Real American Agenda Now Becoming Clear

A superpower like the United States does not invade a pipsqueak power like Iraq — outside the framework of international law and against worldwide opposition — only for its publicly stated reasons, in this case, fighting terrorism, liberating Iraq and triggering a domino effect for the democratization of the Middle East.

The real American agenda is only now becoming clearer.
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'If Fish Can Feel Pain, Then Maybe Iraqi Children Can, Too'
by Terry Jones

The recent report by the Royal Society suggesting that fish can feel pain will come as a severe blow to all those anglers who have hitherto operated on the principle that fish are incapable of feeling anything. It comes as an even bigger shock to those of us who have for so long applied the same principle to human beings.

If fish can feel pain, does this mean that a 13-year-old child, picked up in Afghanistan, hooded, flown several thousand miles to Cuba and kept in a chicken coop, may also experience physical sensations bordering on the uncomfortable?

Like Tony Blair, I thought the Guantanamo Bay camp was 'an unsatisfactory situation', but it never occurred to me that the human beings in there would be capable of feeling discomfort.
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Top Employer Gone, Iraqis Scuffle for Jobs

On Saturday, hundreds of angry Iraqis swarmed into the lobby of the Palestine Hotel, which is home to most foreign journalists here, and protested for hours about their inability to get work from the American administrators, who now have their headquarters inside the marble halls of the Republican Palace.

"Don't try to persuade us that the U.S.A., after 40 days, cannot constitute a government that controls everything," said Younis Abbas Khamis, a 55-year-old government worker. "If this chaos lasts forever, there will be a revolution."

Many Iraqis have fallen victim to hucksters who sold them job applications, but who had no connection to the American administrators.

Even without the sting of local con artists, job prospects here are horrendous, and tempers are rising. By some estimates, as much as 75 percent of the Iraqi work force made a living from either the government or the military — both of which have now collapsed.
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  thanks to The Agonist

So, how is 75% of the Iraqi work force going to get jobs so that they can get money so they can do things like eat?