IRAQ

Counterpunch: Plugging Iraq into Globalization

early April, during the initial assault on Baghdad, soldiers set up forward bases named Camp Shell and Camp Exxon until Pentagon PR realized that didn't look very good and ordered them renamed. Those soldiers knew the score. Several months and dozens of lives later, Bechtel, Halliburton, and a host of oil companies are ensuring that the fledgling "free market" in Iraq will be particularly free for US corporations.

The ultimate prize in Iraq, of course, is oil, and the Bush/Cheney gang has uncoiled a vastly underreported legal and financial cord that plugs U.S corporate control into these resources at least through the year 2007. The basic wiring has two prongs and is already complete. The first part, created by the UN under US pressure is the Development Fund for Iraq­ which is to be controlled by the US and advised by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Unsurprisingly, this is looking more and more like a slush fund for corporate welfare. The second is a recent Bush executive order that provides absolute legal protection for U.S. interests in Iraqi oil. And a third and final prong is being crafted to ground the whole system and get as much profit as possible out of it.

By promising the United Nations a threadbare role in the reconstruction of Iraq, and giving the World Bank and International Monetary Fund accounting oversight, the U.S. managed to buy the world's largest multilateral institutions into an incredible deal for private U.S. interests.