Wikileaks: US Ambdassador Called Pakistani Military Instructors "Naive" And "Biased"

Anne Patterson, former US Ambassador to Pakistan

The following is old news at best, possibly fictional, and from sources of dubious, if any, integrity. But it is still of some interest to a cold blogger who begs your forebearance as we explore...  

The Pakistani daily Dawn says that according to Wikileaks, in 2008, Anne Patterson, who was then US Ambassador to Pakistan, wrote a memo in which she described instructors at Pakistan's National Defence University (NDU) as "naive" about and "biased" against the USA.

Dawn says Ambassador Patterson attributed this "bias" to the "distance" that had crept in between Pakistani and US military officers following "the discontinuation of the IMET (International Military Education and Training) programmes" during the years when Pakistan was under sanctions because of having developed nuclear weapons.

Dawn quotes the memo which quotes a US army officer, Col. Michael Schleicher, who attended a course at NDU, and who, according to the cable, told Ambassador Patterson:

"One guest lecturer – who is a Pakistani one-star general – claimed the US National Security Agency actively trains correspondents for media organisations. Others thought the CIA was in charge of US media (and that MI-5 was in charge of the BBC)."

And not only that, but:

Students in the junior course ... shared "many of the biases prevalent in the Muslim world, including a belief the US invaded Iraq for its oil and that 9/11 was a staged 'Jewish conspiracy,'"

You can see the bias right away, can't you? Everybody who has done honest research has found that the staged conspiracy of 9/11 was not entirely "Jewish." It contained "Christian" elements as well. And so, of course, does the continuing torrent of nonsense about it.

The problem, according to Dawn, according to Wikileaks, according to Ambassador Patterson, was that the Pakistani military had been been insufficiently propagandized, although she would never think to express herself in such terms. But clearly this is her understanding, and clearly this is why she wrote:

"We need, in particular, to target the 'lost generation' of Pakistan military who missed IMET opportunities..."

The word 'target' is particularly apt in this context.

Ambassador Patterson also wrote, according to Wikileaks:

"Given the bias of the instructors, we also believe it would be beneficial to initiate an exchange program for instructors..."

An exchange program would double the propaganda benefit, of course, because the Pakistani instructors would be whisked off to be indoctrinated in the US, leaving their students to be indoctrinated by visiting Americans.

It goes without saying that if and when all this indoctrination came to pass, the Pakistani military would be even more naive with respect to the United States, and even more biased -- but for rather than against, which after all is the only thing that matters to the masters of the American Empire.

And then, diplomatic tensions would be eased, because future ambassadors would write cables in which Pakistani military officers were all well-informed about American actions and motives, and loyal and keen supporters of the American Imperial Project as well.

The properly trained Pakistanis would have been instructed never to admit that the NSA would be negligent if it failed to actively train correspondents for media organisations; that the CIA would be aghast if it lost charge of the US media; that the Bush-Cheney administration would have lost the support of its "base" had it failed to invade Iraq for its oil; and that MI5 would go ballistic if the BBC ever admitted the obvious truths about these things, or explained to its viewers exactly why Britain came along for the ride.

And then, if the IMET programmes could continue for long enough, eventually nobody in the Pakistani military would ever again be "naive" or "biased" enough to give voice to any of this, or any of the other truths about America which are, shall we say, politically inconvenient to acknowledge.

This is what we would call "winning hearts and minds." And it's a shame that the US neglected to keep the propaganda machine running on the Pakistani military during the sanctions, because had it done so, hoaxes such as the big one nine and a half years ago, and the almost-as-big one earlier this month, would have been a good deal easier to sell.

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WSJ Spins Hunt Oil Deal, But Can't Fool Jason Leopold

The spin is almost invisible when the Wall Street Journal describes Henry Waxman's reaction to recent news pertaining to the Hunt Oil deal with Kurdistan:

House baron Henry Waxman [...] is upset with a separate contract that the Kurdistan Regional Government has signed with Texas's Hunt Oil. Mr. Waxman thinks the Bush Administration didn't do enough to stop the deal. Then again, this is old news, as the contract was signed last year. And while the Baghdad central government wasn't pleased the Kurds had moved on a contract without national approval, the deal hasn't impeded Iraq's broader progress.

Fortunately for the cause of truth and justice (not to mention personal sanity), Jason Leopold wasn't fooled; here he explains what Waxman is really upset about:

Ray Hunt, the Texas oil man who landed a controversial oil production deal with Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government, has enjoyed close political and business ties with Vice President Dick Cheney dating back a decade – and to the Bush family since the 1970s.

Despite those longstanding connections -– and Hunt’s work for George W. Bush as a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board [PFIAB] -– the Bush administration expressed surprise when Hunt Oil signed the agreement last September.

At that time, administration officials said Hunt Oil’s deal with the Kurds jeopardized delicate negotiations among competing Iraqi sects and regions for sharing oil revenues, talks seen as vital for achieving national reconciliation.

“I know nothing about the deal,” President Bush said. “To the extent that it does undermine the ability for the government to come up with an oil revenue sharing plan that unifies the country, obviously if it undermines it I’m concerned.”

However, on July 2, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released documents showing that senior administration officials were aware that Hunt was negotiating with the Kurdistan government and even offered him encouragement.

Hunt also personally alerted Bush’s PFIAB about his oil company’s confidential contacts with Kurdish representatives.

In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, committee chairman, complained that the administration’s comments last year were “misleading.”

“Documents obtained by the Committee indicate that contrary to the denials of Administration officials, advisors to the President and officials in the State and Commerce Departments knew about Hunt Oil’s interest in the Kurdish region months before the contract was executed,” Waxman wrote.

Waxman said the Hunt-Kurdish case also raised questions about the veracity of similar administration denials about its role in arranging more recent contracts between Iraq and major U.S. and multinational oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Chevron.

Plus, there’s the longstanding suspicion that oil was a principal, though unstated, motive behind the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, which sits on the world’s second-largest oil reserves.

Administration officials -– and much of the mainstream U.S. media –- have ridiculed the oil motive charge as a conspiracy theory.

It's a conspiracy, that's for sure. But it's no theory. And the connections with Hunt go way, way, back.

Many of the oil companies now stepping forward to benefit from Iraqi oil were instrumental in both supporting Bush’s political career and giving advice to Cheney’s secretive energy task force in 2001.

For instance, Ray Hunt’s personal relationship with the Bush family dates back to the 1970s as Hunt, the chief of Dallas-based Hunt Oil, helped build the Texas Republican Party as it served as a power base for the Bushes rise to national prominence.

The Hunt family donated more than $500,000 to Republican campaigns in Texas, while Hunt Oil employees and their spouses gave more than $1 million to Republican causes since 1995, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Ray Hunt also had strong ties to Dick Cheney during his years at the helm of Halliburton, the Houston-based oil-services giant. In 1998, Cheney tapped Hunt to serve on Halliburton’s board of directors, where Hunt became a compensation committee member setting Cheney’s salary and stock options.

In 1999, when Texas Gov. George W. Bush was running for the Republican presidential nomination, Bush turned to Hunt to help fund his presidential campaign efforts in Iowa, according to Robert Bryce’s book, Cronies: Oil, The Bushes, And The Rise Of Texas, America's Superstate.

