Thread: Iraq News

If I may, let me pop in a few pieces from newspapers around the world. This is rather serious shit and we as a people are eating it.

Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil

Even as Iraq verges on splintering into a sectarian civil war, four big oil companies are on the verge of locking up its massive, profitable reserves, known to everyone in the petroleum industry as "the prize."

By Joshua Holland

10/18/06 "AlterNet" -- -- Iraq is sitting on a mother lode of some of the lightest, sweetest, most profitable crude oil on earth, and the rules that will determine who will control it and on what terms are about to be set.The Iraqi government faces a December deadline, imposed by the world's wealthiest countries, to complete its final oil law. Industry analysts expect that the result will be a radical departure from the laws governing the country's oil-rich neighbors, giving foreign multinationals a much higher rate of return than with other major oil producers and locking in their control over what George Bush called Iraq's "patrimony" for decades, regardless of what kind of policies future elected governments might want to pursue.
Iraq's energy reserves are an incredibly rich prize. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, "Iraq contains 112 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the second largest in the world (behind Saudi Arabia), along with roughly 220 billion barrels of probable and possible resources. Iraq's true potential may be far greater than this, however, as the country is relatively unexplored due to years of war and sanctions." For perspective, the Saudis have 260 billion barrels of proven reserves.
Iraqi oil is close to the surface and easy to extract, making it all the more profitable. James Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum, points out that oil companies "can produce a barrel of Iraqi oil for less than $1.50 and possibly as little as $1, including all exploration, oilfield development and production costs." Contrast that with other areas where oil is considered cheap to produce at $5 per barrel or the North Sea, where production costs are $12-16 per barrel.
And Iraq's oil sector is largely undeveloped. Former Iraqi Oil Minister Issam Chalabi (no relation to the neocons' favorite exile, Ahmed
Chalabi) told the Associated Press that "Iraq has more oil fields that have been discovered, but not developed, than any other country in the world." British-based analyst Mohammad Al-Gallani told the Canadian Press that of 526 prospective drilling sites, just 125 have been opened.But the real gem -- what one oil consultant called the "Holy Grail" of the industry -- lies in Iraq's vast western desert. It's one of the last "virgin" fields on the planet, and it has the potential to catapult Iraq to No. 1 in the world in oil reserves. Sparsely populated, the western fields are less prone to sabotage than the country's current centers of production in the north, near Kirkuk, and in the south near Basra. The Nation's Aram Roston predicts Iraq's western desert will yield "untold riches."
Iraq also may have large natural gas deposits that so far remain virtually unexplored.
But even "untold riches" don't tell the whole story. Depending on how Iraq's petroleum law shakes out, the country's enormous reserves could break the back of OPEC, a wet dream in Western capitals for three decades. James Paul predicted that "even before Iraq had reached its full production potential of 8 million barrels or more per day, the companies would gain huge leverage over the international oil system. OPEC would be weakened by the withdrawal of one of its key producers from the OPEC quota system." Depending on how things shape up in the next few months, Western oil companies could end up controlling the country's output levels, or the government, heavily influenced by the United States, could even pull out of the cartel entirely.
Both independent analysts and officials within Iraq's Oil Ministry anticipate that when all is said and done, the big winners in Iraq will be the Big Four -- the American firms Exxon-Mobile and Chevron, the British BP-Amoco and Royal Dutch-Shell -- that dominate the world oil market. Ibrahim Mohammed, an industry consultant with close contacts in the Iraqi Oil Ministry, told the Associated Press that there's a universal belief among ministry staff that the major U.S. companies will win the lion's share of contracts. "The feeling is that the new government is going to be influenced by the United States," he said.
During the 12-year sanction period, the Big Four were forced to sit on the sidelines while the government of Saddam Hussein cut deals with the Chinese, French, Russians and others (despite the sanctions, the United States ultimately received 37 percent of Iraq's oil during that period, according to the independent committee that investigated the oil-for-food program, but almost all of it arrived through foreign firms). In a 1999 speech, Dick Cheney, then CEO of the oil services company Halliburton, told a London audience that the Middle East was where the West would find the additional 50 million barrels of oil per day that he predicted it would need by 2010, but, he lamented, "while even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."
Chafing at the idea that the Chinese and Russians might end up with what is arguably the world's greatest energy prize, industry leaders lobbied hard for regime change throughout the 1990s. With the election of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in 2000 -- the first time in U.S. history that two veterans of the oil industry had ever occupied the nation's top two jobs -- they would finally get the "greater access" to the region's oil wealth, which they had long lusted after.
If the U.S. invasion of Iraq had occurred during the colonial era a hundred years earlier, the oil giants, backed by U.S. forces, would have simply seized Iraq's oil fields. Much has changed since then in terms of international custom and law (when then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz did in fact suggest seizing Iraq's Southern oil fields in 2002, Colin Powell dismissed the idea as "lunacy").
Understanding how Big Oil came to this point, poised to take effective control of the bulk of the country's reserves while they remain, technically, in the hands of the Iraqi government -- a government with all the trappings of sovereignty -- is to grasp the sometimes intricate dance that is modern neocolonialism. The Iraq oil grab is a classic case study.
It's clear that the U.S.-led invasion had little to do with national security or the events of Sept. 11. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill revealed that just 11 days after Bush's inauguration in early 2001, regime change in Iraq was "Topic A" among the administration's national security staff, and former Terrorism Tsar Richard Clarke told 60 Minutes that the day after the attacks in New York and Washington occurred, "[Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq." He added: "We all said … no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan."
On March 7, 2003, two weeks before the United States attacked Iraq, the U.N.'s chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, told the U.N. Security Council that Saddam Hussein's cooperation with the inspections protocol had improved to the point where it was "active or even proactive," and that the inspectors would be able to certify that Iraq was free of prohibited weapons within a few months' time. That same day, IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei reported that there was no evidence of a current nuclear program in Iraq and flatly refuted the administration's claim that the infamous aluminum tubes cited by Colin Powell in making his case for war before the Security Council were part of a reconstituted nuclear program.
But serious planning for the war had begun in February of 2002, as Bob Woodward revealed in his book, Plan of Attack. Planning for the future of Iraq's oil wealth had been under way for longer still.
In February of 2001, just weeks after Bush was sworn in, the same energy executives that had been lobbying for Saddam's ouster gathered at the White House to participate in Dick Cheney's now infamous Energy Task Force. Although Cheney would go all the way to the Supreme Court to keep what happened at those meetings a secret, we do know a few things, thanks to documents obtained by the conservative legal group JudicialWatch. As Mark Levine wrote in The Nation($$):

… a map of Iraq and an accompanying list of "Iraq oil foreign suitors" were the center of discussion. The map erased all features of the country save the location of its main oil deposits, divided into nine exploration blocks. The accompanying list of suitors revealed that dozens of companies from 30 countries -- but not the United States -- were either in discussions over or in direct negotiations for rights to some of the best remaining oilfields on earth.

Levine wrote, "It's not hard to surmise how the participants in these meetings felt about this situation."
According to the New Yorker, at the same time, a top-secret National Security Council memo directed NSC staff to "cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered melding two seemingly unrelated areas of policy." The administration's national security team was to join "the review of operational policies towards rogue states such as Iraq and actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields."
At the State Department, planning was also underway. Under the auspices of the "Future of Iraq Project," an "Oil and Energy Working Group" was established. The full membership of the group -- described by the Financial Times as "Iraqi oil experts, international consultants" and State Department staffers -- remains classified, but among them, according to Antonia Juhasz's "The Bush Agenda," was Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, who would serve in Iyad Allawi's cabinet during the period of the Iraqi Governing Council, and later as Iraq's oil minister in 2005. The group concluded that Iraq's oil "should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war."
But the execs from Big Oil didn't just want access to Iraq's oil; they wanted access on terms that would be inconceivable unless negotiated at the barrel of a gun. Specifically, they wanted an Iraqi government that would enter into production service agreements (PSAs) for the extraction of Iraq's oil.
PSAs, developed in the 1960s, are a tool of today's kinder, gentler neocolonialism; they allow countries to retain technical ownership over energy reserves but, in actuality, lock in multinationals' control and extremely high profit margins -- up to 13 times oil companies' minimum target, according to an analysis by the British-based oil watchdog Platform (PDF).
As Greg Muttit, an analyst with the group, notes:

Such contracts are often used in countries with small or difficult oilfields, or where high-risk exploration is required. They are not generally used in countries like Iraq, where there are large fields which are already known and which are cheap to extract. For example, they are not used in Iran, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, all of which maintain state control of oil.

In fact, Muttit adds, of the seven leading oil producing countries, only Russia has entered into PSAs, and those were signed during its own economic "shock therapy" in the early 1990s. A number of Iraq's oil-rich neighbors have constitutions that specifically prohibit foreign control over their energy reserves.
PSAs often have long terms -- up to 40 years -- and contain "stabilization clauses" that protect them from future legislative changes. As Muttit points out, future governments "could be constrained in their ability to pass new laws or policies." That means, for example, that if a future elected Iraqi government "wanted to pass a human rights law, or wanted to introduce a minimum wage [and it] affected the company's profits, either the law would not apply to the company's operations or the government would have to compensate the company for any reduction in profits." It's Sovereignty Lite.
The deals are so onerous that they govern only 12 percent of the world's oil reserves, according to the International Energy Agency. Nonetheless, PSAs would become the Future of Iraq Project's recommendation for the fledgling Iraqi government. According to the Financial Times, "many in the group" fought for the contract structure; a Kurdish delegate told the FT, "everybody keeps coming back to PSAs."
Of course, the plans for Iraq's legal framework for oil have to be viewed in the context of the overall transformation of the Iraqi economy. Clearly, the idea was to pursue a radical corporatist agenda during the period of the Coalition Provisional Authority when the U.S. occupation forces were a de facto dictatorship. And that's just what happened; under L. Paul Bremer, the CPA head, corporate taxes were slashed, a flat-tax on income was established, rules allowing multinationals to pull all of their profits from the country and a series of other provisions were enacted. These were then integrated into the Iraqi Constitution and remain in effect today.
Among the provisions in the Constitution, unlike those of most oil producers, is a requirement that the government "develop oil and gas wealth … relying on the most modern techniques of market principles and encouraging investment." The provision mandates that foreign companies would receive a major stake in Iraq's oil for the first time in the 30 years since the sector was nationalized in 1975.
Herbert Docena, a researcher with the NGO Focus on the Global South, wrote that an early draft of the constitution negotiated by Iraqis envisioned a "Scandinavian-style welfare system in the Arabian desert, with Iraq's vast oil wealth to be spent upholding every Iraqi's right to education, health care, housing, and other social services." "Social justice," the draft declared, "is the basis of building society."
What happened between that earlier draft and the constitution that Iraqis would eventually ratify? According to Docena:

While [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay] Khalilzad and his team of U.S. and British diplomats were all over the scene, some members of Iraq's constitutional committee were reduced to bystanders. One Shiite member grumbled, "We haven't played much of a role in drafting the constitution. We feel that we have been neglected." A Sunni negotiator concluded: "This constitution was cooked up in an American kitchen not an Iraqi one."

With a constitution cooked up in D.C., the stage was set for foreign multinationals to assume effective control of as much as 87 percent of Iraq's oil, according to projections by the Oil Ministry. If PSAs become the law of the land -- and there are other contractual arrangements that would allow private companies to invest in the sector without giving them the same degree of control or such usurious profits -- the war-torn country stands to lose up to 194 billion vitally important dollars in revenue on just the first 12 fields developed, according to a conservative estimate by Platform (the estimate assumes oil at $40 per barrel; at this writing it stands at more than $59). That's more than six times the country's annual budget.
To complete the rip-off, the occupying coalition would have to crush Iraqi resistance, make sure it had friendly people in the right places in Iraq's emerging elite and lock the new Iraqi government onto a path that would lead to the Big Four's desired outcome.

Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil (Part Two)
With 140,000 U.S. troops on the ground, the largest U.S. embassy in the world sequestered in Baghdad's fortified "Green Zone" and an economy designed by a consulting firm in McLean, Va., post-invasion Iraq was well on its way to becoming a bonanza for foreign investors.But Big Oil had its sights set on a specific arrangement -- the lucrative production sharing agreements that lock in multinationals' control for long terms and are virtually unheard of in countries as rich in easily accessible oil as Iraq.
The occupation authorities would have to steer an ostensibly sovereign government to the outcome they desired, and they'd have to overcome any resistance that they encountered from the fiercely independent and understandably wary Iraqis along the way. Finally, they'd have to make sure that the Anglo-American firms were well-positioned to win the lion's share of the choicest contracts.
Dealing with the most likely points of opposition began almost immediately. While the Oil Ministry, famously, was one of the few structures the invading forces protected from looters in the first days of the war, the bureaucracy's human assets weren't so lucky. With a stroke of the pen, Coalition Provisional Authority boss L. Paul Bremer fired hundreds of ministry personnel, ostensibly as part of the program of "de-Baathification." But, as Antonia Juhasz, author of "The Bush Agenda," told me, "it wasn't an indication that they were a party to Saddam Hussein's crimes … they were fired because they could have stood in the way of the economic transformation." Some fraction were certainly hard-core Baathists, but they were all veterans of the country's oil sector; they knew the industry, they knew what the norms in neighboring countries were and they had no loyalty to the occupation forces. Some had to go.
That was true at the top as well. Serving as oil minister in the Iraqi Interim Government was Thamir Ghadbhan, a British-trained technocrat who at one time had been chief of planning under Saddam Hussein and was widely respected for his political independence and his opposition to the previous regime (Saddam had ended up imprisoning him at Abu Ghraib). But despite working closely with American advisors, Ghadbhan was replaced with Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, a close associate of Ahmed Chalabi, the exile favored by some war planners to run the country as a kindler and gentler -- but no doubt just as corrupt -- version of Saddam Hussein.
According to Greg Muttit, an analyst with the British oil watchdog Platform, Uloum at first seemed to be a malleable figure. He told the Financial Times that he personally favored PSAs and giving priority to U.S. oil companies "and European companies, probably."
But Uloum would later publicly protest the elimination of fuel subsidies, a key provision of the country's economic restructuring, saying, "This decision will not serve the benefit of the government and the people. This decision brings an extra burden on the shoulders of citizens." He was, as the Associated Press reported, given "a forced vacation." It was, in the end, a permanent vacation; Chalabi, who was deputy prime minister at the time, took over the job himself (as "acting" minister for 30 days, but his term would last a year). Chalabi had no previous experience in the oil biz, but was a reliable, pro-Western figure with little in the way of nationalist zeal to get in the way of being a good lap dog. As leader of the Iraqi National Congress, he had said he favored the creation of a U.S.-led consortium to develop Iraq's oil fields. "American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil," Chalabi told the Washington Post in 2002.
According to Alexander Cockburn, Chalabi also orchestrated the ouster of Mohammed Jibouri, executive director of the state's oil marketing agency, who had offended the Swiss giant Glencore by telling its executives that they couldn't trade Iraqi oil after their extensive dealings with Saddam Hussein.
An emerging, although still fragile, civil society was another source of potential trouble. Iraqi trade unions were a thorn in the side of the CPA -- shutting down the port of Khor az-Zubayr in protest of a rip-off deal with the Danish shipping giant Maersk, halting oil production in the south to demand the rehire of laid-off Iraqi workers and kicking Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root out of their refineries. Perhaps it's not a coincidence, then, that the only significant law that Paul Bremer left on the books from the Hussein era was a prohibition against organizing public-sector workers. Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi analyst with the NGO Global Exchange, told me, "They're having a lot of legal problems."
Of course, none of that guaranteed that the Iraqis would stay on the preferred path, especially after the election of an ostensibly sovereign government.
And that's where the most common -- almost ubiquitous -- tool of neocolonialism, debt, came into play. In this case, massive, crushing debt run up by a dictator who treated himself and his cronies to palaces and other luxuries, spent lavishly on weapons for Iraq's war with Iran -- fought in part on behalf of the United States -- and owed Kuwait billions of dollars in reparations for the 1990 invasion.
To put Iraq's foreign debt in perspective, if the country's economy were the size of the United States', then its obligations in 2004, proportionally, would have equaled around $55 trillion, according to IMF figures (and that doesn't include reparations from the first Gulf War).
Clearly, that amount of debt was unsustainable, and the Bush administration launched a full-court press to get creditor nations to forgive at least part of the new government's debt burden. Former Secretary of State James Baker, long the Bush family's "fixer," was dispatched on a tour of the world's capitals to cut deals on behalf of the Iraqis.
The administration raised eyebrows in the NGO community when it adopted the language of debt-relief activists to frame their pitch. Bush, and Baker, called it "odious" debt, debt that financed the whims of a brutal dictator and used against the interests of the Iraqi population. Under international law, "odious" debt, in theory at least, doesn't need to be forgiven; it's written off as a dictator's illicit gains. As one might expect, wealthy creditor nations have long resisted the concept.
Debt-relief activists Basav Sen and Hope Chu wrote that the move "seemed inexplicable at first." But it soon became clear that Iraq's debt-relief program was, in fact, a way of locking in Iraq's economic transformation.
The largest chunk of debt, $120 billion, was owed to the Paris Club, a group of 19 industrialized nations. Baker negotiated a deal whereby the Paris Club would forgive 80 percent of Iraq's debt, but the catch -- and it was a big one -- was that Iraq had to agree to an economic "reform" package administered by the International Monetary Fund, an institution dominated by the wealthiest countries and infamous across the developing world for its painful and unpopular Structural Adjustment Protocols.
The debt would be written off in stages; 30 percent would be cancelled outright, another 30 percent when an elected Iraqi government accepted an IMF structural reform agreement and a final 20 percent after the IMF had monitored its implementation for three years. This gave the IMF the role of watchdog over the country's new economy, despite the fact that its share of the country's debt burden was less than 1 percent of the total.
Among a number of provisions in the IMF agreement, along with privatizing state-run companies (which resulted in the layoffs of an estimated 145,000 Iraqis), slashing government pensions and phasing out the subsidies on food and fuel that many Iraqis depended on, was a commitment to develop Iraq's oil in partnership with the private sector. Then-Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mehdi said, none too happily, that the deal would be "very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies." The Iraqi National Assembly released a statement saying, "the Paris Club has no right to make decisions and impose IMF conditions on Iraq," and called it "a new crime committed by the creditors who financed Saddam's oppression." And Zaid Al-Ali, an international lawyer who works with the NGO Jubilee Iraq, said it was "a perfect illustration of how the industrialized world has used debt as a tool to force developing nations to surrender sovereignty over their economies."
The IMF agreement was announced in December of 2005, along with a new $685 million IMF loan that was to be used, in part, to increase Iraq's oil output. The announcement came a month after Iraqis went to the polls to vote for their first government under the new Constitution in order, according to the Washington Post, to spare Iraqi "politicians from voters' wrath." That was a wise idea; immediately following the agreement, gas prices skyrocketed and Iraqis rioted.
The icing on the cake is that the deal James Baker negotiated with the Paris Club refers to Iraq as an "exceptional situation"; no precedent was set that would allow other highly indebted countries saddled with odious debt from their own past dictators to claim similar relief.
The deadline the Iraqi government must meet for the completion of its final oil law in December is a "benchmark" in the IMF agreement.
In an investigation for the Nation, Naomi Klein discovered that Baker had pursued his mission with an eye-popping conflict of interest. Klein discovered that a consortium that included the Carlyle Group, of which Baker is believed to have a $180 million stake, had contracted with Kuwait to make sure that the money it was owed by Iraq would be excluded from any debt-relief package. When Baker met with the Kuwaiti emir to beg forgiveness for Iraq's odious debt, he had a direct interest in making sure he didn't get it.
Another major creditor was Saudi Arabia. The Carlyle Group has extensive business dealings with the kingdom and Baker's law firm, Baker Botts, was representing the monarchy in a suit brought by the families of the victims of 9/11.
The most recent IMF report (PDF) shows how successfully he failed: "While most Paris Club official creditors have now signed bilateral agreements, progress has been slow in resolving non-Paris Club official claims, especially those of Gulf countries," it says. It's likely that Iraq, a country occupied for three years, devastated by 12 years of sanctions and with a per capita GDP of $3,400, will end up paying reparations to Kuwait, a country with a per capita GDP of over $19,000, for the five months Saddam occupied his neighbor in late 1990 and early 1991.
Iraq will still face a mountain of debt even if it meets all of the "benchmarks" required of it -- the IMF expects the country's debt service to equal five percent of its economic output in 2011 and warns that even a minor price shock in the oil market "would require significant borrowing from the international markets to close the financing gaps."
"Sovereign" debt is transferable between governments; if a new strongman arises or Iraq becomes a loose federation, the debt will remain on the books and defaulting on it, while a possibility, has serious long-term consequences.
All of this is about bringing different forms of pressure onto Iraq's nascent government, not controlling it, and it's an important distinction. Before and since the "handover" to Iraq's government, the Green Zone has been overrun with "advisers" from Big Oil. Aram Roston wrote, "It's clear that there is not just the one Iraqi Oil Ministry, but a parallel 'shadow' ministry run by American advisers." In business, that's known as "positioning."
Phillip Carroll, a former chief executive with Royal Dutch/Shell and a 15-member "board of advisors" were appointed to oversee Iraq's oil industry during the transition period. According to the Guardian, the group "would represent Iraq at meetings of OPEC." Carroll had been working with the Pentagon for months before the invasion -- even while the administration was still insisting that it sought a peaceful resolution to the Iraq crisis -- "developing contingency plans for Iraq's oil sector in the event of war." According to the Houston Chronicle, "He assumed his work was completed, he said, until Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called him shortly after the U.S.-led invasion began and offered him the oil adviser's job." Carroll, in addition to running Shell Oil in the United States, was a former CEO of the Fluor Corp., a well-connected oil services firm with extensive projects in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and at least $1.6 billion in contracts for Iraq's reconstruction. He was joined by Gary Vogler, a former executive with ExxonMobile, in Iraq's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.
After spending six months in the post, Carroll was replaced by Robert E. McKee III, a former ConocoPhillips executive. According to the Houston Chronicle, "His selection as the Bush administration's energy czar in Iraq" drew fire from congressional Democrats "because of his ties to the prime contractor in the Iraqi oil fields, Houston-based Halliburton Co. He's the chairman of a venture partitioned by the … firm."
The administration selected Chevron Vice President Norm Szydlowski to serve as a liaison between the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Iraqi Oil Ministry. Now the CEO of the appropriately named Colonial Pipeline Co., he continues to work with the Iraq Energy Roundtable, a project of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, which recently sponsored a meeting to "bring together oil and gas sector leaders in the U.S. with key decision makers from the Iraq Ministry of Oil."
Terry Adams and Bob Morgan of BP, and Mike Stinson of ConocoPhillips would also serve as advisors during the transition.
After the CPA handed over the reigns to Iraq's interim government, the embassy's "shadow" oil ministry continued to work closely with the Iraqis to shape future oil policy. Platform's Greg Muttit wrote that "senior oil advisers -- now based within the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office (IRMO) in the U.S. Embassy ... included executives from ChevronTexaco and Unocal." After the handover, a senior U.S. official said: "We're still here. We'll be paying a lot of attention, and we'll have a lot of influence. We're going to have the world's largest diplomatic mission with a significant amount of political weight."
The majors have also engaged in good, old-fashioned lobbying. In 2004, Shell advertised for an Iraqi lobbyist with good contacts among Iraq's emerging elites. The firm sought "a person of Iraqi extraction with strong family connections and an insight into the network of families of significance within Iraq." According to Platform, just weeks after the invasion, in a meeting with oil company execs and Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in London, former British Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind promised to personally lobby Dick Cheney for contracts on behalf of several firms, including Shell.
Meanwhile, major oil firms were positioning themselves so that they'd have the best contacts in the new government. According to the Associated Press, "The world's three biggest integrated oil companies" -- BP, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch/Shell -- "struck cooperation or training deals with Iraq" in 2005. "It's a way to maintain contact and get the oil officials to know about them," former Iraqi Oil Minister Issam Chalabi told the AP. And it seems to have worked; in May, Iraq's current oil minister, Husayn al-Shahristani, said that one of his top priorities would be to finalize an oil law and sign contracts with "the largest companies."
Washington has its hands all over the drafting of that law. Early on, in 2003, USAID commissioned BearingPoint, Inc. -- the new name for the scandal-plagued Arthur Anderson Consulting -- to submit recommendations for the development of Iraq's oil sector. BearingPoint was the firm that designed the country's economic transformation under a previous USAID contract, so it was no surprise that its report reinforced the preference for PSAs that "everybody [kept] kept coming back to" during meetings of the State Department's "Future of Iraq Project."
In February, just months after the Iraqis elected their first constitutional government, USAID sent a BearingPoint adviser to provide the Iraqi Oil Ministry "legal and regulatory advice in drafting the framework of petroleum and other energy-related legislation, including foreign investment." According to Muttit, the Iraqi Parliament had not yet seen a draft of the oil law as of July, but by that time it had already been reviewed and commented on by U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman, who also "arranged for Dr. Al-Shahristani to meet with nine major oil companies -- including Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips -- for them to comment on the draft."
All of these points of pressure are only what we can see in the light of day. There is certainly much more occurring under the table. Raed Jarrar told me that he "was personally familiar with the kind of intimidation that can be brought by both the U.S. military and civilian" personnel, and that he would be shocked if "multiple millions of dollars in bribes" were not changing hands. The IMF noted in its latest report (PDF) that "corruption related to the production and distribution of refined fuel products was rampant." Last March, 450 Oil Ministry employees were fired for suspected corruption, and Mohammed al-Abudi, the Oil Ministry's director general for rrilling, said that "administrative corruption" was pervasive. "The robberies and thefts are taking place on a daily basis on all levels," he said, "committed by low-level government employees and by high officials in leadership positions of the Iraqi state." The same day that the U.N. legitimized the occupation, George Bush signed Executive Order 13303 providing full legal immunity to all oil companies doing business in Iraq in order to facilitate the country's "orderly reconstruction."
Yet, despite a five-year effort, Big Oil still sits on the sidelines, wary of the disorder and violence that's plagued the country. Ironically, it appears that China may well receive the first deal in post-Saddam Iraq (although it's one negotiated with Hussein's government before the war). The Kurdish autonomous zone has signed three PSAs -- none with the majors -- although there is some dispute about their validity (and, at this writing, there are reports that the Kurds are in negotiations with Royal Dutch/Shell and BP, among others).
At this point, the situation is very fluid. Last week, Iraqis were shocked when a controversial measure that might lead to the country's effective breakup was passed by Parliament by one vote. The major Sunni parties and Muqtada al Sadr's ministers boycotted the vote in outrage. Muddying the waters further is a heated debate about whether a somewhat ambiguous provision in the Iraqi Constitution already gives provincial governments the right to hold on to oil revenues rather than send them to the central government. The results of all of these debates will have an enormous impact on Iraq's chances to build an autonomous and potentially prosperous country down the road.
It's possible that the administration and its partners badly overplayed their hand. Iraq's new government stands on the verge of a complete meltdown, faced with a crisis of legitimacy based largely on the fact that it is seen as collaborating with American forces. Overwhelming majorities of Iraqis of every sect believe the United States is an occupier, not a liberator, and is convinced that it intends to stay in Iraq permanently. "If you go in front of Parliament, Raed Jarrar told me, "and ask: 'who is opposed to demanding a timetable for the Americans to withdrawal?' nobody would dare raise their hand." The passage of a sweetheart oil law could prove to be a tipping point. It's also possible Iraq's government won't make it to December; at this writing, rumors of a "palace coup" are swirling around Baghdad, according to Iraqi lawmakers.
What is clear is that the future of Iraq ultimately hinges to a great degree on the outcome of a complex game of chess -- only part of which is out in the open -- that is playing out right now, and oil is at the center of it. It's equally clear that there's a yawning disconnect between Iraqis' and Americans' views of the situation. Erik Leaver, a senior analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, told me that the disposition of Iraq's oil wealth is "definitely causing problems on the ground," but the entire topic is taboo in polite D.C. circles. "Nobody in Washington wants to talk about it," he said. "They don't want to sound like freaks talking about blood for oil." At the same time, a recent poll asked Iraqis what they believed was the main reason for the invasion and 76 percent gave "to control Iraqi oil" as their first choice.
Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.

