Bremer's Cash Shovel

Before the US and the Coalition Provisional Authority turned the keys to Iraq back over to an elected government in 2004, the Coalition of the Willing went nuts with the cash.  Five Billion dollars and six weeks later, Paul Bremer handed over the pink slip to Iraq.

In a thirteen-month period, Paul Bremer’s term as the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the US government shipped 360 tonnes of cash to Iraq.  That is tonnes, as in 2200 pounds of weight.  That would be 792,000 pounds of money. 

The Max Take Off Weight (MTOW) of a Boeing 747-400 is 800,000 pounds.  MTOW includes the weight of the aircraft, full of gas, groceries, (sorry, no meal service) passengers and luggage.

These figures came to light in Washington yesterday in a House oversight committee, as Paul Bremer got carved a spare by Rep. Henry Waxman.  One official from the provisional authority said that a contractor received a two million dollar payment in a duffel bag stuffed with shrinkwrapped bundles of currency.  (source http://www.ft.com/cms/s/77c172ce-b610-11db-9eea-0000779e2340.html)

Yes, I know there were no real government or financial mechanisms in place in Iraq in 2003 or 2004, but this is the kind of thing even the head-injured can understand as dumb beyond redemption. Even a Yale graduate could grasp that.

Not, apparently, Yale-grad Paul Bremer.  An ex-US Foreign Service wank, he worked for Alexander Haig and eventually became Ronnie Regan’s ambassador to the Netherlands.  There was the stint at Kissinger and Associates.  Yes that Kissinger.  After 9/11 Bremer came back to the government tit along with Regan-era sack of suck, Ed Meese, to lay the groundwork for the Department of Homeland Paranoia, with the Heritage Foundation’s Homeland Security Task Force. 

Then The Terror Trust tapped Bremer to run the Coalition Provision Authority in Iraq.

Perhaps the most telling of Bremer’s actions was the repair and re-opening of the pipelines and well-heads to move Iraqi oil.  He got it done right smartly, with one teensy little exception.  The meters on the well-heads and pipelines never seemed to get fixed. 

According to the UN International Advisory and Monitoring Board, it took forever to get a contractor to fix those pesky meters.  I guess Paul couldn’t find anyone from Haliburton with a few hours to spare and an adjustable wrench.  Either that, or he had run out of duffel bags full of cash.

There were other advances under Paul Bremer’s rule.  Like CPA Order #39 which privatized 200 Iraq state-owned enterprises, allowed 100% foreign ownership of Iraq businesses, and granted 40-year ownership licenses.  Then there was CPA Order #17 that granted foreign contractors, including private security firms, full immunity from all Iraqi laws. 

We have to mention CPA Order #49, which dropped the tax on corporations from 40% to a maximum of 15%.  CPA Order #12 that suspended all tariffs, customs duties, import taxes, licensing fees and all other trade restrictions on goods entering or leaving Iraq. 

Or the CPA Order #81 that prohibits Iraqi farmers from saving heirloom seeds from one season to the next if the seeds are transgenic or patented seeds.  Funny that it only took him 27 pages to set up full patent and intellectual property rights in a country that was just gutted in a war.

No wonder Paul Bremer got the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Jo Jo The Idiot Boy on December 14th, 2004. 

Aside from having a 747’s weight worth of cash to pull from, he set up just about every structure that has allowed big business to bend Iraq over a a taxi hood and yell "Please Sir May I Have Another!"  Pardon me, not a reaming, just the Free Market working to defeat the Evildoers of the Axis of Evildoers Axis of Evil. 

Let freedom ring, baby.