When perfectly conservative sources like the Financial Times of London point to the shameless war profiteering in a particular conflict, one sits up and takes notice. The analysis done by FT estimates that the US alone spent about $138 billion with roughly $72 billion, more than half the total, going to the top ten contractors of whom eight were American. And the article's author cautions that these figures are probably very low estimates since, many contractors operate under a variety of names to avoid scrutiny. One of my first thoughts was that this was yet another nail in the coffin of those that believed that the Iraq war was fought to ensure world peace, or for "freedom" or even for the security of our regional allies like Israel and others.
, The Iraq War was so obviously about war profiteering and oil that it seems amazing that anyone can still believe that it was chiefly about such things as regional or global security. I find it especially offensive that arguments are still being made that it was all about Israel or Israeli security in the region especially when the Iraq War was a clear case of unprecedented war profiteering from a variety of angels. Still, fools will be fools, and so I will quote at length the views of Stephen Zunes, a Middle East expert and professor of political science at San Francisco University in a paper written for Foreign Policy in Focus;
Iraq during the final years of Saddam Hussein’s rule was no more of a threat to Israel than it was to the United States. All Iraqi missiles capable of reaching Israel had been accounted for and destroyed by UNSCOM. The International Atomic Energy Agency had determined that Iraq no longer had a nuclear program, and virtually all the country’s chemical weapons had similarly been accounted for and destroyed. All this was presumably known to the Israelis, who actively monitored UN disarmament efforts in Iraq and had the best military intelligence capabilities in the region. Indeed, as far back as the aftermath of the 1991 war, the head of the Israeli military intelligence revealed in an interview that Israel no longer considered Iraq a threat...the Israelis recognized that there was no realistic threat from [biological weapons] either. Respected Israeli military analyst Meir Stieglitz, writing in the conservative Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronot, stated categorically that “there is no such thing as a long-range Iraqi missile with an effective biological warhead. No one has found an Iraqi biological warhead. The chances of Iraq having succeeded in developing operative warheads without tests are zero.” Similarly, it is highly doubtful that Iraq would be able to attack Israel with biological weapons by other means, either. It is hard to imagine that an Iraqi aircraft carrying biological weapons could have made the 600-mile trip to Israel without being detected and shot down by U.S. planes constantly patrolling the area. In addition, Israel—as well as Iraq’s immediate neighbors—had sophisticated anti-aircraft capability. Yossi Alpher, a former senior adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, has revealed that then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon specifically warned Bush against occupying Iraq or invading Iraq without an exit strategy. The Israeli prime minister also feared that an insurgency could radicalize the region, spill over Iraq’s borders, and strengthen Iran. Israeli Ambassador to the United States Danny Ayalon was even instructed by Sharon to tell visiting Israelis not to encourage a U.S. invasion of Iraq for fear that its likely failure would be blamed on Israel. More fundamentally, if the United States was really concerned about potential Iraqi aggression toward Israel, why did the U.S. government provide Iraq with key elements of its WMD capability during the 1980s—including the seed stock for its anthrax and many of the components for its chemical weapons program—back when Iraq clearly did have the capability to strike Israel?
Naturally, I stressed only the security related arguments; the other arguments that form part of the blame Israel thesis are mostly ad hominem attacks and vicious, thinly veiled anti-Semitic propaganda that doesn't merit serious consideration. It is also the case that Iraq was no threat to Israel not least of all because of the vulnerability of Iraq to flooding through the destruction of key dams holding back its main waterways.
One source notes the dangers to Iraqi security currently from ISIS fighters;
In April 2014, fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria captured the Nuaimiyah Dam in western Iraq, despite earlier efforts to defend the site. They then overflowed it to dislodge Iraqi soldiers dug in upstream of the site—and to deny drinking water to civilians downstream...Iraq’s dams [have been described] as its “soft underbelly.” The potential of water as a weapon of mass destruction in Iraq should come as no surprise, given the country’s dependence on its two great rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates.
In fact, in ancient times Babylon's Persian enemies used flooding in war and Iran's attempt to destroy Iraq's dams was also well known during the Iran-Iraq War. An even greater concern today is the creation of
water shortages from the Dam projects of Iraq's neighbors, particularly Turkey, which would have the effect of vastly reducing the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers through the center of Iraq. Suffice it to day, Iraq's inherent geostrategic vulnerability hardly made it a likely target in the interest of protecting Israel, especially given Israel's strategic air superiority in the region (it may be recalled that an Israeli air raid destroyed Iraq's Osirik Nuclear reaction in 1981). It has thus always well acknowledged that Iraq was never a security threat to Israel.
