What we hadn't considered was that a free and independent Iraq, sans Saddam Hussein, might feel a little differently about it's main natural resource:
Only one of the bidders for the eight contracts to run oil and gas fields in Iraq has accepted oil ministry terms.
Six oil fields and two gas fields were available in a televised auction that was the first big oil tender in Iraq since the invasion of 2003.
Iraq has asked the rest of the companies to consider resubmitting bids for the other seven contracts.
How this worked was, Iraq set a minimum output for each of the fields (current production levels, which are minimal, were generally used). Output up to that level was free. After all, the government could do that now without help.
Beyond that level, companies were free to submit bids per barrel based on the amount of oil they predicted they could extract and sell to Iraq. Iraq would then sell to the lowest bidder.
But...
The catch was, Iraq also had a secret ceiling figure in mind of what it would pay for each field, effectively putting a cap on how much oil each contract could produce.
If the bid exceeded that figure, either due to too high a per barrel price or too many barrels predicted, Iraq would then offer it to other bidders.
As you can imagine, this knocked out of the pack any of the more rapacious...pardon me...*koffkoffkapitalistkoffkoff*...sorry, the more rapacious oil companies.
In lieu of this, what you now have is a few oil companies who would treat the Iraq fields as a hedge. Since the per barrel fee is fixed and not subject to the vagaries of the market, oil companies have both a guaranteed income stream from it, and can ramp up or reduce production as they see fit, to ameliorate their corporate income flows.
Making them a little less subject to the crazy pricing that we saw in 2007-2008, when oil was all over the map. The Iraq government is the one picking up all the risk on the commodity exchanges.
But note that the oil people of the Bush administration can still make out on the deal. After all, Iraq owes America a big debt of gratitude and so would not be in a position to march lockstep with OPEC on price increases and could even sell to us at a discount.
The greedy oil barons will still be greedy, but their greed will now be at the mercy of the Iraqi parliament.
Senator John McCain was chiding Senator Barack Obama for “a false depiction of what actually happened” in Iraq in a television interview this week. But in giving his chronology of events in Iraq, Mr. McCain gave what critics said was his own false depiction.
OK, not so bad in its own right, but...
“I don’t know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened,” Mr. McCain told Katie Couric, noting that the Awakening movement began in Anbar Province when a Sunni sheik teamed up with Sean MacFarland, a colonel who commanded an Army brigade there.
[...] The Obama campaign was quick to note that the Anbar Awakening began in the fall of 2006, several months before President Bush even announced the troop escalation strategy, which became known as the surge.
Seriously, anyone who has paid attention to the Bush administration realizes that it is absurd to think that the surge started after he announced it.
Think about it: on September 12, 2001, the Bushies were already planning to hit Saddam Hussein. Even during the surge, we were warned that the limit of 20,000 additional troops would be breached and it turned out to be nearly 50% higher.
Who is going to believe that Bush had not already very quietly shifted troops deployments and rushed stop-loss orders to inflate the number of troops in what was admittedly already a tenuous and crucial province in the invasion aftermath?
Too, one has to look at the "off-sheet" military, the mercenaries, who were far easier to deploy with little to no announcement. Think of it as a transfer to a branch office.
So Obama's criticism here might be better off muted. It's a silly nitpick, and sounds somewhat desperate. This is a criticism that would be better levelled at Bush, if he makes an incredulous statement like McCain did.
The bigger issue, the one both Obama and McCain seem reluctant to discuss, is whether the surge worked. There's the meat of the debate, and naturally, the basic premise of the entire invasion rests on how effective our military strategies for restoring Iraq have been.
As a military strategy, it seems pretty clear it worked, at least the way a bug bomb works: throw enough materiel quickly at the pests, and you have a lot of dead and dying bugs.
But it's not preventative, and here I think is where the surge breaks down: the political will of the Iraqi people is not focused on defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq or the other insurgent groups, but in getting the real irritant (irritant, in this sense, meaning that which incites violence) out.
Meaning us. That Maliki's government is nearly unanimous in their praise of Obama's stated withdrawal plan-- I still don't trust him to put it into play. His big financial backers have too much at stake.-- is indicative that their focus lies elsewhere.
Getting to the bottom of that is the key to "winning" this invasion.
(via) In July 2005, ChicagoBusiness.com reported that Rezmar, Inc., a corporation owned by Tony Rezko (Obama's indicated bagman who is about to stand trila for corruption charges today in Chicago), signed a joint venture agreement with Iraq to operate...wait for it...a power plant in Iraq.
What makes this truly interesting is another piece of the Obama puzzle I reported on the other day: the connections between an exiled Iraqi oil billionaire Nadhmi Auchi and Barack Obama's campaign, in which the billionaire feloniously financed through a loan to Obama's campaign an Obama fundraiser in May of that same year, 2005 (presumably this was to repay debts incurred in his rookie run for Senate).
For the mapless, let me draw one:Iraqi oil billionaire, repatriated oil assets, ready customer base, US President
The deal was signed before the $3.5 million dollar loan to Obama, and was arranged through Tony Rezko. Quid pro quo? Maybe not, but it sure smells funny.
This theft also partly explains why Iraqis only have about eight to ten hours of electricity every day.
Funny how all this corruption surrounds the energy industry in Iraq, isn't it?
Funny how it all centers around Barack Obama's Presidential candidacy. After all this is a man who's positions on Iraq have run from "No war" to his July 27, 2004 comment that there's "not that much difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage" to his current "once we had driven the bus into the ditch, there were only so many ways we could get out," flimflam.
We now get a look behind the curtain at this particular "evolution in action" moment of Barack Obama, lubricated in large part by illegal campaign financing, outright theft of American taxpayer money, and shady connections to a country whose economic and physical future is dependent upon who will be the next President.
I think Obama, for the good of the Democratic party, should consider dropping out now, before this embarassment becomes exploited by the Republican party.
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Monday in voicing hope they could reach a peace agreement before President George W. Bush leaves office in January 2009.
But wrapping up two days of talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, she again gave no date for a U.S.-led conference which all parties have said would serve as a launching pad for statehood negotiations.
Rice said only that the meeting, in Annapolis, Maryland, would take place "before the end of the year".
She offered no details on how Israel and the Palestinians might settle their deep divisions over core issues they have pledged to tackle after the conference: borders and the future of Jerusalem and millions of Palestinian refugees.
When we last saw a light at the end of the tunnel, Bill Clinton was President.
"The. Greatest. President. Ever." had a solution pretty nearly in hand, and had Yassir Arafat signed off on it, who knows where we'd be today?
Having chosen to leave this flashpoint and focus of anger alone to sort itself out until recently (turning their attention towards the ill-fated invasion of Iraq), the Bush administration had allowed things to get way out of hand before stepping in to try to settle things out.
And now? Well, saying peace is on "a wing and a prayer" is probably wishful thinking on our part. Yes, things have been quieter than they ever have been in this century. In 2003, the Bush administration, in a backhanded slap at both sides, negotiated a "road map" to peace, yet failed to insist in immediate implementation from either side, much less both sides.
