The Rag Blog

Question: What is the common theme among all Iraqi oil minsters after the occupation [4 or 5 ministers]?

Answer: All of them promised that oil production to reach 3-5 Million barrel a year, but it never reached even the production line before the occupation [the embargo years].

Yet Al-Maliki still promising people that the new oil law is for the benefit of the Iraqi citizens. Isam Al-Chalabi former Iraqi oil minister answers this:

Adoption of the oil law right now is the result of the U.S. insistence . they did not find anything else to announce at least any achievement.

The “Green Zone” government, SCIRI delivering Iraq’s Holy Grail to Bush/Cheney and Big Oil – in exchange for not being chased out of power by the Pentagon.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim who spent all his life calling America [The Big evil], is much more of a Bush ally than Maliki, who is from the Da’wa Party. No wonder SCIRI’s Badr Organization and their death squads were never the target of Bush death machine. Unlike Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army (Muqtada is against the oil law).

The SCIRI certainly listened to the White House, which has always made it very clear: any more funds to the Iraqi government are tied up with passing the oil law.

The question now is what is the meaning of a law, the “Green Zone” government can not be implement?

Group of Iraqi oil experts, studied the new law, and their conclusions are here in brief:

1.Timing – The current security situation is not proper to pass a law aiming foreign investments to improve the Iraqi economic situation.

How can foreign companies to take this law seriously, while it is impossible for them to go to Iraq?

Check for example the warning issued by Oil Employees in Basra:

We strongly warn all the foreign companies and foreign capital in the form of American companies against coming into our lands under the guise of production-sharing agreements.

Conclusion:

In an interview back in 2003, President Bush said that if his country were occupied he would resist. Indeed he is resisting what he calls “terror” toward making the world safer for Americans and America. An important stage of his “resistance” was invading, occupying and destroying Iraq.

Yet, in occupied Iraq, resistance is being describing as terror and insurgency as long as the occupier is being described as “the liberator.” The whole world silently watches the violence, destruction, crimes against humanity and daily bloodbaths brought into Iraq by the American “liberators”! Bush has the right to resist, yet Iraqis don’t.

In March, while women all over the world will celebrate International Women’s Day, the women of Iraq will have their own very special present. Three Iraqi women will be executed on March 3. The women: Wasan Talib, 31 years old and a mother of three-year-old daughter who has been with her mother till now; Liqaa Omer Mohammed, 26 years old and a mother a three-month-old daughter who was born in jail; and Zaineb Fadhil, 25 years old. According to lawyer Waleed Al-Hilali, a member of the Iraqi Lawyers Union, the court refused to let the lawyers in to defend the three women, who have been in jail for more than a year, accused of attacking the American occupying forces and being “terrorists.”

Iraq’s “liberators” promised to bringing human rights and especially women’s rights to Iraq! Paul Bremer, the former Bush viceroy in occupied Iraq, said during dismantling the Iraqi state that there would be no more death sentences in Iraq!

After a while of this “promise,” the death sentence was back “because the situation in Iraq needs it.”

The “rights” brought to the Iraqi women were: rape, displacement, imprisonment and poverty. According to IRIN news agency reports, 2 million Iraqi poor women became the breadwinners for their families after losing husbands, brothers, fathers and sons in the ongoing violence, and 60 women were raped and 800 were persecuted in just three months last year. According to the Iraqi Human Rights Society, 2,000 women are in jail for security cases. According to the Iraqi official numbers, thousands of women were among the civilian causalities of the violence; among them were professors, academics, journalists, teachers, and housewives, and most were mothers. Many Iraqi and international organizations, societies and personalities appealed to the Iraqi authorities and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who is on record as being opposed to the death penalty, to not execute the three Iraqi women and are still awaiting a reply. The first step toward bringing democracy is to not face violence by another violent action.

