Rumsfeld to Bush: Initiate jobs program for unemployed Iraqi youth

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT/AP: Iraq Experts Weigh Jobs Program
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 6, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Just as debate rages over sending more U.S. troops to Iraq, there are differing views about whether economic incentives such as micro-loans and U.S.-funded jobs programs would coax militiamen to trade guns for tools.

Some reconstruction experts say giving Iraqis jobs that include clearing streets and fixing water and sanitation systems would produce little economic benefit for a country on the brink of all-out civil war.

Others say civilian jobs programs -- an idea President Bush is considering -- are designed to build security. Only when violence is under control, they say, can business flourish.

Details have not been disclosed about the economic incentives Bush will announce as early as Wednesday. But those familiar with the plan say he is favoring short-term jobs programs, extending micro-loans to small business and increasing the amount of money that military commanders can spend quickly on local projects to improve the daily lives of Iraqis....

***

In a classified memo Donald H. Rumsfeld wrote two days before he resigned as defense secretary, he told the president: ''Initiate a massive program for unemployed youth. It would have to be run by U.S. forces, since no other organization could do it.''...

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-Economy.html

[devilgrrl]

1. It's incredible how much this administration does for everyone else but the US

Why do they hate America?

[SammyWinstonJack]

6. It's amazing how much this administration does for their corrupt corporate cronies

and how much they don't do for everyone else, including most Americans. Actually, it's sickening!

[dogday]

2. Wow, why didn't they think of this earlier?

Cannot believe they have waited all this time to bring this idea to light :sarcasm:

[katsy]

5. And deny halliburton skyrocketing profits?

To wage a not for profit war? Unthinkable to the whores in this administration.

They better take note, what's happening in Iraq can happen here also with high unemployment, underemployment, high poverty rates etc.

We're dealing with rapists here. They rape countries for profit.

[mediaman007]

3. Clearly they mismanaged the Iraq situation from the outset...

All they really wanted to do was play with their war toys and then buy new ones.

[tabasco]

4. There ya' have it, folks! Rummy the dummy's plan to fix Iraq.

A US tax dollar paid-for Iraqi Job Corps.

Great thinking once again from genius Rumsfeld.

[rodeodance]

7. rummy covered his butt before he went.

[Union Thug]

8. How about a federal jobs program for Americans, Rummy? n/t

[teryang]

9. This demonstrates a complete lack of insight to the insurgency

Until a political resolution takes place, commerce is not allowed to take place. This is an age old Arab tactic, particularly in Bahgdad.

Most of the mass slaughter by bombings of Iraqi civilians takes place at job hiring points or commercial locations or other recruitment or employment venues.

WAKE UP AMERICA!

[DeepModem Mom]

10. You're right. I'm remembering recent back-to-back bombings...

where men were lined up waiting for employment.

[teryang]

11. Where the society is perceived to be unjust, the ruler will not be...

...allowed to maintain the conditions of order necessary for elites to enjoy the benefits and levies upon commerce to support order. This is a particularly Arab response to perceived injustice. The injustice may not be understood in the western sense, but in the sense of traditional rule. Those perquisites of local income, status, prestige, trades, levies and licenses of the past cannot just be eliminated and a new order reimposed without going through the process of anarchy and rectification.

The presence of outside forces (invaders) is unnatural and foreign in this process, the development of militias, armed groups and tribes and acts of terrorism aimed directly at commercial activity particularly that which is intended to support a new order is, in a historical sense, perfectly Arab.

The anecdotal reportage of how and when "terrorism" occurs supports this thesis, but its roots are deeply historical.