Waiter, there's a fly in my soup!Keep it down sir, or they'll all be wanting one.
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By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent Mon Apr 9, 2:08 AM ET
NEW YORK - In a rueful reflection on what might have been, an Iraqi government insider details in 500 pages the U.S. occupation's "shocking" mismanagement of his country — a performance so bad, he writes, that by 2007 Iraqis had "turned their backs on their would-be liberators."
"The corroded and corrupt state of Saddam was replaced by the corroded, inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state of the new order," Ali A. Allawi concludes in "The Occupation of
Iraq'
Allawi writes with authority as a member of that "new order," having served as Iraq's trade, defense and finance minister at various times since 2003. As a former academic, at Oxford University before the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, he also writes with unusual detachment.
The U.S.- and British-educated engineer and financier is the first senior Iraqi official to look back at book length on his country's four-year ordeal. It's an unsparing look at failures both American and Iraqi, an account in which the word "ignorance" crops up repeatedly.
First came the "monumental ignorance" of those in Washington pushing for war in 2002 without "the faintest idea" of Iraq's realities. "More perceptive people knew instinctively that the invasion of Iraq would open up the great fissures in Iraqi society," he writes.
What followed was the "rank amateurism and swaggering arrogance" of the occupation, under L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which took big steps with little consultation with Iraqis, steps Allawi and many others see as blunders:
• The Americans disbanded Iraq's army, which Allawi said could have helped quell a rising insurgency in 2003. Instead, hundreds of thousands of demobilized, angry men became a recruiting pool for the resistance.
• Purging tens of thousands of members of toppled President
— from government, school faculties and elsewhere — left Iraq short on experienced hands at a crucial time.
• An order consolidating decentralized bank accounts at the Finance Ministry bogged down operations of Iraq's many state-owned enterprises.
• The CPA's focus on private enterprise allowed the "commercial gangs" of Saddam's day to monopolize business.
• Its free-trade policy allowed looted Iraqi capital equipment to be spirited away across borders.
• The CPA perpetuated Saddam's fuel subsidies, selling gasoline at giveaway prices and draining the budget.
In his 2006 memoir of the occupation, Bremer wrote that senior U.S. generals wanted to recall elements of the old Iraqi army in 2003, but were rebuffed by the Bush administration. Bremer complained generally that his authority was undermined by Washington's "micromanagement."
Although Allawi, a cousin of Ayad Allawi, Iraq's prime minister in 2004, is a member of a secularist Shiite Muslim political grouping, his well-researched book betrays little partisanship.
On U.S. reconstruction failures — in electricity, health care and other areas documented by Washington's own auditors — Allawi writes that the Americans' "insipid retelling of `success' stories" merely hid "the huge black hole that lay underneath."
For their part, U.S. officials have often largely blamed Iraq's explosive violence for the failures of reconstruction and poor governance.
The author has been instrumental since 2005 in publicizing extensive corruption within Iraq's "new order," including an $800-million Defense Ministry scandal. Under Saddam, he writes, the secret police kept would-be plunderers in check better than the U.S. occupiers have done.
As 2007 began, Allawi concludes, "America's only allies in Iraq were those who sought to manipulate the great power to their narrow advantage. It might have been otherwise."
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His hands were bleeding and his eyes filled with tears as, four years ago, he slammed a sledgehammer into the tiled plinth that held a 20ft bronze statue of Saddam Hussein. Then Kadhim al-Jubouri spoke of his joy at being the leader of the crowd that toppled the statue in Baghdad's Firdous Square. Now, he is filled with nothing but regret.[..]
Now, on the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, he says: "I really regret bringing down the statue. The Americans are worse than the dictatorship. Every day is worse than the previous day."
