148.

   “80% of the reconstruction contracts went to American firms, 18% to other foreigners and 2% to Iraqis. Then the Americans fired the entire government work force, a half a million bureaucrats, doctors, nurses, teachers, publishers, printers and the entire army. Iraqis lost their their businesses, their jobs, their livelihoods, their identity. As unemployment rose to 67%, the country was flooded with cheap foreign labor. Tariffs were eliminated, taxes were eliminated, and companies could take 100% of any profit out of the country. ‘One well stocked 7-Eleven could knock out thirty Iraqi stores; a Walmart could take over the country.’ was a popular phrase. Corporate America sat back and waited for an explosion of American and foreign investment and unfettered Free Market profit. An explosion happened alright. America found itself in the middle of a three-way civil war between Kurds, Sunni and Shiite in a country cobbled together out of the cobbled together Ottoman Empire, and Americans were the focus of a people furious at their occupiers. Americans began to die quickly. Then there was Abu Ghraib. There is not much a people won’t do when their occupiers resort to torture. When four American mercenaries turned down the wrong street in Falluja they were murdered, and their bodies desecrated. When the American war machine took its revenge, nothing was spared on the city including 500-pound napalm bombs and white phosphorus. Artillery, tanks, jets, cobra and Apache helicopters rained death down on the city. It was Hallabja all over again. It was Guernica. It was Dresden. America has killed over a hundred thousand Iraqis. Millions are exiled. The country is in ruins and awash in depleted uranium.”
   A sudden explosion filled the air with flame and body parts. I passed out.