Because some soldiers were ballsy enough to tell the press about the callous way the Bush gang treats the cannon fodder it sends off to die, kill, maim and be maimed in a useless, pointless, illegal, corrupt, immoral, murderous, mismanaged war, now all the soldiers in Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Medical Hold Unit are being subjected to a punishment regimen – and banished to an area where they will be inaccessible to the press. So reports that well-known bastion of defeatist pink-lib Islamo-wimpism, the Army Times:

Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Medical Hold Unit say they have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the media.

“Some soldiers believe this is a form of punishment for the trouble soldiers caused by talking to the media,” one Medical Hold Unit soldier said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. It is unusual for soldiers to have daily inspections after Basic Training.

Soldiers say their sergeant major gathered troops at 6 p.m. Monday to tell them they must follow their chain of command when asking for help with their medical evaluation paperwork, or when they spot mold, mice or other problems in their quarters.

They were also told they would be moving out of Building 18 to Building 14 within the next couple of weeks. Building 14 is a barracks that houses the administrative offices for the Medical Hold Unit and was renovated in 2006. It’s also located on the Walter Reed Campus, where reporters must be escorted by public affairs personnel. Building 18 is located just off campus and is easy to access.

The soldiers said they were also told their first sergeant has been relieved of duty, and that all of their platoon sergeants have been moved to other positions at Walter Reed.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to find terms that would sufficiently plumb the depth and extent of the moral putrefaction that oozes out of the White House on a daily basis. Metaphors drawn from waste management, the barnyard or the most unsavoury of bodily processes fail to do justice to the moral nullity and active malice that animates every policy of this rancid, wretched crew.

While no one could possibly expect the foul, perverted, fourth-rate minds of the Bush Administration to pay even the briefest quark of concern or attention to the hundreds of thousands of innocent people they have murdered in Iraq or the millions of American citizens they have driven into deep poverty, one might think that they would at least make a show of caring what happens to the men and women they have so cynically and criminally abused in the service of their apparently limitless greed and infinite stupidity. Especially as the Bushists (and their innumerable little bootlickers out there instapunditing and powerlining and pajama paryting and blowing hot air) have made such a fetish of “supporting the troops.” But as any sentient being now recognizes, they are not interested in the concept as a physical reality, but only in the mere phrase – and only so far as it can be used as a cudgel to beat their political enemies.

WASHINGTON – Sunni Muslim insurgents remain by far the biggest threat to American troops in Iraq, despite recent U.S. claims that Iran is providing Shiite Muslim militia groups with a new type of roadside bomb, a review of American casualty reports shows.

While U.S. military officials have held briefings to publicize their concerns about the potent bombs known as explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) or penetrators, casualty reports suggest that such weapons in the hands of Shiite militias are responsible for a relatively small number of American deaths.

U.S. officials have said that attacks with such weapons increased 150 percent in the past year. But a review of bombings by location shows that less than 10 percent of attacks that killed at least two American service members in the past 14 months were in areas where Shiite militias are dominant.

Those reports show that fewer than half the bomb attacks on heavily armored U.S. vehicles such as Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles were in areas where Shiite militias dominate.

While it’s difficult to know which armed group planted a bomb, analysts say the casualty numbers show that U.S. officials are exaggerating the importance of EFPs, which military officials say have been used only by Shiites.

“There were relatively few American deaths from explosively formed penetrators until recently, but you can say the same thing about attacks on helicopters or chlorine attacks,” said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute, a policy research group in Arlington, Va. “The fact of the matter is that the insurgents, both Sunni and Shiite, are becoming a lot more sophisticated in their tactics. Explosively formed penetrators are only one part of that, and they are not a particularly important part.”

Pentagon officials say the issue is important because the Iranian government appears to be involved.

“I think the issue is not whether or not materials and supplies are coming from Iran – they are – but rather how far up the Iranian leadership is involved,” said Bryan Whitman, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman.

U.S. military officials accuse Iran of supplying Shiite militants with EFPs, which fire a molten slug of metal that can punch through the thickest American armor, including tanks and other vehicles designed to withstand heavy blasts. The officials say the bombs have killed at least 170 U.S. and allied service members and wounded more than 620 since they were first discovered on the battlefield in mid-2004.