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THE NEW WORLD DISORDER'North American Union' major '08 issue?Coalition mobilizes grass roots, targets Washington lawmakers
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
Jerome Corsi and Howard Phillip at National Press Club news conference yesterday
A coalition united by its determination to stop efforts to merge the U.S. into a North American Union is organizing a grass-roots effort to make it an issue in 2008, vowing to campaign against any candidate, Republican or Democrat, who won't side with them.
Spearheaded by Conservative Caucus Chairman Howard Phillips; WND columnist and author Jerome Corsi; and activist Phyllis Schlafly, leaders of the 50-member coalition held an event at the National Press Club yesterday, expressing support for a proposed congressional resolution that denounces any effort by the U.S. to enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada.
Corsi said lawmakers need to be held accountable, and the plan, along with calling for a congressional investigation, is to train members of Schlafly's Eagle Forum to lobby on Capitol Hill when the 100th Congress convenes in January.
"We want to make it a major issue of the 2008 campaign," Corsi said. "The coalition will work to oppose any candidate who doesn't sign on, Republicans and Democrats alike."
The resolution – sponsored by Republican Reps. Virgil Goode Jr. of Virginia, Tom Tancredo of Colorado, Walter Jones of North Carolina, and Ron Paul of Texas – expresses "the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in the coNAU) with Mexico and Canada."
Monday, Corsi announced the Internet release of about 1,000 documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request to the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. He says the documents show the White House is engaging in collaborative relations with Mexico and Canada outside the U.S. Constitution.
The documents can be viewed here, on a special website set up by the Minuteman Project.
Corsi told WND the coalition, which now numbers about 50 leaders, is calling for a congressional investigation.
Reporters at National Press Club news conference yesterday
"We'd like to see both the House and the Senate in the 110th Congress conduct a serious investigation and get full disclosure from SPP of all documents," he said. "If the Bush administration wants to continue to deny that we're on the same track that Europe went on to create the European Union and the euro, then there should be no harm in full disclosure."
Otherwise, he continued, "I'm charging they are secretly on the path to create a North American Union, a new currency – the amero – along the same stealth path that was used in Europe, keeping everything below the radar, by administrative decree, making it to late to stop before the American people finally realize what's gong on."
Phillips, who has been chairman of the public-policy Conservative Caucus since 1974, told WND "this could be the most important project on which we've ever worked."
"It's incredible that a project of this magnitude with such potential fatal consequences to American's status as an individual republic should get this far without serious public debate and consideration," said, Phillips, who was one of the founders of the U.S. Taxpayers Party, which changed its name to the Constitution Party in 1999.
He was the party's presidential candidate in the 1992, 1996 and 2000 elections.
The resolution Phillips is promoting reads, in part:
Whereas, according to the Department of Commerce, United States trade deficits with Mexico and Canada have significantly widened since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA);
Whereas the economic and physical security of the United States is impaired by the potential loss of control of its borders attendant to the full operation of NAFTA;
Whereas a NAFTA Superhighway System from the west coast of Mexico through the United States and into Canada has been suggested as part of a North American Union;
Whereas it would be particularly difficult for Americans to collect insurance from Mexican companies which employ Mexican drivers involved in accidents in the United States, which would increase the insurance rates for American drivers;
Whereas future unrestricted foreign trucking into the United States can pose a safety hazard due to inadequate maintenance and inspection, and can act collaterally as a conduit for the entry into the United States of illegal drugs, illegal human smuggling, and terrorist activities;
Whereas a NAFTA Superhighway System would be funded by foreign consortiums and controlled by foreign management, which threatens the sovereignty of the United States.
The resolution calls for the House of Representatives to agree on three issues of determination:
The United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System;
The United States should not enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada; and
The President should indicate strong opposition to these or any other proposals that threaten the sovereignty of the United States.
"As important as this resolution is," Corsi said, "we need still more congressional attention. Where is congressional oversight of SPP? We need congressional hearings, not just congressional resolutions."
H.Con.Res.487 has been referred to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and to the Committee on Internal Relations for consideration prior to any debate that may be scheduled on the floor of the House.
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