Zeitgeist
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Zeitgeist: Addendum - Part Two - Page 4
This is the fourth page of part two in my series of articles on Zeitgeist: Addendum. Please refer to the introduction if you were lead to this page.
Iraq 2003
He's really failed to show at all how the "economic hit men" corrupt governments, he's mentioned a few instances of the CIA overthrowing, or helping overthrow, governments around the world (primarily in Latin America) but not really how any of this has to do with "economic hit men" or the World Bank/IMF.
In the case of Iraq, both of those things failed. Economic hit men were not able to get through to Saddam Hussein, we tried very hard, we tried to get him to accept a deal very similar to what the house of Saud had accepted in Saudi Arabia, but he wouldn't accept it...
These things did not fail, they never happened, at least not until after the Gulf War. Saddam really enjoyed his financing from the CIA/US, be it in money, assets, weapons and also infrastructure to build weapons[29]. When it comes to the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia; there's really no evidence of anything I can find involving the House of Saud, economic hit men, the World Bank/IMF, and so forth. The US kisses Saudi Arabia's ass, not the other way around[30].
...and so the jackals went in to take him out, they couldn't do it, his security was very good...after all, he at one time worked for the CIA. He'd been hired to assassinate a former president if Iraq, and failed, but he knew the system.
They tried to "take him out" in 1996[31]. This was well after the nearly three decades of supporting the Ba'athist government, so it was hardly a situation of "trying to get this man in order", we in fact had him in order for many years until his invasion of Kuwait[32]. He never "worked" for the CIA. The CIA made contact with him prior to the coup which put the party he was a minor member of into power. He was basically contracted to assassinate the Prime minister, but he failed and was injured. He was also involved in other minor assassinations of communists[33][34][35].
So in '91 we send in the troops, and we take out the Iraqi military. So we assume at that point that Saddam Hussein is going to come around. We could have taken him out, of course, at that point in time, but we didn't want to, he's the kind of strong man we like. He controls his people, we thought he could control the Kurds and keep the Iranians within their border, and keep pumping oil for us, and that once we took out his military, now he's going to come around.
This is what really made me think this guy was full of it; he doesn't seem to really understand what happened. As I stated prior to the invasion of Kuwait the CIA/US were backing Saddam with all kinds of support quite literally until the day of the invasion of Kuwait[36]. The invasion of Kuwait caused major instability of the region, unlike the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the 1990 invasion was backed and supported by Saudi Arabia, the UK, and Egypt. In fact 67% of the total cost of the invasion was paid for by Saudi Arabia[37]. US didn't expect him to "come around" and in fact from the point of his invasion of Kuwait and on, the US had no plans of backing him any longer[36][38].
So the economic hit men go back in in the '90s, without success. If they'd had success, he'd still be running the country.
Perkins is incorrect again. As I already stated, we really had no plans on having Saddam listening to us again. The US was essentially hell bent on removing him from office or crippling his infrastructure. There was an unorganized attempt by the CIA to overthrow Saddam in 1991, but it didn't pan out[39].
We'd be selling him all the fighter jets he wants, and everything else he wants... but they couldn't, they didn't have success. The Jackals couldn't take him out again. So we sent the military in once again, and this time we did the complete job and took him out, and in the process created for ourselves some very, very lucrative construction deals...we had to reconstruct a country that we'd essentially destroyed, which is a pretty good deal if you own construction companies, big ones. So, Iraq shows the three stages; the economic hit men, failed there; the jackals, failed there; and as a final measure the military goes in.
This man really has absolutely no clue what he's talking about. The only reason the US ever stopped supporting him was because of his invasion of our ally Kuwait in 1990 and afterwards the US had no plans on supporting him again.
The CIA organized and funded Kurdish organizations in 1993 in order to help strain Iraq's economy and military in hopes of destabilizing the country[40][41].
A year later the CIA helped organize and fund Iraqi exiles and their plans to destabilize the regime. A little over a year later a coup was attempted by said operatives, but it failed[42][43].
In 1996 the CIA had a plan to compromise various Iraqi military leaders while Admed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, believed that the coup had been compromised, the CIA wanted to follow through with their coup plans anyway. The coup fell through[44].
And in that way we've really created an empire, but we've done it very, very subtly, it's clandestine. All of the empires of the past were built on the military. And everybody knew that they were building them. So that the British knew they were building them, the French, the Germans, the Romans, the Greeks and they were proud of it, and they always had some excuse like spreading civilization, spreading some religion, something like that, but they knew they were doing it...we don't. The majority of the people in the United States have no idea that we're living off the benefits of a clandestine empire, that today there's more slavery in the world than ever before.
Most of the countries mentioned do not have the sweatshops used to produce our products at low-low prices (though a couple do).
And then you have to ask yourself, well if it's an empire, then who's the emperor? Obviously, our presidents of the United States are not emperors, an emperor is someone who's not elected, doesn't serve a limited term, and doesn't report to anyone, essentially. So you can't classify a president that way. But we do have what I consider to be the equivalent of the emperor, and it's what I call the corporatocracy.
The corporatocracy is this group of individuals who run our biggest corporations and they really act as the emperor of this empire. They control our media, either through direct ownership or advertising, they control most of our politicians because they finance their campaigns, either through the corporations or through personal contributions that came out of the corporations. They're not elected, they don't serve a limited term, they don't report to anybody, and at the very top of the corporatocracy you really can't tell where the person's working for a private corporation or the government because they're always moving back and forth, so, you know, you've got a guy who one moment is the president of a big construction company, like Halliburton, and the next moment he's vice president of the United States, or the president, who was in the oil business, and this is true weather you've got democrats or republicans in the office, you have them moving back and forth through the revolving door...and in a way, our government isn't visible a lot of the time and its policies are carried out by our corporations on one level or another, and then again, the policies of the government are basically forged by the corporatocracy, and then presented to the government and they become government policy.
So it's an incredibly cozy relationship. This isn't a conspiracy theory type of thing, these people don't have to get together and plot to do things, they all basically work under one primary assumption, and that is that they must maximize profits, regardless of the social and environmental cost
I imagine I could say it until I'm blue in the face, but this man really has not told us anything about economic hit men that fits his story. In fact he basically has a revisionist history of our involvement in Iraq. He also doesn't take into account individuals like Barack Obama who was not on the board of a large corporation.
It's true that President George W Bush had his own oil company, but it was really good at digging holes but not much else; it failed terribly and he essentially sold off the majority of his shares later on[45][46].
I can't totally agree that the US is controlled by a corporatocracy, but it's not far off, because there is still legislation such as the Endangered Species Act[47][48] and organizations such as the EPA[49], and a corporatocracy would be better off without them.
[Maximize profits, regardless of the social and environmental cost]
That's the essence of companies in the free market.