The fact that money and war profiteering opportunities was a core motive for the US invasion/occupation of Iraq in 2003 is shown by the fact that it was the first near totally privatized war in US history. According to a Christian Science Monitor, "By 2008, the US Department of Defense employed 155,826 private contractors in Iraq – and 152,275 troops. This degree of privatization is unprecedented in modern warfare." The report goes on to put the contracting system in historic perspective by noting that although private contractors had a battlefield presence in most post-WWII US conflicts, the Iraq War (2003) was the first time such contracting went beyond simply logistical and base support. The heavy reliance on private contracting became unprecedented during the 2003 Iraq War. The report elaborates further;
"...the US military has developed a growing dependence on private contractors – and for a wide range of functions traditionally handled by military personnel. The Army spent roughly $815 million ($163 million per year, or about $200 million per year in 2012 dollars) to employ contractors under its Logistics Civil Augmentation Program between 1992 and 1997. But between 2001 and 2010, that expenditure grew to nearly $5 billion per year. Of course, this latter cost coincides with US involvement in Afghanistan as well as Iraq."
And this is just the Pentagon contracting figures; when US AID, State Department and other agencies, the figure increases significantly. According to a 2008 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, which actually puts the total number of private contractors in Iraq at about 190,000 for that year, US reliance on private contracting was unprecedented. The Report states, "From 2003 through 2007, U.S. government agencies obligated a total of $85 billion for contracts principally performed in the Iraq theater...The $85 billion in obligations for contracts performed in the Iraq theater accounts for almost 20 percent of the $446 billion of U.S. appropriations for activities in Iraq from 2003 through 2007..."
The dramatic US shift to reliance on unusually high numbers of private contractors for the Iraq War was also noted in the report. The author points out, "The United States has used contractors during previous military operations, although not to the current extent. According to rough historical data, the ratio of about one contractor employee for every member of the U.S. armed forces in the Iraq theater is at least 2.5 times higher than that ratio during any other major U.S. conflict..."
The University of Denver's Private Security Monitor (PSM) project uses the USCENTCOM data base and is considered the most complete source on the US military's use of private contractors in theatres of war. According to a 2008 CENTCOM report cited by the PSM, there were about 163,446 private contracting personnel in Iraq during the first quarter of 2008 (about one fifth of which were US citizens) representing a peak number for the Iraq theatre alone!
The most shameless evidence of war profiteering was the unilateral promulgation of the infamous 100 Bremer Orders by the Coalition Provisional Authority which taken together reads like a wish list of laws enacted to create an international "free market showcase" of the Iraqi economy based on US corporate globalization. Antonia Juhasz, author of The Corporate Invasion of Iraq points out that several of the orders are simply based on attempts by US corporations to globalize the Iraqi economy by imposing undemocratically a list of economic ordinances. Juhasz points out just a few of the most egregious examples;
Order #39 allows for the following: (1) privatization of Iraq's 200 state-owned enterprises; (2) 100 percent foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses; (3) "national treatment" of foreign firms; (4) unrestricted, tax-free remittance of all profits and other funds; and (5) 40-year ownership licenses. Thus, it allows the U.S. corporations operating in Iraq to own every business, do all of the work, and send all of their money home. Nothing needs to be reinvested locally to service the Iraqi economy, no Iraqi need be hired, no public services need be guaranteed, and workers' rights can easily be ignored. And corporations can take out their investments at any time.
Order #40 turns the banking sector from a state-run to a market-driven system overnight by allowing foreign banks to enter the Iraqi market and to purchase up to 50 percent of Iraqi banks.
Order #49 drops the tax rate on corporations from a high of 40 percent to a flat rate of 15 percent. The income tax rate is also capped at 15 percent.
Order #12 enacted on June 7, 2003 and renewed on February 24, 2004, suspends "all tariffs, customs duties, import taxes, licensing fees and similar surcharges for goods entering or leaving Iraq, and all other trade restrictions that may apply to such goods." This led to an immediate and dramatic inflow of cheap consumer products, which has essentially wiped out all local providers of the same products. This could have significant long-term implications for domestic production as well.
Order #17 grants foreign contractors, including private security firms, full immunity from Iraq 's laws. Even if they do injure a third party by killing someone or causing environmental damage such as dumping toxic chemicals or poisoning drinking water, the injured third party can not turn to the Iraqi legal system, rather, the charges must be brought to U.S. courts under U.S. laws.
But clearly the most colonial, hateful and unprecedentedly invasive one was Order 81 which was designed to achieve the long run foreign takeover of Iraqi Agriculture by US agribusiness firms. Order 81 had patent protection stipulations considered too radical for any other society including the US. Order 81 amended a 1970 patent law in Iraq so that it
"...prohibits [Iraqi farmers] from reusing seeds of "new" plant varieties registered under the law. In practical terms, this means they cannot save those seeds for re-use either." The above quote from
GRAIN, a nonprofit organization promoting small holder agriculture in the global South, further explains the purpose of Order 81;
The CPA has made it illegal for Iraqi farmers to re-use seeds harvested from new varieties registered under the law. Iraqis may continue to use and save from their traditional seed stocks or what’s left of them after the years of war and drought, but that is the not the agenda for reconstruction embedded in the ruling. The purpose of the law is to facilitate the establishment of a new seed market in Iraq, where transnational corporations can sell their seeds–genetically modified or not, which farmers would have to purchase afresh every single cropping season.
