Visiting Iraq for the first time after the Invasion ended, Naomi Klein was immediately struck by a billboard going up advertising foreign goods. Contrary to what is commonplace thinking today, there always was a detailed long-term plan for postwar Iraq. The War which was supposedly started for reasons of a regime change to liberate the Iraqis from Saddam Hussein was really aimed at something quite different from the start - a culture change, the subjugation of the Iraqi population to a new belief that greed is good, and to overthrow its existing cultural order, not just its political order. Like giant corporations, the British and American governments marketed the war with the ultimate spin, freedom. Dishonestly brandishing values like democracy, the aim of the War was all along changing the way of daily life in Iraq that had existed for centuries. At the suggestion of Naomi Klein, No War further develops the theme of her essay with contributions by authoritative writers and thinkers Susan Watkins, Bryan Mealer and Walter Laqueur. In Dying for Dollars Bryan Mealer describes grippingly how the real Bush / Blair plan of a hostile takeover of Iraqi resources and culture was marketed by the US to investors as God s work with its distant echo of the crusades. He captures the extraordinary candour that is used to entice business man to invest in relieving a country of assets because an Iraqi making $15 a day thinks he is rich. Startlingly he describes how it is the US military that led the pitch. In A Puppet for All Seasons Susan Watkins shows that in the transfer of power to Iraqi civilians the US is developing a policy started in Afghanistan of filling the Iraqi Administration with Iraqi civilians who are part of the American security services complex and can still lay little or no claim to having any legal authority. Walter Laqueur defines the nature of modern terrorism and how any claim that terrorism involves regimes of other nations is fatuous as a matter o

Contrary to today's news headlines, there always was a detailed plan for what would happen to postwar Iraq. But it had little do with the banners under which the American and British governments cynically marketed their invasion of Iraq - democracy, freedom and fighting terrorism. As if in a giant hostile takeover, the real intentions of the Iraqi invasion were dishonestly disguised: the wiping out of an entire culture in as short a time as possible. Within days of the occupation of Iraq began a firesale of its national assets. Everything was engineered to indenture for generations to come an already impoverished population to foreign investors, while teaching the new belief that greed is good. This scathing J'Accuse tears the veil off the hypocrisy of the actions of Tony Blair and George W. Bush. Seeing the horrific scars inflicted on a country under stress, and the deeply shocking motives for it, no reader will be able to look at the Iraqi Invasion with same eyes as before.

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and author. She is currently doing research on an in-depth analysis of the way the Bush administration exports democracy. She is a former Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics. Three further essays were included at the suggestion of Naomi Klein. Developing the theme of Anglo-US interests in Iraq, they are by Susan Watkins, editor of the New Left Review, Bryan Mealer, correspondent for Harper?s Magazine and Walter Laqueur, co-chair of the International Research Council at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Susan Watkins is the editor of the New Left Review, Bryan Mealer, is a correspondent for Harper s Magazine and Walter Laqueur, co-chair of the International Research Council at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

2005-06-03 Exporting McDonalds to Baghdad, and other NeoCon jokes

Baghdad Year Zero, by Naomi Klien, is the first of three sections to this short, no-holds-barred, account of the truth behind the spin.

Much comment, even from supporters of the Iraq War, has focussed on how the coalition lost the peace. Accepted mythology has it that the allies had no plan of action: they assumed they would be made welcome, but the ungrateful Iraqis had other ideas.

This book explains why. Bush and his NeoCon Junta had a plan for postwar Iraq which involved a giant experiment in NeoCon theory. Iraq would be the first country in the world to be rebuilt by private enterprise, US corporation style. McDonalds and Wal Mart would enter Iraq, and the population would enjoy burgers, and slap their buttocks in delight for ever and a day.

How to do it? Simple, whilst the Iraqis were in a state of shock, all state industries would be privatised, and a corporate paradise would be created in a matter of weeks, if not days.

Bremer's first action was to sack 500,000 public sector workers. The reaction of many was to join the armed resistance as a kind of "alternative employment" scheme.

Not what Bush et.al. had in mind.

Pragmatists, like Colin Powell, and General Jay Garner planned to "fix the infrastructure, hold quick and dirty elections, (and) leave the shock therapy to the IMF." (Just like in Russia, where the IMF's money found its way to a certain football team.)

Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz (soon to be running the World Bank) had other ideas. They were supported by exiles like Ahmad Chalabi - whose assets had been confiscated in 1958 - whose aim was the "de-Baathification" of Iraq.

The rest, as they say is history, or would be if only we would listen to Blair and "move on."

How much, I wonder, did Blair actually know of Plan Corporate Paradise? Was he told? Or was he jetting off on his next crusade?