| "I thought we would be further along at this point, but we have a lot of momentum building in terms of support and a lot of momentum building in terms of finances," Brinkley said. "America's economic might has still not been brought to bear in Iraq." |
You may ask, What is Party neocomrade P. A. Brinkley fallin' behind with? It goes like this:
| More than a year after the Pentagon launched an ambitious effort to reopen Iraqi factories and persuade U.S. firms to purchase their goods, defense officials acknowledge that the initiative has largely failed because American retailers have shown little interest in buying products made in Iraq. |
The top Harvarditarian bosses set this "ambitious effort" up at DOD, notice, no foolin' around with AID or Foggy Bottom or even Dr. Hoover's dear old Department of Commerce! That means they musta been really serious about wantin' some victory for a change. Instead of which they got only, well, . . .
| The Pentagon thought U.S. firms would be willing to help revitalize the war-torn Iraqi economy and create jobs for young men who might otherwise join the insurgency. But the effort -- once considered a pillar of the U.S. strategy in Iraq, alongside security operations and political reform -- has suffered from a pervasive lack of security and an absence of reliable electricity and other basic services. (...) Three officials who have worked with the Pentagon's Task Force to Support Business and Stability Operations in Iraq said in recent interviews that, although some factories have achieved limited success, the larger effort to link Iraqi industries with U.S. retailers has been a "failure." In an interview last Friday,[1] Paul A. Brinkley, the deputy undersecretary of defense in charge of the task force, acknowledged that promising opportunities with U.S. companies have slipped away as the war's popularity fell. So far, only one American company has agreed to purchase clothing from an Iraqi factory, in Mosul. |
Do you suppose it possible, Mr. Bones, that Neocomrade P. A. Brinkley was (is?) simply unaware that there were (and are) any pesky little problems of success remaining about technical details like security and electricity out in the Dubya-blessed Land of Peace and Freedom? I can picture him to myself as piously refusin' ever to glance at the [exp. del.] mainstream media, but swallowin' whole every instance of Iraq-the-Model™ happy talk and GOP-booster sectobabble that came his way, whether from the op-ed columns of the ever-august Wall Street Jingo or from some more downmarket purveyor of tripe and baloney.
Settin' up shop amidst the violence professionals shows that somebody far up the Rancho Crawford totem pole must have fancied this particular AEIdeological moonbeam, but once set up, the violence pros down the corridor cannot have had much to contribute to it out of their special expertise. It is not their business, after all, to keep track of the Mammon-worshipper tribes of central North America so as to foresee such difficulties as
| Iraqi officials have recently highlighted pending deals with retailers such as Wal-Mart and J.C. Penney, businesses that they said were considering purchasing Iraqi products from the few local factories that have restarted. But the two companies said last week that they are not in negotiations to buy Iraqi products, citing Iraq's uncertain future and the questionable viability of potential suppliers there. (...) What Brinkley described as an early "groundswell" of support from U.S. companies has waned. Business experts said that was caused by the uncertain security situation, concerns that supplies could get cut off and the prospect that Congress could end the U.S. involvement in the war. |
The intrepid reporter ends up insinuating that the slaves of Mammon ought to have supported P. A. Brinkley's moonbattery out of sentimental (or "ideological," if you insist) affinity, which implies a serious misunderstanding of late capitalism. Happily his final quotee more or less sets that right and brings us back to a more accurate view of how St. Ike's "military-industrial-academic complex" really operates:
| John H. Sununu, president of the consulting firm JHS Associates, said that he has been interested in the idea for more than a year. He noted that he has been talking to clients about acquiring Iraqi products or using Iraqi services but has not gained much traction. "If all the companies were doing was for the short term, they could do it altruistically," said Sununu, a former Republican governor of New Hampshire and a chief of staff for President George H. W. Bush. "For the long term, there has to be some potential for it being a good business decision, as well. They're struggling with balancing their natural inclination to do good with their business inclination to have to do well." |
==
It might be amusing to pursue the neocomrade's daydreams about "America's economic might [fully] brought to bear in Iraq," but it is dreadfully late in the course of their aggression to play that game, and who can deny that the clowns have already thrown godzillions of bucks at the former Iraq? True believers from the ranks of the Political Capitalist subfaction of the Big Party are free to maintain that many fewer bucks would have done the trick, had only they been privatesectorian bucks, but that tail can't wag the elephant when the elephant's other subfactions -- Big Management proper, Political Christojudaeans, Mugwumps and Weekly Standardizers all alike -- are not much interested in its peculiar dogmas.
In the real world, Little Brother and the Big Managers must fund their Kiddie Krusadin' with money from Congress -- or, just barely conceivably, with money from Sa‘údiyya and the Gulfie dwarfs after the supraconstitutional manner of Col. Oliver North -- else there will be no more Kiddie Krusadin'.
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[1] Today is the Friday after the Friday before, which indicates that the Washington Posties do not think as highly of this gem as they ought to.
On the other hand, and perhaps to make up for lost time, the "Today's Papers" summatorialist for WP corporate subsidiary Slate modestly burbles about "an A1 hollowing-out of a pillar of the U.S. strategy in Iraq" —the effort to get U.S. businesses to buy Iraqi products." He then becomes emboldened to contradict what he summatorializes from: compare "The problem seems to be that there are almost no Iraqi products to buy" (in Mr. Ryan Grim) with anything you like in his original. Insofar as Señorito Brinkley's HVS hasty puddin' has a unifyin' theme, it would be more like "the uncertainty around the situation in Iraq" according to Mr. Josh White, teller of the tale. That deep insight is repeated several times in one wording or another.
Mr. Grim obviously does not think Big Management Party invasions and semiconquests and occupations and counterinsurges are quite as warm and cuddly as some of Slate's other summatorializers do. (With a surname like that, maybe the man thinks nothing at all is warm and cuddly!) He goes so far as to play up some hot poop of an ad hominem nature about P. A. Brinkley that I shall not sully my keyboard by repeating. Myself, I'd even have hesitated to include the hollowing-out of strategy pillars. That vivacity is not over the line into Dr. Limbaugh's "drive-by media" zone, but it is too close to the border for comfort. Anyway, it is simple bad judgment to account this malarkey a "pillar" of anything whatsoever -- obviously it is only a toothpick at most.
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