And of course you were one of the first (indeed, only) to point out in a systematic fashion that the neocons never had the slightest — not the slightest — interest in “promoting democracy” in Iraq, and that everything they have done prior to, during and after the war has in fact been (hamhandedly) designed to achieve precisely the opposite.

Naomi Klein explained it back in 2004, a brilliant piece that still holds up. I forgot about it til someone diaried about it on DKos just today or yesterday.

http://www.harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html

Not only does it hold up for Baghdad, None. Naomi Klein’s upcoming book on “disaster capitalism” show’s its a total mindset. (See her articles “The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” and “Pay To Be Saved” in The Nation.) Masked as reconstruction, it is, as one observer notes, “Not reconstruction at all — it’s about reshaping everything.”

You see it in Viceroy Bremer’s proudest achievements: continuing Saddam’s restrictions on labor unions and implementing a flat tax.

With Paul Wolfowitz, our “just add bullets” democrat, at the World Bank, you can be sure Lebanon will be another pawn in this game — if, that is, it doesn’t get Iranian funding.

Naomi brings this all to bear on post-Katrina “relief,” following the money to Bechtel, Shaw Group and Blackwater.

Another case in point is Israel. See the “Clean Break” paper I link to and quote from upthread (#155).

This design to remake the world is the core of the neocon worldview. 21st century capitalism’s first big idea is: Destroy, then put strings on rebuilding. There’s money to make coming and going, and you end up with a world remade in your own image. What’s not to like?

GSD “Triumph of the Swill” is the best. Is Mickey Reifenstahl Leni’s illegitimate maus?

Hahahahaha!

Mickey’s 11th hour Angstfrage: “Should I shoot myself between the ears with a German Mauser 98K rifle just like Josef Gerbil.”

I hear that loud and clear.

It’s just the price we pay for refusing to let Apollo bugger us.

In the final days leading up to the war Saddam Hussein agreed to go along with all U.S. demands, he surrendered while attempting to maintain face. The neocons ignored his capitulation to their demands.

Saddam Hussein contemplated basing his oil on the Euro rather than the dollar. It was definitely the wrong idea to consider, according to the wheelers and dealers running the show. U.S. economic interests partially depend on fossil fuels being traded in dollars.

The administration was not incompetent or stupid; it simply let greed blind them. Iraq was supposed to be an easy target that would pay for itself, so the only plan it had was to loot Iraq.

Prince Bandar advised Bush to pay the Iraqi soldiers three months’ pay, feed them, and clothe them at a cost of around $200 billion, and there would not have been an insurgency; but Bush and company wanted to do the war on the cheap. After all, it was supposed to be easy, or rather, that was what they wanted to believe.

The plan to loot Iraq and America for special interests, as irresponsible, arrogant, and wrong headed as it was, it was the plan. The rest they just made up as they went along. Iraqi Freedom, Iraqi democracy, rebuilding of infrastructure, and winning the hearts and minds were all after thoughts to disguise their motive.

How could Bush and company make the right decisions when people who stood to gain from America’s involvement were feeding their personal intelligence pipeline?

It was the real intelligence failure. The administration was duped into going to war for interests apart from those of the United States. They went on an imagined profit binge that was similar to gold fever. Incredibly, they found words to justify their actions.

Their intelligence sources told a few members of the administration exactly what they wanted to hear. This was possibly one of the reasons that OBL wanted the current administration to remain in power. OBL could have believed that the neocons were easier to deceive and were more predictable.

It is unbelievable that Americans continue to think the administration is stronger on national security, then the democrats, but if using a blunt instrument is a measure of strength, as opposed to the use of a scalpel, then I suppose it is. Their goals are similar, except that using a scalpel, the patient lives.

I am still surprised at how the Neocon, or just plain “Con”, mindset is still using all this Cold War stuff they need to frame their world view. “Islamofascism” and “totalitarian” Al Quaeda are just the latest spinoffs.

Anyhow, one of the real tragedies of all of this is that in Iraq, unlike the USSR where we really didn’t have much of a handle on the situation anyway, besides deciding to heavily fund the mafia for several years, in Iraq we probably did have the resources and the leverage to set up modern institutions.

The neocon/con idea that capitalism and democracy are somehow not cultural or historic, or even political (God forbid!), but just deep down Human Nature, are I’m sure a big part of why there was no “Phase 4″.

While it is likely that “no plan” was the plan, I think it is important to understand, as Klein did in her Harpers’ article “Baghdad Year Zero”, that chaos was probably not the anticipated result. The neo-cons are so delusional, and their ideology so implausible, that they really think you can bomb the hell out of a country, then sell it off, and turn it into a businessmans’ paradise overnight.

Or, as Ms. Klein describes their lunacy: “The role of good government, then, is to create the optimal conditions for corporations to pursue their bottomless greed, so that they in turn can meet the needs of the society.”

The importance in distinguishing between the neo-cons’ delusional anticipated result and the chaos that occurred is that the former is proof of the idiocy of their radical ideology. The primary reason why we continue to drive headlong to disaster is not the incompetence of the Bush administration, it is their irrational, unworkable ideology.

I end this with one more illuminating quote from Ms. Klein’s article to convince everyone to read it: “Iraq was going to change all that. In one place on Earth, the theory would finally be put into practice in its most perfect and uncompromised form. A country of 25 million would not be rebuilt as it was before the war; it would be erased, disappeared. In its place would spring forth a gleaming showroom for laissez-faire economics, a utopia such as the world had never seen.”