Baghdad-Bodies
Police officer killed, 20 bodies found in Baghdad
Baghdad, Oct 18, (VOI) – Unknown gunmen shot dead an Iraqi police officer in eastern Baghdad while 20 bodies were found dumped in different places in Baghdad city during the last 24 hours, Iraqi interior ministry sources said on Wednesday.
“Gunmen shot dead on Wednesday morning the police captain Imad Abbas in Baladiyat neighborhood, east of Baghdad,” one of the sources told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
“20 bodies were found dumped in different places in Baghdad city during the last 24 hours,” an interior ministry source said.
Most of the bodies “were unidentified and some bore torture marks while most were killed with gunshots in different parts of the body,” said the source who declined to be named.
The death toll has been on the rise with an escalation in sectarian killings. The United Nations estimate that about 100 people are killed everyday in Iraq

"Now watch that drive" - GW Bush 2003

English Translation of Saddam Hussein Letter

Dated October 15th, 2006

10/18/06 -- -- Translation By Roads to Iraq

In the name of God the Merciful God who gives us patience and takes our souls as Muslims” Qur’an 40:51

To the great nation, to honorable Iraqi ladies, to the heros of our armed forces, to our glorious nation.

Dear friends in the world. Peace upon you, God’s mercy and blessings.

To Humanity, this set its duty towards itself and others on the basis of fraternity, equality, rejection of superiority, sordid exploitation and exclusion of wills.

Friends, around the world, peace upon you, and God’s mercy and blessing.

On the occasion of month Ramadan which emerged on us this year and our lives in a very difficult situation, exposed to injustice, aggression and embargo since 1991until now, our people experience hard times under the occupation, the killing, the destruction and looting everything alive in Iraq except its faith and its pride which rejects humiliation, treachery and aggression from far and near neighbors some them came as invaders across the Atlantic inspired by the treacherous Zionist ambitions, unjustified interests and aggressiveness.

Some of them are coming from the east of our land, they are bad as usual, you know brother i am a free in my thoughts and opinions but because I am detained by the invading forces. So, my chances are limited and restricted to express my feelings and my will, especially when I direct them to you [Iraqis] through the media, or during this farce court if they don’t close the microphone to block a right opportunity to address the people at the same time when their vanity media is trying to eat your flesh alive

Here I am addressing you today in this holy month saying:

Resisting the invaders is the right and duty, the same goes to the people who collaborated with western or the eastern enemy. But I ask you, brothers and comrades under different titles and names in the brave Iraqi resistance and the people of proud Iraq to consider truth and justice in your Jihad, and don’t let overreacting mislead you. I ask you to keep the door of forgiveness rather than tolerance with the one who lost the true path, if they show some hope that they can be right guided, and remembers you have the duty to save him from himself and show him the right path. Keep the door of forgiveness open to everyone until the instant precedes the liberation which is coming soon in God allow it.

Remember and don’t forget that your goal is to liberate your country from the invaders and its collaborators and striking the enemy is easier to forgive it even if they chose to retreat, whether internal or external enemy. You recall that after every war there is peace, after each difference there is unity, after separation there is reunion, and after all hatred God will return it as familiarity. Humanity is the same, and you people are one great nation, learned in the cradle of the our land the greatest principles of human beings, and the purist religion, your spread monotheistic to civilizations, and rescued them from their ignorance and savagery. You sacrificed before for these values and sacrificed today for the same values, ahead of it the great unified Iraq, not fragmented under any color, group or allegation, this fact is the candle inside us dispel the darkness.

Brothers, my heart and tongue does not allow me to speak with you and addresses by your colors and titles, which made by the foreigners, Iraq was never been a symbol of separation, we all remember it in its beautiful colors which represent the situation in one great Iraq Arabs, Kurds and from every religion, sect or minority, we were proud that we are one nation.

Dear brothers, you have been oppressed by the invaders, their follower and their associates, so don’t oppress anybody, because you will loss God’s right, and make it easy for the opportunists to distort your struggle, and this is a big loss if its happened, and if you win then remember it is God’s victory and you are his soldiers. You have to show forgiveness and put the blood of your sons and brother (under the carpet), even the sons of Saddam Hussein, forgiveness with no return, we recall the tales of our merciful profits, Mohammad and Jesus, they forgave even the ones who insulted them, don’t forget that Mohammad forgive the pagans in Mecca after he accomplished victory. I know the heart of the freedom fighter and love to his nation, his people after his love to God, I expect you to heal the wounds and not to open new wounds.

Brothers, after you forgive the perpetrators, act to apply the law fairly and firmly, so your nation can enjoy the blessing of stability, security and flourish with culture, science and law, peaceful happy life. In this glorious month and you know that there no authority above me but the authority of the truth…. Saddam Hussein is not to be threaten, Saddam Hussein, as you know and he will stay as your knew him. God is great… God is great … … Glory to God, our nation, our people and the mujahideen … God is great and long live Iraq … Long live Iraq … Long live Palestine … Long live our glorious nation’s in Every year, our people, our nation and the peace-loving people … God is greater.

Saddam Hussein
President of Iraq and Commander in Chief of Iraq’s Arms Forces

15 / October / 2006

Iraq orders US to release Shia activist
(AFP)

18 October 2006
BAGHDAD - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki ordered the release Wednesday of a leading member of radical Shia cleric Moqtada Al Sadr’s political organisation who was detained by US troops, state television said.
Relatives and supporters of Sheikh Mazen Al Saedi confirmed he had been released, while a Sadr spokesman said Iraqi interior ministry vehicles brought him to the Shia movement’s offices in the Kadhimiya district of Baghdad.
Sadr’s organisation, which includes several thousand armed fighters, complained Tuesday that Saedi, one of the party’s precinct captains in Baghdad, had been arrested by US troops along with five of his supporters.
The US military has thus far refused to confirm or deny the arrest but state television quoted Iraq’s national security adviser, Muwaffaq Al Rubaie, as saying the prime minister had ordered his release.
“He was released,” confirmed Sadr spokesman Hamdallah Al Rikabi, accusing US forces of trying to provoke the movement into armed confrontation.
“Everybody knows that the Sadr Movement is a patriotic movement seeking to fight terrorism. The occupation forces always choose to detain our members, and only our members, because they want a confrontation.
“We are not too weak to face the occupier, but our leadership wants us to remain quiet,” he added, demanding that the Iraqi government issue a statement to explain Saedi’s brief detention.
American commanders privately accuse Sadr’s Mahdi Army of being one of the main forces behind Iraq’s recent descent into sectarian bloodletting, and a rise in the number of fatal attacks on US troops.
Maliki, however, warns it will be difficult to disarm a militia with such popular support and has said that he vetoed a US plan to invade Sadr’s stronghold in the impoverished east Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.
Before news of the release emerged, several hundred Sadr supporters gathered in the Shuala district of eastern Baghdad to protest Saedi’s alleged detention and demand both his release and ”the end of the occupation”.
Activists chanted: “No, no to America! No, no to Israel!”
There were no weapons on display at the protest, unlike at some previous rallies in Baghdad, where assault rifles and rocket launchers have been openly paraded by masked Mahdi Army fighters.
“The occupiers have begun arresting the sons of this injured country. The occupiers have never been defenders of freedom,” said protest leader Sheikh Hadi Al Mohammedawi, who had not heard the report of the release.
“They arrest the people of this area, which is a shelter for poor and displaced, and leave the regions of terror,” he alleged, implicitly comparing Shia east Baghdad to other areas roamed by Sunni insurgents.
Nevertheless, a threatened strike, which was to have been organised in Baghdad’s hospitals and schools did not materialise, and the protest leader read out a letter from Sadr himself calling it off.