“By the summer of 1999, Bush had already raised $37 million but he wanted to conserve his campaign cash so he turned to a Texas crony, Ray Hunt, to help fund the Iowa effort,” Bryce wrote. “In July of 1999, Hunt was among a handful of Bush supporters who each donated $10,000 to the Iowa Republican party.”

In May 2000, Bush appointed Hunt finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. Hunt also donated $5,000 to the Florida recount battle and spent $100,000 on Bush’s inaugural party.

Leopold fills in some more background on Hunt Oil and its Bush connections, before describing the newly released evidence in this case (which the WSJ calls old news):

The new evidence suggests that Hunt Oil at least benefited from the administration’s wink and nod in striking the Kurdish oil deal.

In a July 12, 2007, letter to PFIAB, Hunt disclosed that Hunt Oil was “approached a month or so ago by representatives of a private group in Kurdistan as to the possibility of our becoming interested in that region.”

Hunt described a visit of a Hunt Oil survey team and stated, “we were encouraged by what we saw. We have a larger team going back to Kurdistan this week.”

In a second letter to PFIAB, dated Aug. 30, 2007, Hunt revealed that he would travel to Kurdistan in early September for meetings with the Kurdistan regional government, including its president, prime minister and oil minister.

Those meetings led to the oil agreement between Hunt Oil and the Kurdish leaders -- and now have raised questions about Bush’s denial that he had any advanced knowledge about the deal.

“State Department officials similarly disavowed involvement in the contract,” Waxman said in the letter to Rice. “Department officials claimed that to the extent they were aware of any negotiations, they actively warned Hunt Oil not to enter into a contract because it was contrary to U.S. national security interests.

“Documents obtained by the Committee indicate that contrary to the denials of Administration officials, advisors to the President and officials in the State and Commerce Departments knew about Hunt Oil’s interest in the Kurdish region months before the contract was executed.”

See? Wall Street Journal readers may believe that Henry Waxman is upset because he "thinks the Bush Administration didn't do enough to stop the deal".

But now you know better.

Mission Accomplished: Western Oil Companies Set To Return To Iraq

Andrew Kramer in the New York Times:

Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.

Weapons of mass destruction? Complicity in the attacks of 9/11? Central front in the Global War on Terror? Or just the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production?

Oh well, what's the difference? Or, as Andrew Kramer puts it:

There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract.

Yeah, that's it. There was suspicion. But there's no suspicion anymore, right?

Well, it doesn't matter. Or it soon won't.

While small, the deals hold great promise for the companies.

“The bigger prize everybody is waiting for is development of the giant new fields,” Leila Benali, an authority on Middle East oil at Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said in a telephone interview from the firm’s Paris office. The current contracts, she said, are a “foothold” in Iraq for companies striving for these longer-term deals.

And so it goes. Business is business, and oil is oil, and we have to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here.

It's not that you'll believe anything; it's just that your neighbors do.

[i]n a twist of corporate history for some of the world’s largest companies, all four oil majors that had lost their concessions in Iraq are now back.
...

In an interview with Newsweek last fall, the former chief executive of Exxon, Lee Raymond, praised Iraq’s potential as an oil-producing country and added that Exxon was in a position to know. “There is an enormous amount of oil in Iraq,” Mr. Raymond said. “We were part of the consortium, the four companies that were there when Saddam Hussein threw us out, and we basically had the whole country.”

They'll have the whole country again, from the look of things. No matter how many Americans -- and no matter how many Iraqis -- have to die.

Winter Soldier: Bitter Truths From Those Who Know

This weekend, as we approach the fifth anniversary of the American invasion of a defenseless oil-rich country which never threatened us, Iraq Veterans Against the War are presenting the testimonies of soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of civilians who have lived through the invasion and occupation of their country.

The event is called "Winter Soldier", and you can watch it happen (or watch archived video) here.

Apparently it isn't worth a mention in our allegedly liberal "paper of record".

Your search - site:nytimes.com "winter soldier" - did not match any documents.

But Saturday's Washington Post has a piece on page B1, the web version of which (much to the WaPo's credit) actually links to the IVAW website!

The WaPo piece, by Steve Vogel, gives the Pentagon a chance to speak, and cleverly leaves no doubt as to the value of the verbiage.

A Defense Department spokesman said he had not seen the allegations raised yesterday but added that such incidents are not representative of U.S. conduct.

"When isolated allegations of misconduct have been reported, commanders have conducted comprehensive investigations to determine the facts and held individuals accountable when appropriate," Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros said.

How laughable this would be if it were not so tragic. Mark Ballesteros hasn't even seen the allegations but he can already assure us that they're false!

This is an unprovoked war of aggression -- the invasion and occupation of a defenseless, non-threatening country -- the ultimate crime against humanity. That's not an isolated allegation of misconduct; that's a fact!

The so-called "War on Terror" is in fact a barbaric assault on several foreign countries simultaneously (Afghanistan and Iraq directly, and Somalia and Pakistan by proxy, with even more countries in the cross-hairs). It has killed at least a million people and ruined the lives of millions and millions of others. And all the reasons officially given for it have turned out to be not just false but ludicrous!

It's a crime of monstrous proportions, and the individuals who ought to be held accountable are still at large. But instead we get this ... so let's wait a while and see whether Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros can stuff his head all the way up into his small intestine. Oh, my mistake! There was no need to wait!

Vogel's piece bends over backwards to go the "fair and balanced" route, giving plenty of space to obvious liars of all types. But that seems to be the price of admission in post-democratic America, so it's not surprising.

And yet, the article also includes some nuggets of truth.

Former Marine Jon Turner began his presentation by ripping his service medals off his shirt and tossing them into the first row. He then narrated a series of graphic photographs showing bloody victims and destruction, bringing gasps from the audience. In a matter-of-fact voice, he described episodes in which he and fellow Marines shot people out of fear or retribution.

"I'm sorry for the hate and destruction I've inflicted upon innocent people," Turner said. "Until people hear about what is happening in this war, it will continue."

I couldn't agree more, and in fact this is the key reason why the government and the "news" media don't want us to know what is happening in this war.

Not just this war, of course: they don't want us to know what happens in any war. If everybody thought Rambo was realistic, the warmongers would be very happy. They do their best to control what we see, and it works very well for them, unless we go looking.

So we can't just sit passively and watch TV, or go to Hollywood movies for our worldly education. If we want the truth about what our country does in the world, we have to pay attention to the people who have done it, and listen carefully to the people to whom it was done.

Two former soldiers who served with the 1st Armored Division described an attack by an AC-130 "Spectre" gunship [photo] on an apartment building in southern Baghdad that they said took place Nov. 13, 2003.

"It was the most destructive thing I've seen, before or since," said [Cliff] Hicks, one of the soldiers.
...

"These are not bad people, not criminals and not monsters," said [Hicks]. "They are people being put in horrible situations, and they reacted horribly."

Horrible is right! And the most horrible aspect is that there is no reason for any of these horrible situations -- unless you count the part where we lost control of our electoral system, or the part where the real news vanished from our "news" media, or the fear generated by obvious false-flag terror, or the stupidity that somehow in modern America acts like a gas and fills all the available space.

