naomi klein on Iraq

This article is pretty intense and long, but well worth a read for its ability to connect the dots.

"Torturers believe that when electrical shocks are applied to various parts of the body simultaneously subjects are rendered so confused about where the pain is coming from that they become incapable of resistance. A declassified CIA “Counterintelligence Interrogation” manual from 1963 describes how a trauma inflicted on prisoners opens up “an interval—which may be extremely brief—of suspended animation, a kind of psychological shock or paralysis. . . . [A]t this moment the source is far more open to suggestion, far likelier to comply...If there ever was a moment when Iraqis were too disoriented to resist shock therapy, that moment has definitely passed.”

Klein lays out what the economic plan was behind the invasion of Iraq. There has always been an economic front to this war, it is one drenched in neocon values with their embedded religious undertones. But its all gone wrong. terribly wrong and until Bush and his allies loosen their desire to hold on to a cause they can no longer win more people - civilian, soldiers, innocents, future generations - will continue to die for an extremly violent economic ideology. The sad truth is that civil war is and was the only option US/British policy allowed for people to fight the wholescale robbery and western imperialism forced on their country. Bush and Blair are more reponsible than either will admit. Bob Woodward of Watergate fame will tonight address the masks and lies the White House has used to distort their ideological economic front. This war has always been about money, about the rich capitalist class getting richer. Nothing else. simple as that.

As Klein concludes:

"The great historical irony of the catastrophe unfolding in Iraq is that the shock-therapy reforms that were supposed to create an economic boom that would rebuild the country have instead fueled a resistance that ultimately made reconstruction impossible. Bremer's reforms unleashed forces that the neocons neither predicted nor could hope to control, from armed insurrections inside factories to tens of thousands of unemployed young men arming themselves. These forces have transformed Year Zero in Iraq into the mirror opposite of what the neocons envisioned: not a corporate utopia but a ghoulish dystopia, where going to a simple business meeting can get you lynched, burned alive, or beheaded. These dangers are so great that in Iraq global capitalism has retreated, at least for now. For the neocons, this must be a shocking development: their ideological belief in greed turns out to be stronger than greed itself."