McGovern offers plan to end Iraq occupation in new book

George McGovern and William Polk (middle eastern scholar) have a new book "Out of Iraq". Among other things, it has a plan to end Iraq occupation.

http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2006/10/29/news/top/news01.txt

Excerpt from article:

McGovern and Polk have a plan, a plan to exit in “an orderly way, on a reasonable schedule, and in a manner that prevents further damage to American interests.”

Even that, McGovern said, will not prevent inevitable damage in Iraq. That damage, however, will result whenever U.S. forces leave.

“A nation afflicted with a failing and costly policy is not well served by those who call for more of the same,” the authors write.

As part of the withdrawal, America should help fund and create an effective national police force, plus help establish an international force that would help police the country until the national force takes shape.

Other parts of McGovern's withdrawal plan include:

- Release all prisoners of war and close all detention centers.

- Assist with a national reconstruction corps.

- Withdraw from the Green Zone and turn it over to the Iraqi government.

- Remove all private security firms by stopping payments to them.

- Help rebuild the country, but let Iraqis do the work with American financial assistance.

- Make financial reparations to Iraqis for the loss of life and property damage.

- America should not object to Iraq voiding all contracts for oil exploration, development and marketing. The goal is to have those contracts open to free bidding.

- Assist with food, farming and health programs conducted under guidance by the United Nations.

Assuming even the highest costs for their proposals, Polk and McGovern estimate withdrawal would save $400 billion to $500 billion over the next two years.

That money is important - particularly to American taxpayers - but still not the most important aspects of withdrawal, the former senator said.

“Much more important but of incalculable value are the savings to be measured in what otherwise are likely to be large numbers of shattered bodies and lost lives,” the authors write. “Even if our estimates are unduly optimistic and the actual costs turn out to be far higher, we believe that implementing our plan for withdrawal would be perhaps the best investment ever made by our country.”

:hi: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2511080

His words should be heeded.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & Wrecking Crew simply cannot be trusted, and, unless we are able to impeach them, they are in charge. This of course means that nothing like this plan will be implemented. The whole point of everything in Iraq has been to loot us and the Iraqis blind. And even if they were to announce measures of this kind, we can expect only baldfaced lying, and more looting. Cheney's retirement fund (Halliburton) is already obscene with blood money), and so are all military contractors and arms dealers. And the oil companies are now set up with enough filthy lucre for whole private armies with which to kill peasants and leftists around the globe. So it may be the second tier of Bush fascist beneficiaries--the OTHER corporations--who get the lard. Say, Monsanto getting government welfare to provide Iraqis with terminator seeds and pesticides. Gap organizing sweatshops to sew burqas. Walmart and Home Depot offering all shorts of doohickeys for building homes in Iraq, paid for by US taxpayers. Pipes, wire, concrete, wood, toilet seat covers, microwave ovens, steel, roof tiles, hammers, hardhats, aluminum clipboards, police firearms, hospital equipment, pharmaceuticals--the lot--and the tankers to move all this stuff around the globe from the sources of raw materials, to the sweatshops, through the fingers of US-based global corporate predators, to Iraq. And just think of all the loot Bechtel, for instance, could squeeze out of US taxpayers' pockets designing clean water projects for Iraq (as they did for the nuke energy plants in No. Korea). And imagine Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld in charge of the bidding for all this, and the only oversight of it.

The trouble is that George McGovern won't be in charge of it. And the next best thing to a trustworthy U.S. administration would be some sort of special UN task force, with its administrators appointed by the Sec General (new guy from left-leaning So. Korea), to at least bring a "balance of power" into play on the use of reconstruction money. Say the US and UK contribute the funds, as reparations, but have NO POWER over the money (enough is enough!), and reps from all neighboring countries, and from the EU and No. Africa (closest to the peril of an unstable Middle East), and other contributors of funds and UN peacekeeping forces, form an administrative and oversight commission, to insure fair bidding and a broad base of interests in decision-making.

I just think we have to go back to square one. WE. HAVE. NO. RIGHT. TO. BE. THERE.

That is the fundamental problem. And unless this is recognized in any plan to repair this disaster--then the plan will merely be another form of occupation. Guaranteed, if Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are in charge of it. And more than likely for almost any U.S regime--in fact, possibly more likely under the Corporate Democrats. They may not loot everybody with both fists, like the Bushites have done, but they ARE Corporatists--basically hostile to indigenous business enterprise and local control of resources, and into forging markets for their Corporate donors. What better new Corporate market than a decimated country, with desperate supply and infrastructure engineering needs and lots of cheap labor--all to be funded by US taxpayers, in what could be the biggest US Corporate Welfare Scheme of all time?

McGovern has the right idea. A "truth and reconciliation" sort of effort, with funding as reparations, not as opportunities for MORE looting. But the key matter of HOW to instigate such a plan, with master thieves and mass murderers and torturers in charge of our government, is not addressed. The plan has much common sense and reasonableness--and perhaps can help the Democrats by staking out more ground on the common sense and reasonableness front: pushing the parameters of the discussion, from how we can kill more "insurgents" in a mad effort to create order out of the chaos that Bushites have created, to how, truly, to start repairing the damage.