We’ve come to the place in our Horror/Thriller where credibility is strained — as we munch our popcorn and balance our drink on our knee, the lead character [who we've grown to despise although he remains endlessly fascinating] is about to open the door behind which we know All Manner of Fanged Night Creatures wait to rush in … he’s been warned repeatedly by the cast members who are no longer sympathetic to his naive, blustering charms, all of them having been victimized once too often by what appears to be congenital rashness and arrogance. Most would gladly push him through the door and be rid of him, but there’s no way to open it without Hell entering.
For just a moment we have to admire the casting of this dumbf__k, because it’s entirely believable that he will open the door at any moment in some kind of psychotic fugue state, but we have the sudden revelation that the script writer is just a hack, putting such an incredibly disastrous option in his hands and leading us to regret that we paid matinee prices to spend time on this nightmare of an entertainment. You can feel the discomfort in the theatre.
This is the place where we put a hand over our eyes … or get up, leave the theatre and warn everyone we know, including those standing in line for the next showing, not to support this disaster of a plot line … this disaster of a president. This is the place where we demand our money back, and get pickets together to boycott the damned thing.
So, having seen this movie before, it’s only a matter of watching to see any new plot twists. Having discarded and ignored all sound advice from the ‘reality community,’ Dubby is set to announce his “new” [old, dead, suicidal] plans on Wednesday night, while a pro-active Congress and public already knows what’s coming.
Having discarded the generals that stood in his way, Dub’s found a couple that will go Whoop Ass for him; there are a few gung-ho comments, linked below … and I’ve included an op/ed that gives us a little info on the under-reported and unprecedented appointment of a Naval Commander to this elite group — handy to have on board when Iran growls too loud, eh?
Having consulted his NeoCons, Dub’s throwing out carrots for the Iraqi people to the tune of a billion in a “jobs program” [which should work the public nerves nicely, since we DON'T have one,] and attempting to lure in civilians [young, faithful Pubs] who want to “fast track” by going to populate our new Baghdad Hilton, the permanent and palatial US Embassy that Bush has built for 500 mil.
And while the Dem Congress has proactively promised stringent oversight on Dubby’s war budget, Justin Raimondo and an article that includes comments by Joe Biden, below, give us a little reality therapy on just how much can be done without a complete defunding of the war, something the Dems aren’t seriously considering.
The last few articles are worthy — what happens next with the oil fields as the jingle of cash fills crony pockets at the expense of this “liberated” country — and a brief BuzzFlash rant on how the two despots, Dub and Saddam, have become interchangeable.
At the end, I’ve posted an article that I like to call Runs With Frogs [a Dancing With Wolves reference] and you’ll quickly see why … it’s a don’t miss bit of trivia coming out of Iraq that will make you pause to wonder about tribalism, cultural values and understandings, and the possibility of bringing these folks into any kind of peaceful accord. It’s also an example of why it’s important to have SOME notion of the people you’re trying to “liberate” BEFORE you go Shock ‘n Awe.
So, settle back, kids — now we’ve noticed how the stage is set and it’s just a matter of watching the little bits of business with which the players entertain us … until the stunningly untalented and disturbing protagonist opens the damned door.
[And let's see to it that this is his LAST leading role, 'kay?]
A fascinating collection. Pass the ju-ju-be’s.
Jude
War Could Last Years, Commander Says
JOHN F. BURNS, NYT
January 8, 2007
BAGHDAD, Jan. 7 — The new American operational commander in Iraq said Sunday that even with the additional American troops likely to be deployed in Baghdad under President Bush’s new war strategy it might take another “two or three years” for American and Iraqi forces to gain the upper hand in the war…
[open for article]
Critics Say ‘Surge’ Is More of The Same
Past Troop Buildups Have Not Quelled Iraq
Michael Abramowitz, Robin Wright and Ann Scott Tyson, WaPo
Sunday, January 7, 2007
President Bush is putting the final touches on his new Iraq policy amid growing skepticism inside and outside the administration that the emerging package of extra troops, economic assistance and political benchmarks for the Baghdad government will make any more than a marginal difference in stabilizing the country…
[open for article]
Powell Opposes “Surge”
Political Wire
January 07, 2007
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, “who has gone public with criticism of President Bush’s Iraq policy, is caustic in private about the proposed ’surge’ of 30,000 additional U.S. troops,” according to Robert Novak. “Powell noted that the recent congressional delegation to Iraq headed by Sen. John McCain heard from combat officers that they wanted more troops.”