Other than these relevant yet unrelated issues, there's no good reason for any of our soldiers to be in any horrible positions.

Unless you count the oil.

Adam Kokesh, a student at George Washington University who served with the Marine Corps in Iraq, said Marines were often forced to make snap decisions about whether to fire on civilians.

"During the siege of Fallujah, we changed our rules of engagement more often than we changed our underwear," he said.

On the screen, a photograph showed him posing next to a burned-out car in which an Iraqi man was killed after approaching a Marine checkpoint.

"At the first Winter Soldier in 1971, one of the testifiers showed a picture like this and said, 'Don't ever let your government to do this to you,' " Kokesh said. "And still the government is doing this."

The people of Iraq and Afghanistan are not the only ones suffering, and they're not the only ones whose suffering has been mostly hidden from us:

At a session on shortcomings in veterans' health care, audience members sobbed as Joyce and Kevin Lucey described the suicide of their son, Marine Cpl. Jeffrey Lucey, a death they blamed on his inability to get treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Mental health specialists were on hand to help speakers and audience members, and a workshop was offered on PTSD.

The veterans who participate in Winter Soldier will undoubtedly be smeared forever for having told a few minutes of truth.

Such is life in post-democratic America.

Those who spoke yesterday described the experience as intimidating.

"It was terrifying for me," said Steven Casey, a former 1st Armored Division specialist from Missouri who also described the AC-130 attack. "I knew somebody needed to hear it. All I wanted to do is say what I saw. I'm not accusing anyone of a crime."

From the look of the IVAW site at the moment, a lot of people need to hear it.

How High's The Oil, Mama?

One oh eight and climbin'.

... the fifth new high price for oil in the last six sessions ...

One analyst [...] said of the runup in oil prices: "It's not over."

In early 2003 I sent an alarmed email to a friend, including Josh Marshall's excellent "Practice To Deceive", which discussed the neocon plans to embroil not only Iraq but all of the Middle East in the "transformative process" of modern warfare.

He wrote back and said "I guess I need to start buying cowboy hats and oil stocks."

I've often wondered whether he did.

If so, he's making good money, and on his way to Hell.

Stream Of Unconscious

If you turn off your mind, relax and float downstream ... and just read for a while ... the Wall Street Journal can explain how the Democratic primary in South Carolina just might change the face of racial politics in the South forever, since Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are trying such different strategies.

Clinton is using an old-style political machine, trying to scoop as many endorsements as possible from political leaders and media types and preachers; Obama is using a grass-roots campaign to mobilize an entirely different group of people, or so the WSJ wants me to believe.

They may be right. But they lost me when they started talking about poor blacks looking to their preachers for "both spiritual and political guidance". White people don't do that, of course. Not since 2004, anyway.

Meanwhile, in an effort destined to earn even more ... um ... credibility ... said Journal carries a piece from Norman Podhoretz called "Stopping Iran", in which he argues -- quite falsely -- that hardly anybody disputed the 2005 NIE which said Iran was racing to build nuclear weapons.

Podhoretz also asserts that Iran has no need for nuclear power since it has all that oil.

Let's see, now: If I had all that oil, and it was selling for $100 a barrel, with no sign of a price decrease ever ... Would I rather sell it ... or burn it? Hmm, that's a tough one. Podhoretz would burn it, obviously. Apparently he doesn't understand the value of money. So he argues that Iran must be stopped from obtaining nuclear technology.

And it seems to me I've heard that one before. Have you? It's funny how Podhoretz doesn't seem too concerned about the entirely credible allegations made by Sibel Edmonds, who says US government insiders were selling nuclear secrets to the highest bidder on the black market, and much more.

Actually, no one in the US media seems much concerned about that; they're more interested in a hypothetical threat than evidence of any actual crimes, especially with crimes as serious as these -- crimes committed by powerful people who could ruin your reputation!

Naturally, the Democratically controlled Congress can't find time to look into it either, since their feckless leader, Henry Waxman, is so busy chasing down a chump who last played in the big leagues five years ago so he can find out what the chump knows about some illegal injections of steroids.

Illegal injections of cash are far less interesting to our bought-and-sold friends in the political/media circus, who don't give a damn about a million dead Iraqis but can't stop writing about one dead Marine.

So this is post-democratic America in its embryonic form: stupid; distracted; cut adrift from reality; corrupt to the bone; fighting a one-sided war of choice and bragging about it; and torturing people until they get mad at us.

And then, if they get mad enough to want to hurt us, we're morally obliged to torture them again, aren't we?

What Took You So Long? Osama bin Laden Says The US Wants Iraq's Oil

If Osama bin Laden claims the United States wants to exploit Iraq's oil, does that mean it's not true?

I'm just kidding about that; I suspect the real import of the story is that now those of us -- conspiracy theorists -- who have been saying the same thing all along can be branded as "terrorists".

That part was easy. My real question is more difficult: What's with Osama bin Laden?

He's supposed to be this great geopolitical genius, capable of drawing the USA into battle on his terms, and keeping us there against our will, and so on...

Do you mean to say it's taken him all these years to figure out America wants Iraq's oil?

He may be a terrorist mastermind, but he's no conspiracy theorist.

Now, wait a minute ... the conspiracy theorists are terrorists, but the terrorists are not conspiracy theorists?

Oh well. I guess it makes as much sense as anything else about the GWOT.

Suicide Bomber On Bicycle Kills Iraqi Policemen: Must Be al Qaeda!

Is the suicide bicycle the next weapon of choice for al Qaeda? Alissa J. Rubin of the New York Times takes one out for a spin:

Police training in the provincial capital of Baquba turned into a blood bath on Monday when a suicide bomber on a bicycle set off his explosive vest in the midst of policemen, killing 29, the local police said.
...

The blast in Baquba, the capital of Diyala Province, also wounded 19 people, including 7 policemen who were in critical condition and a woman and her baby, provincial authorities said. Most of the police officers killed and wounded were members of the recently formed emergency police brigade in Diyala.

Wisam Wahid al-Majmaie, a policeman who lives in the Ghatoon neighborhood of Baquba, said that a few minutes before the blast he had been relaxing with his colleagues. “I lost 12 friends who were with me having tea 30 minutes ago,” he said.

The attack was one of the deadliest on Iraqi security forces in several weeks. No group took immediate responsibility, but the episode suggested that Sunni Arab guerrillas, who as recently as last spring controlled Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, continue to be able to carry out devastating attacks.

American military officials said they had largely cleared Baquba of militants during operations this summer, when a large force of soldiers swept through the city. But it appears that despite those efforts the city remains unstable, as does much of the rest of the province, where sectarian killings, bombs and kidnappings occur daily.

During the American and Iraqi offensive over the summer, many of the insurgents were able to flee north before the soldiers arrived, American officers said. Some Iraqis have expressed fears that when United States forces reduce their presence in Baquba, the militants will simply return.

Monday’s bombing in Baquba appeared to be part of a coordinated attack on the police force in the provincial capital. At about the same time as that attack, another suicide bomber attempted to strike the police station in Hibhib, on the northern side of the city, according to an American military official in the city. The attack failed because a policeman shot the suicide bomber. However, the coordinated assault suggests that the extremists are active again in the capital.

