THE SIX-TRILLION DOLLAR PROJECT TO DISMANTLE ARAB IRAQ.

First (really) rough draft


MAYADA’S WORLD

You’re crossing an avenue at around noon. It’s such a gorgeous day. You’re reciting the poetry of Ahmad Shawqi and humming the lyrics of “Ya Jarat’l Wadi” to Fairouz’s imagined voice. All is peaceful. It’s not the best of all worlds; but you believe in God and his Prophet. You interrupt the humming, you murmur, “La Ilah Illa-l-LLah; ash-shukru wal-7amdu laka ya Rabb 'lalameen.”

You’re carrying a couple of grocery bags. You have two children and the bags are heavier. You smile thinking about your daughter, Mayada, how she rules the household. An American truck, a sixteen-wheeler, full of tonnage, driven by a maniac high on the drug PCP, from another culture, the culture of mental health, yet whose very President had needed treatment but had refused to address various personality disorders, some innate, others borne out of untreated alcoholism, resulting in a character which hallmarks were sadism and banality, and a Vice-President who exhibited his own traits of sadism, added to an autocratic and paranoid character, the truck comes out of nowhere, is now so close, going at unmeasurable speed, without a sound, so heavy it's tilting lightly sideways, shining under the noon sun, it really is so close, you have no time to think, still you find the time, you think about Mayada’s smile, it breaks your heart, you think about how much she will cry, and whether she will remember her father, and about who will take care of her and her brother.


The American sixteen wheeler is a six trillion dollar behemoth “invested” to dismantle Arab Iraq – 6,000 billion dollars, 6,000,000 million dollars.

600,000 dead; 5,000,000 orphans.

“La-Ilaha illa’llah”
“,,,Taribtu wa’3adani--” Ahmad Shawqi.



ISSUES:

1. Why not account for the skyrocketing oil prices as a tax, computing the difference between the price of oil before the invasion stage of the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq and the higher price at present and as forecast into the future, for as long as US troops occupy Iraq, and adding that difference to the cost of the war?

2. Would a financial take-over by the Gulf oil protectorates of the cost to the harmful idiots of the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq, using the backdoor tax we’ve paid them as higher prices for oil, extend the life of that Project and allow the harmful idiots to bring Iran to its knees?



AN AD REVIVES THE ISSUE OF COST

I was shopping in Virginia. I saw an ad posted on the lawn at the entrance of a strip plaza, not far from a Starbucks where men (mostly) from Sudan, Eritrea, and Morocco congregate. The ad asked Arabic-speaking people to call a certain number or access a website. It promised a yearly income of over $170,000 for interpreting – as “linguists” – realistic based on what I know. This made me think of the cost of the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq , once again. For a while now it had seemed to me that the various ways of calculating the cost of the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq , now at the occupation stage, had been ignoring the skyrocketing rise in oil prices. A good part of the aloofness towards that aspect of the cost of dismantling yet another Arab country (the higher-oil-prices-as-backdoor-tax aspect) has to do with the fact that the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq didn’t lend itself to numbers as would China’s consumption of oil, for instance.

But it’s more than that. I would say that the talk about the rising oil needs of China and India has served to obfuscate, and may have been meant as such by environmentally-conscious people and parties.

A recent report, one that didn’t mean to link the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq to the rise in oil prices, does exactly that. The McKinsey Global Institute report , for instance, makes it clear that the revenues of the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) had DOUBLED between 2003, the year of the launching of the invasion part of the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq , and 2006. Put differently, the invasion part of the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq was instrumental in doubling the oil income of the GCC countries. Logically, since oil is economically fungible, the invasion has done the same for all oil-producing countries. Unwittingly perhaps, McKinsey has told us that the invasion part of the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq connected directly to the rise in oil prices. Causation or correlation–what does it matter?


WHY DO THEY IGNORE THE RISE IN OIL PRICES AS A BACKDOOR TAX AND AS PART OF THE COST OF THE PROJECT TO DISMANTLE ARAB IRAQ?