Said Powell: “The colonels will always say they need more troops. That’s why we have generals.”
A footnote: “Senior Republican senators are trying to get word to the president that any troop surge would be dead on arrival in Congress.” ++
Biden On Iraq:
Bush Will “Be Able To Keep The Troops There Forever, Constitutionally, If He Wants To”…
MICHAEL R. GORDON and JEFF ZELENY, The New York Times
January 7, 2007
Whether lawmakers are prepared to advocate legislative steps to withhold funds from an expanded mission is unclear. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said Sunday that as a practical matter, there was little that lawmakers could do to prevent Mr. Bush from expanding the American military mission in Iraq.
“You can’t go in like a Tinkertoy and play around and say you can’t spend the money on this piece and this piece,” Mr. Biden said on the NBC News program “Meet the Press.”
“He’ll be able to keep the troops there forever, constitutionally, if he wants to.”
“As a practical matter,” Mr. Biden added, “there is no way to say, ‘Mr. President, stop.’ ”
Read the entire article here. ++
What this country needs now is a surge arrestor
Weldon Berger
Jan 7 2007
I was going to write something sarcastic about Fred Kagan, the man who converted Bush to the theology of The Surge, but why bother. It’s not his fault that the president takes him and his co-genius, retired General John Keane, seriously. It is what it is, which isn’t much. Let’s move on.
The man in charge of implementing The Surge is General David Petraeus, the new commander of everybody with a uniform in Iraq, excepting mercenaries and people who bought the uniforms in the marketplace, or stole them, or were given them to make mass murder and ethnic cleansing less of an effort.
Petraeus is actually a good choice. He did well during the first months of the occupation when he was in charge of the Mosul area. US commanders then had considerable slush funds at their disposals, and he used his to hire Iraqis for various projects recommended by local citizens of stature, which is apparently one of the elements of the new plan. Then his money ran out and he couldn’t get more — Halliburton’s needs were more urgent — and then Anbar province started to go rapidly south and his division was diverted there, and then Mosul went to pieces, and then so did the rest of the country.
So he got high marks the first time around. When he went back, it was to take on an assignment that probably made his first one look oh so easy: training the Iraqi army. Again, he did all the things that should have worked, embedding US troops with the Iraqi forces, stationing them long-term in neighborhoods so residents could get used to their presence and build relationships, using them more as peacekeepers than fighters. But by that time the militias were asserting themselves, the country was falling apart and the Iraqi troops didn’t show much of an appetite for shooting their friends and neighbors or getting shot at. He spent a year doing that; things were far worse when he left than when he got there.
His next assignment was writing the Army’s new counterinsurgency manual, which includes an emphasis on the things he was doing when he was there, to the extent he was allowed to do them and to the extent the situation allowed, and which appear to be at the heart of The Surge. The talk about pumping money into neighborhood economies comes from him, and you’ll hear a lot in coming days about gaining the confidence of the locals and integrating US troops into Iraqi army units.