Indeed, if anything, both sides have moved the goal posts back a bit with their actions in the wake of this agreement: Israel, rather than withdraw settlements, has done nothing to stop the expansion of some, and the Palestinians, rather than securing the border with Israel, have forced Israel to build walls and fences in some places.
Not good.
Other key aspects of the Middle East policy that the Bushies have pursued have also either frozen in place (like democratic reforms in regimes like Saudi Arabia or Syria) or backpedaled (the current crisis in Pakistan is a good example).
And now, Condi Rice believes that she can somehow wrangle cats into a line in less than fourteen months.
One suspects someone in the policy shop at the White House was watching too many episodes of The West Wing's sixth season.
Hey, I guess if you can't be President Bill Clinton, you can at least pretend to be his TV character!
I.F. Stone once wrote that reporters should write the news so that, as the story develops, no one is ever surprised when they read their morning paper.
Who holds the world’s oil? You might assume it’s in the hands of big private oil companies like ExxonMobil. But in fact, 77 percent of the world’s oil reserves are held by national oil companies with no private equity, and there are 13 state-owned oil companies with more reserves than ExxonMobil, the largest multinational oil company. The popular perception in the United States is that if leaders of oil countries nationalize their oil, they are bucking a global trend toward privatization. In reality, nationalized oil is the trend. And the percentage of oil controlled by state-owned companies is likely to continue rising, mainly because of the demographics of oil. Deposits are being exhausted in wealthy countries — the ones that exploited their oil first and generally have the most private oil — and are being found largely in developing countries, where oil tends to belong to the state.
Nationalization is also a political trend in some regions, mainly Latin America, where the populist presidents of Bolivia and Ecuador have made it part of their discourse. They are led, of course, by Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. He has made private producers accept state control of their operations. When they wouldn’t, as in the case of ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, he simply nationalized their holdings. Chávez has also asserted his control over Venezuela’s state oil company, which before him operated very much like a private, profit-driven enterprise.
Meaning, for one thing, if you thought $100 for a barrell of oil was a lot, get used to it.
The upside of capitalism is it tends to make things cheaper and more efficient all around. There aren't many people who would disagree with that, in theory (practice being different in that no capitalist system really exists in the world).
The downside of capitalism is, as I just pointed out, its non-existence. While capitalist forms of economy thrive, they thrive in partnership with governments, or at least within the context of a political system.
In America, we see one side of this coin: eventually money, which always equals power, co-opts the government and turns it into a tool for a ruling class of some sort: a plutocracy.
In other nations, the government cuts out the middle man and goes straight for the profit. Since governments are not beholden to shareholders, they are free to play with markets and supply and demand as they see fit. Who's going to stop them? They hold two forms of power: political power and economic. It's very hard to overturn that kind of ruling class.
In fact, that kind of overthrow only happens when people get desperate enough to exploit the only true power they have: the power to disobey.
All governments are an illusion: the governed allow the governors to govern. If the governed get frustrated and angry enough, they just change the government. We're seeing this now in this country, as the nation slips slowly in a slightly more progressive direction, we've changed the governing party. The pendulum swings and once it starts, it's nearly impossible to stop until it swings too far in the other direction.
Similarly, all freedom is an illusion, again, as we've seen here in the past eight years. The government of this country, regardless of party, has given up being the bulwark against the predations of the not-so-free market and has full-throated decided to not only protect those markets, but to enhance them with regulatory mechanisms designed to close them to outside competitions.
Kinda....frustrates you....don't it? We can't exactly survive this threesome.
The fact that oil has been mostly nationalized now is an indication where the marriage of government and business can lead: if Chavez wanted to shut down Carcas for not "voting" for him, how hard would it be to stop oil refining in that region, then charge an arm and a leg to ship it in?
And doesn't the United States government already punish its opponents, to the detriment of its own security? How hard would it be to imagine American heating oil owned by the government, being used to freeze out the poor?
And then...there's foreign policy, which leads us back to the article. The more nationalized the oil industry becomes, the more likely it is that oil will be used as a weapon in an economic war that would eventually boil over into a military one. And so then, Iraq would have only been a test run.
The largest dam in Iraq is at risk of an imminent collapse that could unleash a 20m (65ft) wave of water on Mosul, a city of 1.7m people, the US has warned. In May, the US told Iraqi authorities to make Mosul Dam a national priority, as a catastrophic failure would result in a "significant loss of life".
However, a $27m (£13m) US-funded reconstruction project to help shore up the dam has made little or no progress.
This dam repair bought to you by the same people who shored up the New Orleans levees ahead of Katrina should have been the warning.
Wait...let me guess...someone skimmed money off this deal, right?
In a report published on Tuesday, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) said US-funded "short-term solutions" had yet to significantly solve the dam's problems.
SIGIR found multiple failures in several of the 21 contracts awarded to repair the dam.
Among the faults were faulty construction and delivery of improper parts, as well as projects which were not completed despite full payments having been made.
A Reagan-era diplomat turned entrepreneur, Bremer had recently proven his ability to transform rubble into gold by waiting exactly one month after the September 11 attacks to launch Crisis Consulting Practice, a security company selling “terrorism risk insurance” to multinationals. Bremer had two lieutenants on the economic front: Thomas Foley and Michael Fleischer, the heads of “private sector development” for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Foley is a Greenwich, Connecticut, multimillionaire, a longtime friend of the Bush family and a Bush-Cheney campaign “pioneer” who has described Iraq as a modern California “gold rush.” Fleischer, a venture capitalist, is the brother of former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. Neither man had any high-level diplomatic experience and both use the term corporate “turnaround” specialist to describe what they do. According to Foley, this uniquely qualified them to manage Iraq's economy because it was “the mother of all turnarounds.”
Many of the other CPA postings were equally ideological. The Green Zone, the city within a city that houses the occupation headquarters in Saddam's former palace, was filled with Young Republicans straight out of the Heritage Foundation, all of them given responsibility they could never have dreamed of receiving at home. Jay Hallen, a twenty-four-year-old who had applied for a job at the White House, was put in charge of launching Baghdad's new stock exchange. Scott Erwin, a twenty-one-year-old former intern to Dick Cheney, reported in an email home that “I am assisting Iraqis in the management of finances and budgeting for the domestic security forces.” The college senior's favorite job before this one? “My time as an ice-cream truck driver.” In those early days, the Green Zone felt a bit like the Peace Corps, for people who think the Peace Corps is a communist plot. It was a chance to sleep on cots, wear army boots, and cry “incoming”—all while being guarded around the clock by real soldiers.
The teams of KPMG accountants, investment bankers, think-tank lifers, and Young Republicans that populate the Green Zone have much in common with the IMF missions that rearrange the economies of developing countries from the presidential suites of Sheraton hotels the world over. Except for one rather significant difference: in Iraq they were not negotiating with the government to accept their “structural adjustments” in exchange for a loan; they were the government.
Anyone want to venture a guess as to how many of the provisional administrators went on to form Iraq-based corporations that bid on the projects, thus dipping even deeper into tax payer funds?
One recent trope of right wingers and Republicans recently is that we've seen a decline in the violence in Iraq, that things are getting better, that Sunni and Shi'ite are meeting and might be reaching agreements to cool things out.
