Spoil the Oil Plan, Man

Interview by Greg Palast with Jay Garner, who was the original point man in "post-war" Iraq:

Oil fields on fire: Garner indicated that his desire for quick elections conflicted with the Bush Administration's economic timetable. Even as they battle to put out oil field fires, Washington pushed a timetable for privatising oil and other industries.

General Garner: I think we as Americans, and this isn't CPA, this is just we as Americans, we tend to like to put our template on things. And our template's good, but it's not necessarily good for everybody else, you know. TE Lawrence has a great saying, I wish I could repeat it exactly, I can't, but it goes something like this: says "it's better for them to do it imperfectly than for us to do it for them perfectly, because in the end, this is their country and you won't be here very long". And I think that's good advice.

While Iraqi's worried about power and water, Washington's concern was that Garner impose an elaborate plan to redesign Iraq's economy on a radical free-market model.

General Garner: I just think that you... again, that we're better by establishing Government and re-establishing basic services and getting things picked up and letting that Government, and through their own electoral process, decide what's good for their country.

Palast BBC: Let them decide whether to privatise the oil fields?

General Garner: Yes.

Palast was on Majority Report Radio today, and stated he had in his posession a 101 page paper written in March 2001 by the Bush administration which served as Garner's initial marching orders for reconstruction. The paper basically elaborated the takeover plan, nominally designed to create an experimental free-market situation in Iraq, but in reality described how to slice and dice assets and capitalize on the oil resources located there. Palast has released a few excerpts from the report but it sounded as if was saving most of it for a future report and to publicize his new documentary Bush Family Fortunes