The problem with that approach at this late date is that the political wing of one of the militias, Moqtada al Sadr’s Mehdi Army, is more or less propping up the government; they’re the ones who were responsible for the spectacle at Saddam’s execution, which Iraqi prime minister Maliki is adamant in defending. The other large Shiite militia, belonging to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), is tight with Iran and its leaders appear to be biding their time, integrating themselves into the army and paramilitary forces and waiting for the inevitable moment when US troops mix it up with al Sadr’s people again, which is about to happen and which means some elements of the Iraqi army will be drawn into fighting others alongside US troops, which won’t engender a lot of confidence in either. The ideal outcome for SCIRI is the erasure of al Sadr’s forces, leaving SCIRI with a clear shot at dominating both the army and the government; if al Sadr goes down, so does Maliki. Meanwhile, they’ve been pleased to leave the dirty work of ethnic cleansing, wholesale murder and pissing off the Americans to al Sadr.
It’s possible that had Petraeus been in charge in 2003, and been given a free hand, that the insurgency would have faced much tougher going than it did. Now, though, he’s faced with running an undermanned counterinsurgency effort heavily reliant on Iraqi troops that are very much part of the problem, in the middle of a civil war; not the ideal laboratory for testing his theories.
If the leaks coming from the White House and other locales are to be believed, The Surge will involve as many as 20,000 US troops and an equal number of Iraqi ones. If they all wind up in Baghdad, the city will be hosting in the vicinity of 115,000 troops in total. The Army’s rule of thumb for peacekeeping is that it requires 20 troops for every 1,000 civilians. Baghdad has a population of around 6 million; if you do the math, the ideal number of troops for peacekeeping operations in the city would be 120,000. This is probably not a coincidence.
But there are, of course, a number of problems that peacekeepers generally don’t face: there’s no peace to keep; the US forces are short on people with the language skills and civil society support training required to rebuild a country’s institutions along with its infrastructure; more than 75% of that 115,000 will be Iraqi forces that at best aren’t particularly reliable and at worst are acting in opposition to US aims; there are another 20 million people in the country, requiring another 400,000 troops for effective peacekeeping (if there were peace). The odds for success are considerably less than the thin ones of nearly four years ago, and not much greater than the two mini-Surges toward the end of last year, which were negatively effective.
Petraeus is, astoundingly given the administration’s unerring instinct for the wrong move in Iraq, the right guy for the job. He’s just four years too late and 400,000 troops too light. You’ll probably hear a whole lot about his counterinsurgency manual in coming days and weeks, much of it from instant experts on the right (by their fruits ye shall know them); the Army says 1.5 million copies of it have been downloaded since it was released (Acrobat file) three weeks ago.
He’ll be working for the new chief of US Central Command. The officer now responsible for managing the ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — replacing General John Abizaid, who in another uncoincidental event told Congress a few months ago that he thought more troops in Iraq would be counterproductive — is Admiral William “Fox” Fallon, the first Navy officer to take the CentCom reins in the command’s 25-year history. This is interesting. One would think the institutional press would find it interesting as well, but apparently not; during the first White House press conference following the announcement, no reporter thought to ask why the president appointed someone whose primary expertise is in naval and air combat just when the US is about to significantly escalate the urban warfare in Iraq.
Bob Gates, the new defense secretary, said that Fallon “is one of the best strategic thinkers in uniform today and his reputation for innovation is without peer.” Maybe that’s all there is to it. Fallon has experience, albeit from a distance, at overseeing Special Forces troops engaged in training the Phillipine army in counterinsurgency tactics, including the sort of civil support exercises the administration has belatedly rediscovered. From that perspective he’d be a good fit with Petraeus.
He’d also be a good fit with an attack on Iran; he has three aircraft carrier strike groups in his area of operations now, another on the way and three more that could be called in on relatively short notice. The Brits have a couple of minesweepers on extended deployments to the Gulf, and there is an assorted bunch of other US and British warships floating around there as well. The administration has made no secret of the fact that the naval buildup is aimed at “sending a message” to Iran, and it’s no secret that this administration’s messages to countries without nuclear arsenals usually involve blowing stuff up, and it’s no secret that since all of our ground troops are occupied elsewhere, any attack on Iran will of necessity rely on air and sea power with a Special Forces assist. Suspicion is warranted, but remains foreign to the press.