It's possible that exhaustion has set in, and that Iraqis have had enough.
[A]t least 27 people died in a suicide bomb attack on a police headquarters in Baquba, north of Baghdad, according to police.
At least 20 people were hurt. Most victims were police recruits.
Correspondents say the attack bears the hallmarks of the al-Qaeda in Iraq militants, who often target recruits.
What most right wingers forget in their crowing about reductions in civilian deaths and civil violence is, Ramadan this year was about two weeks earlier than last year. Yes, it's true: Sunnis and Shi'ites have reached out across the table to try to get a handle on what to do with this mess, but as Joe Klein points out:
[T]here is a missing player in all this hugging and goat eating (ed. note: think of it as a barbecue). He is Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi Army militia and, quite possibly, the most popular Shi'ite political figure in the country. Al-Sadr is less accessible, a fuzzier figure than al-Hakim. The U.S. intelligence community has only a vague sense of how much control he has over his disparate movement, which includes everything from Iranian-trained guerrillas, referred to as "special groups," to ragtag teenage criminal street gangs who claim the Mahdi mantle. He has been spending a lot of time in Iran lately, where he is said to be receiving advanced religious training. The future of Iraq is likely to be decided by the struggle for power between the Hakim and Sadr families. That struggle could easily turn very lethal. Indeed, in recent days there have been battles between the Sadr and Hakim forces in Karbala and Basra.
So we have Sadr forces and Hakim forces tearing the Shi'ites apart, a renewed front opened up by Al Qaeda, and now Turkey is crossing over into Kurdish Iraq to rout out Kurdish rebels, triggering suicide bombings.
Much like the recent forest fires in Southern California, this civil war is not going to go away easily, and is not easily contained. Clearly, the surge has some small effect in pushing the violence out of the Baghdad region (particularly the Green Zone, but hey! Who cares if Iraqis end up dead, right? *snark*) and other places where the troops were deployed, but in truth, it may only have been a lull.
Paul Wellstone died 5 years ago today. I still get tears in my eyes thinking of him.
Because it has turned out to be so prophetic, I thought I would post his Senate floor speech regarding military action in Iraq on October 3, 2002, just before he died. He was in the middle of a tough re-election campaign. His numbers went up after his vote against authorization. People who said Paul was "too far left for me" always add that they still voted for him because they trusted him. If you have the chance to ever hear the speech, at the end he thanks his staff and makes it clear that they in no way tried to influence his decision to oppose the Iraq war resolution, shouldering the responsibility alone.
(Ed. Note: I added the video for your convenience)
Regarding Military Action Against Iraq: October 3, 2002
Mr. President, as we turn later today to address our policy on Iraq, I want to take a few minutes to outline my views. The situation remains fluid, and Administration officials are engaged in negotiations at the United Nations over what approach we ought to take, with our allies, to disarm the brutal and dictatorial Iraqi regime.
Our debate here is critical because the administration seeks our authorization now for military action including possibly unprecedented, pre-emptive, go-it-alone military action in Iraq, even as it seeks to garner support from our allies on a tough new UN disarmament resolution.
Let me be clear: Saddam Hussein is a brutal, ruthless dictator who has repressed his own people, attacked his neighbors, and remains an international outlaw. The world would be a much better place if he were gone and the regime in Iraq were changed. That's why the U.S. should unite the world against Saddam, and not allow him to unite forces against us.
A go-it-alone approach, allowing for a ground invasion of Iraq without the support of other countries, could give Saddam exactly that chance. A pre-emptive go-it-alone strategy towards Iraq is wrong. I oppose it.
I support ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction through unfettered U.N. inspections, which should begin as soon as possible. Only a broad coalition of nations, united to disarm Saddam, while preserving our war on terror, is likely to succeed. Our primary focus now must be on Iraq's verifiable disarmament of weapons of mass destruction. This will help maintain international support, and could even eventually result in Saddam's loss of power.
Of course, I would welcome this, as would most of our allies. The president has helped to direct intense new multilateral pressure on Saddam Hussein to allow U.N. and International Atomic Energy Agency weapons inspectors back in to Iraq to conduct their assessment of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear programs. Saddam clearly has felt that heat, and it suggests what might be accomplished through collective action. I am not naive about this process, and much work lies ahead. But we cannot dismiss out-of-hand Saddam's late and reluctant commitment to comply with U.N. disarmament arrangements, or the agreement struck Tuesday to begin to implement it. We should use the gathering international resolve to collectively confront his regime by building on these efforts through a new U.N. disarmament resolution.
This debate must include all Americans, because our decisions finally must have the informed consent of the American people, who will be asked to bear the costs, in blood and treasure, of our decisions. When the lives of the sons and daughters of average Americans could be risked and lost, their voices must be heard by Congress before we make decisions about military action.
Right now, despite a desire to support our president, I believe many Americans still have profound questions about the wisdom of relying too heavily on a pre-emptive, go-it-alone military approach.
Acting now on our own might be a sign of our power. Acting sensibly and in a measured way in concert with our allies, with bipartisan Congressional support, would be a sign of our strength.
It would also be a sign of the wisdom of our founders, who lodged in the President the power to command U.S. armed forces, and in Congress the power to make war, ensuring a balance of powers between co-equal branches of government. Our Constitution lodges the power to weigh the causes for war and the ability to declare war in Congress precisely to ensure that the American people and those who represent them will be consulted before military action is taken.
The Senate has a grave duty to insist on a full debate that examines for all Americans the full range of options before us, and weighs those options, together with their risks and costs. Such a debate should be energized by the real spirit of September 11: a debate which places a priority not on unanimity, but on the unity of a people determined to forcefully confront and defeat terrorism and to defend our values.
I have supported internationally sanctioned coalition military action in Bosnia, in Kosovo and Serbia, and in Afghanistan. Even so, in recent weeks, I and others including major Republican policymakers like former Bush National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former Bush Secretary of State James Baker, my colleague on the Foreign Relations Committee Senator Hagel, Bush Mideast Envoy General Anthony Zinni and other leading US military leaders have raised serious questions about the approach the Administration is taking on Iraq.
There have been questions raised about the nature and urgency of Iraq's threat, our response to that threat, and against whom, exactly that threat is directed. What is the best course of action that the U.S. could take to address the threat? What are the economic, political, and national security consequences of possible U.S. or U.S.-British invasion of Iraq? There have been questions raised about the consequences of our actions abroad, including its effects on the continuing war on terrorism, our ongoing efforts to stabilize and rebuild Afghanistan, and efforts to calm the intensifying Middle East crisis, especially the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And there have been questions raised about the consequences of our actions here at home.
Of first and greatest concern, obviously, are the questions raised about the possible loss of life that could result from our actions. The United States could send tens of thousands of U.S. troops to fight in Iraq, and in so doing we could risk countless lives, of U.S. soldiers and innocent Iraqis. There are other questions, about the impact of an attack in relation to our economy. The United States could face soaring oil prices and could spend billions both on a war and on a years-long effort to stabilize Iraq after an invasion. The resolution we will be debating today would explicitly authorize a go-it-alone approach.
