Baghdad Year Zero

[HTO]

I did a search on the forum to see if this topic was covered already but couldn't find it so I thought I'd add it on.

Baghdad Year Zero is Naomi Klein's accounts of visiting Iraq one year after the war had started. Her investigations reveal the chilling purpose behind the US led war on iraq:

One of the things from this article that stood out for me the most was that the bombing of Iraq is actually viewed as "economic shock therapy" among economists:

A declassified CIA “Counterintelligence Interrogation” manual from 1963 describes how a trauma inflicted on prisoners opens up “an interval—which may be extremely brief—of suspended animation, a kind of psychological shock or paralysis. . . . [A]t this moment the source is far more open to suggestion, far likelier to comply.” A similar theory applies to economic shock therapy, or “shock treatment,” the ugly term used to describe the rapid implementation of free-market reforms imposed on Chile in the wake of General Augusto Pinochet’s coup.

...and the reasons why there is such resistance from the Iraqis (aside from the fact that many have lost loved ones):

The tone of Bremer’s tenure was set with his first major act on the job: he fired 500,000 state workers, most of them soldiers, but also doctors, nurses, teachers, publishers, and printers. Next, he flung open the country’s borders to absolutely unrestricted imports: no tariffs, no duties, no inspections, no taxes. Iraq, Bremer declared two weeks after he arrived, was “open for business.”

Baghdad Year Zero: Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia. Harpers (2004)

Honestly!

 

[moghrabi]

Thank you for this informative article. I hope more members read it. BTW, welcome to Canadian Content. Please enjoy your stay.

 

[Reverend Blair]

Naomi Klein's stories from and about Iraq should be required reading for everybody who wishes to have an informed opinion on the war. Unfortunately those who support the invasion refuse to consider her words or the words of others who do similar work.