October 6, 2003- The Report
A few days ago, a report was issued that America is not going to like at all. This report was done by a financially based think tank, The Institute of International Finance, an organization that is based in the USA. This organization was asked to take a long, hard look at Iraq and try their best to forsee exactly what the future of Iraq holds, especially financially. They looked at things as they are now and tried to extrapolate that into the future and see what they could come up with. What they came up with is not at all good news for the White House, for the foundation says that Iraq is doomed to remain poor for many years to come for a variety of reasons. That flies in the face of the propaganda that the White House and Pentagon have been putting out for these last six months. They have been saying that Iraq was going to have to go through a rough patch for a short time, and then would be able to regain its place amongst First World nations because America was going to help restore stability to the nation, and then Iraq would be able to fend for itself and would be able to do so due to oil sales, because America has always said that the money that the oil sales generate was going to go to the Iraqi people and their country. The findings by the think tank come to drastically different conclusions. They say that oil sales will not be enough to restore Iraq's economy by themselves. OK then, what about all that foreign aid that Iraq is getting? There is not really that much of it other than what America is kicking into it. Other countries are saying thanks but no thanks to any requests to kick in funding money. They see how much they are going to have to give, and they want no part of that shit at all. America can only afford to put so much into the whole thing, and they are already putting way too much money into it all already. The costs of rebuilding a country the size of Iraq are enormous. Even America, with its vast resources, cannot rebuild Iraq alone without seriously putting their own country into financial problems, and America is flirting with that as it is. They have pledged over twenty billion dollars to it, but the problem is that reconstruction costs are pegged at more than seventy five billion dollars. That is why America has been asking the European Union and the like to help out, but those dudes have not even pledged one-half billion dollars to it all, so there is a big gap there. The most logical way for that to be plugged is for Mr. Businessman to pick up the slack, and he is not at all willing to do so. He is looking at the security situation in Iraq and sees that it is very unsettled and is going to remain that way for a very long time to come. Mr. Businessman never wants to invest his precious money in an unsettled place, it is too much of a risk for him. If there is outlaw behavior and banditry and anarchy like there is in Iraq now, that could cost him everything, since the situation could disintegrate at any moment. So he has said no thanks to investing in Iraq. As A result, the report says that Iraq has no chance of even reaching the economic level that they were at in the 1970's, they probably will not even get to half of that, says the report. Even if oil prices are favorable,, stability as achieved, and debts largely written off, Iraq will still be lucky to hit half of what they were in the 1970's. That is serious bad news for America. What it means is that America has just introduced itself to the Third World, because they now are in control of a Third World country. What good that will do America is anyone's guess. Now the problem becomes what the fuck to do about it, because America cannot just walk away from what they have done. Somehow, Iraq has to be brought into financial stability or else it will never amount to anything. This is another factor that President Bush neglected to look at when he was so hard up for this war. It is one thing to take over a country and restore order and public facilities and the like, but it is another thing entirely to restore a country's destroyed economy once you have taken over there. That is infinetly harder to do. Now Bush and his cohorts have to figure out a way to do just that or else look bad. And we all know that they do not want that more than anything. Bush thought that everything would be solved by running Saddam out of the country. Yes, it was Saddam that ran up huge debts for Iraq, to the tune of 134 billion dollars, and yes, it was Saddam that persecuted and harassed his own people and helped destroy Iraq's economy in the process, but one has to remember that it was America, led by the current President's father, that slapped economic sanctions on Iraq and left them there for thirteen years, and would not remove them no matter what. Now the current President is seeing first hand exactly what the damage that these sanctions that his old man came up with have done. They are the real culprits behind the economic destruction of Iraq. Bush will blame Saddam for all of it, like he blames the dude for everything bad that happens in that part of the world. He is going to pin his hopes on the fact that he has intimidated the American people so much that they will never question anything that he says about any subject. However, they will start to question him eventually, especially when they are asked to pay for this folly by paying ever higher taxes. Yes, President Bush has said that he intends to go through with his tax cuts, but Americans better not get used to that so much, because in about thirteen months time when the Presidential Elections are over, if Bush is still President, rest assured that he will rescind that tax cut and have big tax increases because he is going to have to pay for Iraqi reconstruction. Untilo then, the administration is going to be able to juggle numbers and things so that it looks as if Americans are not going to have to rebuild Iraq all by themselves and a year or so is not a long time to have to do that. In the meantime, Iraq will surely slide further into chaos and poverty, with less and less foreign aid coming in as more and more countries avoid the situation totally, and with zero help coming from the private sector, because Mr. Businessman is going to take his money elsewhere. That is going to lead To further deterioration of an already volatile and chaotic security situation. This will lead to more American soldiers being killed and maimed in Iraq by loonies of all stripes. That is a much gloomier picture of things than the White House and Pentagon have painted of everything.