You see that? A coordinated attack means extremists, but what would a single attacker with a suicide vest and a bicycle prove? Would that not be a sign that "extremists" were active? It's starting to get dizzy in here.

And it's amazing how American "officials said they had largely cleared Baquba of militants" and yet the city is still "unstable", with "killings, bombs and kidnappings" occurring "daily". It's incredible how "many of the insurgents were able to flee north before the soldiers arrived" and some "Iraqis have expressed fears that when United States forces reduce their presence in Baquba, the militants will simply return".

But -- as we can see from the coordinated attacks of the day -- the militants are already (or still) there! So how can they return when (or if) the American troops leave, if they're already there? It's a vexing problem, isn't it?

Fortunately the solution is at hand: Blame it on al Qaeda!

It's an amazing solution: as it turns out, it can be applied to virtually any problem, and it goes on nice and easy. Reuters shows how it's done, via the same New York Times:

A suicide bomber on a bicycle killed 28 Iraqi policemen doing their morning exercises at their base north of Baghdad on Monday, police said, in one of the deadliest strikes on security forces in months.

The bomber entered the base in the volatile Diyala province and blew himself up amidst members of a rapid reaction force, said Major-General Ghanim al-Quraishi, the Diyala police chief.

A shopkeeper whose store is close to the base told Reuters he had seen a man riding a bicycle slip through a gap in the concrete wall surrounding the compound and heard a huge blast seconds later that threw a cloud of dust into the air.

"I saw many bodies covered in blood. Some were dying, some had arms and legs blown off," said store-owner Ali Shahine.

At least 20 people were wounded in the attack, including a woman and a child, police said.

No group claimed immediate responsibility for the Baquba bombing, but it bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda, which has often used suicide bombers in attacks on Iraqi security forces to devastating effect.

You see, once you get the "hallmarks", the rest is easy. You don't even have to enumerate the hallmarks.

Was it a solo suicide bomber on a bike? Must be al Qaeda! Was it a suicide squad with a hijacked airliner? Must be al Qaeda!

See how it works? The methods are all alike.

Did they have a bomb? Must be al Qaeda! Did they intend to make a bomb? Must be al Qaeda! Was it one attacker or several? Must be al Qaeda! You see it now, don't you?

Amit R. Paley of the Washington Post explained why the terrorists attack Iraqi security forces:

Militants in Iraq frequently target police and others who cooperate with the Iraqi government or the U.S. military.

In other words, members of the Iraqi police and army are being killed for collaborating with the occupying enemy.

Or as CNN reported:

Col. David W. Sutherland, commander of U.S.-led coalition forces in Diyala province, said, "This attack is typical of al Qaeda's barbaric and hateful ways, targeting Iraqi security forces who have been working to secure Baquba and enable progress."

We're not supposed to ask what they mean by "progress", but it does appear to have something to do with transferring the nation's oil wealth into the hands of foreigners.

Imagine that!

Condoleeza Rice Explains Why We're Fighting In Iraq

The war in Iraq has dragged on for so long, and the reasons for fighting there have changed so many times, that it has become difficult and somewhat boring to keep up with the shifting justifications.

Some people think we're there for the oil. Some think we're trying to make sure the terrorists don't hit us again, just like they did on September 11, 2001, only worse. Some think we're there to change the regime of Saddam Hussein. Some think it was just a big mistake and we would withdraw if we could.

But according to Condoleeza Rice,

We are fighting to help the Iraqis to develop a democratic government that can provide for its people.

So ...

that's why we set up the death squads ...

and that's why we use so much depleted uranium ...

and that's why we bomb civilians in residential neighborhoods ...

... to help the Iraqis develop a democratic government!

We should have known it all along; in fact, we are uniquely qualified to do this, since we have a formerly democratic government that doesn't give a damn about providing for its people.

I just thought you might like to know that.

Iraqi Government Rejects Senate Plan To Carve Up Iraq

Just in case anyone was wondering what "the sovereign Iraqi government" was thinking...

Baghdad rejects US Senate [plan] to carve up Iraq

BAGHDAD, Sept 28 (AFP) - The Iraqi government on Friday firmly rejected a Bosnia-style plan approved by the US Senate to divide Iraq on ethnic and religious lines, saying Iraqis will themselves decide their future.

“The government and its prime minister (Nuri al-Maliki) reject this vote,” said government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.

“It is the Iraqis who decide these sorts of issues, no one else,” Dabbagh said on state-run Al-Iraqiya television. “The Iraqi parliament too should express its total rejection of this plan.”

The plan, touted by backers as the sole hope of forging a federal state out of sectarian strife, was approved by the US Senate on Wednesday in a vote of 75 to 23.

It proposes to separate Iraq into Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni entities, with a federal government in Baghdad in charge of border security and oil revenues.

Greenspan Says The Iraq War Is About Oil, Unless It Isn't ... But That's Not The Sad Part

Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal Reserve, has written in his new book that the Iraq war is largely about oil.

According to London's Sunday Times:

Alan Greenspan claims Iraq war was really for oil

AMERICA’s elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.

In his long-awaited memoir, to be published [today], Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W Bush’s economic policies.

However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” he says.
...

Britain and America have always insisted the war had nothing to do with oil. Bush said the aim was to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and end Saddam’s support for terrorism.

Having laid those cards on the table, Greenspan then ducked and backpedaled, saying that the quest for oil was not necessarily the administration's motive for invading Iraq.

Reuters explained it this way:

Greenspan clarifies Iraq war, oil link

Clarifying a controversial comment in his new memoir, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said he told the White House before the Iraq war that removing Saddam Hussein was "essential" to secure world oil supplies, according to an interview published on Monday.

Greenspan, who wrote in his memoir that "the Iraq War is largely about oil," said in a Washington Post interview that while securing global oil supplies was "not the administration's motive," he had presented the White House before the 2003 invasion with the case for why removing the then-Iraqi leader was important for the global economy.

"I was not saying that that's the administration's motive," Greenspan said in the interview conducted on Saturday. "I'm just saying that if somebody asked me, 'Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?' I would say it was essential."

In light of this clarification, it might be worth taking another look at the sentence in which Greenspan made his claim:

“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

If you read carefully, you can see that Greenspan is not saddened by the war, nor by the reason it is being waged, but because of the political inconvenience entailed by telling the truth about it.

In other words, in Greenspan's view, it would be much more agreeable if the American people were politically mature enough to understand that it's perfectly all right to kill people and take their stuff -- as long as you really, really want their stuff.

Ray McGovern explains this point of view in a different way:

Greenspan Spills the Beans on Oil

Could it be that many Americans remain silent because we are unwilling to recognize the Iraq war as the first of the resource wars of the 21st century; because we continue to be comfortable hogging far more than our share of the world’s resources and will look the other way if our leaders tell us that aggressive war is necessary to protect that siren-call, “our way of life,” from attack by those who are just plain jealous?

Perhaps a clue can be found in the remarkable reaction I received after a lecture I gave two and a half years ago in a very affluent suburb of Milwaukee. I had devoted much of my talk to what I consider the most important factoid of this century: the world is running out of oil.

