating source _for that fact_ that you can verify on the web.

Best regards,

Adam

Post 2

Friday, September 19, 2003 - 4:53pm

Fascinating.

I saw that first on riverbend, and hoped it might be sour grapes.

But this is certain corroboration; you should definitely tell her to link your page.

This, finally, is genuine grounds for impeachment. We saw all the writing on the wall with the "post-war" plans for rape. (Sec. 13303 and so forth.)

Here, now, is evidence that those rules are being used to enforce the worst sort of government-enforced monopoly.

It was called a Patent in the days of royalty, and it was a genuine evil.

Post 3

Friday, September 19, 2003 - 7:57pm

OK, I've been googling unsuccessfully for a while now. (I don't know you from Michael Ledeen after all...)

Can you please, please post a list of references?

Post 4

Friday, September 19, 2003 - 8:11pm

Sorry, my fall quarter starts Monday, so I don't have time to compile a comprehensive list now. I offered to to provide refs to any specific fact in the article, and that offer is good indefinitely, providing the requester identifies what he or she wants to verify. But that is the limit of what I have time to provide.

Post 5

Friday, September 19, 2003 - 10:57pm

I have been asked by a reader to provide a reference for the fact that the US government (the Los Angeles Times names a specific US government agency, the "Export-Import Bank") and major US government-contract corporations (the Los Angeles Times names Haliburton, Bechtel etc.) had a plan to siphon off future Iraqi oil revenues to pay for "reconstruction" contracts that those firms were bidding on. The reference is http://www.odiousdebts.org/odiousdebts/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=7942 . (I originally came across this reference on the Los Angeles Times web site, but for some reason today it no longer shows up on Google as being on latimes.com.)

Post 6

Saturday, September 20, 2003 - 11:50am

I work for a major company that has been given work in Iraq. They recently posted on our intranet the dozens and dozens of schools, bridges, roads etc that have been completed. They have 100 people in Irak and employ thousands of locals mostly as sub-contractors.
This is in-spite of ALL the money so far coming from US taxpayers. I doubt that your friends claims can be substantiated but i agree that Poland would have been able to offer alot for the reasons you stated. In fact in the 70's and 80's many Poles worked in Iraq so would be familiar with their industries.

Post 7

Saturday, September 20, 2003 - 4:34pm

Gee, Albert, ONE HUNDRED Americans? As far as I can tell, building schools, bridges, roads etc does not require any particularly esoteric expertise. Fully loaded salary for an American engineer is ten times what it is for an Iraqi, and travel and hazardous duty allowances will double that. How can a company pay one hundred people twenty times what its Iraqi competitors would pay theirs, and still win an honest, unrigged competitive bid? An inquiring mind wants to know.

Post 8

Saturday, September 20, 2003 - 5:15pm

Good article that makes perfect sense.
I disagree with the need for war. An extensive search in Iraq has failed to turn up any evidence of any weapons of mass destruction, much less nuclear weapons. The image of "mushroom clouds going up over American cities," which was used to panic Congress into accepting an invasion of Iraq, has turned out to be � as every expert knew at the time � nothing but propaganda worthy of Heinrich Himmler and Paul Joseph Goebbles. The fabrications about Iraq�s intentions toward the US rival Hitler�s declaration that Poland had attacked Germany!
It is perfectly clear what the US real intentions were at the outset, as your article describes perfectly.
You do realise that this observation makes you a Saddam Succour!

Post 9

Saturday, September 20, 2003 - 6:23pm

Saturday, September 20, 2003 - 6:36pm

Adam:

No, I did not ask you to name names. But if you have to protect your friend's identity, it means that the evidence is classified and cannot be found on Google either.

Michelle

Post 11

Saturday, September 20, 2003 - 7:55pm

Contracts Administrators, Project Managers and Specialists are needed. This is US tax payer money by the way.
So far only 2 major contracts have been let by the US Corps of Engineers.
The US companies administering these contracts are putting them out to bid and local companies can and are winning bids.
What Adam picked up in the pub in Krakow over a few beers I doubt was "classified information"

Post 12

Sunday, September 21, 2003 - 12:02am

Michelle,

Albert is right - nothing I was told was classified, and except for the job of assembling it all in a coherent structure, any enterprising investigator could have found everything out in the open on the web.

