another voice
Here is a link to a site with a transcript, or you can listen, from an interview with author Antonia Juhasz. Her book is called "The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time"
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/25/1343214
a snip....
AMY GOODMAN: You talk about the Bremer orders. You spend a lot of time in the book on them. Can you talk about Paul Bremer, Bremer's blueprint by BearingPoint, the orders themselves?
ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah. You know, in the report that you were quoting in the beginning of the hour, which said that the reconstruction failed because of poor planning, it’s a myth that there was not a post-war planning done by the Bush administration. The reason why it failed was because the interests it was serving were U.S. multinationals, not reconstruction in Iraq.
That plan was ready two months before the invasion. It was written by BearingPoint, Inc., a company based in Virginia that received a $250 million contract to rewrite the entire economy of Iraq. It drafted that new economy. That new economy was put into place systematically by L. Paul Bremer, the head of the occupation government of Iraq for 14 months, who implemented exactly one hundred orders, basically all of which are still in place today. And everyone who is watching who is familiar with the policies of the World Trade Organization, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the World Bank, the I.M.F., will understand the orders.
They implement some of the most radical corporate globalization ideas, such as free investment rules for multinational corporations. That means corporations can enter Iraq, and they essentially don't have to contribute at all to the economy of Iraq. The most harmful provision thus far has been the national treatment provision, which meant that the Iraqis could not give preference to Iraqi companies or workers in the reconstruction, and therefore, U.S. companies received preference in the reconstruction. They hired workers who weren't even from Iraq, in most cases, and utterly bungled the reconstruction.
And the most important company, in my mind, to receive blame is the Bechtel Corporation of San Francisco. They have received $2.8 billion to rebuild water, electricity and sewage systems, the most important systems in the life of an Iraqi. After the first Gulf War, the Iraqis rebuilt these systems in three months' time. It’s been three years, and, as you said, those services are still below pre-war levels.
AMY GOODMAN: BearingPoint. Why have we never heard of this company? Where does it come from?
ANTONIA JUHASZ: BearingPoint was KPMG Consulting, but had to change its name in the wake of the Arthur Andersen scandal, but BearingPoint picked up all of Arthur Andersen's old clientele and is essentially just the reborn KPMG. And BearingPoint, you probably haven't heard of, though, because they work in the back room. They write things like new economic policies, but are not the people seen on the ground implementing the policies.
Actually, there’s a wonderful story that I tell in the book by a member of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. occupation government in Iraq, who says, ‘One day these people from this place called BearingPoint came up and started telling us about these economic policies that were so unrealistic. I didn't know who they were and what they were talking about.’ Well, what they were talking about was an economic agenda that seemed completely ridiculous for the people on the ground who are looking at sewage flowing through the streets and Iraqis saying over and over and over again, ‘The most important thing we need is electricity. Just electricity. Just give us our electricity back,’ and failing to do it.
But this was BearingPoint, and they are still there. Their contract was renewed. They’re still focusing in particular on privatization of Iraq's state-owned enterprises. That's almost the sole focus of their current contract, and that contract goes, I believe, until 2007.
AMY GOODMAN: You have a quote of Lakhdar Brahimi, who is the U.N. Special Adviser to Iraq. A few years ago, he said, “Bremer,” talking about L. Paul Bremer, “is the dictator of Iraq. He has the money. He has the signature. Nothing happens without his agreement in this country.”
ANTONIA JUHASZ: Bremer became the dictator of Iraq. His orders laid out the law. Now, probably the most important thing to know is that that was completely illegal under international law. The Geneva Conventions are very specific about what an occupying power should do. It must provide basic security and services. It cannot change the laws or the political structure of the country it occupies. The Bush administration did exactly the opposite -- changed all the fundamental economic and political laws and utterly failed to provide for the security and the basic needs of the Iraqi people. What you hear most often in Iraq today is people saying, “Please just put us back where we were before you came.”