I believe an international approach is essential. In my view, our policy should have four key elements. First and foremost, the United States must work with our allies to deal with Iraq. We should not go it alone or virtually alone with a pre-emptive ground invasion. Most critically, acting alone could jeopardize our top national security priority, the continuing war on terror. The intense cooperation of other nations in matters related to intelligence-sharing, security, political and economic cooperation, law enforcement and financial surveillance, and other areas has been crucial to this fight, and enables us to wage it effectively with our allies. Over the past year, this cooperation has been our most successful weapon against terror networks. That -- not attacking Iraq should be the main focus of our efforts in the war on terror.
We have succeeded in destroying some Al Qaida forces, but many of its operatives have scattered, their will to kill Americans still strong. The United States has relied heavily on alliances with nearly 100 countries in a coalition against terror for critical intelligence to protect Americans from possible future attacks. Acting with the support of allies, including hopefully Arab and Muslim allies, would limit possible damage to that coalition and our anti-terrorism efforts. But as General Wes Clark, former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe has recently noted, a premature go-it-alone invasion of Iraq "would super-charge recruiting for Al Qaida."
Second, our efforts should have the goal of disarming Saddam Hussein of all of his weapons of mass destruction. Iraq agreed to destroy its weapons of mass destruction at the end of the Persian Gulf War and to verification by the U.N. and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that this had been done. According to the U.N. and IAEA, and undisputed by the administration, inspections during the 1990's neutralized a substantial portion of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and getting inspectors back in to finish the job is critical. The prompt resumption of inspections and disarmament, under an expedited timetable and with unfettered access in Iraq, is imperative.
Third, weapons inspections should be enforceable. If efforts by U.N. weapons inspectors are tried and fail, a range of potential U.N.-sanctioned means, including proportionate military force, should be considered. I have no doubt that Congress would act swiftly to authorize force in such circumstances. This does not mean giving the U.N. a veto over U.S. actions. No one wants to do that. It simply means, as Chairman Levin has observed, that Saddam is a world problem and should be addressed in the world arena.
Finally, our approach toward Iraq must be consistent with international law and the framework of collective security developed over the last 50 years or more. It should be sanctioned by the Security Council under the U.N. Charter, to which we are a party and by which we are legally bound. Only a broad coalition of nations, united to disarm Saddam, while preserving our war on terror, can succeed. Our response will be far more effective if Saddam sees the whole world arrayed against him.
We should act forcefully, resolutely, sensibly with our allies, and not alone, to disarm Saddam. Authorizing the pre-emptive, go-it-alone use of force now, right in the midst of continuing efforts to enlist the world community to back a tough new disarmament resolution on Iraq, could be a costly mistake for our country.
Commanders in Iraq have decided to begin the draw down of US forces in volatile Diyala province, marking a turning point in the US military mission.
Instead of replacing the third Brigade of the first Cavalry Division soldiers from another brigade in Salahuddin province will expand into Diyala.
In this way, the number of US Army ground combat brigades in Iraq will fall from 20 to 19.
It will also mark the start of what President George W Bush has billed as a shift in the American military mission.
The December move, not yet announced by the Pentagon, was described by Col Stephen Twitty, commander of the fourth Brigade, first Cavalry, in a telephonic interview.
Two clues tell you what's really going on here:
1) The area, Diyala, is hardly what one might term "settled", the way that Bush has touted the Anbar province as "settled".
2) Rather than have Iraqi forces stand up, we're merely spreading out our remaining forces to secure what is a hotly contested region.
Meaning, basically, we're throwing our troops DEEPER into harm's way.
Following up on my post yesterday, where I pointed out that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had the courage to confront a hostile crowd (and apparently, it took its toll, if news reports are to be believed), both President Bush and President Ahmadinejad will speak today at the opening of the United Nations.
By luck of the draw...koffkoff...Bush will speak first, then disappear long before Ahmadinejad gets up.
So you'd imagine this is an opportunity for Bush to launch some pre-emptive rhetorical strikes against a country he has called a "grave threat" to our national security.
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - President George W. Bush is set to announce new U.S. sanctions against Myanmar over human rights as the annual U.N. General Assembly gathering of world leaders gets under way on Tuesday.
Bush is one of the first speakers on a list that later features Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and diplomats will be watching to see if the leaders of the two bitterly hostile countries cross paths or exchange words.
But despite the United States leading efforts for more U.N. sanctions against Iran to curtail its nuclear program, Bush will only make a brief mention of Tehran in his speech, the White House said.
"The speech is not about Iran," spokeswoman Dana Perino said. "The speech is about liberation and how liberation from poverty, disease, hunger, tyranny and oppression and ignorance can lift people up out of poverty and despair."
Oh really? Darfur, Ms. Perino? Ring a bell? Nigeria? IRAQ?!?!?!?! (feel free to chime in if I missed any).
YANGON (Reuters) - Chanting "democracy, democracy", 10,000 monks marched through the heart of Myanmar's main city on Tuesday in defiance of a threat by the ruling generals to send in troops to end the biggest anti-junta protests in nearly 20 years.
The streets were lined with people clapping and cheering and there were no overt signs of police or soldiers and no trouble as the campaign against 45 years of military rule swelled in size and scope.
But after the demonstrators left the area around the Sule Pagoda in central Yangon, the focus of a week of marches by the revered maroon-robed monks, riot police and troops moved in.
Eight trucks arrived with police carrying shields, batons and rifles, a Reuters witness said. Eleven army trucks packed with soldiers also drove in, suggesting the junta was filling up the city centre to counter any attempt at a repeat.
In another possible sign of looming confrontation, a well-placed source said detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi was moved to the notorious Insein prison on Sunday, a day after she appeared in front of her house to greet monks.
Yes, this long-festering conflict appears to be ready to boil out.
You might recall, or maybe not...it didn't get a whole lot of attention in the States with Bush the Elder in office...in 1988, nearly 3,000 Myanmaris were killed by government troops cracking down on pro-democracy factions.
Bush's solution? Sanctions...which worked nicely against Saddam Hussein basically until Bush's cronies in the oil business started circumventing them.
Not to worry, of course: Myanmar has no oil to speak of, producing only 9,500 barrels a day. It does have some fairly sizable natural gas reserves, however (283 billion cu m), as well as major jade, precious gem, and timber industries.
So we're talking "C" list on the economic impact scale: large enough that local governments and politicians can live nicely by Western standards, but not enough for America to bother invading and raping.
Geopolitically, there's no real advantage to be gained in supporting the pro-democracy forces in Myanmar...the ruling junta has no real allies (China comes closest, but even they keep an arm's length), aside from a "See? We really DO support free people!" posturing.
Which raises the question, "Why is Bush bothering to spotlight this crisis?"
Well, it's clear he's ashamed to face the international community on the 800 lb gorilla in his closet: Iraq. The last thing he wants is to remind people of how his "Coalition of the Bribed Willing" fell apart this past year and how it's been five years and only now are we starting to see even a plateau in the level of violence, much less a consolidation and unification of Iraq under a democratic government.
