"Iraqis are some of the strongest, most enthusiastic people I know," asserted Ramzi Kysia, a one-time resident of Baghdad, "if given the chance to help themselves." The U.S. is not giving them that chance, he maintained.

Kysia, speaking as former director of Washington lobbyists the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (www.epic-usa.org), addressed members of Citizens for Global Solutions Pittsburgh - the 56^th annual gathering of the local chapter of this humanitarian think tank - filling a second-floor ballroom at the University Club in Oakland. Kysia witnessed the U.S. invasion and the first months of occupation during his two-year residency in Iraq, and worked with Baghdad university students to launch an independent paper, available at www.almuajaha.com. As an American of Lebanese descent and a practicing Muslim, Kysia has developed an intimate perspective on the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and the political maneuverings behind the continuing civil unrest.

"It genuinely seems as if nobody in the Bush administration spent five minutes thinking about, let alone planning for, what they would do when they were finally in charge of the country," said Kysia. "The only word to describe the American occupation is…incompetence."

He recalled three Iraqi boys detained by American soldiers at the Palestine Hotel, in an area of Baghdad that is home to an army of foreign journalists and dignitaries. The adolescents were carrying between them US$350. "The average salary in Iraq at the time was $30 a month. If these boys had been American, they’d have been carrying the equivalent of fifty or sixty thousand dollars." A soldier ultimately determined that the youths had earned the cash, and allowed them to return to the streets. "It struck me [that the U.S. soldier] really thought he was being helpful. He didn’t recognize the danger they were in."

When American talking heads refer to a "secure" Iraq, it’s generally a segue into reports of border patrols, fanatical, possibly terrorist insurgents, and attacks on American soldiers. Security, to an Iraqi citizen, is a much more domestic commodity, and one in rare supply.

"[Street] crime is out of control in Iraq," said Kysia. Theft, rape, and kidnapping have become widespread and criminals "well-organized and well-armed," since U.S. forces disbanded Iraqi police immediately after the so-called end of the war. "These were regular guys from their communities," Kysia testified. Pre-liberation, the state committed tortures and executions, but street crime was almost non-existent, thanks to the same totalitarian rule. Ironically, Baghdad has gone from the third-safest city in the world to having a murder rate per capita ten times that of New York City’s. "Had [Iraqi police] been welcomed back to their jobs, it might be different today," Kysia speculated.

"The most consistent, troubling, and unacceptable reason for this devastation [in Iraq]…has been the failure of the entire world community to see the Iraqi people as we see ourselves."

Economic sanctions during the 1990’s ruined Iraqi currency, skyrocketed unemployment, and decimated the educational system. "When 150 dinar bought a car in 1987, under sanctions, it bought a pack of cigarettes," said Kysia. Anachronistic epidemics of cholera and dysentery swept the population as water plants failed and a half million tons of sewage daily washed into the Tigris and Euphrates. Child mortality rates doubled. In 1998, facing both the immanent conclusion of U.N. inspections reporting that Iraq was not in possession of WMD’s, and a Republican-led Congress in an election year, the Clinton administration gave the go to "Operation Desert Fox," a bombing campaign that resulted in "collateral damage" amounting to 10,000 dead civilians. One-hundred thousand people are estimated to have died in conditions of extreme poverty, malnourishment, and sickness, as a direct result of 13 years of U.S.-led sanctions.

"U.S. policy in Iraq under both parties’ administrations has been nothing short of criminal," Kysia emphasized.

Kysia pointed to the continued absence of reliable electricity, and a poll of Iraqi citizens revealing a general ignorance of the recently drafted interim constitution, as two consequences of allowing "laissez-faire ideologues" to privatize Iraq’s infrastructure and appoint government officials largely behind closed doors. He stressed the need to internationalize decision-making, and called upon the press to make the process more transparent.

Kysia also called for the forgiveness of Iraq’s half a trillion dollars of international debt, citing Alexander Sack’s 1927 doctrine of "odious debt," which instructs that debt incurred by a despotic or tyrannical government against the will and without consent of governed citizens should be unequivocally forgiven by the world community. "They lent the money to Saddam. It’s on them."

"When the IMF is agreeing with you, that’s weird."

Unemployment in Iraq remains well above 50%, largely because foreign corporations winning contracts in Iraq often transport foreign employees to run their operations. Likening the situation to America’s Great Depression, Kysia cited FDR’s Public Works Administration as a model for reform, and the antidote to gross corporate mismanagement. Having work gave people "a reason to hope," he said.

"Iraqis will have little faith" in American intentions until that happens, Kysia warned.