By making Plant Variety Protection available to those plant varieties that have the characteristics of being "new, distinct, uniform and stable" in the words of the UPOV (an international patent protection organization to establish international standards of plant life patent protection) it thereby excludes organic farmers' seeds which are natural unlike the genetically modified seeds of large transnational corporations. According to F. William Engdahl, a German freelance journalist, the entire effort to impose a corporate dominated seed market on a country whose existing seed varieties have been devastated by years of war, drought, economic mismanagement and imports imposed by US agreements with former dictatorial regimes. The law is essentially a handover of Iraqi farming to US corporations. Engdahl asserts;
Under the USAID program, the State Department, working with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) set up 56 ‘wheat extension demonstration sites’ in northern Iraq, ‘introducing and demonstrating the value of improved wheat seeds.’ The project was run for the US Government by Texas A&M University’s International Agriculture Office. This $107 million US AID agriculture reconstruction project had as goal the doubling the production of 30,000 Iraqi farms within the first year. The idea was to convince sceptical Iraqi farmers that only with new US ‘wonder seeds’ could they get large harvest yields. Desperation and a promise of huge gains would be used to trap Iraqi farmers into dependence on foreign seed multinationals...With their new seeds would come new chemicals – pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, all sold to the Iraqis by corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill and Dow...Iraq was to become a giant live laboratory for testing GMO wheat, and the Iraqis were the human guinea pigs of the experiment...To facilitate the introduction of patent-protected GMO seeds from foreign seed giants, the Iraq Agriculture Ministry distributed the new GMO seeds at ‘subsidized prices.’ Once farmers were hooked on the GMO seeds, under the new Plant Patent Protection rules of Order 81, they would be forced to buy new seeds each year from the company. Under the banner of bringing a ‘free-market’ Iraqi farmers are becoming enslaved to foreign seed multinationals.
Many of the seeds being developed in Iraq are to produce grains for making pasta and other foods foreign to the Iraqi diet; about half the wheat seeds under development by US transnationals are for export. This is an endeavor to create profitable export markets for US transnationals. This is an especially egregious offense when more land needs to be committed to meeting local food needs in a country where most of the population is either starving or food insecure. This form of neo-colonial plunder is only one reason that the Iraqi population has been violently opposed to continued foreign occupation and exploitation.
Many US firms did well immediately after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. According to UK journalist Pratap Chatterjee, Halliburton's stock plunged from a high of about $25/share in the late 1990s to $7/share in 2002 due after a company for which Halliburton paid nearly $3 billion, Dresser Industries, was found to have tremendous asbestos liabilities. In the immediate wake of the Iraq invasion by the US/UK coalition, Halliburton was once again a profitable company; according to financial reporter Daniel Gross, KBR, a large affiliated corporation of Halliburton, benefited enormously from the sudden rush to war by the Bush Administration. Gross writes; "KBR's five-year financial data show that revenues have exploded thanks to the post-9/11 wars, from $5.1 billion in 2002 to $10.1 billion in 2005—about half of all Halliburton revenues. The G&I business accounted for virtually all of the growth. The unit accounted for 61 percent of the company's revenues in 2003 and 80 percent of revenues in 2005. The Middle East alone accounted for $6 billion of KBR's 2005 revenues."
Other big, politically connected contractors like Bechtel got a no bid reconstruction contract from US AID for over $680 million in April 2003 for the following eighteen months for infrastructural work in Iraq. The Business Pundit has exposed in detail twenty five of the most corrupt and greedy war profiteers which account for the lion's share of the take. The point is that not only was the Iraq War chiefly about oil but also war profiteering in an age of privatization of many formerly public sector endeavors including war should not be controversial!
The fact that control of a highly strategic and highly profitable region was the motive for the US/UK invasion in 2003 should be clear. The fact that the US wanted to make post-invasion Iraq a showcase for free market, corporate capitalism, in accord with the 100 Bremer Orders, is an obvious aspect of the war which should be discussed more frequently by progressives since US imperialism (and capitalist imperialism in general) is based on consolidating global profits and property among a few giant transnationals. In this sense, the US invasion is perfectly consistent with US foreign policy history and not an aberration at all! The Neocons were not employees of a foreign government so much as they were the latest in a long history of agents of US capitalist expansionism. Any progressive assessment of the Iraq War would make a lot more sense if analyzed along classic Leninist lines, that is to say an approach that regards imperialism as capitalist competition at the system's highest historic phase. It's part of our progressive tradition and it is the only salvageable intellectual contribution made by the late Russian leader and revolutionary theoretician with contemporary relevance. In any case, it beats blaming the whole disastrous venture on...da Jooooz!!