Fallon was the subject of a brief Associated Press profile yesterday. The AP writer, Audrey MacAvoy, failed to note his historic achievement in breaking the olive drab CentCom ceiling but did come up with one of those apparently mandatory anecdotes aimed at revealing the secret of a subject’s success. Back when James Baker was riding in to save the Iraq day, a Newsweek profile revealed that the secret of Baker’s success is turkey hunting, which provided him with the infinite patience necessary to wait until just the right moment to spring the Iraq Study Group’s findings on Bush. “You can wait all day and you only get one shot,” says a former minion. “When the time comes, and it’s only a split second, he doesn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.” Boom. Damn.
With Fallon, it’s surfing.
Shortly after arriving in the islands to head U.S. forces in the Pacific, Adm. William Fallon asked a former world surfing champion for lessons on riding the waves.
“I was awfully impressed that a man that’s in his 60s, as I am, would have the wisdom and the youthful spirit to take up surfing,” said surfer Fred Hemmings, who also is a state senator.
The 62-year-old Navy officer’s willingness to try new things was one quality Defense Secretary Robert Gates cited Friday in giving Fallon one of the world’s toughest jobs: commanding U.S. troops in the Middle East as they battle insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hemmings went on to say that Fallon was “genuinely was sensitive to me as a person, to who I am, my roots and background. It’s a tremendous asset in any human being, much less a military leader.” Hemmings is a Republican, but in Hawaii even Republicans acknowledge the need for humanity in humans.
So there you have it. AP might have mentioned that surfing requires a lot of patience too, although not as much as turkey hunting and only in very rare instances involving firearms. As it happens there are some good breaks in the Persian Gulf, but you have to think that Fallon is there to make his own waves (actually he’s in Tampa, but no need to award AP or Newsweek a monopoly on strained analogies).
It’s something of a reach to imagine that an acquaintance with counterinsurgency in the Philippines and a penchant for surfing explain Fallon’s appointment to his new post, but the press are still willing to go the extra mile to avoid thinking unpleasant thoughts. I suspect the Senate will show the same restraint; several members have already said they anticipate that he’ll sail through the confirmation process.
But the good news is that The Surge, and the appointments of Petraeus and Fallon, really do represent new thinking on the part of the White House. That’s also the bad news; exactly how bad — and it could very well be extremely so — we won’t know for several months. ++
US twists civilian arms to fill Fortress Baghdad
Guy Dinmore
January 7 2007
At the heart of George W. Bush’s “new way forward” – which the president is expected to announce on Wednesday and involve substantial troop reinforcements – is the plan already under way to expand the US civilian presence across Iraq and complete the world’s largest embassy in Baghdad.
Construction of what critics call “Fortress Baghdad” has led to arguments inside the State Department amid fears that the overwhelming diplomatic presence will perpetuate a sense of US occupation and become a focus of local anger.
US diplomats say that just as the armed forces are being stretched to breaking point, the US foreign service is suffering from low morale and operations in the rest of the world are being damaged by the diversion of resources to Iraq.
Officials are also questioning why the Bush administration is sending more civilians into a deteriorating war zone, and the effectiveness of the work they can do.
The embassy compound being built inside Baghdad’s Green Zone covers 104 acres, making it six times larger than the United Nations compound in New York. A city within a city for more than 1,000 people, it will have its own water, sewers and electricity, six apartment buildings, a Marine barracks, swimming pool, shops and some walls 15 feet thick.
The State Department has told the Financial Times that the US civilian presence in Iraq has “grown considerably beyond the numbers projected for the new embassy compound”, which is scheduled for completion by September 1 at a cost of $592m (€455m, £307m).
The department and other agencies, such as the Pentagon and Treasury which also supply staff, are working out how to accommodate the extra numbers that Mr Bush is expected to announce this week. Recruits are being attracted to one-year posts by a mix of cajoling and inducement – an almost doubling of their salary, four trips outside Iraq and guarantees of favourable postings afterwards.
Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, and other officials have repeatedly sent cables to personnel around the world saying diplomats have a patriotic duty to volunteer for Baghdad and the expanding “provincial reconstruction teams”, where diplomats work out of military bases.
“Baghdad dwarfs everything else. It is becoming a monster that has to be fed every year with a new crop of volunteers,” says one diplomat.
So far the State Department has not resorted to compulsory or “directed” assignments, a practice last used during the Vietnam war. But it has warned it would put assignments elsewhere on hold “if Iraq and Afghanistan and other priority posts are not staffed”.
Among the many recommendations of the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton report on Iraq, issued in December, was that diplomats and other US personnel should be obliged to serve in Iraq if there were not enough volunteers.
Steve Kashkett, vice-president of the American Foreign Service Association, the professional body representing US foreign service officers, questions their logic.
“It makes no sense for the Iraq report authors simultaneously to propose scaling back the US military presence and beefing up the presence of unarmed US diplomats in a combat zone,” he writes this month in the association’s journal.
John Brown, who resigned as a US diplomat in protest against the 2003 invasion and now teaches public diplomacy, says the embassy “will be a symbol of the US occupation and the near-total separation of US embassy staff members from the society with which they are supposed to interact”.
“Indeed, the planned embassy reminds me of the huge, cavernous buildings that housed Soviet missions in eastern Europe during the cold war. They were hated by the local population for all they stood for: secrecy, arrogance and domination.”
Of the 1,000 or so US civilians staffing Baghdad at present – not including large numbers of private-sector bodyguards – there are about 200 career diplomats, plus some 70 in the provincial reconstruction teams that are set to expand.
Many other staffers are so-called “3161s” – recruited ad hoc and, according to the State Department, “fully qualified for their highly technical jobs”. Diplomats question this, saying many are incompetent and have been hired for their loyalty to the Republican effort.
Asked why the US was sending more diplomats into a war zone when such conditions elsewhere in the world would lead to closure or drawdown of embassies, the State Department said such comparisons were “inappropriate”, noting the embassy had suffered “minimal casualties”. ++
Defund the War
The Democrats say they can’t – and won’t
Justin Raimondo, AntiWar
January 8, 2007
The twisting and turning, the double-and–triple-talk, the obfuscation and evasion – is there any limit to the Democrats’ duplicity when it comes to ending the Iraq war?
Apparently not. Listen to newly-installed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, appearing on this Sunday’s Face the Nation, as she tries to make some dubious “distinction” between funding the war and paying for Bush’s “surge.” Asked by interviewer Bob Schieffer what the Democratic response would be if the president goes ahead with his “surge” in spite of widespread opposition, Madame Speaker replied:
“If the president chooses to escalate the war, in his budget request we want to see a distinction between what is there to support the troops who are there now. The American people and the Congress support those troops. We will not abandon them.
“But if the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have to justify it. And this is new for him because up until now the Republican Congress has given him a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no conditions. And we’ve gone into this situation, which is a war without end, which the American people have rejected.”
Appropriations for military operations in these theaters have, up until now, been put off-budget, on the grounds that spending requirements in wartime are unpredictable.
However, an obscure provision of the defense bill, passed by the Republican-controlled Congress in October, requires the president to include a detailed justification for his Iraq and Afghanistan spending requests, and directs that this be included in the official budget, to be submitted no later than the first Monday of February. Yet the money for the “surge,” as well as maintaining our present level of spending, will come in the form of another “emergency” supplemental, due to come up around the same time in the House Defense Appropriations Committee, chaired by antiwar congressman Jack Murtha.
