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). The result of the Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI by the Allied Powers. A Summary Blueprint of “Project for New American Century” Plan for U.S. Global Hegemony. Some people have compared it to Hitler’s publication of Mein Kampf, which was ignored until after the war was over. Full text of Rebuilding America’s Defenses here When the Bush administration started lobbying for war with Iraq, they used as rationale a definition of preemption (generally meaning anticipatory use of force in the face of an imminent attack) that was broadened to allow for the waging of a preventive war in which force may be used even without evidence of an imminent attack.
They also were able to convince much of the American public that Saddam Hussein had something to do with the attacks of 9/11, despite the fact that no evidence of a link has been uncovered. Consequently, many people supported the war on the basis of 1) a policy that has no legal basis in international law and 2) a totally unfounded claim of Iraqi guilt. PNAC members on the Bush team include Vice-President Dick Cheney and his top national security assistant, I.
Rebuilding America’s Defenses A. B. East Asia. 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. Line up the bodies of the children, the thousands of children — the infants, the toddlers, the schoolkids — whose bodies were torn to pieces, burned alive or riddled with bullets during the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. This is the reality of what happened in Iraq; there is no other reality.
This is the reality of what happened in Iraq; you cannot make it otherwise. But you can, of course, ignore it. Chris Floyd. 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. " Well, I'm a blugger, and I accuse Colin Powell of lying. The evidence is overwhelming that he knew much of what he said in front of the Security Council was false. This may not seem plausible to people who know Powell only via the media image he's carefully constructed over decades – that of being Washington's last honorable man. As journalist Margaret Carlson said in 2003, "Whatever Colin does, I’ll go with. " But in fact Powell's image has about as much to do with reality as what he told the UN. So everyone's default assumption should have been that Powell would lie to Americans and the world at the UN.
Powell's speech can be found via the archived State Department website. That's in public. Powell at the UN: 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. That brings us to this week's Newsweek, which includes an excerpt from Powell's new book. Powell writes: Facts are verified information, which is then presented as objective reality. Well OK. He goes on to say, "My warning radar always goes on alert when qualifiers are attached to facts. " And later, still blaming someone else for what he said: "Yes, the evidence was deeply flawed. Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all - World Politics - World.
"Curveball", the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi's lies used to justify the Iraq war. He tries to defend his actions: "My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime's oppression. " The chemical engineer claimed to have overseen the building of a mobile biological laboratory when he sought political asylum in Germany in 1999. His lies were presented as "facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence" by Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, when making the case for war at the UN Security Council in February 2003. But Mr Janabi, speaking in a two-part series, Modern Spies, starting tomorrow on BBC2, says none of it was true.
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). I didn't realize until later Klein's only contribution - and apparently without her consent - was "Baghdad Year Zero", an essay published more than a year ago in Harper's and available free online. Besides the need to be smarter about my discretionary spending, I'm glad it also reminded me of Klein's reporting from Iraq. Klein writes:The great historical irony of the catastrophe unfolding in Iraq is that the shock-therapy reforms that were supposed to create an economic boom that would rebuild the country have instead fueled a resistance that ultimately made reconstruction impossible.
The neocons are the Lone Gunmen of Iraq. Signs and wonders. We asked for signs. The signs were sent. - Leonard Cohen Afraid the time's too short today for writing, but time's getting shorter every day. I don't mean to get all John the Revelator about it, but as Juan Cole's written, "Tuesday was an apocalyptic day in Iraq. " The destruction of Samarra's Askariyah shrine marks a Biblical moment of provocation in Iraq's ersatz Civil War. These must be hard times for soft-headed apologists of "benign" empire, who thought there could be something of worth even to the fiction of liberation and democracy; who believed that civil war would be the last thing sought by Western powers, which wanted peace and security rather than provocation and chaos. The Samarra mosque contains the shrine of the Hidden Imam, the Mahdi, whom many Shiites believe is about to manifest himself.
How short is our time, and how hot the coming hellfire? An Alarm based on 2 verifiable events Perhaps it won't be March. Remember the story of Manhattan's talking fish? We have the signs. 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. " The arrival of the corpses "provoked a storm of anger and cry among the people there. " Hammorabi adds the dash of colour that the slaughtered children "were bloodstained all over. " I first saw this here where it was commented on with some clucking about how the Sunnis "must be suicidal," and the credulous metaphor that US forces were the cure for the cancer of Iraqi barbarity.
Do these 100 headless corpses, children covered in blood, exist? Back in October 2004, Hammorabi posted graphic images of children killed by a "Zarqawi" bombing in Baghdad. Three Years of Goddamn. They ask me if I feel remorse and I answer, Why of course:There's so much more I could have done if they'd let me - Nick Cave There's a lot I want to say about a number of things, but I can't seem to find those words until I scream some others. Have you read the Iraqi police report of last week's little Helter Skelter outside Tikrit? From Knight Ridder: At 230 of 15/3/2006, according to the telegram (report) of the Ishaqi police directorate, American forces used helicopters to drop troops on the house of Faiz Harat Khalaf situated in the Abu Sifa village of the Ishaqi district.
The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 people, including 5 children, 4 women and 2 men, then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles and killed their animals (map coordinates 098702). They were: (Signed) Staff Colonel Fadhil Muhammed KhalafAssistant Chief of the Joint Coordination Center Husam Harat Khalaf, 6 months. Information warriors. 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. For what it's worth, which may not be much, both were alumnists of Oklahoma University, where Berg's email account found it's way to Zacharias Moussaoui. 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. It seems most reports don't bother with that detail. Nor that she was a child, and not a young woman.) It was self-evident from the moment the story broke, despite the military's insistence to the contrary, that the subsequent abduction, execution and mutilation of two soldiers from the same platoon were acts of retaliation.
A Pentagon spokesperson called the slaughter of Abeer and her family "crime of opportunity. " 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.