Even as Iraq verges on splintering into a sectarian civil war, four big oil companies are on the verge of locking up its massive, profitable reserves, known to everyone in the petroleum industry as "the prize."

That's good news....what's the point of this thread?

Originally Posted by spliff

Even as Iraq verges on splintering into a sectarian civil war, four big oil companies are on the verge of locking up its massive, profitable reserves, known to everyone in the petroleum industry as "the prize."

That's good news....what's the point of this thread?

no offence mate, but that goes down as the most stupid question i have ever been asked. if you are having a laugh, thats cool, but if you asked that question in earnest then go and do yourself

Oct 19 (Reuters) - Following are security and other developments in Iraq as of 1630 GMT on Thursday:
*KHALIS - A roadside bomb ripped through a busy market, killing 10 people and injuring 20 shortly before the evening Iftar meal when Muslims break their fasting in the month of Ramadan, Interior Ministry sources said. The bomb hit the town of Khalis, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad.
BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed five people -- three policemen and two civilians -- and wounded 12, nine of them civilians, in Baghdad's southern Dora district, an Interior Ministry source said. BAGHDAD - Gunmen attacked a police station and killed four policemen and wounded 10 civilians, an Interior Ministry source said.
KIRKUK - A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol wounded a civilian in Kirkuk, police said.Asterisk denotes a new or updated item.
BAQUBA - Three Iraqi policemen were killed in clashes with gunmen near the volatile town of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. MOSUL - Six suicide bombers in vehicles, including one in a fuel truck, attacked Iraqi police and U.S. patrols, and insurgents fired mortars and clashed with police, U.S. officials and police said. The violence killed at least 20 people in the city 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad.
KIRKUK - A suicide car bomber killed at least eight people and wounded 70 others in the oil city of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad. It targeted Iraqi army troops collecting salaries from a bank, police said. KIRKUK - A suicide car bomb killed two Iraqi soldiers and wounded four more some 35 km (22 miles) southwest of Kirkuk, police and the army said.
KIRKUK - A car bomb killed one person and wounded eight others in Kirkuk, police said.
NEAR KHALIS - Gunmen killed four labourers and wounded four others in a drive-by shooting near the town of Khalis, 80 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - A car bomb and a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed a civilian and wounded five others, including two policemen, in the New Baghdad district in the east of the capital, an Interior Ministry source said. MAHMUDIYA - The bodies of five people were found with gunshot wounds in the town of Mahmudiya, 30 km (20 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. MAHMUDIYA - Several mortar rounds landed in a residential district of the town of Mahmudiya, killing two people and wounding three from the same family, police said.
NEAR MAHMUDIYA - Several mortar rounds landed on a town near Mahmudiya, killing two people and wounding four others, police said. BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed an employee in the Ministry of Higher Education in central Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - Gunmen shot dead police Colonel Basim Qasim in Baghdad's southern Saydiya district, an Interior Ministry source said. ANBAR PROVINCE - A U.S. soldier died on Wednesday from wounds sustained in combat in the western Anbar province, the U.S. military said on Thursday.
BAGHDAD - Two roadside bombs wounded two people near the Iraqi National Theatre in central Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.
DIWANIYA - Gunmen killed a man as he left his house in Diwaniya, 180 km (112 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.
KIRKUK - A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol and wounded three policemen in the city of Kirkuk, police said.
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS *BAGHDAD - The top American commander in Iraq, General George Casey, has ordered a review of a U.S.-led crackdown in Baghdad, a spokesman said on Thursday, as reinforcements have failed to ease violence and the U.S. death toll has spiked this month.

Upon Red Rivers of Genocide Living Inside Hell on Earth

By Manuel Valenzuela
10/19/06 -Daily upon the rivers that birthed civilization can the flow of crimson colored blood be seen journeying over liquid roadways through the land of Mesopotamia, its accumulated and growing volume the result of scattered bodies, bullet hole riddled men and bloated humans, all silent witnesses to the devastation that has cursed the Iraqi people.

Tainted with the flow of human wickedness, the Tigris and Euphrates spread their polluted waters over the entire culture of Iraq, like sewers of human waste contaminating land, water and air, their toxins of evil and torture and murder and suffering spreading a noxious fog over cities and towns, its cocktail of death and destruction infecting the fabric of society, the very foundation of Iraq cracked and shattered by the spillage of human energy, that crimson liquid granting life.

Upon red rivers of genocide do twenty five million human beings sip out of, forced to endure the aftertaste of rotting flesh, drinking from the chalice of human violence, swallowing the red liquid of their nation’s blood, bathing in its corrupted waterways as their country slowly, yet surely, hemorrhages to death. Unable to close a gaping and now pussing wound, unable to stitch back together lacerated flesh, millions upon millions of human beings have become the gangrened body infected by America’s disastrous debacle, slowly rotting from within, turning vile in color and putrid in smell with each passing day, their only salvation the amputation of the whole, the division of their nation, the destruction and partition of Iraq.

To twenty five million Iraqis hell on Earth has been introduced to their land by the demons roaming the halls of American power that care not an ounce for the misery and wickedness now roaming like a vulture over Iraq’s skies. For human evil has been imported into the Cradle of Civilization, an export birthed, nurtured and molded by Old Glory itself, under the watchful eyes of Jefferson, Lincoln and Washington, crafted by debasement and corruption, becoming the most successful product launch America has sent abroad in many, many years. For the war culture has perfected the art of sadistic mass murder, a new edition introduced like a software program, resurrected every few decades to enrich war profiteers and greed mongers while making comfortable the lives of those residing inside the belly of the beast. Like a virus the American angel of death has spread far and wide, free of antidotes or miracle cures, given the freedom that is denied Iraqis, like a haze enveloping almost every city and town, village and farm, infecting madness and hatred and vengeance and anger into the minds of millions, injecting civil war upon Iraq and genocide upon the Iraqi people.

Upon the affliction that has befallen them, born of lies, deceit and criminality, against all precepts of human and international law, rising out of smoldering ashes and destroyed skyscrapers, fashioned by incompetent daydreamers and pathological deviants, Iraqis – whose only true curse is having evolved for millennia in the lands pregnant with the devil’s excrement – find themselves stuck in a nightmare whose waking hour will not come and whose terror cannot be made to disappear. To them, the nightmare is all too real, as evident as the smell of burning flesh or the concussion of the next explosion, as real as the searing shrapnel tearing and ripping open body parts or the decapitated and mangled head of a loved one.

This nightmare does not wake, nor does it allow eyes to open, becoming as real as the destruction of homes, livelihoods or rape of an older sister. Whether murdered execution style with a bullet to the head or murdered by an American smart bomb, the Iraqi nightmare seems only to end upon the last breaths of life, upon the expiration of human energy. Only then does fire and phosphorous and bullets and missiles and beheadings turn to nothingness; only then does hell on Earth subside and peace prosper.

The omnipotent darkness of genocide, American style, has been resurrected in lands ancient and mesmerizing, where history began and where humanity was nurtured and reared. From the fertile bosom and succulent nectars of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers humankind took a great leap forward, advancing in civilization, growing in numbers, evolving in time. Today, from rivers once offering life only death and the products of human malevolence can be seen, courtesy of greed, arrogance and apathy, of the self-aggrandized narcissism and inexperienced idiocy that blinds and insulates populations smeared in comfort and willful ignorance. Through the silence and acquiescence of Americans, through the complete indifference to the plight of 25 million Iraqis, genocide has become America’s foreign policy in Iraq, becoming Iraq’s new normal, rising to the present as it once did in the past, a disease thriving wherever America’s armies land, just as it once did in the Philippines, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia, where in the span of a century the lives of tens of millions of human beings were systematically erased from the face of Earth.

Genocide, that most malevolent of human activities, that most common of historical realities, that most useful of American foreign policy objectives, a demon that invariably never fails to leave our mammalian psychology, becoming as common to our history as music is to our culture, has been birthed in the land of sand and dunes, becoming as common as scorching temperatures, rising like ancient Babylon once did to lay claim to Mesopotamia. Upon rivers that once brought life now only death floats by; where fertile mud once flowed now human blood gushes. Where sustenance once flourished only misery can now be irrigated; where once fish were pulled out in bountiful amounts now bodies of rotting human flesh are fished out of the water.

For what can you call what is happening in Iraq in the first decade of the twenty-first century anything but genocide, the complete and systematic decimation – the annihilation – of an entire culture, of an entire society, of an entire nation? What do you call the death, mostly by violent murder, state sponsored terrorism, American birthed civil war, sectarian violence and counterterrorism operations, of 655,000 human beings if not mass murder, genocide, the genesis of Holocaust? Two to three percent of the Iraqi population has been exterminated, never to breathe life again, never to see children grow up, never to see mothers give birth or see fathers become proud grandfathers. Two to three percent of Iraq’s people lie six feet under, buried under the massive and monstrous American military machine. If two to three percent of America was killed in the span of three years, a number reaching 6 to 9 million individuals, what would happen to the United States? What would happen if a city the size of Los Angeles or New York or Chicago was wiped off the face of the nation? The equivalent of this hypothetical is happening today in Iraq.

Entire families have disappeared, entire ways of life extinguished; the devastation of daily anarchy, occupation, chaos, thirst for vengeance and civil war results in several hundred deaths by murder every single day in Iraq. Every month in Iraq at least 3,000 civilians die at the hands of human wickedness, creating an Iraqi 9/11 every 30 days, every 720 hours. Rivers and puddles of blood flowing through Iraq’s streets never seem to run dry, with each new day spawning the next bloodbath of body parts and devastated flesh. The Iraqi genocide refuses to relent, thriving off of human psychology, off of a culture of revenge and honor, off of a brutal guerilla resistance to foreign occupation. In each case of murder, torture or intolerable suffering, the common denominator is always the invasion of Iraq by America and the subsequent occupation that has become a catalyst to the horrors facing average Iraqis today. Each day only seems to make things worse; each year only cements the continuing decent into human Hell. From the bowels of hell the demons of mankind have risen in the land of Mesopotamia.

Children rise one day to innocence only to fall asleep to malevolence. Teenagers once full of idealism, hope and love are now possessed by hate, anger and psychological maiming. Young adults hoping for a fruitful life now have only the memories of the past to sustain them, their potential and opportunity now eroded, their talents and abilities quashed. Mothers and fathers once hoping for a better tomorrow for their children now see nothing but decades of decimation to come. Grandmothers and grandfathers look at the present and remember the past, cursing the devil’s excrement, condemning the Anglo-American world, shedding tears over the crushed vibrancy of a destroyed society. Through the eyes of babies a world of violence and murder becomes routine, along with bloated bellies and diseased bodies, hungry mouths and depleted brain power. Through the eyes of babies Iraq and its cities burn in a fiery inferno of man killing man, its pillars crumbling under the weight of the evil birthed through American intervention. This, today, is reality and truth to 25 million Iraqis, or to those who remain, unable to flee.

