Reparations In Reverse

This is obscene, suprised they aren't going to make them pay for 911, even though they had nothing to do with it!? I guess there is more than one way to get free oil??

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If I stand for my country today...will my country be here to stand for me tomorrow?

I've heard about this. Check it out<BR> "<B>GREG PALAST</B>: Well, it's disturbing. It's weird, It's strange. We’ve got shades of Henry Kissinger being appointed to the September 11th committee. This is called, what we are talking about here is called sovereign debt, 120 or $130 billion of debt owed that piled up by Saddam Hussein, sovereign debt. George Bush, and James Baker, are not the sovereigns of Iraq. There is a real question whether the money is not owed to them or to the United States or from the United States. That might even come from us. What the heck is the president of the United States telling the Iraqi government what to do with its Saudi -- with its debt? I just said Saudi debts. That's a big issue here. James Baker has not been approved by the United States senate. This seems to be some type of a rump appointment. In fact, it looks like he may be actually an appointee of the puppet government we have set up in Iraq. The government there is not legitimate, either, and they will be making a decision with James Baker about enough debt that will lock up the assets of the Iraqi people for the next two generations. It's not an elected government in Iraq. This is astonishing. You have to understand that this is preempting the World Bank. James Wolfenson, who is president of the World Bank, has not called for the restructuring of Iraqi debt and that's by the way the job of the World Bank, which is officially called the bank for reconstruction and development, post-war reconstruction bank. The bank in charge has said no, the debt should not be restructured. It should be eliminated, $120 billion should be forgiven, but that's a problem for Mr. Bush and Mr. Baker, because $27 billion is owed to Mr. Baker's client, the Saudi government. So, now you have got a problem here. You have got the lawyer for the creditor being put in charge by a president of a conquering nation to make sure that his friends, the Saudis and Baker's clients, the Saudis get their money. This is clearly a violation of international law by any measure. It horrifies the World Bank and it horrifies the world community. It's a type of conflict of interest-laden appointments that President Bush can't seem to get enough of.....<BR> Right, James Baker is a serious fixer. Do you remember during the Florida race in 2000, he was the mouthpiece for the Bush campaign saying, the votes have been counted in Florida six times, when in fact by my last count, 180,000 ballots were never looked at by the state. So, he did a good job of bamboozeling the public, but that is for his campaign client. He is now here supposedly working for the benefit of the Iraqis. I think that the panic for George Bush is that he is going to have to, whether he likes it or not, turn over the control of Iraq to Iraqis. When that happens there is no elected government of Iraq which is going to accept the debts incurred by Saddam Hussein. For example, in the case of the Saudi debt, James Baker's client, $27 billion, this was -- i know that $7 billion of that money was given to Saddam Hussein to build atomic bomb. So, should the Iraqis be paying that money back? Should the United States be guaranteeing that money to Saudi Arabia for helping Saddam Hussein attempt to build a weapon of mass destruction. The other money was given by Saudi Arabia to Iraq to run in effect a proxy war against Iran. Is that a legitimate debt or not? According to the World Bank and sources in the international financial community this is exactly the type of debt, which the Iraqi people themselves don't owe. What's he very disconcerting here is that we know the only way for Iraqis to pay off that debt as they're obligated by Mr. Baker is to basically give up their oilfields in order to pay off the Saudis and other creditors. So this is the problem. Rearranging this debt determines the future of Iraq for the next two generations."<BR> etc<BR> see the rest here:<BR> http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/08/150250&mode=thread&tid=25<p>---<br>"George Bush has declared the war on terrorism to be the cause of his generation. The cause of Canadian sovereignty will be ours." - John Godfrey, MP for Don Va

We are supposed to be helping them create a new country and democracy - or so we are told, yet the Iraqis have paid out more to foreign multinationals than they have seen money spent on rebuilding their own war-torn nation.

Oh what a twisted web we weave...

Roy

I think the world has to unite and fight the USA just like we did against the NAZI`s.

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Dave Ruston

Yes but fight its government and military. This will require rebel Americans to destroy their government and military control centres, like the Pentagon, from the inside and the world will destroy their international posts on the outside. Then, the Americans can build a new United States without the large military and policy hold over the world. But there will always be future countries to fight and the world will hopefully be prepared for that. Sort of sounds like bloody Star Wars to me.

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Alliance Atlantis films proudly presents...

You forgot, all it's fundamentalist religious fanatics as well. I truly feel that if Bush gets in again there will be a revolution of sorts in the US.. Bush could be fighting his own civil war. And it won't likely stop there. The rest of the world is going to be very, very upset as well.

"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end...liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition...The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to to govern. Every class is unfit to govern...Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." <p>-- Lord Acton</p><p>---<br>RickW

Whether citizens of Iraq are, or should be, legally responsible for debts arising from the actions/decisions of a dictator from whom they've only recently been 'liberated' is a question that needs asking.



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"When we are in the middle of the paradigm, it is hard to imagine any other paradigm" (Adam Smith).

Yes Calumny, especially when the actions of the dictator were financially and otherwise supported by the foreign power that eventually liberated them,destroyed their infrastructure, history, schools, hospitals but managed to protect their oil!

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If I stand for my country today...will my country be here to stand for me tomorrow?