Iraq Watch:

Debts and democracy

IRAQ’S POVERTY-wracked people face being “lumbered with billions of dollars of debt” under US plans to mortgage future Iraqi oil supplies, claim campaigners for debt relief.

Much of Iraq’s enormous oil revenue will be used as security for billions of dollars of loans, under proposals from Wall Street bankers and such contractors as Bechtel and Halliburton.

Both these firms have links with the Republicans – Bush’s vice-president Cheney was formerly chief executive of Halliburton while big Republican benefactor Bechtel made money from Iraq under Saddam by building a £1 billion complex for the Ministry of Industry and intends to carry on under ‘democracy’ too!

So getting post-war ‘reconstruction’ will depend on gambling with Iraqi oil, then using these ‘debts’ to keep US control of Iraq while hoisting up share prices for American banks and construction firms.

Plans like these confirm what the socialist said about the war in Iraq: that US imperialism has been conducting it to increase its national power and its companies’ profits.

Rogues’ report

TONY BLAIR used the ridiculously misnamed conference on “progressive governance” to defend his role in the Iraq war.

He prepared a document for it seeking new powers for global intervention against ‘rogue states’ in cases “where a population is suffering serious harm as a result of internal war, insurgency, repre-ssion or state failure and the state is unwilling or unable to halt it or avert it.”

Blair is threatening to send imperialist troops – mainly from the US with British back-up – into states which are in revolt, are suffering from civil war etc.

And who are the rogue states in the world at present? Many people worldwide would put Bush’s USA at number one in this chart.

As the truth comes out about Bush and Blair’s real ‘solution’ in Iraq, is Blair preparing for more possible worldwide adventures in support of the rogue in Washington?