Genesis of Holocaust

The lives of 25 million human beings lie in ruins, destroyed like the rubble and mortar that lines city streets and boulevards. The Iraqi genocide is what we at present see, a reality fated to continue well into the future, without a hint of when it will stop, a direct and proximate cause of America’s war crimes and its illegal and immoral occupation. The curse upon Iraqis, begun with the act of economic genocide called sanctions, imposed, implemented and supervised by America in the 1990’s – which resulted in the death of up to 1.5 million Iraqis, 500,000 of them children lacking proper nourishment or medicines – and continued with Bush’s Crusade against Iraq, an operation of blatant terrorism disguised under the state’s veil of Lady Liberty and Old Glory, has in the span of a decade and a half become a shameful and criminal Holocaust, resulting in the death of perhaps two million human beings. If the mass murder by radiation through America’s weapon of mass destruction, depleted uranium munitions, is added to the calculations, the Iraqi Holocaust approaches some of the worst crimes of human civilization in the brief history of our species.

The monster engendered by George W. Bush, the military-energy industrial complex and the neocons has become an unstoppable force whose momentum has spiraled out of control, its life growing and evolving not in accordance with the commands from Washington but rather from the vicious cycle of devastation now feeding its unquenchable appetite for blood and malice. Like a hurricane it gains speed and strength from warm liquid, in this case human blood, becoming a vicious circle of mass murder that cannot be halted.

Has the greed and hunger for unsurpassed wealth and power been worth the genocide of Iraqis? Has it been worth the indescribable pain and suffering and anger and hatred emanating from millions of Iraqis against the United States? To you and me the answer is surely no; to the war mongers and greed addicts in power, however, it has been worth every penny, for they care nothing for ordinary Iraqis, having not one drop of remorse or empathy or humanity in their ice cold veins from where only the green of the Almighty dollar and the thick black oil of the devil’s excrement is allowed to flow. To them, the Iraqi genocide is seen only through the macabre vision of dollar signs and enhanced power. To these individuals, they would just as easily squash a cockroach than care about 300 deaths a day in Iraq.

How high will the final tally of dead Iraqis reach? How much killing and murder and maiming and destruction is left to achieve? How much longer will the blueprint for Central America during the Cold War be implemented in Iraq, with its counterinsurgency operations full of torture, disappearances, mass executions and death squads? Will the final death count approach the two to three million dead that were recorded in Vietnam, that the American military left in its wake as it retreated from its embassy’s rooftop? Will the killing stop only when there is nothing left to kill, only when the enemies of America have exhausted destroying each other, when they realize that they have been made to fight each other so as not to unite and fight the common enemy, just as the pathological occupiers desired in a classic example of divide and conquer?

The Iraqi genocide will not be destroyed until America is kicked out of Iraq, until its bases are overrun, until the Green Zone is sacked, until the last remaining Americans are evacuated with helicopters from the rooms of Saddam’s old palaces, for it will never leave voluntarily. It has created a mess it cannot extricate itself out of, both strategically and financially. It has invested too much precious treasure, to say nothing of blood, in the pursuit and control of Iraq’s energy resources. It has built more than a dozen permanent bases, it has firmly planted itself in a most geostrategic location, the easier to wage battle against tomorrow’s rivals, Russia and China. America has made the first move in the great chess match for control of Earth’s remaining petroleum. It cannot now simply pack up and leave, no matter how costly the enterprise, no matter how much blood is spilled. With its reputation in tatters, with its military trapped in quicksand, with its leaders as incompetent and arrogant as they are unwise, America will, like a spoiled and undisciplined child of wealth, thinking itself privileged and enveloped under hallucinations of chosen grandeur, refuse to listen to reason, preferring to suffocate under the immense weight of the greatest strategic disaster in the history of the nation than declare defeat and retreat.

The killing and destruction will continue, with America as catalyst, as the malignancy destroying the invaded nation with the cancer of human wickedness, until the term genocide is replaced by the word Holocaust, until millions lie in graves, their bodies returning to dust and earth and grass, the winds carrying radiation poisoning becoming the silent reminders and perpetual killers of America’s foray into the Iraqi deserts. Millions of Iraqis, those already born and those yet to come, are destined to die at the hands of what America wrought. Thousands will die of bullet holes to the head, while thousands more will be murdered by bombs and missiles. Still many more will die of preventable disease, dead for lack of sanitation, lack of potable water, lack of electricity, medicine and nutritious food. Tens of thousands will die of lack of security, as anarchy and chaos and civil war devastate Iraqi culture and society. Untold numbers of Iraqis will die of cancers and diseases resulting from radiation poisoning caused by the use of hundreds of tons of depleted uranium munitions. Thousands of newborns will be born mutated or deformed, distorted in ways human babies have never looked before; thousands more will never be born at all, for stillborn will they enter this planet, becoming the lucky few to escape the human hell their parents must confront and escape.

Up to a million Iraqis, those lucky enough to possess some form of infinitesimal wealth, have fled their native country, never to return to their homes, their lives left behind. Displaced by America’s occupation and the resulting insecurity and guerilla warfare, uncounted millions have decided that it is better to risk leaving Iraq than remaining under the real threat of becoming one more statistic in a Baghdad morgue. The Iraqi Diaspora has begun, with those allotted a little luck in money and fate creating a mass exodus from Mesopotamia, choosing poverty abroad rather than insecurity and constant threat at home. Already hundreds of thousands of professionals have left the cities, from professors to doctors, leaving Iraq a desolate and anemic society, never to return to the nation of their birth. As a result, hundreds of thousand of students are without teachers, millions of civilians are without doctors.

Yet for the poor of Iraq, for those comprising the salt of the earth, the great majority of Iraq’s citizens whose resources prevent escape from the gates of hell on Earth, only the certainty of living in constant fear of death or injury awaits, their lives reduced to an understanding that the last breath they take could very well be their final gasp of air. For the poor of Iraq, America and its brutal occupation, with its massive debacle of historical proportions, makes Saddam Hussein seem like Franklin D. Roosevelt. Indeed, how many Iraqis today wish Saddam was still in power? Iraq, after all, was safe, secure and at peace with him at the helm, a reality that today does not exist.

While brutal and a dictator, he was nonetheless the fulcrum upon which all of Iraq stood united, in control, free of terrorism, a non-threat to its neighbors, much less to George W. Bush’s America. Yet even today his war crimes pale in comparison with those unleashed by George W. Bush, yet it is Saddam that will soon hang from a noose. It was Saddam that acted as the thread and needle needed to stitch Iraq together. Without him the entire deck of cards has come tumbling down. With a western created nation such as Iraq, with borders delineated according to European interests and not ethnic or religious realities, only a strong-arm despot sponsored by the west could maintain control, becoming the thread holding the nation together. Unfortunately for America, George W. Bush and his neocon handlers have no interest in learning history or its many lessons.


The Folly of Ignoring History’s Lessons


What those who discard or ridicule the study of history fail to realize is that history – not the kind that is written by powers or winners but by reality – is but the decoded pattern of repeated psychologies and behaviors of our past and the blueprint for understanding our present and future. It is our demons, mistakes, lessons, triumphs, wonders and evolution as a civilization outlined for us to learn from and study, to absorb fully into our existence. For it is indeed true that those who fail to learn history are utterly, and faithfully, condemned to repeat it, which is what has happened in the American disaster in Iraq, as well as in the brewing failure in Afghanistan. Had the history of the region been taken seriously, had it been studied and learned from, Iraq would have never become the inferno it is today. Quite simply, Iraq should have never been invaded and occupied. Yet wisdom and intelligence are almost always mutually exclusive from politicians, elites and their legions of yes-men and women.

By throwing away the readily available history of Mesopotamia, with its plethora of lessons and warnings for arrogant yet ignorant imperial seekers saturated with the honey of hubristic honey, America and her so-called leaders embarked on a course towards debacle from the very beginning, preferring to believe those whose minds dwell in fantasy, delusion and theory espoused in books over those whose decisions are based on history, experience, wisdom and reality. America’s so-called leaders chose to smell the sweet yet delusional aroma of being greeted as liberators, believing they would be welcomed with flowers, candy thrown at their feet. Instead, they were greeted with AK-47s, rocket propelled grenades and IED’s, along with the collective and growing anger of the Iraqi people. Because of this gross incompetence, because of complete negligence and disregard for reality, American soldiers were sent into a hornet’s nest, straight into a pit of quicksand designed to meticulous tear apart one soldier at a time, trapping citizen soldiers in a guerilla war that was never going to be won and was always going to end in disaster.

Because of the complete ignorance festering at the top of America’s pyramid of hierarchy and inside the decrepit neocon nest of vultures, in three years 655,000 Iraqis have died, more than a million Iraqis have become refugees, countless more have suffered maiming of both body and mind, and an entire society has been decimated, raped of its vibrancy and usurped of its peace and unity. With years yet to go before the madness is halted, with America unable and unwilling to extricate itself from the tar pit it has nosedived into, the genocide now taking place will only grow, easily surpassing the present evil in the Darfur, the past wickedness in Rwanda and the Congo, and threatening to reach levels of genocide America created and furthered in both Vietnam and Cambodia, which resulted in millions of deaths.

If this is the case, the time honored American tradition of waging invasion and occupation against a concocted enemy nation will continue, as always biting off more than it can chew, refusing to change the course, through guerilla war waged by resistance forces being forced to retreat, in the process engendering and furthering genocide, creating a bloodbath in the process, and eventually leaving the nation it originally invaded a wasteland of destruction, suffering and death. Its time honored tradition of killing millions through invasion, occupation and through a barrage of state sponsored terrorism every two or three decades will thus continue. Which country, which people, we should all wonder, will be next to become the blood needed by the Pax Americana to gorge on? Which nation will be next to suffer the wrath of American genocide that invariably helps sustain the comfortable standard of living of those residing inside the belly of the beast?

For those residing in the reality based community and not the fantasy based bubble of delusion, the Iraq debacle has become even greater than originally thought, becoming, in the span of three years, a disaster of monumental proportions, a comma of history that will be studied and analyzed as the greatest strategic disaster in the history of the United States. It will become the comma of history that is used, along with that other comma called Vietnam, as a case study of how not to hand incompetent greed addicts and war mongers the reigns of military power, becoming, as all disaster usually is, a harsh lesson taught future generations so that they do not repeat the mistakes and disasters of their forefathers. Unfortunately, the same was once said of the Vietnam experience.


Forever Remembered, Never Forgotten


The Iraq genocide from 1991 through the Bush Crusade will forever be remembered in history books, just as the president wanted, though not for the reasons those who concocted and furthered it thought. It will be remembered not for triumph or grandeur or to memorialize America or its leaders but rather for the crimes against humanity, for the war crimes, the horrible suffering and the genocide perpetuated by America along with the shameful indifference, acquiescence and silence of an American people that have lost all sense of shame, or decency, preferring to bask under the glow of purposeful ignorance than have their lives of comfort and materialism interrupted by the destruction and genocide their country is committing in the Middle East.

The Iraq/Bush Crusade will be remembered for the greed and lust for oil of the American people, of millions upon millions driving gas-guzzling SUVs while Iraqis were forced to spend entire days in line to fill up their cars. It will be remembered for a housing bubble that granted Americans inflated and borrowed comfort, allowing them the opportunity to purchase enormous cookie cutter homes and a myriad number of toys, wants and luxuries, even as our war machine destroyed the lives of 655,000 human beings, even as our beautiful minds placed the entire decimation of another nation by our government out of sight and out of mind.

The Bush Crusade will be seen for what it has become: the utter failure of the American people to act during our most loathsome hour. At a time when America hit the nadir of morality and virtue, the American people of the first decade of the 21st century will be judged guilty of complicity in the first mass genocide of the new millennium. Our callous complicity in supporting criminals and murderers, while living lives of gluttony and apathy, have made us all guilty in what has certainly become a crime of the highest order. But for our terrible passivity in the face of an illegal and immoral invasion and occupation, obvious war crimes, and the decadence of American virtue and principles, perhaps the Iraq genocide might have been avoided, saving the lives of millions of human beings, both Iraqi and American, and perhaps saving our honor and reputation as well.