Not accounting for the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq as one major reason for the rise in oil prices, and the imposition of an backdoor tax on the consumer, likely is due to various reasons:

(1) The difficulty empirically to prove that the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq is directly connected to the rise in oil prices. We do know that oil prices did go up, skyrocketed, after the invasion part of the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq had been launched. But we also know that China and India needed more oil; we knew about the role of speculators who took advantage of the regional insecurity the invasion part of the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq had caused, and what have you. But we didn’t know how to calculate these aspects of the rise in oil prices and the concomitant consumer tax on oil consumption which the rise in price in fact was.


(2) The difficulty for reporters to understand the power of seignorage –the imperial ability to go to war without taxing , by printing money -- and connecting the use of that power to the inflation that became the prices of oil. After all, Europe is paying roughly one-third less for an oil barrel because its currency is worth one third more against the dollar. It was the dollar which sank, not the Euro which rose, on the printing and glutting of the American currency to fund the oil grab and the associated Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq. The printing of money (e.g., intimidate a cowardly Congress to pass war spending bills without taxing) therefore could be said to be responsible for one third of the rise in oil prices. In addition, we do know that speculators got in on the act as soon as it became clear that the US Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq was in trouble, as Iraq wasn’t lending itself to easy subjugation. Roughly, let’s say that speculation -- ongoing since the infamous date of the invasion -- has added another one third to the price of each barrel. Net result: an oil barrel which two-third of its price can be accounted for by the dollar glut and the speculation of war with Iran, or what have you of regional insecurity caused by the invasion part of the oil grab.


(3) the clamoring by well-meaning environmentally-conscious people to make use of the rise in oil prices to get some legislation off the ground for alternative energy -- an impossible task for them on such grounds as the purely looming dangers of the continued use of fossil fuel. That the consumer/taxpayer would be more amenable to adopt the alternative energy route if she’s reminded that oil prices will continue to go up.

Which they could unless the recession digs in. Still, the fact is that they started skyrocketing only after the invasion part of the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq was launched.


(4) Not wanting to blame the two domestic communities which played such a pivotal role in taking us into the invasion part of the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq: the Jewish Right and Jewish liberals (the “thinking” crowd whose judgement all trust) , and the Christian Right (the “warrior” crowd which aches for war against Muslims).

(Anecdote: One of my roommates in college turned Evangelist or Baptist or something. When he visited, carrying the Bible –and giving me one as gift–, and since I hadn’t seen him in years, I humored him by going to an Evangelist or Baptist church or something with him. He had insisted. And I can act at times–not always. The first thing I noticed: no handsome women. These were likely so in demand they didn’t have time for the Bible, especially here in the Northeast. Then they started the service. I was impressed by how all knew the verses of the Bible, so much so that they could finish the pastor’s recitation. But then a visiting pastor took the podium and launched on one diatribe after another against Muslims. It freaked me out. I couldn’t believe my ears. Why would anyone need to prove his or her faith by debasing another’s? And this was before September 11. Outside I asked my former roommate about this. The Muslims do it, too, he said; worse they’re persecuting the Christians. Look at Egypt. Fine, I said, if you open the immigration doors for Egyptian Christians, eighty percent of them will be here and you can enjoy their company in this very country–you miss them so much. My argument didn’t impress him.)

What I’m proposing here is a new way to calculate the cost of the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq, including the occupation. I believe the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq is way more costly than we’re told, even by respected economists. This proposal of mine -- on re-calculating more realistically -- remains in the realm of an idea that needs developing. I don’t have the time or the resources to do it. A non-ideological economist with a posh office and graduate assistants–well she can do it.


TWO TRILLION

In April of last year, I wrote up a post titled, “ Staying Power: the Harmful Idiots v. the [Iraqi] Resistance.” I wanted to get an idea about the relative cost of occupation versus that of resistance. My comparison wasn’t scientific. I was acting on a hunch: that the occupation would bankrupt us, pure and simple, what with salaries such as the one above for people without much experience in interpreting or degrees as “linguists.” (The ad for “linguists” wasn’t a ruse; I know my fair number of semi-unemployed immigrants from northern Virginia who were recruited as “linguists” to Iraq. They make more than the 170,000 figure above. Only a few weeks ago I had assisted one of them in drafting the appeal of the denial of his application for unemployment benefits. After a labored appeal, pro bono, he informed me he was leaving to Iraq to make money -- more than $170,000 -- so he could afford to get married.) The looming bankruptcy, it seemed to me, was a goal of the resistance. And the resistance knew it because it knew that it was costing way less than the fancy occupation. (What the resistance likely didn’t know, and perhaps even the Iranians, was the power of seignorage Empire carries, which makes it that bankruptcy is a longer journey than a straightforward crunching of the numbers would portray.)

