147.

    BenAn picked up speed. The landscape blurred. The roar of the engine was deafening. Then suddenly we were at rest. We stood before the city of Bagdad shimmering like a mirage on the Tigris, a very strange mirage, a fouled mirage of an ancient skyline smothered in billboards and neon. Every mosque, every minaret, every building had a corporate logo squatting on its roof top or sprawled across its edifice. Conrad winced in pain as he pulled himself out of the seat. I picked up Nanette who was just now coming to. Pat stood on the hood of the Bugatti, hands on his hips with a look of revulsion on his face. I put an arm around Conrad. He leaned on me for support and growled, “This, Oliver is what Monkey Boy calls democracy in the Middle East. The world knew that America was after Iraq’s oil. What the world didn’t know was that Monkey Boy and his masters wanted not only the oil of Iraq but everything in the entire nation: the factories, the farms, the water, the electricity, the sewers, every little business in every little bazaar in the country. A proconsul was installed. Paul Bremer imposed one hundred imperial orders on the people of Iraq. Order 14 censored all Iraqi media and resulted in the trashing and closing of newspapers and radio stations. Order 17 immunized all foreign contractors from Iraqi law including rape and murder. Order 39 privatized all state-run agencies, allowed 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses with forty-year contracts. Order 81 made it a crime for farmers to save seed from season to season and forced them to purchase and grow genetically modified crops, pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer from American agribusiness.”