Thread: Quagmire....

Originally Posted by Milkman

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India

Why would anyone with the interests of his country at heart award these 'no bid' contracts.

Interesting though to see French Total in there too- France of course was quite a vocal 'Non' to the coalition of the villains. My guess is that was over US objections, but I know nothing of the process- it's all being done behind closed doors.

One things for sure- the first Iraqi's to get rich off this will be in the government.

[quote=sabang;663239]

Originally Posted by Milkman

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India

Why would anyone with the interests of his country at heart award these 'no bid' contracts.

I'd like to know why there were no-bid contracts there - again - too.

Lots of wheeling and dealing we are not even told about.

Do you want fries with that?

"Curveball" is revealed.

Special to The Times
June 18, 2008
Nuremberg, Germany

Rafid Ahmed Alwan hoped for an easier life when he came here from Iraq nine years ago. He also hoped for a reward for his cooperation with German intelligence officers.

• Photos: The 'Curveball' saga

• About this story
• How U.S. Fell Under the Spell of 'Curveball'
• BABYLON & BEYOND: Observations on the Middle East and beyond

"For what I've done, I should be treated like a king," he said outside a cramped, low-rent apartment he shares with his family.

Instead, the Iraqi informant code-named Curveball has flipped burgers at McDonald's and Burger King, washed dishes in a Chinese restaurant and baked pretzels in an all-night bakery. He also has faced withering international scorn for peddling discredited intelligence that helped spur an invasion of his native country.

Now, in his first public comments, the 41-year-old engineer from Baghdad complains that the CIA and other spy agencies are blaming him for their mistakes.

"I'm not guilty," Alwan said, insisting that he made no false claims. "Believe me, I'm not guilty."

It was intelligence attributed to Alwan -- as Curveball -- that the White House used in making its case that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. He described what turned out to be fictional mobile germ factories. The CIA belatedly branded him a liar.

Entire & Link: 'Curveball' speaks, and a reputation as a disinformation agent remains intact - Los Angeles Times

Adding to the enormous monthly cost of this fiasco is fuel the US military uses.

Fighting forces get no break on fuel costs

Military to pay $400 million more per month for fuel


Fri., June. 27, 2008



WASHINGTON - Consumers at the gas pump aren't the only ones suffering sticker shock. Military units in Iraq and elsewhere will see another hike in fuel costs next week, the second increase this budget year because of soaring oil prices.
On July 1, the cost for refined fuel used by troops will jump from $127.68 a barrel to $170.94 — an astounding 34 percent increase in just six months and more than double what the Pentagon was paying three years ago.


While prices charged to warfighting units have fluctuated in recent years, they have not faced such a steep spike in so few months. The cost of jet fuel, for example, jumped from $2.31 a gallon in October, the start of the 2008 budget year, to $3.04 in December. As of next month, units will start paying $4.07 a gallon.

Sticker shock for military on fuel costs - Military - MSNBC.com

Yeah, the military operates in some parallel universe where fuel prices are actually going down...

Don't you ever get tired of this Milk?

The ironic thing is that if Bush had allowed the Chinese and Russians to go ahead and develop the Iraqi oil reserves under Saddam Hussein, the world would be flush with oil right now and we wouldn't have the current price escalation.

The Neo-Cons thought Iraq was going to be a walk over, and it was in a conventional military sense. They thought the people would roll over and then they could put a pseudo democratic puppet government in place which would give generous oil development concessions to the coalition of the willing who freed Iraq from Saddam and the western trade sanctions imposed on them.

Cheer up. We're winning this War on Terror | Gerard Baker - Times Online

Cheer up. We're winning this War on Terror
Al-Qaeda and the Taleban are in retreat, the surge has worked in Iraq and Islamism is discredited. Not a bad haul

"My centre is giving way. My right is in retreat. Situation excellent. I shall attack!”

If only our political leaders and opinion-formers displayed even a hint of the defiant resilience that carried Marshal Foch to victory at the Battle of the Marne. But these days timorous defeatism is on the march. In Britain setbacks in the Afghan war are greeted as harbingers of inevitable defeat. In America, large swaths of the political class continues to insist Iraq is a lost cause. The consensus in much of the West is that the War on Terror is unwinnable.

And yet the evidence is now overwhelming that on all fronts, despite inevitable losses from time to time, it is we who are advancing and the enemy who is in retreat. The current mood on both sides of the Atlantic, in fact, represents a kind of curious inversion of the great French soldier's dictum: “Success against the Taleban. Enemy giving way in Iraq. Al-Qaeda on the run. Situation dire. Let's retreat!” ...

While I am not so sure I completely agree with the premise of the artical, it is kind of refreshing to see a rather positive spin put on the current situation.

The true agenda for the war against Iraq is becoming more obvious all the time.

Seumas Milne: Bush is trying to impose a classic colonial status on Iraq | Comment is free | The Guardian

"In April, I was leaked a draft copy of this "strategic framework agreement", intended to replace the existing UN mandate at the end of the year. Details of the document, which came from a source at the heart of the Iraqi government, were published in the Guardian - including indefinite authorisation for the US to "conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security". Since then, much more has emerged about the accompanying "status of forces agreement" the US administration wants to impose: including more than 50 US military bases, full control of Iraqi airspace, legal immunity for US military and private security firms, and the right to conduct armed operations throughout the country without consulting the Iraqi government.
This goes far beyond other such agreements the US has around the world and would shackle Iraq with a permanent puppet status. Not surprisingly, it has led to uproar in the country and opposition in the US, where congress will be denied a vote on the arrangement because the administration has chosen not to call it a treaty.
But it also evokes powerful memories in Iraq, which has been down this road before. After Britain invaded and occupied Iraq during the first world war, it imposed a strikingly similar treaty on its puppet government in 1930 in preparation for the country's nominal independence. Just as in George Bush's version, Britain awarded itself military bases, the right to conduct military operations, and legal immunity for its forces - though the proposed new US powers and restrictions on Iraqi sovereignty go even further than in the pre-war colonial treaty.
To add to this sense of imperial revival, the four oil companies now preparing to return in triumph to Iraq were the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company, which Britain gave a free hand in the 1920s to dine off Iraq's wealth in a famously exploitative deal. The Anglo-Iraqi treaty and those bitterly unjust oil concessions dominated Iraqi politics for decades, feeding riots, uprisings and coups until the monarchy was overthrown, the tables turned on the oil companies and the British were finally sent packing by the radical nationalist General Qasim in 1958"