In other words, he's going to avoid his "miserable failure" like the plague.
So why not Iran, Mr. President? Why not talk about arguably a real threat to the world's security, something the UN might want to actually get involved with, ahead of some insane aggression you would want to indulge your G I Joe fantasies over?
Surely it can't be that you're afraid to say in person to Ahmadinejad's face that which you've plastered all over CNNinternational and every major newspaper in the world?
Hell, even Lee Bollinger, the President of Columbia University, had bigger grapefruits than that!
Or are you? All your life, you've ducked controversy after controversy and then refused to face up to your critics and victims in a confrontation.
Can you say "passive aggressive"?
You've refused to go to Viet Nam, and then refused to work your full shift in the namby pamby detour that your daddy arranged for you. You've failed in every single business you've gotten involved with, needing family and friends to bail you out, even to the point where you took the Texas Rangers from last to even worse: the laughing stock of the American League.
And here, now, as President, rather than engage in dialogue with anyone who might disagree with you, all signs point to the fact that if you don't have toadies and chimpanzees doing your bidding, you fire them or make life so miserable for them, they leave.
This is not the mark of a President. Hell, it's not even the mark of a good gang leader!
So go. Talk about Myanmar until the heat gets too great and you have to leave the kitchen.
America and the world will be much better off once you're out of the driver's seat and in our rear view mirror.
There was a distinct sense of "whistling past the graveyard" in this week's dog and pony show trotted out by President Bush and his commander in Iraq, General Dave "I'm NOT coached, dammit!" Petraeus.
It seems they were hoping that lull in the action in Iraq meant the surge was working. Guess again:
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Militants stepped up attacks across Iraq on Sunday, killing at least 30 people in a spate of bombings and shootings that followed a threat by al Qaeda to launch a new phase of violence.
The U.S. military announced it had caught a suspected al Qaeda militant believed to be responsible for the killing last week of a key Sunni Arab tribal leader in Anbar province.
Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, who met U.S. President George W. Bush two weeks ago in Anbar, was killed in a bomb attack on Thursday near his home. He led an alliance of tribes that helped U.S. troops push al Qaeda out of much of the vast western area.
Suspected al Qaeda militants shot dead 14 people in the predominantly Sunni Arab town of Muqdadiya north of Baghdad and torched at least 12 shops in the town, Iraqi police said.
What's particularly troubling about this new wave of violence is that, nominally at any rate, Shi'a leader Muqtada al-Sadr is in control of that region around Baghdad, while Al Qaeda has traditionally been a Sunni-based organization. If Sadr and Al Qaeda (either in Iraq or bin Laden's organization...they are not the same people) have made a deal, then the recent calm in the country was merely an adjustment and planning period for far deadlier attacks and far more sectarian violence, as well as violence aimed at American troops.
Keep in mind, as well, that Iraqi summers are hot, as hot as the deserts in the American Southwest, hundreds of degrees hot. It would be foolish to believe that the respite in attacks was not at least in part the result of that oppressive heat.
Which is now breaking as fall and winter approach.
An al Qaeda-led group, the Islamic State in Iraq, said on Saturday it was launching a fresh round of attacks to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which started late last week.
A sustained campaign of violence would undermine U.S. and Iraqi assertions that a seven-month security crackdown had disrupted the Sunni Islamist network's operations in and around the Iraqi capital while also reducing attacks from other groups.
Bush, announcing a limited withdrawal of around 20,000 U.S. troops by July, last week said the cuts were possible because U.S. forces had made significant progress in improving security and "ordinary life is beginning to return" to Baghdad.
Just so. Desperate for any sign, any hint of progress in Iraq to hang his legacy on, Bush has tried to nail Jello to the wall. Surprise, surprise, the Jello is dripping off.
The right wing spin this week, if the Sunday talk shows are to be trusted, is that the Democrats in Congress were "disrespectful" of Petraeus and that the full page Moveon.org ad mentioning "Petraeus/Betray Us" was treasonous.
My opinion? The Democrats didn't go far enough in hammering Petraeus' credibility and the Moveon.org ad probably was more truthful than we know. At the end of this session of Congress, barring a miracle spine transplant into Democrats, Bush will leave office with precisely as many troops in Iraq as when the Democrats took over on a promise of troop withdrawals.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Thursday is expected to endorse plans for limited cuts in U.S. troop levels in Iraq but will offer little else to skeptical Americans looking for a change of course in the unpopular war.
Trying to rally public support in the face of growing Democratic opposition to his Iraq strategy, Bush will deliver a televised address after two days of congressional testimony by his top military and diplomatic officials in Baghdad.
The president is all but certain to embrace Gen. David Petraeus' recommendation to gradually withdraw 30,000 troops by next summer, bringing U.S. force strength in Iraq back to what it was before he ordered a buildup in January.
An administration marked by the ultimate in flip-floppery-- "We're invading Iraq because (pick one) they hit us on 9/11, they have WMDs, they intend to build WMDs, they intended to build WMDs, Saddam Hussein is a vicious tyrant" and "Stay the course until we achieve (pick one) total victory in Iraq, a beacon of freedom for the Middle East, the end of sectarian violence, a political solution in Iraq-- has lowered the bar, yet again.
The "vision thing" has caught up with the Bush family once more. His father nakedly lacked any vision, preferring situational ethics of the kind only a CIA director could appreciate. His son, Bush the Childish, has put up the pretense of a vision but it is an essentially flawed vision filled with sparkly ponies and cotton candy pink clouds at sunrise and a Texas cowboy trompe l'oeil.
BAH!
Bush has touted Thursday's prime-time speech as a chance to "lay out a vision" for future U.S. involvement in Iraq four and a half years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
But the White House has signaled little chance of a major shift in policy, which could make Bush's address a tough sell. Polls generally show Americans 2-to-1 against the war.
Even his own handlers don't buy his crap anymore.
You half expect Bush tonight to announce he's taking his bat and ball and "going heume!," to quote Cartman.
The Democrats need to seize on this opportunity the way Republicans and their orc army would: a twin-barrel assault on the President.
The leadership, the members of Congress and responsible spokespeople (/snark) need to come out and say that this is "too little, too late," that Bush's credibility and stroke in the country is so low that he needs to up the ante and bring even more troops home.
Meanwhile, the rabblerousers (myself included) ought to hammer home the point that even this little concession to the will of the American people was orchestrated ONLY because we and the Democrats held his feet to the fire and forced him to capitulate.
Let the right wing get a taste of their own medicine, and let Bush get it coming and going, a rat trapped in a rat trap with a couple of hungry cats circling, trying to pick out the tender cuts first.
WE forced this jackass to even curtsey in the direction of drawing down troops! WE made him realize that he has gone way over the line for the past seven years and WE will hold him more and more accountable to the American people. Bush believes he is out of the woods in terms of getting out of Dodge just ahead of the posse, but the posse switched to fresher and faster horses now, and WE will ride him down.
