DECEIVING WITH TRUTH:

Not neo-con, just plain greed: The U.S. campaign to have Iraq's debts forgiven shows how the Bush administration backs any market distortion that enriches its friends (NAOMI KLEIN, Dec. 20, 2003, Globe and Mail)

Contrary to all predictions, the heavy doors of Old Europe weren't slammed in James Baker's face as he asked forgiveness for Iraq's foreign debt. France and Germany appear to have signed on, and Russia is softening its line.

Just last week, there was virtual consensus that Mr. Baker's Drop the Debt Tour had been maliciously sabotaged by deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, whose move to shut out non-coalition partners from $18.6-billion (U.S.) in Iraq reconstruction contracts seemed designed to make Mr. Baker look like a hypocrite.

Only now it turns out that Mr. Wolfowitz may not have been undermining Mr. Baker at all, but rather acting as his enforcer. He showed up with a big stick -- the threat of economic exclusion from Iraq's potential $500-billion reconstruction -- just when Mr. Baker was about to speak softly.

Mr. Baker hardly needed Mr. Wolfowitz to make his mission look hypocritical; one can scarcely imagine an act more rife with historical ironies than James Baker impersonating Bono on Iraq's debt. The Iraqi people "should not be saddled with the debt of a brutal regime that was more interested in using funds to build palaces and build torture chambers and brutalize the Iraqi people," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

This is a nearly pluperfect--though unintelligible--example of a column that's become a staple of the pundits during the George W. Bush years: "I didn't think he was serious. He was. I didn't think his strategy made sense. It worked. This all goes to show how treacherous he is and that no matter how wrong I now seem, I was really right."

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 20, 2003 4:38 PM