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (ret.), a veteran of the Pentagon with firsthand experience of the administration’s cherry-picking of intelligence, reveals why Bush thinks he can win a war with Iran, why few politicians are serious about withdrawal and why “when they call Iraq a success, they mean it.”

Transcript:

JAMES HARRIS: This is TruthDig. James Harris sitting down with Josh Scheer, and on the phone we have a special guest. She is a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, formerly working for the Pentagon, The National Security Agency. Needless to say, she knows a lot about intel and a lot about what took place and what went on before we went into Iraq and what went on with that intel. Many questions have been asked in recent weeks, obviously in recent years about what we knew, what was fabricated, what was made up. On the phone we have somebody who has been vociferous in her effort to out the wrongdoings of people like Douglas Feith and people like Donald Rumsfeld. So, Karen Kwiatkowski, welcome to TruthDig.

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Thanks for having me.

JAMES HARRIS: It’s our pleasure. I want to start, not talking about Douglas Feith, but I want to get your opinion about Iraq. We know that British troops and Tony Blair have decided that they’re out. We’ve seen the commitment of other nations drop by 17 countries and our biggest partner, England, is now out. Why do you think they’re out and Bush is still in? Well we know why Bush is still in. Why now?

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: It is towards the end of Tony Blair’s long, long term of duty there as the Prime Minister. And the other thing is, the British very much oppose, in spite of the fact that there are some Murdoch newspapers in Great Britain, some conservative papers, pseudo conservative I should say, not truly conservative. Truly conservatives, true conservatives have opposed this venture form the beginning. But in spite of the small, loud pro-war faction in London, most people in Britain recognize this for what it is. They have some experience in this kind of thing with, both in Middle East, particularly in Iraq years ago when they left in dishonor. LAUGHS Another time when they tried to occupy Baghdad, years and years ago, and also their experience with terrorism and movements of independents or what have you with Ireland, much more recent memory for many of the people in Great Britain. I don’t think Britain’s economy can afford it. Certainly they see the writing on the all, why get, why not get out now while George Bush is still there than be stuck with, stuck holding the bag when a Democratic president takes over and pulls the troops out abruptly in 2008, 2009. So I think there’s many reasons why they’re doing it. Some people say it is, it is because of Tony Blair’s concern over his legacy. If he doesn’t bring the troops home, his legacy will be that he left Britain in a quagmire. They are in a quagmire now and maybe he doesn’t want to leave office with that being on his record. Mainly it’s the right thing to do, the people of Britain want those troops home. And I guess their government is listening. Unlike ours.

JAMES HARRIS: The highly speculative people have said they’re out because we’re going into Iran. You might’ve read the news…

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Well yeah, I don’t… I had not seen that connection made, but I certainly am alarmed at the daily signs that indeed this country is getting ready to instigate an attack on Iran. All the signs are there, the suggestions that Iranian bombs are killing American soldiers, that’s not true, but it’s certainly been made in, I think every American newspaper, the suggestion that Iran is somehow killing Americans. The suggestion that Iran has nuclear weapons, is imminently close to nuclear weapons. That is not true but that’s been, those claims are made, even by this Administration. The idea that we have two carrier battle groups currently in the region and in fact I just saw today, Admiral Walsh, one of the big guys in the Navy said that we’re very concerned about what Iran is doing even more so than Al Qaeda. So there, all the signs are there that we are being, we’re going to wake up one morning soon, very soon, and we will be at war with Iran. We will have bombed them in some sort of shock and awe campaign destroying many lives and setting back US relations even further than we’ve already done it with Iraq.

JOSH: I want to continue on Iran. You spent obviously many years in the military and you talk in those kind of terms that many people maybe not know about. Can we not just politically, and not just in the region, but can we support another war in another country? Right now we’re in Afghanistan, we’re in Iraq. Can we feasibly actually go into Iran, or is this going to be a shock and awe campaign?