Now I’m aware that the war had been waged under the power of seignorage–the power to print money and avoid burdening the tax base, or angering it, or creating instant opposition to the war while seeking supremacy or a grab somewhere. And the tax base is too dumb to figure out that it’s paying taxes when it’s paying its oil and heating bills -- that it had been taxed for the war the backdoor way. (God forbid a politician should offer to add $2 to the $1 price of a gallon of gasoline, making the total price $3–which is what it is now. And financing a single-payer health insurance system and housing for effectively homeless men, and so on of civilized measures. As a former Congressman once told me, “people [he meant Caucasian] don’t want to pay for other people’s [he meant blacks and recent Hispanic immigrants] insurance.” ) But it seems that we now have reached the tipping point in money-printing, what with the credit crunch which has followed the years of dollar glut. Politicians don’t want to tax; the Federal Reserve wants to dodge recessions by keeping interest rates low; and the harmful idiots want to wage an unnecessary (not to mention sleazy and immoral) war, built on Israel-centered precepts, therefore morally and practically questionable by definition–all without taxing.

Now the (financial) chickens have come home to roost. The treatment: More of the same – more glutting.

About the cost of the war: Let’s go with the Bilmes/Stiglitz figure of over $2 trillion by the year 2016. This would be the higher estimate. I’ve chosen it because, if McCain/Lieberman are elected, two silly war mongers, we’ll be there for one hundred years as John McCain has made it clear. The electorate might not want to vote for a black man or a woman. So McCain might just make it.


PLUS THREE TRILLION

The McKinsey Global Institute tells us that the six countries of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) , at $100 per barrel, would reap $9 trillion in oil revenues by the year 2022. To conform to Bilmes/Stiglitz’ s cutoff of 2016, we can estimate that the GCC countries by that year – 2016-- would reap around $6 trillion in oil revenues, at $100 per barrel. Divide that by half to discount for the rise in oil prices that was occasioned by the invasion and occupation part of the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq. Result: three trillion.

Why divide it by half? Key to this is the fact that the McKinsey Global Institute report makes it clear that the revenues of the GCC countries had DOUBLED between 2003, the year the Jewish/Christian Right decided to invade an Arab country (my words not McKinsey’s) , and 2006.


Why is this key? Correlation or causation, the war is connected to the skyrocketing rise of oil prices. We know from McKinsey that the oil revenues of the GCC countries had doubled between the year of the invasion part of the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq and 2006. That rise is tantamount to a tax we pay, not to the federal government, so despised by the right wing, but to the GCC , to Russia, to Iran, to Venezuela, to Nigeria. And to boost the future money careers of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney who, I assure you with every instinct in my being, would be benefitting from the oil price bonanza they caused. (No one is foolish enough to make it obvious. Their children might be the ones to benefit. Many ways to re-route a few tens of millions of dollars.)



(NATIONAL SECURITY ALERT:

The oil price bonanza should have repercussions even on the Washington D.C. scene. Recall the observation by this newsletter that a coterie/cabal of Arab intelligence service officers likely are behind nearly all the attempts to entrap Iran, mobilize the Gulf Arabs against it, and ignite armed conflict between that country and the US. I have no doubt whatsoever that US intelligence is in on this, likely a silent partner. After all the orders from the White House is to entrap Iran. Kuwaiti intelligence, for one, has been taken over by the US -- hence the role it had played with "our boys" in entrapping the former President of Iraq and its attempts to entrap Iran -- Refer to prior posts: the incident of Barazani from the Kuwait Airport calling for the opening of an Israeli consulate in Arab Kurdistan; the beating of a Kuwaiti diplomat, forgot his name, Zibbi or something, by Iranian intelligence operatives, likely for spying for the harmful idiots. The oil price bonanza should allow this coterie/cabal to recruit people in Washington, DC, who would push the agenda of encircling (if not outright war) with Iran. Now I don’t mind them doing that so long as these people register as foreign agents. But who am I kidding? Anytime you hear or read anyone who directly or indirectly is calling for war against Iran or the encirclement of that country -- think Jewish Right, an ally of the Jewish Right, one whose career had been spomsored byt he Jewish Right, or look into her background and deduce, or all of the above.)