As a result of this most incompetent of administrations, Iraq and its valiant resistance has disemboweled the grand American military machine, gutting its power, re-opening the large scab that refuses to heal, bringing the American imperial project to its knees and proving to humanity, yet again, that asymmetric guerilla warfare cannot be defeated by a conventional military, no matter how arrogant or powerful it claims itself to be. In the streets of Iraq battles are waged according to the dictates of the resistance, a fragmented amalgam of native mujahadeen whose knowledge of Iraq, patience in attacking, discipline in retreating and noble cause in fighting off a brutal occupation, have allowed it to bruise and make bloody the American military on a daily basis, slowly, yet surely, tiring out the powerful giant.

With 95 percent of the resistance born and bred in Iraq, fighting for the independence of their nation and not for an al-Qaeda ideology, with 90 percent of the civilian population supporting them, America will never defeat the insurgency, no matter how hard it tries to divide and conquer, no matter how many times it tries to foment sectarian violence and civil war, no matter how many billions it spends on a monthly basis, no matter how many permanent bases it decides to build. Shiite and Sunni may be fighting each other, yet their common enemy remains America.

A culture of vengeance and of honor, a society brimming with anger and a people thirsting for freedom from America cannot be defeated, no matter how many times the occupier decides to stay the course on a most defective ship. Iraqis fight for freedom and independence; they fight to prevent their oil from being stolen; they fight for family and honor, for the death of loved ones and against the dehumanization by the occupier. They have reason to fight, possessing passion knowing they are in the right, which cannot be said of American soldiers. What does America fight for? What cause guides it forward? What passion drives its momentum? How is America in the right? This war is all about control of oil, all about greed and engorging the bank accounts of the military-energy industrial complex. The Bush Crusade is about pillage of resources, plundering of the treasury and securing for tomorrow the oil fiefdoms that will further enrich and empower the American elite and its corporations. How do you get American soldiers to believe in a cause and fight for a war based on lies, deceit, manipulations and for the greed and power of a tiny minority that have sent them to become the cannon fodder of the wealthy?


The Shame of America


Make no mistake, America will prefer to stay the course, for to its alpha male leaders it can never “cut and run.” Her so-called leaders will always choose to sacrifice thousands of sons and daughters of poverty so leaders’ and their reputations and legacies survive intact. It is not their sons and daughters bleeding to death, it is not their relatives being maimed in body and mind. No, America never loses a war, it never suffers defeat, for in the national narrative, in the fables and myths told the masses, America is blessed by the Christian god, she is good and everything else evil, she is right and all else wrong, her soldiers fight only for freedom and democracy, not for corporate and elite power. In the national fiction a war on terror exists and Iraq is the central front, the place where evil must be confronted because it hates us for our freedoms, not our foreign policy.

Sure, the appearance of withdrawal of forces will be concocted to appease the grumbling masses, enough to satisfy their beautiful minds, yet tens of thousands of troops will remain, protecting pipelines, refineries, permanent bases and the oil fields that now fly the great red, white and blue. You do not think the American state would spend a trillion dollars in the Bush Crusade simply to expel a despot from power, right? You do not think a trillion dollars will in the end be spent to bring freedom and democracy to a partitioned tri- state, do you? Because of oil and its strategic location in the Middle East and near Central Asia, Iraq will remain an American colony for decades to come or until that time that Iraq’s oil fields run dry. It will be infested with American troops protecting America’s corporate interests until the day arrives when America and her military are forced out of the nation by a resistance that continues to gain momentum, strength and support. Only by force, and with her tail between her feet, will America stubbornly relent and retreat in the face of a perpetual bloodbath.

To her leaders, as well as to most of her citizens, the Iraqi genocide is of no more significance than last week’s episode of Survivor. Out of sight and out of mind, hundreds of millions of Americans could care less about Iraqis and their plight. To America’s so-called leaders, genocide is part of doing business, part of war profiteering and greasing the engine of perpetual war for perpetual profit. To most Americans, both leaders and civilians, Iraqis are subhuman dark skinned Arabs and the death of 655,00, or the displacement of one million, are of little importance or consequence, whether or not the American state perpetrated crimes against humanity in their name.

Why be bothered by the misery and suffering of Arabs in the Middle East when a pedophile was just forced to resign from the Congress? Why feel any ounce of sympathy for the plight of Iraqis when Democrats will only continue the massacre when they regain control of the legislative branch? Why feel extreme sadness and guilt and shame at what is done in our name when we have trouble even finding Iraq on a global map? Why feel indignation at the genocide taking place when more than 40 percent of Americans still think Iraq was involved in the inside job of 9/11?

As a result of what America has unleashed upon Iraq, given the silent passivity and blind acquiescence of the masses, given the loyal support granted Bush by 59 million voters in 2004 and the perpetual support of 30 percent of American sheeple, given the reprehensible indifference and racist xenophobia towards Iraqis by many Americans, given the astounding mortality figures rising out of Iraq in the last fifteen years as a result of American involvement, it is both a shame and an embarrassment to consider oneself American. In this day and age, to consider oneself proud to be an American is to be in serious need of psychological assistance, psychotropic medication, or both. It is to be so brainwashed and manipulated by the state and the corporate media that the labeling of someone as ignorant is a valid affirmative defense.

To show no remorse against the myriad number of crimes against humanity and the war crimes perpetrated by the American government and its president is to lack the basic tenets of what it is to be human. It is to dwell in the land of sheeple and lemmings, immersed in a population of pathological sadists more concerned for the health of fictional television characters than in the genocide of hundreds of thousands of real human beings. To salute the red, white and blue today is to give comfort to terrorists and blind loyalty to criminals. It is to support the destruction of the Constitution, of democracy, international law and human decency. In short, saluting the American flag today is to declare war and commit treason against all the United States has ever stood for, all it has ever fought to preserve. It is to appease the real terrorists, aiding war criminals and granting blind loyalty and faith to the United Corporations of America, a nation of, by and for the corporate world and the elite that control it.

How sad that in the worst cluster of years in our history the American people decided to do nothing, preferring to sit on our ever expanding buttocks hypnotized by the corporate media, failing to act at the most important moment of our lives, our only contribution being remaining silent to the avalanche of war crimes and crimes against humanity that have laid waste to Iraq. How sad and pathetic Americans have become, in the first decade of the 21st century, becoming the ignorant, fearful, xenophobic, acquiescent and indifferent army of good Americans. A once virtuous and honorable people, at one time possessed of intelligence and free thinking minds have, in the span of a few decades, been transformed into the epitome of cattle, sheep and any other unthinking creatures of group mentality, today lacking the cognitive qualities used to reason and use logic to think independently of what the state and the corporate world inculcate.

Ignorance has prevailed over knowledge, eroding the very foundation of democracy, for an unthinking populace cannot possibly question its leaders, their motives, or be given the vital responsibility of electing representatives to act in their interest. With a population bred over decades for ignorance, incurious about the world, unaware of other cultures or lands, conditioned to fear what is not known, the state can act without accountability or restraint, for the blind masses have become too numb minded to even care or be concerned. This is the reality in America today, and the reason genocide goes silent, why it goes unquestioned or why it remains relatively unknown, much like that mass murder that took place in Vietnam. The truth is that Americans would rather not know what their government does in their name, fearing their comfortable lives would become upset with the knowledge of what is transpiring in Iraq at the hands of the American military machine.

Unthinking and easily manipulated, those residing inside the belly of the beast are mere clay in the hands of the powerful, easily molded into the cookie cutter drones of the corporatist state. Combined with the xenophobia, patriotism and nationalism spawned by 9/11, a dumbed down populace thus cares nothing for genocide committed in their name, regressing down a few steps down the evolutionary ladder, devolving into a knuckle dragging proto-primate only a nose hair separated from our chimp cousins. To the average American citizen, better a dead Iraqi than a night without the comfortable glare of the omnipresent television monitor. Better 655,000 dead subhuman Arabs than a day living without a gas-guzzling SUV tank.

To the 25 million Iraqis whose lives have been condemned to hell on Earth, courtesy of the United States, please accept this man’s sincere apology for what this wicked nation has done to your land and people, to your daily lives, culture and society. I know I speak for many who live in the United States when I say that I lower my head in shame at what is done in my name. Today, more than ever, I am ashamed to be American. I am ashamed for what this nation has done, for what it will continue doing, for what it has become and for the continued and silent acquiescence of the American people.

As much as words can traverse entire oceans and deserts, as much as they can never replace lives lost or family members buried, as much as they can never make right what has been wronged, please accept this digital apology for a horror many of us detest and abhor. I am truly sorry, from the bottom of my heart, for the curse that has befallen your beautiful land and culture. I apologize for the 30 to 40 percent of Americans that are one-step away from complete mental retardation. I apologize for the lazy, gluttonous and complacent millions whose only experience with life is the nightly glow of television. I apologize for the tens of millions of so-called Christians that call themselves the culture of life even as they drool with glee at the genocide taking place in your nation. I apologize that the Bush Crusade has not been stopped, that the American people have not hung the neocon cabal from the rafters and that the war culture will only continue laying waste to the peoples of the world.

The Iraq Genocide is a curse upon us all, a shame for all humanity, a crime of the highest order that should bring those responsible to deserved justice. In a more perfect world, there would be confidence that criminals and murderers and malfeasant authoritarians would be brought to justice. In the real world, however, they are promoted, elected and made much more powerful. They are given bonuses and pats on the back, allowed to join the elite membership of privilege and power. Such is human civilization that the genocide of 1.5 million a few years ago, 655,000 Iraqis the last three years, perhaps that of millions tomorrow, will be glossed over and forgotten, becoming one comma of history, not unlike many others that have come before, not unlike many others that are sure to follow, becoming yet one more reality of this self-destructive species called humankind. Genocide comes in many shapes and sizes, monopolized by nobody, suffered by all. Upon red rivers of genocide is Iraq being flooded with, released by America through its spigots of human wickedness.

May we one day be forgiven for the madness that has contaminated us. May Iraqis one day offer us the humanity we seem to have lost. May we find our way, if not for us, then for our progeny. May our children learn from our ways, evolving a better culture than we are leaving behind. Shame on us all for what we have allowed our government to become. Shame on us all for what we have allowed it to do in our name. Shame on America. Shame. Shame. Shame.






Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic and commentator, international affairs analyst and Internet essayist. His articles as well as his archive can be found at his blog, http://www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.comas well as at other alternative news websites from around the globe. Mr. Valenzuela is also author of Echoes in the Wind, a fiction novel. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net.

Originally Posted by seth106

Originally Posted by spliff

Even as Iraq verges on splintering into a sectarian civil war, four big oil companies are on the verge of locking up its massive, profitable reserves, known to everyone in the petroleum industry as "the prize."

That's good news....what's the point of this thread?

no offence mate, but that goes down as the most stupid question i have ever been asked. if you are having a laugh, thats cool, but if you asked that question in earnest then go and do yourself

I apologise for that remark. It was uncalled for. I was a bit stressed at the time and now wish to climb down from my high horse

One Crime Too Many

By Mike Whitney

10/19/06 Iraq is the great tragedy of our generation. Every day men and women are brazenly killed in their own homes or cities by foreign troops who occupy the country without justification.

In Baghdad, “liberation” has become a permanent state of martial law where one can never be certain if his door will suddenly be kicked in and he will either be shot or dragged off to some remote prison for torture.

Entire cities are now under siege; surrounded by concertina-wire and massive walls of dirt. The townspeople are forced to exit and enter through American-run checkpoints and forced to verify their identity to their foreign jailors.

The country has become so unsafe that it is impossible for independent journalists to gather the information the world needs to grasp the horror of what is taking place under the rubric of “democracy”. Meanwhile, “embedded” journalists continue to reiterate the same, worn fictions, generated in the Pentagon or right-wing think tanks, that somehow the Iraqi people are to blame for the massive tragedy which was created by the invasion.

Iraqi blogger Riverbend summarizes the mood in Iraq saying:

“There are women who have not shed their black mourning robes since 2003 because each time the end of the proper mourning period comes around, some other relative dies and the countdown begins again”.

