The Transnational Foundation (Sweden)
May 14, 2003

Who Are These People Running Iraq?

by Jan Oberg

They are people with a background in the far-right of the Republican Party, the Israel lobby, Perle and Wolfowitz henchmen, central to the war on terror, to the Homeland Defence authorities, to anti-ABM and pro-Ballistic Missile Defence (Star Wars), close to conservative think tanks, affiliated with mercenary companies, the military-industrial complex (MIC) and CIA. They are former "stabilisers" in Bosnia and Kosovo, and Marine Corps-people (many in Vietnam); they are private consulting firm executives affiliated with the inner circles of power in Washington. And, of course, several are associated with the oil industry, the computer industry as well as the media and public relations industry. With a few exceptions they are Pentagon and not State Department people, they are generals and technocrats.

Less than a handful have any prior experience in Iraq or in nation-building, conflict-resolution, reconciliation, post-war trauma healing, civil society empowerment and other quite relevant matters. In short, they are perfectly fit to "do" Iraq for the US and totally unsuitable for the Iraqis. They are not accountable to anyone, except President Bush and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld. Their operations and decisions are not transparent to the world community or any world organisation. . . .

Only the uninformed and the politically naive, only the opportunists and the imperialists can believe that this has anything whatsoever to do with democracy or with doing good to the Iraqi people. . . .

It's the contemporary version of a 300-year old colonial tradition. . . .

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David Teather, "American to Oversee Iraqi Oil Industry," Guardian, April 26, 2003

Neil Mackay, "Carving Up The New Iraq," Sunday Herald, April 13, 2003

[Khidir Hamza, the scientist claimed by the Sunday Times as the source of the fake documents, was sent by the Pentagon to Iraq last month to oversee the country's nuclear industry.--Solomon Hughes, "The Pentagon has sent the man at the heart of a 'fake documents' scandal to Iraq," Tribune, June 23, 2003]

[VIDEO : SAIC has been awarded more individual government contracts than any other private company in America. The contracts number not in the dozens or scores or hundreds but in the thousands: SAIC currently holds some 9,000 active federal contracts in all. More than a hundred of them are worth upwards of $10 million apiece. Two of them are worth more than $1 billion.

. . . contractors absorb the taxes paid by everyone in America with incomes under $100,000. . . . The Founding Fathers may have argued eloquently for a government of laws, not of men, but what we've got instead is a government of body shops. . . .

Civilians at SAIC used to joke that the company had so many admirals and generals in its ranks it could start its own war. Some might argue that, in the case of Iraq, it did.

There isn't a politically correct way to put it, but this is what needs to be said: 9/11 was a personal tragedy for thousands of families and a national tragedy for all of America, but it was very, very good for SAIC. . . .

SAIC executives have been involved at every stage of the life cycle of the war in Iraq. SAIC personnel were instrumental in pressing the case that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq in the first place, and that war was the only way to get rid of them. Then, as war became inevitable, SAIC secured contracts for a broad range of operations in soon-to-be-occupied Iraq. When no weapons of mass destruction were found, SAIC personnel staffed the commission that was set up to investigate how American intelligence could have been so disastrously wrong.--Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, "Washington's $8 Billion Shadow," Vanity Fair, March 2007]