{"id":26,"date":"2006-08-29T17:29:49","date_gmt":"2006-08-29T15:29:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/?p=26"},"modified":"2006-12-27T23:41:56","modified_gmt":"2006-12-27T22:41:56","slug":"irak-eine-kleine-zwischenbilanz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/?p=26","title":{"rendered":"Irak: eine kleine Zwischenbilanz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lewis Lapham gibt in der Septemberausgabe von Harpers (2006 – via Scribe<\/a>) eine kleine Zwischenbilanz des Irakkrieges:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe war has been extremely successful. Here are the numbers.
\nDuring the five years since the striking down of the World Trade Center towers, the United States Congress has appropriated well over $300 billion for the Bush Administration\u2019s never-ending war against all the world\u2019s evildoers. Now flowing eastward out of Washington at the rate of $1.5 billion a week, much of the money takes the form of no-bid contracts, cost-plus and often immune from audit \u2013 at least $12.3 billion to Halliburton; $5.3 billion for Parsons Corporation; $3.7 billion for Fluor Corporation; $3.1 billion for Washington Group International; $2.8 billion for Bechtel Corporation.
\nThe contracts specify the repair and reconstruction of Iraq\u2019s depleted infrastructure \u2013 roads, power plants, hospitals, oil fields, pipelines, schools, mosques, and sewer systems \u2013 but because so many of the project sites have been deemed unsafe for visitors, the invoices translate into art objects, intricately and lovingly decorated with surcharges for undelivered concrete and nonexistent electricity.
\nSo also the goods and services with which private security companies supplement the American military effort in Iraq. The Pentagon furnishes 130,000 troops, many of them National Guard Reservists, poorly paid, inadequately equipped, and held against their will for extended tours of duty; the private companies field an additional 50,000 personnel, some of them earning upward of $150,000 a year for driving trucks, cleaning latrines, flying helicopters, pitching tents. Unhampered by U.S.Army regulations or by Iraqi law, the military guest workers are most conspicuously employed as bodyguards for the cadres of American middle management requiring, in the words of one of the advertising brochures, \u201cdiscreet travel companions\u201d or a \u201cheavily armored high profile convoy escort.\u201d For a discreet companion armed with an assault rifle and a record of prior service under the Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet, Blackwater USA charges $600 a day, plus a 36 percent markup for expenses \u2013 travel, weapons, insurance, hotel room, ammunition.
\nFor the friends of the free market operating in Iraq it doesn\u2019t matter who gets killed or why; every day is payday, and if from time to time events take a turn for the worse \u2013 another twenty or thirty Arabs annihilated in a mosque, a BBC cameraman lost on the road to the airport \u2013 back home in America with the flags and the executive compensation packages, the stock prices for our reliably patriotic corporations rise with the smoke from the car bombs exploding in Ramadi and Fallujah \u2013 Lockheed Martin up from $52 to $75 between July 2003 and July 2006; over the span of the same three years, Boeing up from $33 to $77; ExxonMobil up from $36 to $65; Chevron up from $36 to $66; Halliburton up from $22 to $74; Fluor up from $34 to $87.
\nIn a country that recognizes no objective more worthwhile than the one incorporated in the phrase \u201cto make a killing,\u201d I don\u2019t know why so many people insist on withholding their applause.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lewis Lapham gibt in der Septemberausgabe von Harpers (2006 – via Scribe) eine kleine Zwischenbilanz des Irakkrieges: \u201cThe war has been extremely successful. Here are the numbers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kapitalismus","tag-irak"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}