We on the left have persuaded the American people that this man is both dangerous and dimwitted enough to embroil our great nation in a conflict that will last generations AND take out thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of our citizens and our children. And we did it without a reliable national media outlet to hammer home this message, 24/7. WE beat Fox. WE beat Richard Mellon Scaife. WE beat the Washington Times, and the rest of the kneeling masses of mainstream media who bleat the sheeple line of this administration.
It is a small victory, yes, a very small one, but small cracks can open dams as they grow bigger and bigger.
Keep on Bush's case about this, yes, absolutely, just take a minute and reflect on what WE have accomplished in 2007. We humbled the most arrogant men on the planet.
(Ed. Note: Don't worry...no pussies were harmed in the posting of this blog)
For the record, let me state that, generally, I like Dick Durbin, bad hair and all. He was one of the few Senators to stand up against the Iraq war when the vote to authorize came up (in 2002, when he was running for re-election). However, he has voted to fund this war at every opportunity since. I don't think it's unfair to say that, with a re-election campaign on the horizon in 2008, Durbin's comments yesterday could be construed as a grandstand play:
"This Congress can't give President (George W.) Bush another blank check for Iraq," said Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin, who has always opposed the war but until now voted to fund it.
"I can't support an open-ended appropriation which allows this president to continue this failed policy," he said in a speech at the left-leaning Center for National Policy.
Durbin, from Illinois, said he and Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin were working on limits that could be attached to the next war funding bill, such as limiting troops to conducting counterterrorism operations and training Iraqi security forces.
Baby steps, to be sure, but a limit would be a step forward nonetheless.
Is it enough, though? Given that General Petraeus has already revealed that a major condition for the troop surge, the consolidation of the Iraqi government, is woefully behind any schedule benchmark, shouldn't this bill call for at least defunding the surge, since it's clearly not achieving its goals? After all, this Iraqi reconciliation was cited by Bush himself as a key, if not the key, to the troop surge.
Bush is asking for $200 billion for the Iraq invasion and the Afghanistan war, 70% earmarked for Iraq. By my calculations, about $25,000,000,000 will go towards supporting the surge (which comprises roughly 17% of the troops in Iraq). That should be cut immediately as a first step, with the immediate withdrawal of 30,000 troops from Iraq.
Next, we can redeploy remaining troops to secure the Anbar province, where it's generally agreed there may be some small measure of progress against the benchmarks that were established for Iraq as a whole. Those troops would be there strictly in a role of protecting Iraqi civilians and keeping the peace. Across the rest of Iraq, we would have limited troops deployed in training and counterterrorism details, which would greatly cut back our needs for personnel in country. We could likely pull another 50,000 troops out by next Spring, thus cutting American forces in half in the region.
Durbin's proposal appears to merely draw down some funding, keeping troop levels about constant but re-tasking them...sorry, that's right wing Pentagon jargon...re-assigning them to policing and training details.
That hasn't exactly worked in Baghdad, and I don't see much hope for that tactic to work in too many other places.
Senator Durbin, you and Russ Feingold have nothing to lose and everything to gain by taking a stronger stand now. Representative Murtha was hammered two years ago for speaking his mind precisely because he didn't have the weight of history on his side. Yet. While many of us who saw where the doomed Iraq invasion was heading could elicit that history would soon stand foursquare against the aggressor nation, the nation itself hadn't woken to that.
Now we have. Now we can set aside the chattering children of challenged intellect, who are about as relevant to this discussion as whether Pluto is a planet or not, and start to fix a problem that has been brewing since the invasion was announced, five years ago: how the hell do we get out of this mess?
A couple of stories in the news this morning reminded me of a salient fact, one that you can throw in the face of any conservative who believes the invasion of Iraq keeps us "fightin' 'em over there, so we don' have ta fight 'em here."
Sept. 5 (Bloomberg) -- German police arrested three people suspected of planning ``massive'' terrorist attacks on U.S. and other targets in the country, preventing the deaths of ``many, many people,'' the Chief Federal Prosecutor Monika Harms said.
The suspects, two Germans and a Turkish national, were arrested yesterday at a house in Oberschledorn, a village in the western state of North-Rhine Westphalia, officials said. Bomb- making materials and military detonators were also seized. The trio are alleged members of a local cell of the Islamist terrorist organization Jihad Union, which has links to al-Qaeda, Harms told reporters in the southern city of Karlsruhe today.
Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Danish police arrested eight ``militant Islamists'' with alleged al-Qaeda links on suspicion of plotting a ``major'' attack.
Police held the men, whose ages are between 19 and 29, in the Copenhagen area today, Jakob Scharf, head of the Security Intelligence Service, told a news conference in the capital.
``With the arrests, we've prevented a major act of terrorism,'' Scharf said. The suspects are ``militant Islamists with international connections including ties to al-Qaeda.''
Danish intelligence-gathering efforts and security were stepped up when the Nordic country was singled out as a target by al-Qaeda after the July 7, 2005, London bombings. Today's arrests mark the third time in two years Danish police have detained terrorism suspects.
The men, of Afghani, Pakistani, Somali and Turkish origin, are suspected of having produced ``unstable explosives,'' Scharf said. Police will seek to charge them under Denmark's terrorism law, which can carry a life sentence.
Denmark, you may recall, was the site of an uproar over political cartoons which depicted the prophet Muhammad, thus putting itself squarely in the crosshairs of any Islamist organization that might consider bombing Western interests.
Germany, long a hot bed of Islamist fundamentalist activity (Mohammed Atta went to engineering school in Frankfurt, where he was recruited into Al Qaeda), is home to the largest American military presence on the European continent.
That distinction explains why the Danish arrests were of aliens, while the German plot involved German nationals.
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- Police stepped up security and put this capital on high alert Tuesday after apparent twin suicide bombings in a nearby army garrison city killed 25 people and injured more than 60.
The double blasts struck at the heart of Pakistan's military establishment in Rawalpindi, which adjoins Islamabad and is home to President Pervez Musharraf and other senior government figures.
Although there was no claim of responsibility, officials suspect that the morning bombings were linked to the volatile situation in the region along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, where government forces have been battling Islamic militants with ties to Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
"Battling" is a curious word to apply to a government that has capitulated any time Al Qaeda has whined that it's coffee was too cold.
The phrase "Fighting them there..." has its roots in the Flypaper Theory, a military strategy that presumes one can draw one's enemy to a particular venue to wage a battle there. This works particularly well on an enemy as dispersed and insulated as guerillas or terrorists, small cells spread out over a wide geographic area.
In theory. In practice, not so much.
The Flypaper Theory presumes you understand the scope of the opposition, particularly their numbers, and that you can count on those folks rising to the bait, and allowing themselves to be trapped and "expedited". The bait had better be pretty damned attractive.
The prima facie evidence that this theory has failed in Iraq and Afghanistan is the simple statistic that, every year since the invasions, there have been more deaths in more places from terrorist attacks than the year before, even after factoring out Iraq and Afghanistan.
The bait is insufficient, and probably would have been unless Bush himself rode out in a tank during the fall of Baghdad. (/snark)
The gray area in this repudiation of the Flypaper Theory is whether we've failed to attract the existing population of terrorists, or if our actions have accelerated the creation of new terror cells worldwide.