Grant it, we’re not the only ones paying this “tax” on oil -- the sheep we are, being put out to graze by groups and personalities with ideological, financial, and foreign interests which have nothing to do with national security – but by the entire world. Out of want of time, however, I’m not factoring in the revenues of oil countries other than the GCC, which would increase the cumulative oil “tax” paid by the world, including us, tremendously. My hunch: it could triple it. In other words, a serious economist would factor in all the rise in oil prices the world over thanks to the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq, would slice off America’s share of oil consumption, and what have you. I’m not doing that.




EQUALS FIVE-TO-SIX TRILLION.

Going out on a limb, as I am throughout all of this (and feel free to discredit me, using this admission), I’ll add Bilmes/Stiglitz’s figure of $2 trillion to the $3 trillion (half of the GCC estimated total revenues by 2016, which can be attributed to the war) and we have a figure of $5 trillion. Add a one trillion dollars from the war-engineered rise in oil prices for non-GCC countries (Iran, Russia, Iraq, Namibia, Nigeria, Venezuela, Sudan, Algeria, Libya, Yemen, Brunei . . .) – which would be our share of that non-GCC tax, and you get $6 trillion.

The Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq by 2016 should have cost us $5-to-$6 trillion.

Can a non-ideological economist please elaborate, confirm or refute – p l e a s e.



THE POLITICAL REPERCUSSIONS

I can’t begin to enumerate the political repercussions of the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq, now that the power of seignorage has come home to roost. Here are a couple of likely effects:

EXPECT THE HARMFUL IDIOTS TO FORCE THE GCC TO TAKE ON THE FINANCIAL BURDEN OF THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION OF PLANTATION IRAQ.

For one, the new administration is bound to seek help from the GCC countries for the continued occupation of Iraq. The house of cards we’re building there is that – a house of cards. We leave – it’ll crumble. Nothing’s wrong with leaving and letting it crumble. Likely, it’d be one of the best options, especially if we stop ruses and push US oil companies into Iran. But the Gulfies don’t want us to leave–hence the royal treatment they gave George W. when he visited. Our army now is their army. We now are truly fighting their war against Iran. They never bothered to develop decent armies of their own, lest the extended families lose power to these armies and have to live in Switzerland over their heaps and heaps of billions, maybe trillions. Too, our army is Israel’s army, checking Iranian power on behalf of the apple of our eye which likes to grab other people’s lands and mistreat them as inferior, true to its colonial nature.

Every time a US soldier dies in Iraq, consider that he/se isn’t dying for the US.


If the Gulfies refuse to pay, we shall unleash a campaign against them, run by an office at the Pentagon similar to the Office of Special Plans. We shall engineer coups against those who don’t want to cooperate and pay -- what we want, not what they want. But we may not have to do much since the princes, especially in Saudi Arabia, have been jockeying about for our support to become King. They’re doing it under the mis-impression that Israel can help them meet their ambition. So they’re flirting with Israel -- in statements, in secret visits, in attending Jewish-American even (s), in hints at investment in Israel -- as a means to get to the heart of policy decision in the US. (Most Arabs believe that Israel, via the American Jewish community, monopolizes US policy in the Middle East. The princes are no different.)

But I have news for the princes : they’re barking up the wrong tree. The Pentagon should be running the show in their region for the foreseeable future, and the Pentagon had been burned badly by Israel’s ambassadors (e.g., Kissinger, Wolfowitz, Perle, Edelman, Feith–the Defense Policy Board).

Note, for instance, that in mid-January, according to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronot, via al-Quds al-Arabi (on or about 1/25/08–the Arab press covers the Israeli quite thoroughly), a US intelligence delegation traveled to Israel to discuss the NIE findings. Yedioth Ahronot reported that this delegation told the Israelis that the US would be willing to revise the NIE estimates if Israel provided convincing evidence about Iran that would contradict the NIE findings.

