IRAQ: THE PEOPLE WHO WILL RULE

Sunday Herald: Carving Up The New Iraq (cont.)

THE POWER-BROKERS




Robert Reilly



Former director of Voice of America, the pro-US radio service, Reilly has been entrusted with overhauling Iraqi radio, television and newspapers.

The Bush administration has already given Reilly the green light to operate Radio Free Iraq. This will involve using transmitters that have been sent to the Middle East for the military’s psychological operations.

Reilly is closely involved with an American administration plan to establish a media network in the Middle East. A $62m (£40m) satellite TV station is scheduled to begin at the end of the year.

He is a very close friend and business partner of Ahmed Chalabi.

Michael Mobbs



Pentagon lawyer and overall civilian co-ordinator who will be in charge of 11 of the ministries.

Mobbs wants US citizens imprisoned indefinitely without charge for terrorist offences. A notorious hawk and close friend of Richard Perle, Mobbs also worked for Douglas Feith’s law firm.

Currently a Pentagon consultant, he created the legal framework for the indefinite detention of al-Qaeda suspects at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, which was built by Bechtel (see The businesses) for $16m (£10m). Also a former member of the US arms control agency under former president Ronald Reagan.

William Eagleton



Like George Shultz, a contemporary of George Bush Snr. and revered by the right as one the grand old men of republican foreign policy.

The pair went to Yale together and both served in the Far East during the second world war. A career diplomat, Eagleton was based in Iraq between 1980-1984 as Chief of US Interests Section in Baghdad.

His tenure there came at a time when Iraqi use of chemical weapons against Iran was being studiously ignored by Washington.

He is tipped to be the “Mayor of Kirkuk”, the oil-rich city in northern Iraq, or Kurdistan.

Andrew Natsios



The head of USAid, United States Agency for International Development, Natsios is the man who hands out the post-war reconstruction contracts. Only US companies can bid for these lucrative deals.

One of the most controversial episodes of his career saw him, as CEO of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, oversee the Big Dig construction project, a three-mile underground highway in Boston, undertaken by Bechtel. The budget spiralled out of control costing up to $10bn (£6.3bn) more than it should have, with the largest budget rises under Natsios’s tenure.

A former Massachusetts House of Representatives congressman, he is the author of a book called US Foreign Policy And The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse and a retired lieutenant colonel from the first Gulf war. He was also the chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party for most of the 1980s.

Natsios will be assisted by Michael Marx, the head of USAid Disaster Assistance Response Team (Dart) and a former US army officer. Marx previously headed the Dart team after the conflict in Afghanistan.

Lewis Lucke, another USAid senior staffer, will oversee the Iraqi reconstruction process. He headed the USAid mission team in Haiti alongside Timothy Carney (see grey suits), one of the former US ambassadors who is now involved in administering Free Iraq. Attempts at establishing democracy in Haiti have so far failed, with elections collapsing amid allegations of electoral manipulation and fraud.

George Shultz and Clint Williamson


A Republican heavyweight and former secretary of state under Nixon, Shultz was Bush Jnr’s presidential campaign adviser. He is also one of the administration’s key thinkers on running post-war Iraq, and on the board of directors at Bechtel, which is in the running for contracts after regime change. Like Perle, he has lucrative financial relationships, which bring his impartiality into question. Shultz is the chairman of the International Council of JP Morgan Chase, the banking syndicate in which Lewis Libby (see neo-cons) has heavy investments. Morgan Chase lent Saddam’s regime $500m (£320m) in 1983. Shultz is a member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and a patron of the American Enterprise Institute. Perle advised clients of Goldman Sachs, the investment house, on post-war investment opportunities in Iraq. Perle is also a director of the software company Autonomy Corp, which has clients including the Pentagon. Autonomy says it expects its profits to increase dramatically after the war in Iraq ends.

Clint Williamson, who is expected to head the Iraqi ministry of justice, appears to be one of the good guys. A former prosecutor at the Hague’s International War Crimes Tribunal, he helped compile evidence against Slobodan Milosevic. Williamson now works at Condoleezza Rice’s National Security Agency. Williamson appears ideally placed to deal with the unfolding chaos gripping the nation of Iraq, and is skilled and seasoned in preparing indictments against war criminals.

John Bolton



A prime architect of Bush’s Iraq policy, Bolton served Bush Snr and Reagan in the state department, justice department and USAid and is now under-secretary for arms control and international security in Bush Jnr’s state department. His appointment was intended to counter the dove-ish Colin Powell.

Bolton now leads Rumsfeld’s charge to destabilise Powell’s multilateralism. Bolton is part of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Project for the New American Century and is a vice-president at the American Enterprise Institute. He was also one of Bush’s chad-counters during the Florida count. Bolton has long advocated Taiwan getting a UN seat – he’s been on the payroll of the Taiwanese government.

The US unilateralist is a regular contributor to William Kristol’s right-wing Weekly Standard and has vilified UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Bolton was an opponent of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and a cheerleader for the Star Wars Defence System. He has hinted at targeting Cuba in the war on terror. His financial interests include oil and arms firms and JP Morgan Chase, like Shultz. It is said that Bolton believes in the inevitability of Armageddon.

Like Woolsey, Bolton is said to believe we are in the midst of world war four which he estimates could take 40 years to finish. Despite evidence to the contrary they believe Iraq was involved in September 11. With Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Khalilzad, Bennet, Woolsey, Perle and Kristol, Bolton co-signed a letter in 1998 urging President Bill Clinton to take military action in Iraq .

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