Murtha tells Arianna Huffington that he has some cockamamie plan to “fence the funding” and deny the president funds for the “surge” on the grounds that our tax dollars are better spent on taking care of traumatic brain injuries sustained by our fighting men and women, the “signature injury” of those wounded in Iraq. Whether this can work, politically, is one question, but it’s clearly contingent on a number of entirely unpredictable factors, one of which is the strength of the Democrats’ spine when it comes to opposing this war – not, in short, a hopeful picture, considering their skittishness when it comes to this issue, especially considering the very real divisions on this issue within the party. What is likely to happen is that extra funding for medical care will be voted in, in addition to the “surge” funds.
In any event, there is no way Congress can micro-manage military strategy in Iraq. As congressman Dennis Kucinich has pointed out:
“The Administration does not have to pay any attention to Congress’ attempt to guide the administrative conduct of the war. Once Congress gave its consent for military action, it literally did not have the authority to guide the conduct of the war. At this point, the only option Congress has to guide the conduct of the war is to withdraw approval for the war through a cut off of funds. Even a substantial reduction of funds could leave open the door for a legal claim that Congress still intends to keep troops in Iraq. The Administration can rummage through the DOD budget and find money to keep its desired troop levels. Unless the Congress totally cuts off funds, it leaves itself open to an imposition of Presidential will through the Food and Forage Act of 1861 which gives the president the authority to directly spend money for troops in the field absent a congressional appropriation.”
Nancy Pelosi is talking out her … hat when she avers:
“If the president wants to expand the mission, that’s a conversation he has to have with the Congress of the United States. But that’s not a carte blanche, a blank check to him to do whatever he wishes there.”
Bollocks. If Nancy and her friends hand the president the dough, he can spend it as he pleases. There is only one way to squash the “surge,” and stop the war, and that is to vote down the money to pay for it in toto.
Like a frat-boy who’s overspent on his credit card, the president needs to be reined in by responsible adults – that is, if we can find any. Congress must exercise parental control, and put its collective foot down, by saying “Enough is enough!” When an errant adolescent habitually spends his entire allowance on candy – or, in this case, the equivalent of crack cocaine – there is only one course to take: cut him off. That the American people can understand, and surely sympathize with, far more than Pelosi’s ludicrous and constitutionally dubious efforts to transform Congress into the joint chiefs of staff.
We are told that cutting off the funding for the war means not “supporting the troops,” but this is another bipartisan lie: the money for ongoing military operations in 2007 is already in the pipeline: HR5631 [.pdf], the Defense Department appropriations bill authorizing spending on Iraq and Afghanistan for this year, passed overwhelmingly, 394-22, with the full support of the Democratic leadership. So what is Nancy nattering on about?
The idea that, if Congress cuts the funding, the GIs will soon run out of bullets and body armor is complete BS. That’s what they want you to believe so they can sit on their hands while the casualties pile up and the war spreads beyond the boundaries of Iraq.
The big argument that many in both parties have been making is that the Iraqis have become so totally dependent on the American military presence that they have not had to stand on their own feet and keep order in the country. The Iraq Study Group report recommends letting the Iraqis know that there is a limit to our indulgence – that at some point the Americans must threaten to start downsizing their commitment so as to give the Iraqis some incentive to cooperate. Congress must apply this same principle to the Bush administration. Like an over-indulgent parent, we’ve let the Bushies get away with spending money – and lives – hand over fist for far too long. It’s time to let them know that there is a limit to our indulgence, and our patience.
What is needed, in short, is some shock therapy, a sharp rebuke that will make the administration sit up and take notice – the legislative equivalent of a fairly hard slap upside the head. Nothing short of that is going to convince either the White House, or the electorate, that the Democrats are serious about ending this war.
Don’t be distracted by the 11 different “investigations” mounted by various congressional committees – as valuable as some of these may turn out to be in uncovering who lied us into war and how they went about it. Keep your eye on the ball, that is, on the question of ending this rotten and increasingly dangerous exercise in empire-building. And there’s just one way to that: de-fund the war. ++
Future of Iraq: The spoils of war
How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches
Danny Fortson, Andrew Murray-Watson and Tim Webb, Independent UK
07 January 2007
Iraq’s massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.
