In Wake of Chevron Spat, Declassified Documents Show Tricky History of US-Iraqi-Kurdish Affairs. News broke last month that Chevron had signed an oil deal with the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Northern Iraq , making it the second U.S. oil company in a year to violate the Iraqi Oil Ministry’s claimed right to negotiate all energy deals from Baghdad.
[i] In response, the Iraqi government disqualified the U.S. oil giant from signing any future deals with the Ministry, which prompted President Obama to denounce Chevron’s actions and reinforce America’s support for the Maliki government’s central authority in Baghdad. These developments are coming at a precarious juncture. The last of the U.S. troops have exited an increasingly violent Iraq, Iraqi oil production is outpacing Iran’s for the first time since the end of the Iran-Iraq War, and the latest estimates are that the Kurdish region is home to 45 billion barrels of oil (more than twice the proven U.S. reserves). A Summary Blueprint of “Project for New American Century” Plan for U.S. Global Hegemony. War Without End, Amen: The Reality of America’s Aggression Against Iraq. In March 2003, the United States of America launched an entirely unprovoked act of military aggression against a nation which had not attacked it and posed no threat to it.
This act led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. It drove millions more from their homes, and plunged the entire conquered nation into suffering, fear, hatred and deprivation. This is the reality of what actually happened in Iraq: aggression, slaughter, atrocity, ruin. It is the only reality; there is no other. And it was done deliberately, knowingly, willingly. Colin Powell Gets Mad at Me.
Colin Powell Gets Mad at Me In his new book, It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership, Colin Powell writes this about his 2003 presentation at the United Nations about Iraq's supposed WMD: "I get mad when bl*ggers accuse me of lying – of knowing the information was false.
I didn’t. " Newsweek Enables Colin Powell's Iraq War Revisionism. Right before the United States invaded Iraq, Newsweek magazine published a remarkable story.
Reporter John Barry revealed that former Iraqi weapons chief Hussein Kamel had told UN inspectors in 1995 that the country had destroyed its stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. As FAIR pointed out at the time, this was a remarkable discovery, especially considering that Kamel's words had be used so often by U.S. officials to serve the opposite point–that Iraq still posed a dire threat. As FAIR pointed out: According to Newsweek, Kamel told the same story to CIA analysts in August 1995. If that is true, all of these U.S. officials have had access to Kamel's statements that the weapons were destroyed. Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all - World Politics - World. The Lone Conmen. Two eyes took the aim behind a man's brainBut he can't be blamed:He's only a pawn in their game - Bob Dylan I got suckered yesterday by a logo.
Nothing special about that besides the irony that the logo was No Logo, which sold me a copy of No War by Naomi Klein ("and others," though that addendum is dark blue on a black background). Signs and wonders. We asked for signs.
The signs were sent. - Leonard Cohen. Iraq's Hutu Radio. They're saying things that I can hardly believe,They really think we're getting out of control. - Elvis Costello Did you hear about last Friday's "catastrophic tragedy" in Iraq?
The handcuffed and headless bodies of 100 Shiites - "children, women and men" - were taken to Kerbala from south Baghdad, writes Iraqi blogger "Sam Hammorabi. " Reputedly, Sunni militia had been killing the Shiites "every day and hour passing. " Three Years of Goddamn. Route 666. It's five in the morning, the post I've been drafting still isn't ready and I can't keep my eyes open any longer.
So here's something else, while I get my act together:2 Murders and Missing Cash in Iraq The killing of Fern Holland, a young human rights worker from Oklahoma, remains as unsolved and mysterious as it was when her body was found riddled with bullets on a desolate stretch of road near one of Iraq's southern holy cities in March 2004. Now, federal investigators in the United States are grappling with a second mystery: what happened to hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash issued by U.S. government authorities to Holland and Robert Zangas, a press officer who died in the same incident, in the days before their deaths? Holland was the first US civilian to be murdered in Iraq. Two months later, the second was Nick Berg. Pattern of Force. I'm leaving, Captain, I must goThere's blood upon your handBut tell me, Captain, if you knowOf a decent place to stand - Leonard Cohen Only time right now for some quick thoughts on Haditha.
Or rather, Haditha's elevation as Iraq's official, bad apple atrocity. Even for those who try to pay attention to what filters through the fog of war crimes, these things tend to run together. Haditha isn't Abu Sifa where, according to Iraqi police, US forces "on a rampage" executed a family of 11, then bombed their house, burned their cars and slaughtered their animals. What more will we hear of Abu Sifa, now Haditha has become the representative and inevitable example of honour's exception? Because along with Haditha comes Jesse Macbeth, allegedly a former Army Ranger and Iraq war veteran, whose claims that massacre was method rather than madness rapidly went viral on the Net.
On supposedly progressive forums I've seen many apologies for Haditha, and for the other Hadithas still cloaked in denial. Crimes of Opportunity. "It's a hard world for little things" - Night of the Hunter This has to be brief, as I'm still not up to speed here.
Last December, Pfc Steven Green was the face of the Army's happy news story, "Coalition forces keep streets of Iraq safe. " (And sure thing, there he is, preparing "to blast a lock off the gate of an abandoned home. ") Six months later, he's charged with the rape of an Iraqi girl possibly as young as 14, her murder and the murder of her family, including her seven-year old brother Hadeel. (Her name was Abeer Qasim Hamza. Theory of a Dead Man. Www.mnftiu.cc. Judge Napolitano Grills Donald Rumsfeld On WMD, Torture & More. The Pentagon's amnesia-inducing propaganda - Pentagon. When philosopher George Santayana said “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” he meant it as an admonition — not as an endorsement of mass amnesia or historical revision.
This should be obvious. Yet those operating at the shadowy intersection of the Pentagon and Hollywood either don’t understand – or more likely, refuse to understand — the thrust of the aphorism. Instead, with this week’s release of a much-awaited film, Santayana’s omen has been transformed into a public mission statement for a burgeoning Military-Entertainment Complex. Since 1986′s “Top Gun” rekindled the Pentagon-Hollywood relationship from its post-Vietnam doldrums, the collusion between the military and the entertainment industry has become a blockbuster con, generating huge benefits for both participants — and swindling the American public in the process. The scheme is simple: The Pentagon allows studios to use military hardware and bases at a discounted, taxpayer-subsidized rate. Disinformation: Everything You Know Is Wrong.