I found Andrea Crandall’s “Serbia in Our Own Image” (Correspondence, July) very informative.  Her article brings to mind two subsidiary points.

Why has the U.S. bombing in Iraq destroyed much of the infrastructure of the country?  This, to me, seemed unnecessary if the aim of the war was merely to defeat the enemy.  Applying Miss Crandall’s analysis of Serbia to Iraq, one could interpret it to mean that our bombing was designed to make it possible to hand out tax-guaranteed loans to favored banks in order to rebuild or buy up the infrastructure that we had destroyed—and, incidentally, to enable them to buy up any remaining competition in order to control the country’s politics.  Miss Crandall does mention that Larry Summers and Paul Wolfowitz were involved.

Is Iraq a repeat of the disastrous “privatization” in Russia that permitted the oligarchs to gain control of much of Russian industry and infrastructure?  Apparently, privatization and modernization are covers for tax-guaranteed loans so that international financiers can use taxpayer dollars to buy up a country’s infrastructure and thereby control a new order.

        —Monty Baltas
Alexandria, VA

Miss Crandall Replies:

One purpose of destroying Iraqi infrastructure was to profit from rebuilding it.  (Cheney/Haliburton and Senator Feinstein’s URS Corp. and Perini Corp. contracts spring to mind.)  Financial interests would also like to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure in a way that is more politically appealing to themselves.  Iraq is one link in the chain between Caspian oil and Israel’s ports at Eilat and Ashkelon.  The new Iraqi pipe systems will route oil through “America’s Ally in the Middle East.”

A handful of cronies will end up owning Iraq, much like the oligarchs own Russia.  And, of course, these oligarchs will be sympathetic toward the international financial elite.

Mr. Baltas has touched on a very important point: “Privatization,” “modernization,” and globalism are tools of control through debt.  It is no coincidence that organizations pushing globalization, such as the Trilateral Commission or the Council on Foreign Relations, are closely connected to international banking.  Economic control is political control, and a “new order” is just what they are planning for us.