The Lie Of The Iraqi Purple Fingers

As the U.S. media gleefully reported on the Iraqi people dancing in the streets, as they held up purple coated fingers, they failed to tell us the facts that most in the Arab world already knew, ( except the Iraqis themselves), that the entire vote for an Iraqi Constitution was a sham at best, and an evil Corporate Interest plot at worst. Let's examine the facts.

On October 15th, 2005, the Iraqi people voted on whether or not to ratify the new Constitution for their newly "freed" nation. Putting aside the voting 'irregularities', such as voter turnouts that averaged out nationally to 80 per cent, with some provinces reporting a 99 per cent turnout rate, there is the little known fact that the Iraqis weren't even given a chance to read the draft of their new Constitution until 3 days before the voting took place. That, in and of itself, would give any vote observer pause, but add in the fact that while the people were mulling over this piece of paper, Paul Bremer and Company were in fact changing the wording of the draft, without ever informing the voters of these changes before or after they voted. The changes, explained away in the aftermath as "legalese" by Bremer, were in fact the implementation and lock in of several of Bremer's infamous 100 Orders. The most interesting lock in was specifically Order # 39 which gives American multinational corporations the right to rape the Iraqi people of their resources for at least the next 40 years. Here is the short version of Order # 39, written into the 'legal' version of the Iraqi Constitution: "Bremer Order #39: Foreign Investment
The order on foreign investment five key elements: (1) Privatization of state-owned enterprises; (2) 100% foreign ownership of businesses in all sectors except oil and mineral extraction, banks and insurance companies (the latter two are addressed in a separate order); (3) "national treatment" of foreign firms; (4) unrestricted, tax-free remittance of all funds associated with the investment, including, but not limited to, profits; and (5) 40 year ownership licenses which have the option of being renewed."

Safeguards were written into the legal version of the Constitution that all but guarantee that this document can not be changed, save for a revolution by the Iraqi people. This so angered the Sunni voting bloc, that their leader of that time, Saleh al-Mutlaq, called the Constitutional Document a "forgery." Is it any wonder that no political solution can not be reached by the various sects of Iraqi society? They were hoodwinked into voting against their own self interests, by cronies of the Bush Administration, whose sole intention in overthrowing Saddam Hussein in the first place was to give access to the Iraqis' resources, to American mutinational corporations. Just before the invasion, and not known by the American people, Hussein had decided to make deals with Russia, China, France and Germany regarding oil field developement, infrastructure building, and had in fact struck a deal to use the Euro as Iraq's form of payment. Adding insult to injury, Hussein stated that no American corporations would be allowed to participate in his country's affairs any longer. (Even though forbidden by U.S. law, Halliburton and several other U.S. corporations were, in fact, doing a lot of business with Hussein's government, through offshore subsidiaries. The loss of revenue would have been in the billions.)

The fraud of the Iraqi Constitution is yet another example of this administration's willingness to lie to the American people about what this war is really all about. Opening Iraqi markets to American multinationals, who import cheap labor from outside the country instead of using Iraqi labor, who went in after the oil, but not to lower the price of gasoline here at home, but to suppress the production of Iraq's oil supply in order to reap record windfall profits, and to have a permanent military presence in the Middle East, from which we can threaten to invade other countries who don't obey us to the letter. Don't believe me? First, listen to the words of Saleh al-Mutlaq: "They want this constitution to pass despite the will of the people." And second, Google something called MEFTA, The Middle East Free Trade Agreement. You'll then see what's really going on. Batmanchester