A rchive Date
[ 29-08-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/harris.html
Suspicious minds
By MICHAEL HARRIS - For The Ottawa Sun
August 29, 2003
During the free ride that the U.S. media and the political opposition have given the Bush administration, there has been one notable exception, Vanity Fair.
Its editor Graydon Carter, has consistently argued that deceit on the part of lawmakers, even when they are the president of the United States, has a way of catching up with them. What does it take for the truth to overwhelm the phony patriotism that has so far shrouded it? According to Carter, the true grit of journalists and other lawmakers.
In other words, someone besides Vanity Fair had to be ready to say the emperor has no clothes.
He certainly has no calculator. A lot of journalists and politicians are taking note of the fact that President Bush is about to deliver the largest budget deficit in U.S. history. Instead of the $334 billion surplus predicted for 2003, the White House now projects a deficit of $455 billion.
The one-sided Iraq war, meanwhile, is turning into the ugly and many-sided American occupation of a hostile, unstable nation under a U.S. imposed puppet-government. This week the New York Times questioned the soundness of the president's invasion of Iraq on its editorial pages, wondering if there was a real plan after all. According to the latest polling, the American people are pondering the same question. CNN reported that 54% of Americans surveyed did not think the president had a handle on either the Iraqi occupation or the domestic economy.
No wonder. The White House has been wrong or manipulative about weapons of mass destruction, wrong or manipulative about the welcome the Iraqi people would give the Americans after Saddam was toppled, and dead wrong about the costs of rebuilding the infrastructure of a nation it bombed into rubble. L. Paul Bremer III, the top U.S. official in Iraq, now says it will cost "several tens of billions" of dollars to rebuild the country, including $14 billion alone to construct a national water system.
The administration has already spent most of the $1.7 billion worth of Iraqi assets it seized from a New York bank, and it is now clear that Iraqi oil revenues will not be approaching pre-war levels any time soon, which means they cannot be used to contribute to the staggering costs of occupation. With a military bill of $4 billion a month, and another $7 billion in reconstruction efforts this year alone, President Bush has two choices. He can get other nations to shoulder part of the burden of the occupation or he can get more money from Congress.
Neither will be an easy sell. Although the diplomatic approaches have been initiated by the Americans to internationalize the occupation of Iraq, countries like France and Russia have already said no to troops without a new Security Council resolution. Any new resolution would almost certainly insist that the occupying force be multinational and under the control of the UN rather than the United States - something that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld bitterly opposes.
And what UN member who opposed the invasion would be anxious to participate in a peace-keeping mission in Iraq when 138,000 U.S. troops have not been able to stop pipeline sabotage, electricity sabotage, water sabotage, and the murder of American and British troops, Iraqi policemen, Red Cross personnel and UN officials at the Canal Hotel? Although the Bush administration continues to talk about the desperation of Saddam's "dead-enders" and an array of foreign "terrorists", seasoned observers of the Middle East like the Independent's Robert Fisk see a growing Iraqi resistance movement made up of Sunni Muslims who had no love of the former regime.
If it will be difficult for President Bush to get the allies he insulted in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq to contribute troops and investment to the occupation, it may be impossible to convince a skeptical Congress to add to the already staggering deficit, particularly with so many state governments facing financial crises of their own. Behind the bad math, there is also a bad smell beginning to gather around the Bush White House.
In its effort to privatize the logistical operations of the military, the administration has awarded lucrative contracts to political friends to the extent that there is one private contractor in Iraq for every 10 soldiers. (According to the Washington Post, the ratio during the Gulf War was one contract worker to every 100 soldiers.)
So much money is being made by friends of the administration that critics are accusing private companies like Haliburton, based in Houston, Tex., of war profiteering. So far, the company, whose top dog used to be Vice-President Dick Cheney, has already won $1.7 billion worth of contracts under Operation Iraqi Freedom, and stands to make hundreds of millions more under a no-bid contract awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Of the $4-billion-per-month pricetag for military operations in Iraq, a third of the money is going to private companies. Representative Henry Waxman smells a rat and says that a handful of companies with good political connections are making a killing at the public's expense.
President Bush is clearly feeling the heat. For the first time since the quagmire began to deepen in Iraq, the Administration is easing up on its insistence that the United States and the United States alone will be responsible for the occupation. Richard L. Armitage, the deputy secretary of state under Colin Powell, has suggested that Washington might be willing to allow a multinational force to operate in Iraq provided that the UN mission was commanded by an American. The cheese eating surrender monkeys may yet have the last laugh.
Meanwhile, with signs of restlessness in the American public, the 2004 presidential race is becoming more interesting. While Howard Dean continues to build momentum towards winning the democratic presidential nomination, he isn't the only candidate the Republicans have to worry about. General Wesley K. Clark is set to announce his bid for the presidency within the next two weeks. Given Clark's record - former supreme commander of NATO, four star general, and Vietnam War hero, it will be difficult to question his patriotism.
Graydon Carter must be feeling a little less lonely.
Author, broadcaster and investigative journalist Michael Harris can be heard Monday to Thursday, 1-3 p.m. on 580 CFRA.
Letters to the editor should be sent to oped@sunpub.com.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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