The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum

=> The PUSH/BUSH

Posted by Maggie (Guest) - Tuesday, August 16 2005, 22:22:39 (CEST)
from 69.110.70.81 - adsl-69-110-70-81.dsl.pltn13.pacbell.net

Network -

Windows XP -

Internet Explorer
Website:
Website title:

Sunday, August 14, 2005
Missing in the elusive 'Iraqi Constitution' .. .."من نواقص "الدستور

This is a very relevant topic to what is missing in the elusive 'Iraqi Constitution':

"ON MONDAY, Iraq's National Assembly will release a draft constitution to be voted on by the people in two months. Since February, vital issues have been debated and discussed by the drafting committee: the role of Islamic law, the rights of women, the autonomy of the Kurds and the participation of the minority Sunnis.
But what hasn't been on the table is at least as important to the formation of a new Iraq: the country's economic structure. The Bush administration has succeeded in maintaining a stranglehold on issues such as public versus private ownership of resources, foreign access to Iraqi oil and U.S. control of the reconstruction effort — all of which are still governed by administration policies put into place immediately after the invasion. The Bush economic agenda favors foreign interests — American interests — over Iraqi self-determination.
Over a year ago, orders were put in place by L. Paul Bremer III, then the U.S. administrator of Iraq, that were designed to "transition [Iraq] from a … centrally planned economy to a market economy" virtually overnight and by U.S. fiat. Those orders were also incorporated into the transitional administrative law — Iraq's interim constitution — and the economic restructuring they mandate is well underway.
Laws governing banking, investment, patents, copyrights, business ownership, taxes, the media and trade have all been changed according to U.S. goals, with little real participation from the Iraqi people. (The TAL can be changed, but only with a two-thirds majority vote in the National Assembly, and with the approval of the prime minister, the president and both vice presidents.) The constitutional drafting committee has, in turn, left each of these laws in place."
Bush's economic invasion of Iraq August 14, 2005
.

من الملاحظ أن النص الأولي لمشروع الدستور لا يحوي إلا فقرات محدودة جدا ومبهمة حول المسائل الاقتصادية وبشكل خاص حول واجبات الحكومة في مجال الإدارة الاقتصادية وتجاه حقوق المواطنين الاقتصادية ورعاية مصالحهم. وقد يفسر ذلك بالرأي القائل بأن الدستور يجب ألا يقيّد السياسة الاقتصادية بشكل يضعف مرونتها وكفاءتها، إلا أن الأمر لا يتعلق بتقييد السياسة بقدر ما يتعلق بمنح صلاحيات الإدارة الاقتصادية في موقعها المناسب والصحيح بل ومنح الدولة الوطنية القدرة على تنظيم الاقتصاد وتوجيه الموارد الوطنية لمصلحة الشعب، ووضع شروط التعامل الدولي المناسبة للبلاد "....ة
د. كامل عباس مهدي
.
An Update : The elephant in the room is finally raising his trunk
.
"The IMF, issuing its first review of Iraq in 25 years, urged leaders to adopt an elusive constitution and to pursue hard-hitting reforms to get the war-torn economy back on track.
"The approval of the constitution (would be) an important step in the political and economic development process of Iraq," Perez, one of the co-authors of the IMF report, told a news conference.
... One key challenge is "the elimination of existing price distortions" including the phasing out of "significant government subsidies on petroleum products as quickly as feasible", the IMF added. "The level of subsidies in Iraq is probably the highest in the world," Perez said, while acknowledging that higher prices would hurt ordinary Iraqis in the short term.
IMF says Iraq's embattled economy needs new constitution August 16, 2005
.
Would hurt ordinary Iraqis? The IMF's quaint language is so angelic.
.
Why don't they rather insist on putting meters to the oil pipelines in the South of Iraq to measure how much oil is being pumped to ?????? ?
.

posted by Imad Khadduri # 2:28 PM 22 comments
The Bush black hole

"The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.
The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.
"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."Administration officials still emphasize how much they have achieved despite the chaos that followed the invasion and the escalating insurgency.
"Iraqis are taking control of their country, building a free nation that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself. And we're helping Iraqis succeed," President Bush said yesterday in his radio address. (emphasis added)
U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq August 14, 2005

As Bush was saying:

"Iraqi investigators have uncovered widespread fraud and waste in more than $1 billion worth of weapons deals arranged by middlemen who reneged or took huge kickbacks on contracts to arm Iraq's fledgling military, according to a confidential report and interviews with U.S. and Iraqi officials.
The Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit, in a report reviewed by Knight Ridder, describes transactions suggesting that senior U.S.-appointed Iraqi officials in the Defense Ministry used three intermediary companies to hide the kickbacks they received from contracts involving unnecessary, overpriced or outdated equipment.
Knight Ridder reported last month that $300 million in defense funds had been lost. But the report indicates that the audit board uncovered a much larger scandal, with losses likely to exceed $500 million, that's roiling the ministry as it struggles to build up its armed forces. The episode deprives Iraq's military of essential gear that could help prepare the way for U.S. forces to withdraw. It also raises questions about the new government's ability to provide an effective defense against an entrenched insurgency and win broad acceptance among Iraqis.
.... Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who oversees the U.S. military's training of Iraqi troops, conducts weekly briefings with the defense minister. Other Iraqi defense officials seldom are spotted without American civilian advisers nearby. The close relationship has raised questions as to how $500 million or more could vanish without U.S. intervention to stop the suspicious contracts that flowed for at least eight months.
"Ask them. I have the same question," al-Dulaimi said. "I blame those who posted them (the officials under investigation). And, by the way, the CPA posted them."
.... "Before me, there was another prime minister. His name was Bremer," Ayad Allawi, who served as interim premier when the corruption investigation began sometime last year, told Knight Ridder. "He ran this country, he had this ministry and a lot of the corruption started then. ... There was no auditing. Airplanes were flying in and the money was handed out in suitcases."
.... "The entire embassy was upside down over this," he said. "I swear to God the advisers didn't know everything going on over there. Where did they get their information? From the Iraqis. I can give you one budget that says this country is flourishing and another that tells you this country is going to s---. The Iraqis told us only what they wanted us to hear."
.... "This is not only the Defense Ministry's problem. It affects the image of the new Iraq," al-Dulaimi said. "If we really spent that money in the right way, maybe it would have given us more capabilities to face terrorists."
.... "It's chaos," al-Dulaimi said, visibly exasperated. "It's a result of all the chaos brought to Iraq."
Audit: Iraq fraud drained $1 billion August 11, 2005

Does the Bush Administration only apply sun tan lotion to Bush while he vacations?
Somebody should Talk to him about the first report above.

---------------------

- BACK TO INDEX - REPLY - QUOTE - EDIT - DELETE -

The full topic:
No replies.

Content-length: 14608
Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, application/x-shockwave-flash, application/vnd.ms-excel, applicatio...
Accept-encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept-language: en-us
Cache-control: no-cache
Connection: Keep-Alive
Cookie: *hidded*
Host: www.insideassyria.com
Referer: http://www.insideassyria.com/rkvsf4/rkvsf_core.php?.hfzS.
User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; sbcydsl 3.12; YPC 3.0.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; yplus 4.1.00b)