Yeah, Well Duh

Duncan calls the "early economic planners" the Free Market Fairies. Pretty funny, if you're not an Iraqi. Reuters (08.12.07), via Eschaton:

"Years of economic policy mistakes after the fall of Saddam Hussein left unemployed young Iraqis easy targets for recruitment by al Qaeda and other insurgents, a U.S. Defense Department official said on Sunday.

Economic policy mistakes hurt Iraq-US official

Paul sez that the "early economic planners had made the understandable mistake of assuming that a free market would rapidly emerge to replace what he described as Saddam's 'kleptocracy', and create full employment."

"This mistaken assumption led to a series of decisions which 'sowed the seeds of economic malaise and fuelled insurgent sympathies' after industrial production collapsed and imports flooded in to replace locally made goods."

"The Coalition Provisional Authority, headed by American Paul Bremer, was set up by the western allies after the fall of Saddam and largely ran Iraq until June 2004 when an interim Iraqi government took over."

And as it turned out, they had no fucking clue what they were doing. Guess in that sense the mistake was understandable.