SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION
By William Engdahl
Iraq Gets American Seeds of Democracy
"The reason we are in Iraq is to plant the seeds of democracy so they flourish there and spread to the entire region of authoritarianism."
George W. Bush US-style Economic
Shock Therapy
When George W. Bush spoke of planting the "seeds of democracy" few realized that he had Monsanto genetically engineered seeds in mind.
Following the US occupation of Iraq in March 2003, the economic and political realities of that country changed radically. Not only was Iraq occupied by some 130,000 US troops and a small army of private mercenary soldiers of fortune closely tied to the Pentagon, it was also under the comprehensive economic control of its occupier, the United States.
Control over the Iraqi economy was run out of the Pentagon. In May 2003, Paul Bremer III was put in charge as Administrator of the newly created Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA, a thinly veiled occupation authority. Bremer, a former US State Department terrorism official, had gone on to become Managing Director of the powerful consulting firm of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Kissinger Associates.
In many respects, US-occupied Iraq was a far better opportunity than Argentina. The US occupation was instrumental in bringing the agricultural system of an entire country under the domain of GMO agribusiness. The US occupation administration simply made Iraqi farmers an offer they could not refuse: "Take our GM seeds or die."
Bremer held de facto life-and-death control over every area of civilian activity in occupied Iraq. Notably, he did not report to the State Department, which is typically the department responsible for reconstruction, but directly to the office of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in the Pentagon.
As head of the CPA, Bremer moved swiftly to draft a series of laws to govern Iraq, which at the time had neither a constitution nor a legally-constituted government. The new laws of the US occupation authority numbered 100 in all, and were put into effect in April 2004.1 As a whole, the hundred new US-mandated laws-or orders, as they were called-would insure that the economy of Iraq would be remade along the lines of a US-mandated free-market economic model; much as the International Monetary Fund and Washington had imposed on the economies of Russia and the former Soviet Union after 1990.
The mandate given to Bremer by Rumsfeld's Pentagon planners, was to impose a "shock therapy" that would turn the entire state centered economy of Iraq into a radical free-market private region. He executed more drastic economic changes in one month than were forced on the debtor countries of Latin America in three decades.
Bremer's first act was to fire 500,000 state workers, most of them soldiers, but also doctors, nurses, teachers, publishers, and printers. Next, he opened the country's borders to unrestricted imports: no tariffs, no duties, no inspections, no taxes. Two weeks after Bremer came to Baghdad in May 2003, he declared Iraq to be "open for business." He did not say whose business, but that was becoming increasingly clear.
https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Cargill