Imagine the Green Zone as the new Mid East Business Zone

May 8, 2008
by Cliff Carson

Recently, there was an article read on C-Span about building the Green Zone in Baghdad into a high dollar business zone around the Billion Dollar Embassy. The plan seems to be that Luxury Hotels and other business buildings will be built to house United States Business and Foreign business offices. The project is headed up by a Pentagon official and is expected to cost $5 Billion. You've probably already guessed who gets to pay for this boondoggle. The Marriott Corporation is said to have already committed to build the first hotel.

The plan is for it to open in five years.

Seems like land is now at a premium in the Green Zone with a going price of about $1000 per square meter (that's a plot of land about 39 inches on each side). Just envision laying down a yardstick to represent the length of each side, that's what $1000 will buy. My question is who's selling? Is it the people who owned the property (that would be Iraqis), or is it some consortium like Halliburton who's going to share it with the War Profiteers and their enablers?

I think it would be a safe bet that only well placed power and money will get the proceeds of those sales. You and I will get to pay the Billions that will go into the project. Remember Congress didn't want to stop this war; maybe we are now going to see why. Investors in the Green Zone have indicated the return on their investment will be very well worth the risk.

To go along with that, recently on The Situation Room, Glenn Beck came on as Wolf's Guest to inform us all that there was a $53 Trillion Asteroid approaching Earth and no one was paying attention. He was speaking of the Accrued debt that is piling up. In a way he's correct. Comptroller General of the United States David Walker has been warning about this oncoming economic disaster for the past two years.

And I have written some articles about the United States Accrued Liabilities (I call that debt) the last one being "The Financial Cost of the Bush Administration". Beck stated that when Bush came into office, the Accrued Liabilities were at $20 Trillion, now almost 8 years later $53 Trillion. Attention Mr. Beck, the $53 Trillion is the Debt Accrued up to September 1, 2007. I'll bet its bumping up to $60 Trillion by today.

Can anyone tell me if that $60 Trillion is the current figure?

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The cost of the Iraq war is now estimated to reach $3 Trillion by the time its over. If we divide three trillion by 25 million (the number of people left alive in Iraq today) we wind up with $120,000 for every man, woman, and child alive in Iraq. If the average family size in Iraq is at least five, then that means that instead of starting a war based on lies and criminal propaganda, we could have paid every family in Iraq more than ½ Million to sell out and move somewhere else, then we could have had the country without losing a single American life and there wouldn't be possibly a million dead Iraqis and over 2 million Iraqis who have left the country. What did our soldiers, our men and women, and the million Iraqis die for in this war? I submit that it was to make the rich and powerful richer and more powerful.

A hell of a thing to die for.

But then of course if we hadn't had the war, Halliburton and such, Bush, Cheney and buddies, the Mercenary Army Corporations, and other Military Industrial Complex providers wouldn't have been able to rake much of that $3 Trillion into their pockets. If I divide $3 Trillion by 300 million (population of the U S) the figure of $10,000 for every man woman and child in the United States is the result) In other words an average family of four would owe $40,000 for the war alone, and it's not over yet.

Should we really believe that the War Profiteers give a damn about the death and destruction caused both in Iraq and America? If they did, why wouldn't they have stopped it before it started? Just exactly what has the average American gained for the carnage visited upon Iraq? Seems like the answer to that is the prospect of another war on the horizon, and if we don't stop them they will find another reason to start wars until we do stop them.

And to think those instigators and providers of the war in Iraq are doing the old Iraq run up to start another one in Iran! Why would they want to start another war? Could it be that there's just too much potential profit to ignore the opportunity?