FURTHER DEMOCRATIC DERANGEMENT

Who Profits from Erasing Iraq's Debt? (Heather Wokusch, July 28, 2003, CommonDreams)

Outspoken Pentagon advisor Richard Perle recently called for Iraq's debt to be cancelled as a way of teaching banks about the "moral hazard of ... lend[ing] to a vicious dictatorship."

Fair enough. Other countries with "odious debt" incurred under nasty regimes may be granted debt forgiveness. Why not Iraq?

Why not indeed. A war profiteer like Perle lecturing on morality is doubtful enough, but who in today's occupied Iraq will really profit from debt forgiveness, the Iraqi people or companies like Halliburton?

At stake is more than $184 billion of pending contracts and debts against Iraq, many of which transpired before the 1991 invasion of Kuwait. In other words, even deals inked when Saddam Hussein was considered a US ally could now be considered odious debt.

No small coincidence that the countries slated to lose most from an Iraqi write-off include Russia, France and Germany: Bush's axis-of-just-as-evil for opposing the recent invasion of Iraq. [...]

Bottom line, until a stable government is in place, truly representative of the Iraqi people, there should be no debt cancellations - reschedulings or delayed payment allowances perhaps, but no write-offs.

To oppose a policy that you'd otherwise support, just because you're worried that your fellow advocates are more odious than the debt, and even though your opposition will hurt the people you're supposedly trying to help, is very nearly clinically insane. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 29, 2003 9:56 AM