Afterwards some 20 folks lingered in a small circle to ask follow-up questions. A persistent, handsomely dressed man, who just would not let go, dominated the questioning:

"Surely you agree that we need the oil. Then what's your problem? Some 1,450 killed thus far are far fewer than the toll in Vietnam where we lost 58,000; it's a small price to pay... a sustainable rate to bear. What IS your problem?"

I asked the man if he would feel differently if one of those (then) 1,450 killed were his own son. Judging from his abrupt, incredulous reaction, the suggestion struck him as so farfetched as to be beyond his ken. “It wouldn’t be my son,” he said.

Of course, none of the dead Iraqis, whose oil we need -- surely you agree! -- would ever be his son either.

After all, dead Iraqis don't live in very affluent suburbs of Milwaukee.

Prominent Democratic Senator Calls For Iraqi Government To Be Voted Out; Why Iraqis Oppose The Oil Law

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, has called for the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to be voted out of office, for failing to unify the occupied country.

"I hope that the Iraqi assembly, when it reconvenes in a few weeks, will vote the Maliki government out of office and will have the wisdom to replace it with a less sectarian and a more unifying prime minister and government,"

Reuters quotes the senator as saying. And

"There's a consensus that there is no military solution and there is only a political solution, and that's truer now than it has ever been, and the gridlock has got to end in that government if there's going to be a political solution," Levin said.

Levin doesn't explain what he means by "a political solution", but the implication is obvious, and so is the game. The game is called Blame The Victims and the implication is: Our military broke it; your government can fix it!

On a related matter,

Levin said he and [Sen. John Warner of Virginia, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee,] met with Gen. David Petraeus, who is to make a report on progress in Iraq in September. The White House said on Monday, the general will likely testify to Congress around September 11 or September 12.

[White House spokesman Gordon] Johndroe said the hearing date was not related to the anniversary of the 2001 attacks. The September 15 deadline for the report falls on a Saturday, making it necessary to testify earlier in the week, he said.

You don't think they would take advantage of the calendar in such an obvious way ... do you? Nah!!

How do I know this? Because basically, it is not in this administration's nature to take advantage of any of the opportunities that seem to fall into its lap on a regular basis. Is it?

Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle ran a good column in in which David Bacon explained why the Oil Law is so vigorously opposed:

Why Iraqis oppose U.S.-backed oil law: Workers think foreign firms will take over

Across the political spectrum in Washington, members of Congress are now demanding that the Iraqi government meet certain benchmarks, which presumably would show that it's really in charge. But there's a big problem with the most important benchmark: the oil law. It is extremely unpopular in Iraq.

Congress has been told the law is a way to share oil wealth among Iraq's regions and religious sects. Iraqis see it differently. They say the law will turn over the oil fields to foreign companies, giving them control over setting royalties, deciding production levels, and even determining whether Iraqis get to work in their own industry.

Under Washington's guidance, the Iraqi government wrote the oil law in secret deliberations. It needed secrecy to obscure the fact that it gives foreign corporations control over exploration and development in one of the world's largest oil reserves, through agreements called "production-sharing" contracts. Such deals are so disadvantageous that they have been rejected by most oil-producing countries, including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and otherwise conservative regimes throughout the Middle East.

It's good to see a piece of this type and quality in a mainstream paper.

The leaders of the Iraqi opposition to the oil law are the industry's workers. In early June, the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions shut pipelines from the Rumeila fields near Basra, in the south, to Baghdad and the rest of the country. Their main demand was that oil remain in public hands, although they also sought to force the government to improve conditions for workers.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki responded by calling out units of the 10th Division of the Iraqi army and surrounding the strikers at Sheiba, near Basra. U.S. aircraft buzzed the strikers as well, while al-Maliki issued arrest warrants for the union's leaders. Facing the possibility, however, that the strike would escalate into shutdowns on the rigs themselves, cutting off oil exports, al-Maliki blinked. He agreed to hold off implementation of the oil law until October, giving the union a chance to propose alternatives.

There's a lot more and it's very good. Hint, hint.

U.S. legislators trying to impose the oil law might note that they are requiring the Iraqi government to betray one of the few reasons Iraqis have for supporting it - its ability to keep oil revenue in public hands.
...
the United States, which imposed a series of low-wage laws at the beginning of the occupation, looks bent on enforcing poverty.
...
the Bush administration, and the Baghdad government it controls, has outlawed collective bargaining
...

Iraqi nationalists make sharp accusations that the occupation has an economic agenda, including the wholesale privatization of the Iraqi economy. Paul Bremer, formerly head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, published lists in Baghdad newspapers of Iraqi public enterprises he intended to auction off. Arab labor leader Hacene Djemam bitterly observed, "War makes privatization easy: First you destroy society, then you let the corporations rebuild it."

Hassan Juma'a Awad, president of the oil workers federation, wrote a letter to the U.S. Congress on May 13. "Everyone knows the oil law doesn't serve the Iraqi people," he warned. The proposed new statute "serves Bush, his supporters and foreign companies at the expense of the Iraqi people. ... The USA claimed that it came here as a liberator, not to control our resources."

Well ... the USA has claimed a lot of things ...

One would almost have to be a magician to find any correlation in the mainstream media between the so-called "compromises" that the al-Maliki government "refuses to make" and the Oil Law.

But no one can doubt that they are one and the same.

And if the Oil Law were ever passed, even though it would drag the country beyond the brink of even greater chaos, no one can doubt that the bipartisan American raiding committee, led by both Democrat Carl Levin and Republican John Warner, would congratulate the Iraqi government on "finally" making the "compromises" so necessary to "peace" and "stability".

It's Come To This: Hand Over The Loot Or We'll Leave You Alone!!

Good news for Iraq, courtesy of the UPI via Earth Times dot Org:

BAGHDAD, Aug. 13 Australia's leader has told Iraq's prime minister that he'll withdraw troops from the coalition if Iraq doesn't approve a draft oil law.

That's the idea! I've been pulling for this all along; now all we need is for John Howard to talk George Bush into doing the same thing.

Howard meets with President Bush this week in Sydney.

Perfect! The war could be over before the congressional recess.

Well of course I'm kidding about that ... but in all semi-seriousness, UPI actually has some slightly half-decent reporting about the oil law itself, although it -- like all other mainstream media accounts -- skirts the point nicely:

The law, which is highly controversial, is being promoted by the Bush administration as a way toward reconciliation in the highly factionalized country. The thought is if political and other leaders can decide how to compromise on sharing the wealth from Iraq's vast oil reserves, they can also compromise on issues that are leading the country toward fracture and civil war.

The oil law Bush, and now Australian Prime Minister John Howard, are begging for, however, doesn't divvy up the revenue from oil -- that will be handled in a separate revenue-sharing law. The draft oil law actually decides the extent of federalism in exploration, development and production of the third-largest oil reserve in the world, as well as how much access foreign oil companies will have, among other issues that are proving hard to find agreement on between the competing demands of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

Right. And it also says the oil companies get 87.5% of the revenue. And the rest will be divvied up according to whatever system comes of the much-ballyhooed "federal / provincial / regional squabble", but that's not the main issue, is it?