Albert is also factually correct that the only funding for ongoing infrastructure in Iraq today are US taxpayer funds, if only because sabotage is keeping Iraqi oil off world (and even internal) markets. And the key reason for the sabotage is the American plan, documented in the Los Angeles Times article linked above, to siphon off Iraqi oil revenues to pull-peddling crony-capitalist corporations in the United States. If Iraqis had some kind of guarantee that oil revenues will be invested in private, job-generating enterprises in Iraq itself - if the Iraqi oil industry were privatised, and private firms employing Iraqis were able to guard their assets with their own personnel - then sabotage would be stopped, and there would no longer be any excuse for massive expenditures of US tax funds.

Post 13

Monday, September 22, 2003 - 8:35am

That link was rather weak in support of "the key reason for the sabotage is the American plan" and the idea that it would stop if "if the Iraqi oil industry were privatised, and private firms employing Iraqis were able to guard their assets with their own personnel". Given the Saddamist and Islamist enemy, I doubt that sabotage would stop.

Nevertheless, the centrally planned operation is fraught with problems. Your basic thesis is right. A mixed economy will have the "special interests" and "pull-pedaling" that undermines the mission. While I doubt that Iraqis would do better given their history of a controlled economy, the fact still remains: gov't run industries are failures.

Post 14

Monday, September 22, 2003 - 5:04pm

Rick,

So you "doubt that Iraqis would do better given their history of a controlled economy." Do you know that in the 200 years up to the end of 1990, Poland had an independent constitutional government for a total of 11 years: 1791-1795 and 1919-1926? Or that promoters of a Roman Catholic theocratic dictatorship in Poland - a force every bit as backward as the worst Islamists - had proportionally more support than the Islamists in Iraq? Believers in a "Western Civilization" too often forget that there is only one civilization, the human civilization, on earth today - and that until the Baathist takeover, Iraqis participated in human civilization more vigorously than the citizens of many European states. Go read the blogs of Iraqis on the Web, rather than make unfounded assumptions about their supposed "differences."

Post 15

Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - 6:58am

Yes but Poles are quite an intellectual lot. There was enough of pro freedom thinking around for a market economy to survive and communism had been discredited. Is there such a movement of a significant minority in Iraq?

Post 16

Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - 10:27pm

Talking with ex-Iraqis in Israel leads me to believe that before Saddam took over, British "Liberal" ideas were widely known, if not dominant, among Iraqi intellectuals. In any case Iraq has the highest educational standards and highest proportion of university graduates in the Middle East. Not exactly the kind of country where the natives need American help to rebuild their schools, roads, bridges, or oil wells and pipelines. The current contracts let out to American corporations are pure Washington pork.

Post 17

Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 9:20pm

Here's a short article from The Economist that also notes that Iraqi's are being passed over for local work: http://economist.com/world/africa/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2126088.

Post 18

Monday, August 2, 2004 - 11:33am

Here i sit in Taji, almost a year later looking at what has to be the end of what is and hoping for what could have been. Had the personal arrogance of american corporate greed not come into play, we could have achieved the exact intentions of Poland with greater ease, more cooperation, and fewer casualties. The largest motivation of american industry involved in the reconstuction of Iraq seems to be fueled by the desire to remain in Iraq. america needs to realize 1 that she cant do it alone 2 this is not an american province 3 that the international community has a viable stake in Iraqs future 4 that the Iraqis know Iraq better than she does and 5 knowledge, technology and humanitarianism are singular american values. We could have done so much more faster had we utilized the single most vauable asset to the reconstruction of Iraq - the citizens of Iraq. Had we approached with the "yours" not "ours" mentallity; had we shown greater incorporation; had we provided for the needs of people not corporations; had we advised and not decided; had we protected and informed instead of fought; how closer would we have been with half the burden of so many lives lost. Would the Iraqis have policed themselves, would the clerics have called for peaceful cooperation, would the world community have bent over backwards to provide both debt relief and incentives for growth; sadly this all could have been! Thanks Andy!

Post 19

Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - 5:57pm