Clearly, the latter has some traction: when homegrown cells begin to operate within the borders of their home countries, places where presumably those people are safe from suspicion of being anti-American terrorists or Al Qaeda members, you're creating new terrorists, as the German case demonstrates.
What we're seeing is a rejuvenated Al Qaeda begin to marshall forces and do dry runs for attacks directly at its enemy, much like a boxer who's been injured will first spar with some easy partners, then take some lower level tune up fights before challenging the champ for the title.
Too, the timing of these arrests (and the plots themselves) serve as reminders for the US: next week is the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Al Qaeda will strike again, it's just a matter of when and how and if they can.
Right now, the administration is whistling past the graveyard, praying that the attacks can be delayed until the next administration, so that the spinmeisters of Satan can pin it on the Democrats somehow even if the next President is a Republican. It clearly will never be Bush's fault.
Unless the attacks happen on his watch, something I'm sure Al Qaeda is keenly aware of.
Meanwhile, instead of flypaper attracting a bunch of the enemy to a slaughter, it looks more and more like Bush took a stick and smacked a hornets' nest in order to draw them out for the battle. Surprise, surprise, the world is getting stung in the ass.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has insisted that the withdrawal of British troops from the southern Iraqi city of Basra is not a defeat. The 550 soldiers have handed Basra Palace over to Iraqi control and joined 5,000 UK troops at their last base, near Basra Airport, outside the city.
The MoD said the handover of Basra province was now due in the autumn.
Mr Brown insisted the withdrawal was "pre-planned and organised" and said UK forces would take an "overwatch" role.
The Coalition of the Willing is now us, and Poland. And even the Poles are groping for the exit.
I agree with Brown: the withdrawal of these troops is not an admission of defeat. It's an admission that it was a bloody stupid idea in the first place, and that Blair should have curtailed his bloody-minded instincts and cautioned Bush against invading Iraq.
See, Blair, by his own admission, had considered (no doubt in his cups) invading Iraq long before Bush had entered office, but was shackled by the fact that, well, he'd have to deal with the UN and world community. Clearly, he didn't have the chutzpah of Bush, who just doesn't give a damn.
We in the States often wondered why Blair was a poodle to Bush, when in point of fact, he was not going to get the political cover from a Gore administration to invade Iraq and establish a base for democracy in the Middle East with a Gore presidency. Bush was less a Svengali and more a Clyde to Blair's Bonnie.
In fairness to him, Blair announced the troop withdrawal just before his resignation earlier this year, allowing Brown a graceful way to get Britons out of the country without paying a political price himself. Blair himself is trying to broker a Middle East agreement via the Israelis and Palestinians, and it appears that he has had some success, given the recent outbreak of quiet in that conflict.
Bush's surprise visit to Iraq, in point of fact, may have been a way to deflect some of the coverage of the British withdrawal from the region. By sneaking in, and racing out, Bush would hope to draw the attention away from the men behind the curtain, and while Brown can argue that this is not an admission of defeat, Bush's stunt certainly lends credence to that charge.
The Bush White House, while never particularly deft in policy and promotion, has suddenly turned a tin ear to the events of the day.
All this now puts increasing pressure on the Democrats in Congress to come up with a viable plan to get our troops out, quickly, while staunching the blood from this bizarre and ill-advised incursion into another innocent nation's sovereignty.
This is utter lunacy. I'm reminded of the apocryphal story recounted in "Citizen Kane" about the start of the Spanish-American War: "You provide the pictures, I'll provide the war.":
NEAR SHATT AL-ARAB (Reuters) - Mandated to secure Iraqi waters, the commander of a U.S. gunboat orders his crew to watch an Iranian look-out post for activity as his ship sails through waters with no clear divide between Iraq and Iran.
It was in this murky stretch that 15 British military personnel were captured by Iran earlier this year and accused of straying into its waters. A long-running dispute over the nearby Shatt al-Arab border river has helped spark war in the past.
Now, the U.S. military and its allies patrol as close as possible to where they believe Iraq's territorial waters end, but as tension rises between the Islamic Republic and the West, so does the potential for accidental escalation.
"We set a line where we think it's reasonable, and by customary use, going up and down that line, we try and set the tone," said John Chandler of the Australian HMAS Anzac warship, part of the coalition patrolling Iraqi waters.
"The Iranians have slightly different view as to where the line is."
Uh, yea, not like you don't have binoculars or anything, and can stand off a few hundred yards...but the clearest sign of provocation comes from the idiots on patrol there:
"We're going to drive down the line on the Iraqi side, and we're going to drive down slow. For Americans, we see this as driving down the strip on a Friday night, waving to all our friends," [USS Typhoon Commander Joel Lang] said on the way to the disputed area.
Now, I don't know where Commander Lang grew up, but I'm fairly sure the neighbors weren't polishing their guns and pointing them in your general direction. Perhaps a slightly more serious attitude is in order, rather than this reckless and insane lightheartedness?
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has told a German magazine that the United States has too many problems in Iraq to become involved in armed conflict with Iran. The United States "is not in a position to get into a new military conflict," Mottaki was quoted as saying in an excerpt of an interview to be published in Focus magazine.
Who'd have ever thought Iran would be the bastion of reason in this conflict?
That's not to say that Iran is innocent. No sir, and in fact, insurgents in Iraq have already issued warnings to Iran that they face an all-out border skirmish if they don't stop meddling in Iraq, but the simple fact is, 170,000 soldiers are tired of fighting. Americans are tired of fighting and probably won't support another war in a region we have no business meddling in at all. They might, correctly, it turns out, view an Iran-US showdown as a provocation on our part, as opposed to some imaginary slight.
Particularly given this administration's track record with honesty and forthrightness. You know, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, errrrr...won't get fooled again" (which may be the first time The Who have made it into international diplomacy.)
Many Iraqis say basic services are at their worst level in decades. More than four years of war has crippled infrastructure while unrelenting violence has hobbled reconstruction efforts.
To make matters worse, summer temperatures can remain above 40 degrees centigrade (104 degrees Fahrenheit) even at night.
Some residents say they get electricity in Baghdad and other provinces for around two hours a day, while water supplies are often cut for days at a time. Motorists sometimes queue for half a day to get petrol.[...]
"I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I see the situation with fuel in a country that sits on a sea of oil," [Taxi driver Mustafa al-Zubaidi] said, before edging closer to the petrol station.
Mr. al-Zubaidi, here's a reason for that. From an article on the BBC website dated March 17, 2005:
Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protesters claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.
In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists".
"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.
The official story is somewhat different, of course:
Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani told lawmakers that acts of sabotage by insurgents and people drilling holes in fuel pipelines to steal refined oil products were a major reason for petrol shortages.
"In just one stretch of pipeline between Baghdad and Baiji, we found 1,488 holes," he said, referring to a key pipeline running from a refinery in the city of Baiji, 180 km (112 mile) south to the capital. "It doesn't function as a pipeline ... it's more like a sieve."
An excuse which is ludicrous on its face. Where is an average Iraqi citizen going to go with refined petroleum, which needs still further processing to turn it into usable oil products? Insurgents popping pipelines, while certainly a possibility, run into allied patrols regularly, as nearly all of our "temporary bases" are strung along oil pipelines, and one of the first things the Bush administration secured in the invasion were oil production and transport facilities.