Iraq is in a permanent state of bereavement. The suffering we have caused is immeasurable.

In Washington, President Bush has brushed aside a new survey which shows that over 600,000 Iraqis have been butchered in his “war of choice”. The “peer-reviewed” epidemiological study appeared in “The Lancet” and has thus-far been supported by every reputable analyst familiar with the methodology used to determine the number of casualties.

As Dr. Curren Warf, professor of pediatric medicine and board member of the Physicians for Social Responsibility, said:

“I wish to set the record straight. “The Lancet” study is superb science. The study followed a strict, widely accepted methodology to arrive at its sobering conclusion. The study is being attacked not on scientific grounds, but for ideological reasons.”

To Bush, it makes no difference whether the number is 600,000 or 6 hundred million; the cost in human terms is irrelevant. In America, the life of one microscopic stem-cell is of more value that the entire population of Iraq. That’s what happens when racism merges with apathy; the dead simply don’t count.

Compare Bush’s indifference to the Iraqi death-toll to his “pro-life” rhetoric at home. Consider how he cancelled his Crawford vacation to speed back to Washington to sign legislation to save the life of Terri Schiavo even though Schiavo was showing no mental-activity and 19 courts had already ruled in her husband’s favor to allow her to die peacefully. Later, an autopsy confirmed that her brain had calcified and shrunk to half its normal size.

Still, Schiavo’s political value was of greater importance to Bush than the 650,000 men, women and children he has slaughtered in Iraq.

There’s simply no way to measure this degree of cynicism.

And “what if the 600,000 number is wrong,” Riverbend asks? “What if the minimum number is correct: nearly 400,000? Is that better? Prior to the war Bush kept claiming that Saddam killed 300,000 Iraqis over 24 years. After this latest report in The Lancet, 300,000 is looking quite modest and tame. Congratulations Bush et al.”

Bush’s crimes and the crimes of the United States are far greater than Saddam’s. Saddam had no intention of dismantling the government, the army, the civic institutions; of looting the museums and killing the teachers and intellectuals, of ethnic cleansing the Christians and the Sunnis, and inciting violence between the sects. Saddam had no plan to increase malnutrition, to reduce the flow of clean water, to cut off the electricity, to remove the social-safety net, to increase the poverty and unemployment, or to set Iraqi against Iraqi in a vicious struggle for survival. Saddam did not abide by the neoconservative theory of “creative destruction”, which deliberately plunged an entire nation into chaos destroying the fabric of Iraqi society and leaving the people to flock to militias for safety.

Saddam was a brutal, cold-blooded dictator, but compared to the calculated viciousness of Bush, he looks like a pillar of virtue.

America will never atone for its part in the genocide in Iraq. We have compromised our moral authority for the promise of oil, and lost both in the process. The mission is unraveling and the vulnerabilities of the empire have been thoroughly exposed. We will not prevail.

The occupation of Iraq is “one crime too many”.

Note: Colin Powell stated that “genocide” was taking place in Darfur when the figures showed that approximately 200,000 Sudanese had been killed. Applying Powell’s standard to Iraq, which has half the population of Sudan, The Lancet statistics prove that the United States is perpetrating genocide in Iraq.

United Press International - Security & Terrorism - Military Matters: Cynicism on Iraq

Civil war reveals bankrupt Iraq policy - World - theage.com.au

The Herald

it makes awful reading

I will continue to trawl the press and net.

If this is not to your taste please let me know.

- The top American commander in Iraq, General George Casey, has ordered a review of a U.S.-led crackdown in Baghdad, a spokesman said on Thursday, as reinforcements have failed to ease violence and the U.S. death toll has spiked this month.

What happened to "mission accomplished" and "democracy in the middle east"?
If Bush/Rumsfeld & co had a single moral fibre left in them, they'd be jumping around with their feet in their fekking mouths 24/7.

After Pat’s Birthday

By Kevin Tillman

Editor’s note: Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written a powerful, must-read document.

10/20/06 "TruthDig" -- -- It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we get out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.

Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman, Kevin Tillman

Guardian Unlimited | Video | Sean Smith in Iraq

flash movie from the Guardian and the BBC

Medics beg for help as Iraqis die needlessly

Half of all deaths preventable, say country's medics Reconstruction seen as disaster More than 2,000 doctors and nurses are killed 18,000 more leave the nation. Even the most basic treatments are lacking

By Jeremy Laurance
Health Editor

10/20/06 "The Independent" -- -- The disintegration of Iraq's health service is leaving its civilians defenceless in the continuing violence that is rocking the country, Iraqi doctors warn today.

As many as half of the civilian deaths, calculated at 655,000 since the 2003 invasion, might have been avoided if proper medical care had been provided to the victims, they say.

In separate appeals, the doctors beg for help to stem the soaring death rate and ease the suffering of injured families and children. They say governments and the international medical community are ignoring their plight.

In the first 14 months after the 2003 invasion almost $20bn (?11bn) was spent on reconstruction by the British and American funds, including hundreds of millions on rebuilding and re-equipping the country's network of 180 hospitals and clinics.

But billions went missing because of a combination of criminal activity, corruption, and incompetence, leaving Iraqis without even the essentials for basic medical care.

The violence for which the Allied forces failed to plan has meant a $200m reconstruction project for building 142 primary care centres ran out of cash earlier this year with just 20 on course to be completed, an outcome the World Health Organisation described as "shocking".

In March, the campaign group Medact said 18,000 physicians had left the country since 2003, an estimated 250 of those that remained had been kidnapped and, in 2005 alone, 65 killed.

Medact also said "easily treatable conditions such as diarrhoea and respiratory illness caused 70 per cent of all child deaths", and that " of the 180 health clinics the US hoped to build by the end of 2005, only four have been completed and none opened".

Writing in the British Medical Journal today, Dr Basssim Al Sheibani and two colleagues from the Diwaniyah College of Medicine in Iraq says that, as the violence escalates, "the reality is we cannot provide any treatment for many of the victims."

"Emergency departments are staffed by doctors who do not have the proper experience or skills to manage emergency cases. Medical staff ... admit that more than half of those killed could have been saved if trained and experienced staff were available."

They say equipment, supplies and drugs are in many cases unobtainable. " Many emergency departments are no more than halls with beds, fluid suckers and oxygen bottles."

They add: "Our experience has taught us that poor emergency medicine services are more disastrous than the disaster itself. But despite the daily violence that is crushing Iraq, the international medical community is doing little more than looking on"

The shortages were graphically highlighted in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary made by GuardianFilms, and broadcast in February. It revealed that children with diarrhoeal disease were dying of dehydration because hospitals lacked the right sized needles to inject them with fluids.

In Diwaniyah children's hospital, doctors were shown struggling to give drugs by ventilation to a two-day old girl, Zehara, who was born with underdeveloped lungs, because they had the wrong sized plastic mask. Masks costs pennies but, like all other equipment, are in short supply.

Zehara's father was dispatched on to the streets to try to buy Vitamin K on the black market, urgently needed for an injection. But it was too late - by the time he returned, she was dead and her twin brother also passed away shortly afterwards.

In a separate report yesterday, Peter Kandela, an Iraqi doctor who has practised as a GP in Surrey for 30 years, travelled through Jordan and Syria interviewing Iraqi medical staff who had escaped the violence.

"The current Iraqi brain drain is the worst the country has seen in its modern history," he writes

"In the new Iraq there is a price tag linked to your position and status. Those doctors who have stayed in the country know what they are worth in kidnapping terms and ensure their relatives have easy access to the necessary funds to secure their speedy release if they are taken."

He describes a kidney surgeon seized by a group of armed men, despite the presence of security guards who he had hired to protect himself, whose first act was to go through his contacts book for other potential victims. " They had the audacity to suggest that in return for receiving better treatment inn captivity I should recommend others for kidnapping", the surgeon said.

He was released unharmed after a ransom of $250,000 was paid by his wife.

In Baghdad where no one can escape violence, hospitals provided the last refuge. But they are now unsafe and Iraqis are avoiding them. Public hospitals in the city are controlled by Shiia - who have come under suspicion for allowing death squads to enter them to kill Sunnis.

Abu Nasr, the cousin of a man injured in a car bomb who was dragged from his hospital bed and riddled with bullets, told the Washington Post: "We would prefer now to die instead of going to the hospitals. I will never go back to one, never. The hospitals have become killing fields."

Medical notes

34,000 The number of Iraqi physicians registered before the 2003 war.

18,000 The estimated number of Iraqi physicians who have left since the 2003 invasion.

2,000 The estimated number of Iraqi physicians murdered since 2003.

250 The number of Iraqi physicians kidnapped.

34 The number of reconstructive surgeons in Iraq before the 2003 invasion.

20 The number who have either been murdered of fled. 72 per cent of Iraqis needing reconstructive surgery are suffering from gunshot or blast wounds.

164 The number of nurses murdered - 77 wounded.

$243,000,000 The amount of money set aside by US administration to build 142 private health clinics in post-invastion Iraq.

20 The number of such clinics built by April 2006.

$0 The amount of money left over.

$1bn The amount of money the US administration has spent on Iraq's healthcare system.

$8bn The amount of money needed over the next 4 years to fund the health care system

70 the percentage of deaths among children caused by "easily treatable conditions" such as diarrhoea and respiratory illnesses.

270,000 The number of children born after 2003 who have had no immunisations.

HEALTH INDICATORS:

68 per cent of Iraqis with no access to safe drinking water.

19 per cent of Iraqis with sewerage access.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

The End of Maliki?

Will a Coup Unravel Iraq
By Robert Dreyfuss The clock is ticking for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the hapless, feckless leader of the Shiite fundamentalist party Al Dawa. From Washington, London, Baghdad, and other capitals come rumors that Maliki's government will soon be overthrown by a nationalist general or colonel or that he will resign in favor of an emergency "government of national salvation."
A coup d'état in Iraq would put a period -- or rather an exclamation point -- at the end of the Bush administration's bungled experiment with democracy there. And it would open an entirely new phase in that country's post-2003 national nightmare. Would it result in the creation of a Saddam-like strongman to rule Iraq with a heavy hand? Or would it force the warring parties (Sunni insurgents, Iranian-backed Shiite militias, and Kurdish warlords) to intensify the bloody civil war that is tearing Iraq apart? No one knows.
As the carnage in Iraq reaches new heights of barbarism, what's clear is the utter uselessness of Maliki's government. It is simply incapable of staunching the bloodletting. Despite weeks of blunt warnings from U.S. officials that time was running out for him, on Sunday the Prime Minister announced yet again that efforts to disarm Iraq's militias would be postponed. "The initial date we've set for disbanding the militias is the end of this year or the beginning of next year," he said, according to USA Today. Still, whatever form it might take, a coup d'état stands an excellent chance of making a horrible situation worse. Rather than toy with yet another misstep, the capstone in a seemingly endless series of errors in Iraq, the Bush administration -- including the increasingly powerful "realist," anti-neoconservative policy types now emerging in Washington -- would do far better to start planning for a quick exit.
Despite the bloodbath fears that are constantly raised about an Iraq without American troops, a U.S. exit need not consign that country to years of Rwanda-style ethnic slaughter or a Congo-style civil war. Even as it leaves, there are plenty of things the United States could do to ameliorate the state of post-occupation Iraq, including beginning real negotiations with the Iraqi resistance and launching diplomatic efforts to get neighboring countries, especially Iran and Syria, to stay out of the conflict.
Even though a military coup might seem to some desperate policymakers a tempting option, it's one of those quicksand ideas. In a paper just written for the Middle East Institute, the sagacious Wayne White -- who headed the State Department's intelligence effort on Iraq until last year -- specifically warns that it's time for the United States to "back off" in Iraq:

"A series of apparent U.S. ultimatums and veiled political threats aimed at the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in recent weeks -- especially Maliki himself -- is but the latest example of excessive U.S. involvement in the Iraqi political process. "[But] it is time that setting the overall direction of Iraqi politics must be left to Iraqis, for better or worse. Washington must recognize that it cannot orchestrate political success in that tortured land through still more heavy-handed political tampering. And stepping back from the Iraqi political fray is a prerequisite for any overall exit strategy."

