Iraq: Future Strategic Relationship

I accept the hon. Gentleman's point, but that is an implication. Let me read what Sir Jock Stirrup, the head of our defence forces, said in a speech on 1 December:"““So I want…to lay to rest some of the myths that have emerged,””" including the myth that we"““failed to support the Iraqis during charge of the knights.””" He continued:"““The UK made repeated attempts to deal with extremist militia violence in the south east. We planned and sought to execute numerous Special Forces operations.””" Presumably that includes the ones where people were dressed in Arab headdresses or dressed as Muslim clerics. He went on:"““We also developed Operation Salamanca—an ambitious, comprehensive and hard-edged plan to confront and subdue the militias. All of these combined powerful offensive action with stabilisation and development activity. But each was, in the event, emasculated. Then, suddenly, Prime Minister Maliki decided that he personally was going to lead the Iraqi army into action in Basra, and that he was going to do it immediately. There was little in the way of planning, limited intelligence, no preparation of the battlespace—just get on with it. I have to say that we felt rather torn by this decision. It was, from a professional perspective, no way to launch an operation. On the other hand, the Iraqi Prime Minister was giving the political lead we'd been seeking all along. In any event, as our American colleagues in Baghdad said, this was an express train that couldn't be stopped…We were asked to provide air support, but there were no precise targets and huge uncertainty over the location of civilians and the dangers of collateral damage.””" That was Sir Jock's point, but I want to make the point that our whole role has been an interference in the electoral process. There is an electoral dispute, a political one, between al-Maliki's forces and al-Sadr's forces, and we have increasingly been on the side of al-Maliki. We have been interfering, and Operation Charge of the Knights was part of that process to try to deliver the election and to defeat al-Sadr. That is not our role. Our British troops should not be dying as a result of interference in the Iraqi political process. I think that that is atrocious. Another point relates to the special forces. Our troops that are going to remain in Iraq will be special forces, again taking action and interfering, I suspect, in the election. There has also been massive embezzlement. On ““Panorama”” in June, Jane Corbin's programme ““Daylight Robbery”” talked about the $23 billion intended for the reconstruction of Iraq, which was embezzled, overpaid or which simply vanished in the form of $10,000 bundles. My last major quote comes from ““Shock Therapy”” by Naomi Klein, which really illustrates the robbery involved. She says:"““The nonstop conveyor belt was part of what was so enraging to Iraqis about the U.S. insistence that they adapt to a strict free market, without state subsidies or trade protections. In one of his many lectures to Iraqi business-people, Michael Fleischer explained that 'protected businesses never, never become competitive.' He appeared to be impervious to the irony that Halliburton, Bechtel, Parsons, KPMG, RTI, Blackwater and all the other U.S. corporations that were in Iraq to take advantage of the reconstruction were part of a vast protectionist racket whereby the U.S. government had created their markets with war, barred their competitors from even entering the race, then paid them to do the work, while guaranteeing them a profit to boot—all at taxpayer expense. The Chicago School crusade, which emerged with the core purpose of dismantling the welfare statism of the New Deal, had finally reached its zenith in this corporate New Deal. It was a simpler, more stripped-down form of privatization—the transfer of bulky assets was not even necessary: just straight corporate gorging on state coffers. No investment, no accountability, astronomical profits.””" She went on to say:"““The Bush Cabinet had in fact launched an anti-Marshall Plan, its mirror opposite in nearly every conceivable way. It was a plan guaranteed from the start to further undermine Iraq's badly weakened industrial sector and to send Iraqi unemployment soaring. Where the post-Second World War plan had barred foreign firms from investing, to avoid the perception that they were taking advantage of countries in a weakened state, this scheme did everything possible to entice corporate America (with a few bones tossed to corporations based in countries that joined the 'Coalition of the Willing'). It was this theft of Iraq's reconstruction funds from Iraqis, justified by unquestioned, racist assumptions about U.S. superiority and Iraqi inferiority—and not merely the generic demons of 'corruption' and 'inefficiency'—that doomed the project from the start. None of the money went to Iraqi factories so they could reopen and form the foundation of a sustainable economy, create local jobs and fund a social safety net. Iraqis had virtually no role in this plan at all. Instead, the U.S. federal government contracts, most of them issued by USAID, commissioned a kind of country-in-a-box, designed in Virginia and Texas, to be assembled in Iraq. It was, as the occupation authorities repeatedly said, 'a gift from the people of the United States to the people of Iraq'—all Iraqis needed to do was unwrap it. Even Iraqis' low-wage labor wasn't required for the assembly process because the major U.S. contractors such as Halliburton, Bechtel and the California-based engineering giant Parsons preferred to import foreign workers whom they felt confident they could control. Once again Iraqis were cast in the role of””—"