The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.
The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. “So where is the oil going to come from?… The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies,” he said.
Oil industry executives and analysts say the law, which would permit Western companies to pocket up to three-quarters of profits in the early years, is the only way to get Iraq’s oil industry back on its feet after years of sanctions, war and loss of expertise. But it will operate through “production-sharing agreements” (or PSAs) which are highly unusual in the Middle East, where the oil industry in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world’s two largest producers, is state controlled.
Opponents say Iraq, where oil accounts for 95 per cent of the economy, is being forced to surrender an unacceptable degree of sovereignty.
Proposing the parliamentary motion for war in 2003, Tony Blair denied the “false claim” that “we want to seize” Iraq’s oil revenues. He said the money should be put into a trust fund, run by the UN, for the Iraqis, but the idea came to nothing. The same year Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, said: “It cost a great deal of money to prosecute this war. But the oil of the Iraqi people belongs to the Iraqi people; it is their wealth, it will be used for their benefit. So we did not do it for oil.”
Supporters say the provision allowing oil companies to take up to 75 per cent of the profits will last until they have recouped initial drilling costs. After that, they would collect about 20 per cent of all profits, according to industry sources in Iraq. But that is twice the industry average for such deals.
Greg Muttitt, a researcher for Platform, a human rights and environmental group which monitors the oil industry, said Iraq was being asked to pay an enormous price over the next 30 years for its present instability. “They would lose out massively,” he said, “because they don’t have the capacity at the moment to strike a good deal.”
Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister, Barham Salih, who chairs the country’s oil committee, is expected to unveil the legislation as early as today. “It is a redrawing of the whole Iraqi oil industry [to] a modern standard,” said Khaled Salih, spokesman for the Kurdish Regional Government, a party to the negotiations. The Iraqi government hopes to have the law on the books by March.
Several major oil companies are said to have sent teams into the country in recent months to lobby for deals ahead of the law, though the big names are considered unlikely to invest until the violence in Iraq abates.
James Paul, executive director at the Global Policy Forum, the international government watchdog, said: “It is not an exaggeration to say that the overwhelming majority of the population would be opposed to this. To do it anyway, with minimal discussion within the [Iraqi] parliament is really just pouring more oil on the fire.”
Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman and a former chief economist at Shell, said it was crucial that any deal would guarantee funds for rebuilding Iraq. “It is absolutely vital that the revenue from the oil industry goes into Iraqi development and is seen to do so,” he said. “Although it does make sense to collaborate with foreign investors, it is very important the terms are seen to be fair.” ++
Bush in the Bunker
Mark, Buzzflash
Mon, 01/08/2007
In reading a BBC News Profile of Saddam Hussein from 2001, we couldn’t help but be struck by some eerie points of nexuses with George W. Bush:
“A former Iraqi diplomat living in exile summed up Saddam’s rule in one sentence: ‘Saddam is a dictator who is ready to sacrifice his country, just so long as he can remain on his throne in Baghdad.’”
“The Iraqi people are forced to consume a daily diet of triumphalist slogans, fattened by fawning praise of the president.”
“He is portrayed as a valiant knight leading the Arabs into battle against the infidel, or as an eighth-century caliph who founded the city of Baghdad. Evoking the glory of Arab history, Saddam claims to be leading his people to new glory.
The reality looks very different. Iraq is bankrupt.”
“Saddam Hussein remains largely isolated from his people, keeping the company of a diminishing circle of trusted advisers.”
Okay, Bush hasn’t been as tyrannical and murderous to Americans as Saddam Hussein was (with the complicity of the Reagan/Bush administrations in the ’80s), but consider just a slight rewording of the above excerpted description of Hussein:
“A former State Department diplomat summed up Bush’s rule in one sentence: ‘Bush is acting like a dictator who is ready to sacrifice his country, just so long as he can remain in the White House. He defies the will of his own people and has assumed powers of surveillance and secrecy that used to be found in the Kremlin.’”
