Before the invasion, Iraq’s economy had been anchored by its national oil company and by two hundred state-owned companies, which produced the staples of the Iraqi diet and the raw materials of its industry, everything from cement to paper and cooking oil. The month after he arrived in his new job, Bremer announced that the two hundred firms were going to be privatized immediately. “Getting inefficient state enterprises into private hands,” Bremer said, “is essential for Iraq’s economic recovery.”
