These mandated selling off several hundred state-run enterprises … Many of these orders were in violation of the Geneva and Hague Conventions concerning war, occupation, and international relations, which mandate that an occupying power must guard, rather than sell off the assets of the occupied country. But if illegal under international law, the orders could be implemented by a sovereign Iraqi government. To that end, an interim government was appointed by the United States in late 2003 and was pressed to ratify the orders when it was pronounced “sovereign” in 2004. And lest future elected governments not be so pliable, one order declares that no elected Iraqi government will have the power to alter them.

Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, loc. 275