Is a Coup in the Cards?
I first raised the possibility of a coup d'etat in an October 6 column, "Coup in Iraq?" for TomPaine.com. It followed a drumbeat of comments and statements from Bush administration officials, U.S. military officers, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, and former Rep. Lee Hamilton -- co-chairman with James A. Baker III of the Iraq Study Group -- all of whom warned Maliki ominously that he had only a matter or weeks or months to get a handle on Iraq's paramilitary armies, militias, and death squads. The consequences for the Prime Minister of failing to do so were left unsaid, but the warnings were so explicit that Maliki spoke to George W. Bush this week about how he should interpret the barrage of deadline-like statements, and the President replied, according to spokesman Tony Snow, "Don't worry, you have our full support." (Think: Heck of a job, Maliki!) In fact, whatever consoling words the President might have had for him, the Iraqi Prime Minister has almost no reservoir of support left either in Washington or among U.S. military commanders in Iraq.
Over the weekend, rumors began to fly thick and fast. In a piece headlined "Iraqis Call for Five-Man Junta to End the Anarchy," Marie Colvin wrote in the Sunday Times of London:

"Iraq's fragile democracy, weakened by mounting chaos and a rapidly rising death toll, is being challenged by calls for the formation of a hard-line ‘government of national salvation.' "The proposal, which is being widely discussed in political and intelligence circles in Baghdad, is to replace the Shi'ite-led government of Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, with a regime capable of imposing order and confronting the sectarian militias leading the country to the brink of civil war. Dr. Saleh al-Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni politician, traveled to Arab capitals last week seeking support for the replacement of the present government with a group of five strongmen who would impose martial law and either dissolve parliament or halt its participation in day-to-day government."

Mutlaq, who is sympathetic to, if not affiliated with, the Iraqi resistance and its former Baathist leaders, explicitly called for Maliki to step down.
Colvin quoted Anthony Cordesman, an uber-realist, conservative U.S. military analyst, claiming that there is a "very real possibility" Maliki will be toppled. "There could be a change in government, done in a backroom, which could see a general brought in to run the ministry of defense or the interior."
David Ignatius -- an exceedingly well-connected reporter at the Washington Post -- wrote a column on October 13 citing Mutlaq as well, and suggesting that Iraq's own intelligence service (created, funded, and run by the CIA) is involved:

"The coup rumors come from several directions. U.S. officials have received reports that a prominent Sunni politician, Saleh al-Mutlaq, visited Arab capitals over the summer and promoted the idea of a national salvation government, suggesting, erroneously, that it would have American support. Meanwhile, top officials of the Iraqi intelligence service have discussed a plan in which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki would step aside in favor of a five-man ruling commission that would suspend parliament, declare martial law and call back some officers of the old Iraqi army. "Frustration with Maliki's Shiite-led government is strongest among Iraq's Sunni minority, which dominated the old regime of Saddam Hussein. But as sectarian violence has increased, the disillusionment has spread to some prominent Shiite and Kurdish politicians as well. Some are said to support the junta-like commission, which would represent the country's main factions and include former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi -- still seen by some Iraqis as a potential ‘strongman' who could pull the country back from the brink."

To be sure, Allawi -- in London -- denied any reports in an interview with Newsweek that he is involved in plotting a coup d'état. "Total nonsense. To plot a coup, I don't sit in London," huffed Allawi, a long-time asset of the CIA and British intelligence. "I would be sitting in Baghdad trying to make a coup."
Allawi's denials aside, when I spoke to a former CIA officer with wide experience in the Middle East, far from pooh-poohing the idea he had this to say:

"It's being talked about in Washington. One scenario is, the Iraqis do it themselves, some Iraqi colonel who's fed up with the whole thing, who takes over the country. And it would take the United States forty-eight hours to figure out how to respond, and meanwhile he's taken over everything. The other side of the coin is, we do it ourselves. Find some general up in Ramadi or somewhere, and help him take over. And he'd declare a state of emergency and crack down. And he'd ask us to leave -- that would be our exit strategy. It's a distinct possibility. I've raised this with a number of foreign service and intelligence people, and most of them -- remembering the days of the coups d'état in the Middle East -- say, ‘Hear, hear!' "And you know what? I think Rumsfeld would jump on this idea in five minutes."

Of course, no coup will happen at all -- no general or colonel would dare try -– without, at the very least, a wink and a nod from the CIA, the U.S. military, or Ambassador Khalilzad. And most likely, it would take significantly more than a wink, something like explicit support and promises of assistance.
But, according to my reporting, that is precisely what is being discussed in Washington, even among the inner councils of James Baker's Iraq Study Group, the realist (that is, anti-neoconservative) commission set up last spring to figure out what to do about Iraq.
Salah Mukhtar, a former top Iraqi official who served as Iraq's ambassador to India and then Vietnam in the period just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, is not a spokesman for the Iraqi resistance. But he is very well plugged in to the thinking of that country's insurgent leaders. When I spoke to him this week by telephone, he assured me the resistance is well aware that elements in the Bush administration might be planning a coup. According to him, the main focus of such a coup -- even one fostered by the United States -- would be to mobilize the Iraqi Army against the Shiite militias:

"The increase in the volume of mass killing in Iraq is creating a willingness among the people to accept a military coup. I would say that 80% of Iraqis are willing to accept it, to accept anything that would help to crush the Iranian gangs [i.e., the militias of the Shiite religious parties, such as the Badr Brigade and the Mahdi Army]. "The United States is making contacts with some old Iraqi generals in Jordan. They are former Baathists. The United States is looking for people to topple the government of Maliki. Some of them are in Iraq, and some of them are based in Jordan. Some of them turned down the U.S. offers, but some of them accepted.
"If there is a military coup in Iraq, that coup will be [sympathetic to] the Baathists. If its leader is not pro-Baathist, there will be a second coup against that leader. So either way, it will result in a pro-Baathist government… It would be a crazy move by the United States. It shows that they don't understand Iraq."

The Unraveling of Iraq?
What does all this mean? As a start, it probably represents a belated Washington wish-list that contains quite a disparate, if not conflicting, set of ideas about the American future in Iraq. Some top officials are surely eyeing the possibility of a last-ditch effort to establish a government that would stabilize the country, put down the resistance, and create a secure environment for President Bush's "victory" strategy in Iraq -- even though that victory would have nothing to do with democracy. Others in or around the administration are undoubtedly drawn to the idea of a coup, or at least of the forced removal of Prime Minister Maliki in some fashion because it would present a fig leaf for an American "redeployment" (read: withdrawal from Iraq). Under this scenario, the United States could exit as gracefully as circumstances allow, leaving behind a strong Iraqi central government that might still be an ally of some sort.
Indeed, as early as mid-August, a New York Times piece suggested that at least some officials in the White House had given up on the idea of democracy in Iraq and were ready to look at "alternatives":

"Some outside experts who have recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq's democratically elected government might not survive. "'Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,' said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity."

Whatever fantasies officials in Washington or Iraq may harbor, however, a coup d'état in Baghdad would by no means be a silver bullet to end Iraq's anarchy. Quite the opposite, it might just add to the bloody unraveling of the country. The problem is, as one experienced Middle East hand told me, "In order to mount a coup, you have to have a state. And there is no state in Iraq."
Iraq is utterly anarchic, a Mad Max world of clashing paramilitaries, gangs, warlords, sectarian fighters, death squads, criminal enterprises, government-backed mafias, and several hundred thousand Army men, police, Interior Ministry commandos, and special units like the Facilities Protection Service that are only loosely under the control of the central government. So how would a prospective coup-maker, even with Washington's fervent backing, impose his will on all that?
The answer is: He couldn't. If a coup happens, it will likely signal that the center of gravity inside Baghdad's Green Zone has shifted from the Shiite majority (and its religious parties, such as Al Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) to a more centrist, more pro-Sunni, less sectarian, less religious, and less ideological bloc. It might be seen as an attempt by the CIA and the U.S. military to re-install a more Saddam-like regime in Baghdad, perhaps with the intent of undoing the damage that has been done to Iraq's unity and stability by the neoconservatives. But like all too-clever-by-half strategies, this one would probably make things not better but a lot worse in a country that has already been torn to shreds by the U.S. invasion and occupation.
Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. He covers national security for Rolling Stone and writes frequently for The American Prospect, Mother Jones, and the Nation. He is also a regular contributor to TomPaine.com, the Huffington Post, Tomdispatch, and other sites, and writes the blog, The Dreyfuss Report, at his website.
Copyright 2006 Robert Dreyfuss

Oct 22 (Reuters) - Following are security and other developments in Iraq as of 1910 GMT on Sunday: Asterisk indicates new or updated item.
HADITHA - Four people were killed and five wounded in clashes between U.S. forces and gunmen in Haditha, west of Baghdad, police said.
* BAQUBA - A bomb blast and an ambush by gunmen on a convoy of buses near Baquba killed 13 police recruits and several more recruits were kidnapped, a local official said. Another 25 recruits were wounded in the ambush on the buses which were taking the recruits to Baghdad from a base attacked by insurgents using mortars and rifle fire on Saturday. There were 80 casualties, including many dead, from Saturday's attack, the official said. * BAGHDAD - The Interior Ministry said 50 bodies had been found in Baghdad over the past 24 hours.
* MOSUL - Three bodies were found in Mosul, a hospital source said. SALAHEDDIN PROVINCE - A U.S. soldier was killed and three more wounded as a result of enemy action in Salaheddin Province, the military said.
ANBAR PROVINCE - A U.S. Marine was killed in combat in western Anbar province on Saturday, the U.S. military said on Sunday, bringing to 79 the number of U.S. military deaths in October, the deadliest for American troops this year.
BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber killed six people and wounded 20 on Palestine Street in central Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - A bomb under a vehicle killed three people and wounded six in a market in Al Rashid street in central Baghdad, police said.
MAHMUDIYA - Gunmen killed a man police said was responsible for bicycle bomb and mortar attacks on Saturday that killed 16 and wounded 60 in a market in Mahmudiya, a town in the Sunni insurgent "Triangle of Death" south of Baghdad.
MADAEN - Sunni and Shi'ite tribes clashed between Madaen and Suwayra, south of Baghdad, on Saturday, police said. On the Shi'ite side, six people were killed and three wounded, and three Sunnis were also killed, police said.
KUT - Interfax-Ukraine said a blast killed a Ukrainian and wounded another on Friday, 45 km (30 miles) west of Kut in southern Iraq. They were working as contractors for a British firm. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry was unavailable to confirm the report.
BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed two street cleaners in the western Baghdad district of Yarmuk, an Interior Ministry source said.
MOSUL - Two bodies were found with gunshot wounds in Mosul, one of them a police officer, a hospital source said.
NEAR MAHAWEEL - A roadside bomb near Mahaweel, 75 km (50 miles) south of Baghdad, killed a civilian whose car was hit by the blast, police said. BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed a barber in Amil, in southern Baghdad, police said. KUT - Gunmen killed a former member of the Baath Party in Kut, 170 km (105 miles) southeast of Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - Two blasts wounded several people in eastern Baghdad. Police said four were wounded and attributed the blasts to a car bomb and a roadside bomb. An Interior Ministry source said 14 were wounded and said it was a car bomb and a mortar.
BAGHDAD - Gunmen kidnapped two Shi'ite tribal leaders as they were driving into Baghdad from the south, police said, adding their families had received a ransom demand for $500,000.
BAGHDAD - The Defence Ministry said 29 suspected insurgents had been arrested around Iraq in the past 24 hours.
BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad wounded a civilian, police said.