Merkinball
Deity
Those 100 or so laws passed by proconsular Dictator Bremer, which sold the country out to US corporations. Banks, essential state owned industries and so on, were all sold off to big US business. The orders forbid Iraqis from receiving preference in the reconstruction while allowed foreign corporations -- Halliburton and Bechtel, for example -- to buy up Iraqi businesses, do all of the work and send all of their money back to the States. They cannot be required to hire Iraqis or to reinvest their money in the Iraqi economy. They can take out their investments at any time and in any amount. Basically, its pillage. - Princeps
This is such a joke. Who's worse Princeps? Saddam, or Bremer? Which of those laws are still in place? Which were necessary in Iraq's infancy? I'm real glad you're with the times. We do whatever we can to farm out employment to locals in whatever capacity we can. This goes for Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Horn of Africa. What you say really makes no sense. Bechtel and Halliburton get contracts, but then don't hire out labor or buy resources locally? What about military civilian aid projects? The majority of civilian affairs projects that have taken place in Iraq have been contracted out through local labor and local help. It's cheaper, and it's far more productive than doing it all on our own.
If Halliburton is making so much money doing this, then why are the LEAVING numerous area's of operation?
but the fact is that the military wasn't there to provide order, they just stood there and allowed the pillage to go on and cause massive destruction to public and private property. While of course the oil infrastructure and supporting industries were protected. - Princeps
Again, laughable. If we protected the oil infrastructure so well, then why has oil production stagnated at pre-Saddam era levels? Sort of like the electricity (which we turned over to them, but we had to take back over because they didn't have the people to manage the energy grid correctly and grow it.)
I think you need to get yourself an ROE card for Iraq. We're not authorized to use deadly force when there is destruction of private Iraqi property, or even most public Iraqi property. You can't even do anything if a man is raping a 10 year old girl in broad daylight.
I'm sorry, but the things that you complain are constructs of your ilk. Not mine.
Fallujah massacre. The one that was ordered by the highest commands. - princeps
How was this a massacre?
You don't know a damn thing about Fallujah do you. We gave civilians DAYS to get out of Fallujah. We leafletted the city. This was a mil to mil battle in the purest sense.