Well, let's put it this way: It's the main issue in Iraq, where seven eighths of the money is slated to go somewhere else! But in the sleepy living rooms of America (and Australia), the public perception is so warped that people actually buy this utterly ridiculous story of this utterly ridiculous threat.

It's almost as if a gang of thieves broke into your home and trashed it, trashed every other home in the neighborhood too, raped your wife and your daughters, took your sons away to who knows where and did who knows what to them, kept all this up for four years!, and then backed you into a corner and said "If you don't give us all the rest of your money, we're leaving!"

Of course that's not the real story. That's only a glimmer of how absurd the real story is.

The real story is about the Iraqi parliament and the precarious position in which it finds itself, especially with respect to the occupying armies. The armies in effect put the politicians in power, by securing the country so that it could have three democratic elections, the first two having been insufficiently democratic as their results failed to please the occupiers. Don't snicker! This is how democracy works in an occupied country.

Now those politicians are in power and they see the occupiers as protectors. For many reasons, including this self-same belief, the rest of Iraq sees its parliamentarians -- just like everyone else who has been working for the occupiers -- as "traitors", "collaborators" and "spies".

So when the occupying armies threaten to leave, the politicians, instead of thinking "Good! Now perhaps the violence will settle down", tend to think "What will happen to me?" They may see handing over the county's vast natural wealth as preferable to the bullet in the back of the head that most certainly awaits them -- or would, in the absence of the occupying protectors.

They can't afford to see the occupiers leave just yet: they need to get themselves out of the country, safely ensconced someplace nice and friendly, before they can allow that to happen. Now: how to find a nice safe friendly place? Hmmm. You think passing a little bit of legislation might help?

Now you're starting to think like a puppet ... um, I mean, a Parliamentarian.

Bloody Mess: The Surge Is A Success

Some of the most excellent reporting we've seen from Iraq has come from Patrick Cockburn, and one of his best recent columns was published Tuesday. I found it at the Belfast Telegraph, and it's a monsterpiece, except for one little detail.

Cockburn says the surge has failed:

Six months after the surge was actually launched, in mid-February, it has failed [...] dismally.
...

The US Defense Department says that, this June, the average number of attacks on US and Iraqi forces, civilian forces and infrastructure peaked at 177.8 per day, higher than in any month since the end of May 2003. The US has failed to gain control of Baghdad. The harvest of bodies picked up every morning first fell and then rose again.
...

The surge is now joining a host of discredited formulae for success and fake turning-points that the US (with the UK tripping along behind) has promoted in Iraq over the past 52 months. In December 2003, there was the capture of Saddam Hussein. Six months later, in June 2004, there was the return of sovereignty to Iraq. "Let freedom reign," said Bush in a highly publicised response. And yet the present Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, claims he cannot move a company of soldiers without American permission.

Freedom indeed. And let's not forget democracy:

In 2005, there were two elections that were both won handsomely by Shia and Kurdish parties. "Despite endess threats from the killers in their midst," exulted Bush, "nearly 12 million Iraqi citizens came out to vote in a show of hope and solidarity that we should never forget."

In fact, he himself forgot this almost immediately. A year later, the US forced out the first democratically elected Shia prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, with the then US Ambassador in Baghdad, Zilmay Khalilzad, saying that Bush "doesn't want, doesn't support, and doesn't accept that Jaafari should form the next government".

Well, if not democracy, then how about some security?

There was intense pressure on the US military and the civilian leadership in Baghdad to show that the surge was visibly succeeding. US embassy staff complained that when the pro-war Republican Senator John McCain came to Baghdad and ludicrously claimed that security was fast improving, they were forced to doff their helmets and body armour when standing with him lest the protective equipment might be interpreted as a mute contradiction of the Senator's assertions. When Vice-President Dick Cheney visited the Green Zone, the sirens giving warning of incoming rockets or mortar rounds were kept silent during an attack, to prevent them booming out of every television screen in America.

Ok, there's no security either, even in the Green Zone. So what have the Americans actually brought to Iraq?

On the one hand, there's propaganda and hubris:

US commanders are often cheery believers in their own propaganda, even as the ground is giving way beneath their feet. In Baquba, a provincial capital north-east of Baghdad, US and Iraqi army commanders praised their own achievements at a press conference held over a video link. Chiding media critics for their pessimism, the generals claimed: "The situation in Baquba is reassuring and is under control but there are some rumours circulated by bad people." Within hours Sunni insurgents, possibly irked by these self-congratulatory words, stormed Baquba, kidnapped the mayor and blew up his office.

And on the other hand, death and destruction. Torture, murder, grand larceny. And a cold, calculated instability that the occupiers apparently want to extend -- indefinitely!

The recruitment of Sunni tribal militias by the US is not quite what it seems. In practice, it is a tactic fraught with dangers. In areas where they operate, police are finding more and more bodies, according to the Interior Ministry. Victims often appear to have been killed solely because they were Shia. The gunmen from the tribes are under American command, and this weakens the authority of the Iraqi government, army and police – institutions that the US is supposedly seeking to foster.

A grim scene showing Sunni tribal militiamen in action was recorded on a mobile phone and later appeared on Iraqi websites. It shows a small, terrified man in a brown robe being bundled out of a vehicle by a group of angry men with sub-machine guns who cuff and slap him as he cowers, trying to shield his face with his hands. One of his captors, who seems to be in command, asks him fiercely if he has killed somebody called "Khalid". After a few moments he is dragged off by two gunmen to a patch of waste ground 30 yards away and executed with a burst of machine-gun fire to the chest.

It is a measure of the desperation of the White House to show that the surge is having some success that it is now looking to these Sunni fighters for succour. Often they are former members of anti-American resistance groups such as the 1920 Revolution Brigade and the Army of Islam – Bush has spent four years denouncing these groups as murderous enemies of the Iraqi people. To many Iraqi Shia and Kurds, who make up 80 per cent of all Iraqis, the US appears to be building up its own Sunni militia. So, far from preventing civil war (a main justification for continued occupation), the US is arming sectarian killers engaged in a murder campaign that is tearing Iraq apart.

There's not much new here; the US has been arming "sectarian" killers for quite some time now, in a transparent effort to foment civil war; after all, if peace were to break out in Iraq, the US would have no pretext to justify staying there.

All in all,

The surge has changed very little in Baghdad. It was always a collection of tactics rather than a strategy. All the main players – Sunni insurgents, Shia militiamen, Iraqi government, Kurds, Iran and Syria – are still in game.

One real benchmark of progress – or lack of it – is the number of Iraqis who have fled for their lives. This figure is still going up. Over one million Iraqis have become Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) since the Samarra bombing, according to the Red Crescent. A further 2.2 million people have fled the country. This exodus is bigger than anything ever seen in the Middle East, exceeding in size even the flight or expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948. A true sign of progress in Iraq will be when the number of refugees, inside and outside the country, starts to go down.
...

All of this seemingly adds up to a compelling case that the surge has failed.

But what about the larger question? What was the surge intended to accomplish?