Soon afterwards, this Administration appointed Paul Wolfowitz as adviser to the US State Department to handle, among other things, the nuclear files of Iran and North Korea – a seeming concession to the Israelis. But it really wasn’t much of a concession. What’s telling about this appointment is that it was an appointment to State, not to the Pentagon where he once belonged. Foreign policy Paul wasn’t sent to the Pentagon to handle these files, but to insignificant State. There, insignificant he can work under the equally insignificant and incompetent she – the Secretary of State, another foreign policy and national security disaster who seemed to be always behind, unable to define the task in a timely fashion (including te task of resigning after September 11), a symptom of some mental pathology. No strategic alliance boys of the Jewish Right (Israel-US-Turkish Generals aching to topple the civilian government, and likely Russia as indirect beneficiary) need apply for Pentagon jobs for a while.


IRAN FACES THE EXTENSION OF THE LIFE OF ITS ENCIRCLEMENT

For another: What’s Iran to do?

Iran now is beyond the stage of talking to the US to coordinate in Iraq. It knows that actions speak louder than words. And it sees that the harmful idiots still are intent on crippling it economically. The more time it spends to tarwidh (condition/tame wild and impulsive animals--see prior posts) the harmful idiots the more it’ll see the Gulf governments crumble one by one to either accept to finance US occupation of Iraq, and an eventual war on Iran, or be replaced by outright “assets” of the harmful idiots. In other words, the takeover by the GCC states of the financing of the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq should give the project to encircle and suffocate Iran, if not outright war on the Islamic Republic, a new life. The threat of bankruptcy which the Iraqi resistance had banked on (before the network of Baathists and former army officers put out the word among their sect to re-align tactically with the harmful idiots to await an intra-Shia civil war) would now be off the table. A Shia insurgency would be quelled by US troops financed by the oil surplus money of the Arab Gulf protectorates. And Iran would be in for serious trouble. (You see, even a war with Iran can now be financed by the backdoor tax on oil–the higher prices–since the GCC would be taking on the expense of the Project to Dismantle Arab Iraq and the concomitant policy of encircling Iran and bringing it to its knees.)


Would the harmful idiots, now that seignorage has gotten us into real trouble, and once they stop sapping US resources and rely instead on Gulf countries’ resources, be able to wage a better war against Iran? Not really. The more likely scenario is one where the “new” governments in the Gulf -- the ones which would be the result of Pentagon-instigated coups or the old/new ones, more willing to accept dictates by the harmful idiots as quid pro quo to avoiding being replaced–would set off on a campaign of purging the Gulf of any and all Iranians or Iranian influence. The idea would be to encircle the Islamic Republic. All the while, the harmful idiots would continue to unleash the troops in Iraq to exorcize it of any Iranian Hizbollah-like Iraqi cells which could be unleashed against US troops. A stupid strategy, long term, one where the harmful idiots are trying to reverse the damage they’ve done. One of plugging holes in a damn on a violent river. The mini-states they’re building in dismantled Iraq aren’t theirs, and will never be.


Move now? Move later? Iranian strategists are likely mulling this over. Any sign that the Gulf Arabs will be sharing the burden of the US occupation of Iraq in any significant fashion, or any launching of a true and effective campaign to purge the Gulf countries of Iranians and Iranian influence (this has begun but still is timid), would be key to the Iranians that they would need to ignite insurgencies
against the US in Iraq – before the plans by the harmful idiots to coax the Gulf governments, or change them to encircle and suffocate Iran, materialize.


( Note: Iran may not have the luxury of waiting. The Saudi mini-state in Lebanon is now moving full-force to demarcate the lines between the Sunni and the Shia, by spilling blood between the two communities, in retaliation for the assassination of its operatives. The Syrian/Iranian mini-state in Lebanon should try not to allow this to happen. But it may not be successful. Retaliation: Coax the Saudis toe ease and desist from their plan and do it in Plantation Iraq, where Saudi Arabia has placed all of its weight behind the harmful idiots. If they want blood spilled between Shia and Sunni, we certainly can do it in Iraq, would go the Iranian thinking. Let’s give them a taste of it. Let the Temple crumble on all, not only us.)


Oddly, in that sense, Iran, if successful at kicking ass with the harmful idiots, especially in domestic repercussions in the US, should be the current Gulf governments’ best hope to stay in power and keep a modicum of independence. Otherwise: expect the militarization of the Gulf societies, a la once Latin and Central Americas -- all to defeat the Islamic Republic.