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. After the Invasion, the Hardball April 18, 2003 -- SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA (apj.us) -- Great minds think alike. No sooner had the world seen my piece on Iraqis emulating the hyperacquisitiveness of Ahmad Chalabi, than the brilliant Mark Fiore does a riff on the same subject -- except in his case, the role model for the Iraqi citizenry isn't a middle-aged émigré con artist, but the GOP Congress. But you know, the Iraqis wouldn't be so desperate to loot if they hadn't been starved by years of sanctions and bombings. Admittedly, things wouldn't have been so dire if Saddam had taken the cash he used for his palaces and plowed it into Iraq's infrastructure. But most of the people who make this argument give you funny looks if you make similar suggestions about Dick Cheney's, Jack Welch's and Rush Limbaugh's bank accounts. (Socialism for thee, but not for me, you understand.) In short, the Iraqi people need help. Desperately. And, since northern Iraq (or at least its all-important oil fields) is secure enough for hugely unpopular chiselers like Ahmed Chalabi to survive, it should be safe enough to allow the presence of a few humanitarian-aid workers from the United Nations. But that's not what he-man UN-hater Darth Rumsfeld thinks. He's refusing to allow a plane load of much-needed food and medical supplies, enough for forty thousand people, into the city of Irbil. As you'll remember from my last article, Rumsfeld thought that it was just fine to airlift the hugely unpopular Ahmed Chalabi, convicted embezzler and soon-to-be puppet viceroy, into northern Iraq, along with seven hundred groupies and hangers-on. But when it comes to letting in people who could actually do Iraq some good, Rummy balks. Why? Rumsfeld's also balking at securing much of anything besides the oil fields. This means that the UN aid workers who were evacuated from northern Iraq aren't able to return. Why? Could it be that it's because of his well-known hatred of the UN, and all that it stands for? You know, peace, harmony, working together, instead of letting one big bully dictate everything? Right now, he wants to turn on the oil spigots so his buddies at Bechtel and Halliburton can start raking in the spoils of post-Saddam Iraq: an Iraq they envision as being under their firm and exclusive control. But the UN is standing in his way by refusing to remove roadblocks to their profit making -- namely, the UN provisions calling for no weapons of mass destruction to exist in Iraq. (You remember those weapons of mass destruction? They were the reason Rummy and his fellow chickenhawk PNAC Platooners pushed to invade Iraq in the first place.) Rumsfeld and Company, of course, are having their tame parrots in the US media announce that the UN is refusing to allow the people of Iraq to get aid, but that's bogus: If Rummy cared about aiding the Iraqi people, he wouldn't be blocking the UN aid flights and relief workers from entering Iraq in the first place. Eleven percent of the children in northern Iraq are severely, dangerously malnourished. They cannot be made to wait any longer. But Rummy would rather a few thousand Iraqi kids starve to death in his game of hardball than admit that the UN is a much-needed force in the world today.
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