The surge was never going to bring Iraq nearer to peace. It always made sense in terms of American, but not Iraqi, politics. It has become a cliché for US politicians to say that there is a "Washington clock" and a " Baghdad clock", which do not operate at the same speed. This has the patronising implication that Iraqis are slothful in moving to fix problems within their country, while the Americans are all get-up-and-go. But the reality is that it is not the clocks, but the agendas, that are different. The Americans and the Iraqis want contrary things.
...

The hidden history of the past four years is that the US wants to defeat the Sunni insurgents but does not want the Shia-Kurdish government to win a total victory. It props up the Iraqi state with one hand and keeps it weak with the other.

The Iraqi intelligence service is not funded through the Iraqi budget, but by the CIA. Iraqi independence is far more circumscribed than the outside world realises. The US is trying to limit the extent of the Shia-Kurdish victory, but by preventing a clear winner emerging in the struggle for Iraq, Washington is ensuring that this bloodiest of wars goes on, with no end in sight.

Aha! Now we've finally reached the bedrock truth. The surge has escalated the war and guaranteed that it will go on, with no end in sight -- exactly what its "architects" have always wanted.

The bodies continue to pile up, the cash continues to flow, and the pressure on Iraq's parliament to sign the Oil Law continues to increase.

And all this is exactly as intended. So it's not a failure at all. Quite the contrary: the surge has been a huge success!

In mid-September, General David Petraeus will report on the "progress" being made by the surge. No matter what he says, the president will decide to continue the surge, and maybe even expand it. This is not rocket science: it's the only thing he can do.

You don't mess with success.

The Iraq Oil Law: Crime Of The New American Century

Allen Carstensen's guest column in the Ithaca Journal the other day was a good one. I've quoted it in full below, and added emphasis as well as a few comments.

Hydrocarbon law: the crime of the century

Our government is planning the biggest theft in the history of the world. Both Republicans and Democrats are to blame, and the media are not covering it.

The Bush administration has crafted an Iraqi hydrocarbon law and is pressuring the Iraqi Parliament to pass it as one of the benchmarks necessary for continued U.S. support of their government. This document pays lip service to the fair and even distribution of profit among the various sects, but a careful look reveals that it allows huge multinational oil companies to take 80 percent of Iraq's oil wealth.

It's 87.5% as I read it, but still a bad case of "spoils" to the "victor", in this unprovoked war of choice.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, invoked a rarely used House rule of personal privilege to gain an hour of time on the floor of the House on May 23 to lay out the details of this travesty. “This administration has led Congress into thinking that this bill is about fair distribution of oil revenues,” Kucinich said. “In fact ... except for three scant lines, the entire 33-page hydrocarbon law creates a structure to facilitate the privatization of Iraq oil. The war in Iraq is a stain on American history. Let us not further besmirch our nation by participating in an outrageous exploitation of a nation which is in shambles due to the U.S. intervention.”

Despite the objections from Kucinich, the Congress passed the Iraq Supplemental Bill, including language requiring the privatization of Iraq's oil resources as a benchmark for U.S. support of the corrupt Iraqi government. Bush signed it into law on May 25. Bush will have to ask Congress for another appropriations bill in September. If our representatives felt enough pressure from the people, they could draft the new bill with language that made it clear that the U.S. and the multinational oil companies have no right to control what Iraq does with its oil. If not, then we have proof beyond any doubt remaining in our minds that this war is about oil.

Our representatives clearly have no intention of drafting any such law and we have already had more than enough proof of what this war is about in my humble view. But then I am one of the fringe lunatics and Allen Carstensen's reputation is not as fully besmirched -- at least not on this frozen page.

I've been saying all along that there was 9/11 was a breakpoint with reality -- a black op designed to shut us up, which worked! -- and while we were stupefied they got all this horror rolling ... very seldom have they told the truth or shown any glimpse of their real agenda or motives, but every now and then true words have in fact been spoken:

Vice President Cheney said to Tim Russert on Sept. 13, 2003, “Iraq sits on top of 10 percent of the world's oil reserves — a very significant reserve, second only to Saudi Arabia. The fact is, there are significant resources here to work with.” Most of the oil producing countries in the world have nationalized their oil production. Iraq nationalized its in 1972. It's very clear that the intention of our government from the beginning was to privatize those resources. The Center for Global Energy Studies estimates that Iraq could produce 300 billion barrels of oil. At $70 per barrel, that comes to about $21 trillion — nearly twice the gross national product of our entire country. No wonder Bush defaulted on his electioneering promise that he was against regime change and lied to us about reasons for invading Iraq.

No wonder indeed. I've been making the same point as often as possible here, consistent of course with the desire to keep all four or five of my loyal readers awake. But this is the reality-based wing of the lunatic blogosphere, where people are actually expected to defend what they write, and we have rarely seen such frankness from the print media, who are not normally burdened with such expectations. So hooray for the Ithaca Journal. Allen Carstensen continues:

Here is what Hassan Jum'a Awwad, head of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, has to say about the hydrocarbon law: “Everyone knows that the oil law does not serve the Iraqi people, and that it serves the administration, its supporters, and the foreign oil companies at the expense of the Iraqi people, who have been wronged and deprived of their right to their oil, despite enduring all difficulties.”

Everyone in Iraq may know this, but the US population is much less informed on this point. Clearly, and most unfortunately, this is only crucial point on which the US people are poorly informed.

Vice President Cheney called together his Oil and Energy working group four times between December 2002 and April 2003. The transcripts have not been released, and Cheney will not even tell us who was there. Cheney recently visited Iraq to urge passage of the Hydrocarbon Act.

The passing of the Hydrocarbon Act has been the most significant benchmark ever since the concept of benchmarks came to the fore.

And speaking of Dick Cheney, Who planned the crime of the century? Who else along with Dick Cheney, that is? The Washington Post has had planted a hint or two about this very question, if my memory fails me ... aaah yes, here it is, from Michael Abramowitz and Steven Mufson, July 18, 2007:

At 10 a.m. on April 4, 2001, representatives of 13 environmental groups were brought into the Old Executive Office Building for a long-anticipated meeting. Since late January, a task force headed by Vice President Cheney had been busy drawing up a new national energy policy, and the groups were getting their one chance to be heard.

Cheney was not there, but so many environmentalists were in the room that introductions took up "about half the meeting," recalled Erich Pica of Friends of the Earth. Anna Aurilio of the U.S. Public Interest Group said, "It was clear to us that they were just being nice to us."

A confidential list prepared by the Bush administration shows that Cheney and his aides had already held at least 40 meetings with interest groups, most of them from energy-producing industries. By the time of the meeting with environmental groups, according to a former White House official who provided the list to The Washington Post, the initial draft of the task force was substantially complete and President Bush had been briefed on its progress.

In all, about 300 groups and individuals met with staff members of the energy task force, including a handful who saw Cheney himself, according to the list, which was compiled in the summer of 2001. For six years, those names have been a closely guarded secret, thanks to a fierce legal battle waged by the White House. Some names have leaked out over the years, but most have remained hidden because of a 2004 Supreme Court ruling that agreed that the administration's internal deliberations ought to be shielded from outside scrutiny.