One thing that one is led to wonder about all of this is where is that oil revenue that was supposed to fix everything, why won't it cut it and so on. Bush told everyone when he wanted this war that oil revenue was going to fix any and all problems that Iraq has. Once he started the war, he took great care to ensure that the oil refineries and pumping stations were not damaged at all. Schools, mosques, hospitals, and civilian homes were blasted to smithereens by American bombs, but the oil refineries and pumping stations were left unscathed. In fact, one of the first things that American troops did in Iraq was to seize and then secure these places and make sure that the oil spigots were not turned off even for one minute. So that oil and the resultant money has been flowing non-stop ever since America took over and shows no signs of stopping anytime. So why isn't all that money that it generates flowing to the Iraqi people like America said that it would? Part of the answer is that oil prices are not high enough. Whatever the current going rate is for barrels of crude oil, which is the stuff that they trade in, just is not sufficient to cover things. Bush forgot that there are a lot of other countries besides Iraq that sell oil. Iraq may be a big time oil producer, but they are not even the biggest one in the Middle East. That puts them at the mercy of market forces. Since Iraq is far from the sole oil producer in the world, they do not get to set the price. Whether it is Saddam or America running Iraq, their oil has to compete against the oil produced by all the other countries, and the price suffers as a result. Currently, there is a glut of oil ion the world, as many oil producing countries are releasing stocks of oil that they had been holding in reserve. That has caused oil prices to go down even with the war. The other oil producing countries know that they have to get the jump on things now that America is running Iraq, that they have to realize that Iraqi oil is going to be on the market again for the first time in years, and they are stepping up the amounts that they have available as a result. Bush cannot do a fuckin' thing about this, even if he is President. He may have all sorts of buddies and pals in high places in the business world, but not enough that he can corner and control the oil market. Since Bush lives in some sort of fantasy world, he probably was not aware of this fact, but he is now. But the oil prices are high enough for something else to happen, something that Bush wants far more than a liberated Iraq, and that is for his pals and buddies in the business world to make lots and lots of money. No matter what the price of crude oil is, rest assured that this will happen. For Bush is not all that concerned with using the opil money to rebuild Iraq, he does not give a fuck about the Iraqis, after all, they are not his mentors and patrons like Mr. Businessman is, so it is Mr. Businessman that is going to get any money from the oil first, and then the rest can go to rebuilding Iraq. That is the real reason why oil sales will not generate enough money to rebuild Iraq like Bush said, because Mr. Businessman has to take his cut of the money first. That is and always has been America's first priority in all of this. Bush is trying to use this as a way to get private business to invest in Iraq, but it is not working. Not every business in America is in cahoots with the White House, even though it seems otherwise all too often these days, and most businesses are not guaranteed the profits that Bush's pals are getting out of Iraq. Unless you are directly involved in the sale of oil, you have no guarantees at all. The businesses that are profiting in Iraq are ones that do not need any infrastructure to do business, they can operate in a lawless place where the gun is the law and death the ruler, like the current Iraq situation. They are taking their profits and hauling them back to the USA, to squirrel away in their secret bank accounts and the like and to stuff in their pockets. They have no interest in keeping any of that money in Iraq, or in even having a real presence in Iraq themselves. All they want there is someone to go and pick up their profits for them and bring them back to America. That is fine and dandy for the President's friend's businesses, but other businesses would need to stay in Iraq if they wanted to make money. They could not have some lawless military state in place, that is too chaotic for them. But apparently, most of these businesses must be run by Democrats, because Bush does not seem to care about their needs, he only wants their money so his pals do not have to use the profits that they are getting to actually rebuild Iraq. That is why this report is so gloomy. There is no way that any country can come back to financial stability under these type of conditions. Until Bush realizes this fact and takes real steps to do something about it, this will not change. How long Iraq can limp along in its current state of unsteadiness is anyone's guess. Eventually, it is going to disintegrate into total anarchy if things are not done to stop that. The Iraqi people are only going to take so much of seeing Mr. American Businessman come into their land and take over by force and siphon money out of Iraq and take it away and not do anything concrete to help the Iraqi people. Eventually, they will explode, and America is going to have a much fiercer war on its hands then it did with Saddam, because the Iraqis did not really support Saddam so much, so they did not care if he was deposed. But it will be another story if they rise up due to appalling economic conditions. They will be totally united against the ones that they see as responsible for this situation, and that would be America, and they would go after America as a united people, not as the fractured shit that was seen in the war to remove Saddam. The Iraqi people did not fight much them because they truly believed that America was coming in to liberate them and rebuild Iraq into a First World country. They are staring to see that was not the real motive,and they do not like it at all. This report, with its bleak forecast, does not help things any. Bush needs to get his head out of his ego and realize that he needs to do what he said that he was going to do and rebuild Iraq or else he will be overseeing the demise of Iraq and possibly his own demise because of it too. This report needs to be taken very seriously and acted upon, and if it is ignored and dismissed, disaster will result.