Nonetheless, the insurgents have reason to blow up as much of the oil infrastructure as they can: to prevent the aforementioned privatization plans by foreigners hellbent on exploiting Iraqis. Which sort of makes them less insurgents and more patriots, in this limited instance. Think of this aspect of the struggle as the Boston Tea Party, if you need an historical framework.
It's not just the energy and electricity services that are down and out. Basic services like water supply, heavily dependent in a desert country like Iraq on electricity (which of course, requires oil to fuel it and cabling to deliver it), is failing badly, as well as food delivery systems.
These people would be happy for a bath and a cool night's sleep. Is it any wonder that, the longer we keep troops in Iraq, the more insurgents we're generating? That's about ALL that's being generated in Iraq right now.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Opposition to the Iraq war has climbed to a record high and President George W. Bush's approval rating dropped to a new low amid growing dissent from members of his own Republican party over his war strategy, according to a new USAToday/Gallup poll.
Which is a slightly misleading statement, since in truth, the opposition from within the Republican party is...
According to the report, nearly four in 10 Republicans cited the immigration debate, which ended in defeat for Bush's overhaul proposal, as the reason for losing confidence in him.
Mind you, this poll was taken well after the Libby commutation occured, something the White House felt would shore up his standing with the Republican base. His approval ratings amongst Republicans had never been below 80% until this poll, where it dropped dramatically to 62%.
So where does he go from here? Well, "jail", in my opinion, but that's not likely to happen. Even Nixon never seriously faced jail time.
I mentioned last March that the pieces were in place for Bush to simply run out the clock. Events over the weekend have strengthened my belief that this is the only option left to him, barring another terrorist strike (which carries its own baggage of failure, should it occur). Bush has refused to let Congress have access to his aides, citing executive privilege, and of course, with essentially three of the SCOTUS justices Bush appointees (Thomas was Daddy's) he stands a good chance of prevailing. Or maybe not. Even in poker, there's no such thing as a sure thing. You calculate your risks and hope for the best.
We're also already seeing trial balloons regarding concessions made on issues that anger the American people: the Iraq invasion, Guantanamo, even Alberto Gonzales may be on the negotiating table. Bush has made a particular effort to reach out to Democrats lately, inviting them to bipartisan private dinners at the White House. Given the disturbing news coming out of Iraq that the government has failed to hit even one benchmark, six months after the surge, Bush has no place to run, no place to hide, despite the tortured arguments of Dick Cheney that he is neither executive nor legislative branch, leaving Bush a temporary place to stash his hoard of political capital.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. strategists are exploring how to implement a peace accord to officially end the 1950-53 Korean War and hope to start discussions with North Korea as soon as year end, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
Presumably, this is an attempt to salvage some kind of historical legacy that will deflect some of the criticism of the Iraq invasion, but in point of fact, history will probably look at this as an indication of the cynical acknowledgement by the Bush administration that Iraq was a debacle and that by ending the Korean War, Bush is setting the stage to make Iraq the longest-running conflict in American history.
In other words, by calling attention to the long-standing "failure" of past administrations to essentially put pen to paper and make de facto that which has been considered de jure for roughly twenty years, Bush throws into harsh relief the fact that, well, he'll never be considered seriously for a Nobel Peace Prize, to be charitable. Too, it highlights the officious and arrongant manner in which Bush has run his foreign policy, and takes essential brainpower (something already in short supply at the White House) off the more pressing and immediate problem of Iraq to formalize that which basically exists, but for our interference. Or should I say, Bush's interference.
This comes on the same day as Iraqi leaders warned that civil war is imminent if the US pulls its troops out anytime soon:
BAGHDAD, July 9 (Reuters) - Iraqi leaders warned on Monday that an early U.S. troop withdrawal could tip Iraq into all-out civil war after the New York Times said debate was growing in the White House over a gradual scaling-down of forces.
The stark comments followed a wave of bombings and shootings in Iraq at the weekend that killed 250 people.
"This could produce a civil war, partition of the country and a regional war. We might see the country collapse," Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari, a Kurd, told a news conference when asked about the New York Times report.
Citing administration officials and consultants, the Times said these officials feared the last pillars of political support among Senate Republicans for U.S. President George W. Bush's Iraq strategy were "collapsing around them".
In other words, the Iraqi leaders are in danger of losing their cushy jobs, and will be forced back into the streets along with the people they so callowly abandoned for their vacation.
Right now, American troops are like crack cocaine in Iraq: cheap to get, and plentiful. And highly tempting. Shoot one up, and move on to the next fix. But they also imply a stronger drug is at work, and that drug is the civil war that is already raging in Iraq, all over Iraq, and with a few exceptions, throughout Iraqi provinces. And like crack addicts, the Iraqi leadership is in deep denial over the extent of this addiction as well as their role in facilitating it.
There are a couple of elements to this story which I had to ponder as I read it:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic leaders vowed Friday to keep up the pressure on President George W. Bush to end the Iraq war with more votes next month on withdrawing U.S. troops.
House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would seek a vote on legislation instructing the Pentagon to begin pulling out U.S. troops within 120 days, similar to a provision Bush vetoed in the first version of a war spending bill Congress sent to him in May.
A comparable provision also is expected to come to the floor of the Senate in July. So far this year, Senate Democrats have been unable to get the 60 votes needed to overcome procedural hurdles to proposals to start a pullout from Iraq.
So far, pretty straightforward. Obviously, Pelosi, Reid, & Co decided that they caved a little too easily with Bush on the war funding bill, and heard about it from both the left wing ideologues but also from mainstream Americans who elected them in large part to end this national nightmare. Too, that Senators Richard Lugar and George Voinovich, not exactly firebreathing lefties, came out strongly against the war this week gives them some political cover to reintroduce this withdrawal timetable.
Bbut here's the intriguing bit:
But Defense Secretary Robert Gates noted legislation from Congress called for progress reports on Iraq in July and September and suggested those should determine any decisions.
"It seems to me that Congress has laid out a sensible timetable and we ought to adhere to it," he told reporters at the Pentagon.
Huh? Is Secretary Gates suggesting, or at least, leaving the door open, to a troop withdrawal this year? After all, those "progress reports" to be delivered by General Petraeus, will show that the surge has had minimal success (the Anbar region is raised continually as a beacon of hope, which neglects the truth that the Anbar region was relatively peaceful right up until the surge) and that the general benchmarks it will report on-- oil revenue sharing, suppression of the sectaraian violence, and regional elections-- will fall woefully short, mostly due to the Iraqi parliament's lack of...passion...in passing legislation.
Meaning the Democrats in Congress will have a field day at Bush's expense.
If in fact, this was the game plan, to give the surge the summer and then cut off funding anyway, then it concerns me that the Democrats would play this so cynically. Hundreds of Americans would have died to gain an incremental political position of giving in one last time and letting the baby have his bottle.
"Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things...every one! So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal,' as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor." -- Matt Santos, The West Wing
(video at link)
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