One of the first visitors, on Feb. 14, was James J. Rouse, then vice president of Exxon Mobil and a major donor to the Bush inauguration; a week later, longtime Bush supporter Kenneth L. Lay, then head of Enron Corp., came by for the first of two meetings. On March 5, some of the country's biggest electric utilities, including Duke Energy and Constellation Energy Group, had an audience with the task force staff.

British Petroleum representatives dropped by on March 22, one of about 20 oil and drilling companies to get meetings. The National Mining Association, the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America and the American Petroleum Institute were among three dozen trade associations that met with Cheney's staff, the document shows.

The WaPo has more for those who are interested, but as you can see from the introduction, they don't really have any significant beans to spill. So we're back with Allen Carstensen again, and he says:

Some people might think that it makes sense to use Iraq's oil wealth to pay for the war. I would point out to those misguided souls that this hydrocarbon law is not designed to benefit the American taxpayer who is paying for this war. It is designed to benefit Exxon/Mobil, Chevron, Shell and British Petroleum.

Absolutely true. But who is really paying for this war? Not the American taxpayer, but the people of Iraq!

They're the ones doing most of the dying, they're the ones doing the vast majority of the suffering, they're the ones whose country has been ruined before their very eyes and they're the ones who are going to be left living in the wreckage. Iraqis can't "rotate home", although many have been "rotated out". But even though their homes have been destroyed, and even if they have someplace else to go, they can't get away from the carnage, nor will they ever get away from the depleted uranium ...

So please let's not focus too much on the relatively slight portion of the cost that is being borne by the American taxpayer. Tragic though it is for America, this war is infinitely worse for Iraq. And perhaps the worst part of it is this so-called "reconciling" legislation:

This hydrocarbon law was made a part of the Iraq Supplemental Bill by a Congress under the control of the Democratic Party. This is a sad reflection on the nature of both parties. I hope it is not a reflection on the American people.

I hope we are better than that. I hope that Americans would not want to use military force to steal the resources of another country. I hope that Americans would not want to trade blood for oil. If you agree perhaps you should call your congressmen and senators.

I agree with every principle Allen Carstensen has espoused here, although clearly he is a shade or two more hopeful -- and more trusting -- than I am at this point. Nonetheless, I urge you to take some action while you still can. Maybe Allen Carstensen is right. We'll never know until we try.

Irrational Politics : Iraqi Workers Threaten To Mutiny Over Oil Law

Imagine that the first time you ever saw tennis, you were so far away, you couldn't see the ball. No matter how long you spent watching, you'd be hard-pressed to arrive at any conclusion other than "these people are crazy".

In fact you'd be a damned fool to think anything else. Only by seeing the game up close could you observe that all the running and whacking had a purpose; then you still might think "these people are crazy" but at least you could understand what they were trying to do.

I got thinking about this back in May when Ron Paul stunned the Republican debate with his view that 9/11 was the result of what the CIA calls "blowback"; that somehow American foreign policy had angered people. In the midst of explicating his position, Dr. Paul twice quoted Ronald Reagan as saying "We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics."

All this came to mind when I read this UPI report (emphasis added):

Iraq unions vow 'mutiny' over oil law

BAGHDAD, July 20 (UPI) -- Iraq's unions say the draft oil law is a threat and threaten "mutiny" if Parliament approves the bill.

"This law cancels the great achievements of the Iraq people," Subhi al-Badri, head of the Iraqi Federation of Union Councils, told the al-Sharqiyah TV station. He referred specifically to laws that nationalized Iraq's oil sector.

Iraq holds 115 billion barrels of proven reserves, the third largest in the world, and likely much more when the country is fully explored.

It could produce more than the 2 million barrels per day, and many are pushing the oil law as a means of solidifying investment in the sector. The law, as drafted, allows for foreign access to the oil, a line that must not be crossed, the oil unions say.

They have threatened to strike in the past -- and made good on the threat as recently as last month -- and claim workers of all sectors support them.

That was verified by Badri's interview, as reported by the Middle East Economic Survey.

"If the Iraqi Parliament approves this law, we will resort to mutiny," he said. "This law is a bomb that may kill everyone. Iraqi oil does not belong to any certain side. It belongs to all future generations."

The law is stuck in negotiations with various parties demanding either a strong regional/local control over the oil sector vs. a strong federal government control.

You could read this "news" piece a thousand times and you would never know why the Iraqi unions were ready to "mutiny", unless of course they happened to be irrational.

Foreign access to the oil? Is that really a line that must not be crossed? Foreigners are going to buy that oil anyway, aren't they? Doesn't that count as access? These people are so irrational!

And imagine fighting over regional vs. federal control of natural resources in terms like "This law is a bomb that may kill everyone"! How irrational can you get?

In my view, in relation to Middle Eastern politics, we qualify as an observer who can't see the tennis ball. We don't understand the languages, we don't understand the cultures, we don't know who the players are nor what their motivations might happen to be. So of course the game appears entirely irrational.

And we comfort ourselves by thinking the most bizarre thoughts about people and situations we don't understand at all. If they're all irrational, then they're not like us, are they? So there's no need for us to be concerned about what happens to them, as you can see for yourself in the tone of the piece quoted above, one of a million similar mainstream "news" items -- all lying.

They lie by hiding the ball. Leaving out a bit of context here and there makes all the difference.

Listen:

Iraq holds 115 billion barrels of proven reserves; light sweet crude which can be had for just a few bucks apiece and sold for at least $70. There's no place on Earth where an oil company can make more money faster.

The law, as drafted, puts control of Iraq's oil in the hands of foreigners, and that's the line the unions say must not be crossed.

The "regional/local vs. federal" issue is a distraction, and it's intended as such.

The oil law as drafted allocates seven eighths of the revenue to a consortium of foreign-controlled companies and leaves just one eighth for Iraq.

And that's why the proposed law says:

ARTICLE 34: ROYALTY

A - [...] holders of an Exploration and Production right shall pay a royalty on Petroleum produced from the Development and Production Area, at the rate of 12.5% of Gross Production [...]

The Iraqi parliament is supposedly squabbling over who controls the revenue, but in fact there's nothing left to fight over but one slice among eight. And for this reason, Iraqis find the law so objectionable that even the puppets in their parliament -- installed in the "democratic election" run by the occupying foreigners -- are refusing to pass it. And the nation's workers, by striking, then threatening to mutiny, are supporting the best instincts of their "elected representatives" -- and threatening them at the same time!

It's an entirely rational thing to do, in my opinion, especially when the future of the country's vast natural wealth is at stake.

What's irrational is believing that people -- whole cultures! -- are irrational, when we don't know the first thing about them.

~~~

Here's a message to Iraqis from Citizens around the World:

We support the Iraqi people's sovereign right to the country's oil. We reject the pressure campaign led by the Bush Administration and multi-national oil companies to force Iraqis to adopt this draft Oil Law, which risks conceding extraordinary rights over revenue and production to foreign corporations.

Iraq's oil wealth should be shared fairly among all Iraqis to help them rebuild their country. We affirm the right and responsibility of Iraq's national parliament to take the final decisions on this matter, and call on the US President and Congress to respect Iraq's sovereignty. We stand in solidarity with Iraqi leaders who oppose this unwarranted foreign interference.

If we can't get the war stopped, then the least we can do is sign a petition here and there.