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Unreported: The Zarqawi Invitation
By Greg Palast
t r u t h o u t | Report
Friday 09 June 2006
They got him - the big, bad, beheading berserker in Iraq. But, something's gone
unreported in all the glee over getting Zarqawi - who invited him into Iraq
in the first place?
If you prefer your fairy tales unsoiled by facts, read no further. If you want
the uncomfortable truth, begin with this: A phone call to Baghdad to Saddam's
Palace on the night of April 21, 2003. It was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
on a secure line from Washington to General Jay Garner.
The General had arrives in Baghdad just hours before to take charge of the newly
occupied nation. The message from Rumsfeld was not a heartwarming welcome. Rummy
told Garner, Don't unpack, Jack - you're fired.
What had Garner done? The many-starred general had been sent by the President
himself to take charge of a deeply dangerous mission. Iraq was tense but relatively
peaceful. Garner's job was to keep the peace and bring democracy.
Unfortunately for the general, he took the President at his word. But the general
was wrong. "Peace" and "Democracy" were the slogans.
"My preference," Garner told me in his understated manner, "was
to put the Iraqis in charge as soon as we can and do it in some form of elections."
But elections were not in The Plan.
The Plan was a 101-page document to guide the long-term future of the land we'd
just conquered. There was nothing in it about democracy or elections or safety.
There was, rather, a detailed schedule for selling off "all [Iraq's] state
assets" - and Iraq, that's just about everything - "especially,"
said The Plan, "the oil and supporting industries." Especially the
oil.
There was more than oil to sell off. The Plan included the sale of Iraq's banks,
and weirdly, changing it's copyright laws and other odd items that made the
plan look less like a program for Iraq to get on its feet than a program for
corporate looting of the nation's assets. (And indeed, we discovered at BBC,
behind many of the odder elements - copyright and tax code changes - was the
hand of lobbyist Jack Abramoff's associate Grover Norquist.)
But Garner didn't think much of The Plan, he told me when we met a year later
in Washington. He had other things on his mind. "You prevent epidemics,
you start the food distribution program to prevent famine."
Seizing title and ownership of Iraq's oil fields was not on Garner's must-do
list. He let that be known to Washington. "I don't think [Iraqis] need
to go by the U.S. plan, I think that what we need to do is set an Iraqi government
that represents the freely elected will of the people." He added, "It's
their country, their oil."
Apparently, the Secretary of Defense disagreed. So did lobbyist Norquist. And
Garner incurred their fury by getting carried away with the "democracy"
idea: he called for quick elections - within 90 days of the taking of Baghdad.
But Garner's 90-days-to-elections commitment ran straight into the oil sell-off
program. Annex D of the plan indicated that would take at least 270 days -
at least 9 months.
Worse, Garner was brokering a truce between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. They were
about to begin what Garner called a "Big Tent" meeting to hammer out
the details and set the election date. He figured he had 90 days to get it done
before the factions started slitting each other's throats.
But a quick election would mean the end of the state-asset sell-off plan: An
Iraqi-controlled government would never go along with what would certainly amount
to foreign corporations swallowing their entire economy. Especially the oil.
Garner had spent years in Iraq, in charge of the Northern Kurdish zone and knew
Iraqis well. He was certain that an asset-and-oil grab, "privatizations,"
would cause a sensitive population to take up the gun. "That's just one
fight you don't want to take on right now."
But that's just the fight the neo-cons at Defense wanted. And in Rumsfeld's
replacement for Garner, they had a man itching for the fight. Paul Bremer III
had no experience on the ground in Iraq, but he had one unbeatable credential
that Garner lacked: Bremer had served as Managing Director of Kissinger and
Associates.
In April 2003, Bremer instituted democracy Bush style: he canceled elections
and appointed the entire government himself. Two months later, Bremer ordered
a halt to all municipal elections including the crucial vote to Shia seeking
to select a mayor in the city of Najaf. The front-runner, moderate Shia Asad
Sultan Abu Gilal warned, "If they don't give us freedom, what will we do?
We have patience, but not for long." Local Shias formed the "Mahdi
Army," and within a year, provoked by Bremer's shutting their paper, attacked
and killed 21 U.S. soldiers.
The insurgency had begun. But Bremer's job was hardly over. There were Sunnis
to go after. He issued "Order Number One: De-Ba'athification." In
effect, this became "De-Sunni-fication."
Saddam's generals, mostly Sunnis, who had, we learned, secretly collaborated
with the US invasion and now expected their reward found themselves hunted and
arrested. Falah Aljibury, an Iraqi-born US resident who helped with the pre-invasion
brokering, told me, "U.S. forces imprisoned all those we named as political
leaders," who stopped Iraq's army from firing on U.S. troops.
Aljibury's main concern was that busting Iraqi collaborators and Ba'athist big
shots was a gift "to the Wahabis," by which he meant the foreign insurgents,
who now gained experienced military commanders, Sunnis, who now had no choice
but to fight the US-installed regime or face arrest, ruin or death. They would
soon link up with the Sunni-defending Wahabi, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was
committed to destroying "Shia snakes."
And the oil fields? It was, Aljibury noted, when word got out about the plans
to sell off the oil fields (thanks to loose lips of the US-appointed oil minister)
that pipelines began to blow. Although he had been at the center of planning
for invasion, Aljibury now saw the greed-crazed grab for the oil fields as the
fuel for a civil war that would rip his country to pieces:
"Insurgents," he said, "and those who wanted to destabilize a
new Iraq have used this as means of saying, 'Look, you're losing your country.
You're losing your leadership. You're losing all of your resources to a bunch
of wealthy people. A bunch of billionaires in the world want to take you over
and make your life miserable.' And we saw an increase in the bombing of oil
facilities, pipelines, of course, built on - built on the premise that privatization
[of oil] is coming."
General Garner, watching the insurgency unfold from the occupation authority's
provocations, told me, in his understated manner, "I'm a believer that
you don't want to end the day with more enemies than you started with."
But you can't have a war president without a war. And you can't have a war without
enemies. "Bring 'em on," our Commander-in-Chief said. And Zarqawi
answered the call.
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Greg Palast is the author of Armed Madhouse out this week from Penguin
Dutton, from which this is adapted. Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks,
the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the
Front Lines of the Class War. Order
it now.
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