“The American people are forced to consume a daily diet of triumphalist slogans doled out by the media and fattened by fawning praise of the president from a chorus of highly paid commentators.”
“He is portrayed as a pious crusader leading Christians into battle against the infidels. Evoking the glory of God and divine guidance, Bush claims to be leading his people to new glory.”
“The reality looks very different. The U.S. is nearly bankrupt, saddled with an unprecedented debt. It is bogged down in an unwinnable Civil War that Bush continues to throw lives and billions of dollars into.”
“George W. Bush remains largely isolated from his people, keeping the company of a diminishing circle of trusted advisers.”
Uh, the similarities are kind of creepy aren’t they? And both men appear to get a thrill out of death and the macabre. (Uh, make that the past tense for Saddam.)
We recently ran across an account of a meeting that Bush had with a Democratic senate leader before the Iraq War. In essence, Bush justified the Iraq War because Saddam won’t “F**kin” dance to the tune of the U.S.
Only 11% of Americans reportedly support an escalation of troops. The Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously opposed the idea. The list of even Republican honchos opposing an increase in the number of troops far outnumbers the scattering of remaining Bushevik loyalists. A “study group” engineered by Bush’s father came up with recommendations that would lead to a decrease in U.S. GIs, but Bush rejected the “centrist” findings with a dismissive disdain.
It is Bush and Cheney against the world.
They are in the bunker now, surrounded by enemy forces – not the Iraqis, but the overwhelming majority of Americans.
We have a runaway Executive Branch that is operating in its own self-interest against the wishes and needs of its citizens.
The increase in troops in Iraq will be a death warrant for many of the additional GIs sent to Baghdad. This is not a political decision; it is murder.
The sociopath, reportedly, sleeps soundly every night.
It’s all quiet in the bunker as the world is further set aflame. ++
In Iraq, frogs and rabbits will scatter
C.W. GUSEWELLE
The Kansas City Star
Sun, Jan. 07, 2007
[highly recommended read]
It was only a brief item in our paper — small enough to perhaps be easily overlooked — although it got more extensive play in the Eastern press.
The story concerned the transfer of responsibility for security in Najaf province of Iraq from coalition forces to U.S.-trained indigenous soldiers and police.
It is the hoped-for ability of Iraqis themselves to maintain order that is the cornerstone of the U.S. administration’s strategy for salvaging something resembling a victory from the wreckage of that broken country.
President Bush is expected to share his plan with Congress and the American people in a major address early in this coming week.
What Bush declares to be steady gains in the competence of Iraq’s own forces are sure to figure greatly in his “new” blueprint for avoiding full-scale civil war and extracting U.S. forces from a worsening nightmare.
If so, the events at the security-transfer ceremony were not terribly encouraging.
In a Najaf soccer stadium, troops from the Iraqi army, the police and other emergency units paraded for an hour before a reviewing stand filled with U.S. and Iraqi dignitaries.
Then, in what seems to have been the high point of the affair, the members of a commando unit gave a dramatic demonstration of their courage.
According to published accounts, each commando plucked a frog from his pocket, bit off its head and flung aside the twitching lower parts. Then their leader cut open a rabbit and passed it to the others to chew on its still-beating heart.
Bear in mind, these are U.S.-trained forces — elite members of the Iraqi military upon which the future of that country, if it has one, is said to depend.
Now, I served in the U.S. Army in what at the time also was considered a reasonably elite unit. And you have my word that that thing with the frogs and rabbits was not part of our training. It must be a local Iraqi conceit.
Can that country’s own forces ever muster the competence or the will to end the sectarian strife and enable the U.S. to withdraw from the debacle with honor?
Commanders on the ground seem to be saying that’s an open question. Only time will tell.
Meantime, one thing looks certain. It’s going to be hell on rabbits and frogs. ++
What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
January 8th, 2007