At least retain a healthy chunk of the airport. Geez, let's not get silly.

can't wait to see those GIs run for their life at the top of a roof when the insurgents start to make it inside the green zone,

popcorn time,

Hey, those guys are there to protect the interests of the big oil companies. If they get the boot, the Chinese and the Ruskies will get all the cream. Iraq is one big gas station, so whats a few thousand dead soldiers and a million dead Iraqis to the big money oil men when there's a fortune to be made stealing Iraqi oil.

'Saddam fixation' led to post-invasion Iraq chaos

1:45PM Monday June 30, 2008



For many, the Iraq conflict seems to have gone on far too long. Photo / AP


The United States defence force has released a report criticising military and civilian leaders for poor planning and a lack of vision for the chaotic post invasion phase of the Iraq war.

The study, which blames a fixation on removing Saddam Hussein, aims to help the US Army understand the lessons from its recent operational experience.
Military historians have prepared the report on what happened in Iraq in the 18 months after US President George W Bush declared an end to major combat operations.

It is the first the time the US Army has officially waded into what has become one of the most hotly debated periods of the American occupation of Iraq.

The almost 700 page report concludes that military and civilian leaders were fixated on removing Saddam Hussein from power, but did not prepare for the next stage.

It has also raised concerns that long and repeated deployments from the Army National Guard and Reserve may not be sustainable.

- RADIO AUSTRALIA

'Saddam fixation' led to post-invasion Iraq chaos - 30 Jun 2008 - NZ Herald: World / International News

^ In a nut shell, -- they believed their own spin. And when one is a compulsive liar, that can be very dangerous.

Post-Script.

It looks like the Americans and Brits may not actually be winning the Iraq war, after all.

"It is a service contract and not a production-sharing contract," the minister said.
Shahristani said Iraq would not enter into production-sharing contracts with any energy major, while service arrangements for overseas firms would require locals partners.

"We think there is no need to share Iraq's oil with anybody," the minister said, adding the final offers of the companies would have to be approved by the cabinet.

Those companies that offered higher revenues for the ministry would be preferred in awarding the services contracts, Shahristani said.

Link and Entire: Iraq fails to ink deals with global oil majors

^I'm sure China is lurking in the background and at some point will make an offer the Iraqi's can't refuse. Would be a revolting development for the coalition partners!

^ & ^^

Only if one thinks the only thing to be gained in Iraq is access to the oil.

Originally Posted by Bugs

Only if one thinks the only thing to be gained in Iraq is access to the oil.

If the reason for the war was oil then it was an extremely irrational way to go about it. Saddam was all in favor of selling Iraqi oil. UN sanctions and restrictions on use of oil revenues could have been easily modified to ensure Iraqi oil was available to the market.

The reasons for "liberating" Iraq evolved from eliminating WMDs, to removing terrorist training camps, and finally, when these proved to be the result of "creative intelligence", the removal of a bad person from power and now the democratization of Iraq. Neither the removal of Saddam who at the time represented a threat to no one, or the democratization of Iraq would ever make a rational CinC's list of things to do.

The first and foremost reason for liberating Iraq was regime change. It was years in the making. Everything else was tertiary.

Originally Posted by Texpat

The first and foremost reason for liberating Iraq was regime change. It was years in the making. Everything else was tertiary.

Agree. Regime change in Iraq has been US policy for some time as stated by Clinton. However, regime change can be accomplished in many ways. Had the Bush administration gone to the US Congress and the UN stating the US was invading Iraqi for the purpose of regime change, we can all guess there would be no support. To gain any measure of support the administration needed to manufacture a good reason. The WMD and terrorist threat was just the ticket that tipped the US public but fell far short of unanimous support internationally. Without these fabrications the US would not find itself in it's current position and could have achieved regime change by continuing economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure and other means at it's disposal to effect regime change.

The Bush administration's lack of patience in continuing sanctions and the like in what would eventually result in regime change and opting for invasion demonstrates an inexcusable level of ignorance regarding the consequences of such an act.

Choice 1: Continue enforcing piss-weak UN resolutions and northern and southern no-fly zones to infinity and beyond from bases in Saudi Arabia that were the crux of the 9-11 attacks. No telling what country Saddam might have invaded next.

Choice 2: Oust a ruthless dictator, allow the country to elect leaders, set it up for success and go home. Sure it took a lot longer than expected, but the US has a more integrity than to leave a job half finished.

Continuing sanctions was a sham. Too many seem to forget the long list of violations of UN sanctions. I can vividly remember living in Saudi Arabia in the late 90s watching Saddam make a mockery of the UN. I hope he's burning in hell.

Originally Posted by Texpat

The first and foremost reason for liberating Iraq was regime change. It was years in the making. Everything else was tertiary.

True. Bush and his NeoCon mates were boxed in a corner with the sanctions against Saddam Hussein. They needed to get rid of him and install a puppet pseudo democratic government to get control of the oil.