The number of deaths attributed to Saddam Hussein by the West is incomprehensible. If you add them all up, it seems he killed more people than the number who inhabit Iraq. He had to work overtime and must have had advanced weaponry of which no one is aware.

Numbers and techniques abound: 182,000 during the Anfal campaign (Despite the numbers, not one body has been found. Maybe Saddam had a secret vaporizing ray); 5,000 in Halabja (About 300 bodies were found and there is much doubt as to the origin of the gas used against the Kurds); and hundreds of thousands in the south of Iraq.

In November 2003, word came out that more than 400,000 bodies had been discovered in mass graves in Iraq. “The whole country is a mass graveyard” was the slogan of the day. Finally, proof of Saddam being the Butcher of Baghdad was there for the whole world to see. Case closed.

Let’s go forward a few months from the discovery of the almost half million bodies. On July 18, 2004, the headline of the day for the British paper The Independent read, “British Prime Minister Admits Graves Claim Untrue.” How could that be? George Bush and Tony Blair don’t lie. If we can’t trust them, who can we trust? Certainly not Saddam, even though he told the truth about WMD. That must have been a fluke.

According to the article:

Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by Tony Blair that “about 400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves” is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered.

The claims by Blair in November and December of last year (2003) were given widespread credence, quoted by MPs and widely published, including in the introduction to a U.S. government pamphlet on Iraq’s mass graves.

In that publication, Iraq’s Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves, produced by USAID, the U.S. government aid distribution agency, Blair is quoted from 20 November last year: We’ve already discovered, just so far, the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves.”

Here’s what the USAID website stated:

If these numbers prove accurate, they represent a crime against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Pol Pot’s Cambodian killing fields in the 1970s, and the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.

I assume that USAID did not hear about the two million Iraqis who died at the hands of the U.S.-imposed embargo from 1990-2003. After all, they’re Iraqis: they don’t count.

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran, accused by Washington of backing militants in Iraq, is reviewing Baghdad’s invitation to attend a regional conference on ways of easing tensions in Iran’s neighbor, a senior official said on Wednesday.

The United States has said it will attend both a mid-level meeting in March and a ministerial meeting that may be held in April. Syria, accused by Washington of igniting tension in Iraq by failing to control its border, has also been invited.

Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said Tehran was considering the offer.

Iranian officials had previously said Tehran was not interested in discussions before U.S. troops pulled out of Iraq.

Al-Hayat provides an explanation how the Americans (and the British) finally got the Iraqi cabinet to agree on a draft oil law, the point being that main unresolved issue (as far as the draft text of the law is concerned) had to do with the competing claims to control over oil and gas extraction contracts in Kurdistan, by the regional government on the one side, and the central government on the other. The Al-Hayat reporter quotes Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the national parliament, but not a member of either of the two big Kurdish parties, on how this was settled: US ambassador Khalilzad, on his latest trip to the region, proposed that they simply agree between them that half of the contracts would be under the auspices of the regional government, and the other half under the auspices of the central government. The implication is the text of the law can be left vague, but that there is a side-understanding between the US and the Kurds, to the effect that they will split oil jurisdiction 50-50 between the Kurdish regional government, and the US-controlled central government. Here is the text of what Al-Hayat says Othman said:

Kurdish deputy Mahmoud Othman said “the British and the Americans, who were in a hurry to decide on an oil and gas law, had a major role in convincing the Kurds to accept [this version]”… Othman explained some of the details of the process, that led to the council of Ministers approving this after so many months of disagreement between the central government and the regional government. The British and the Americans, who were bound and determined to accelerate the process of deciding on an oil and gas law, had a major role in convincing the Kurdish parties to accept this, after intensive discussions between the parties leading to haggling about exploitation, contract-management, and distribution. Othman added: “The latest visit by US ambassador Khalilzad to [the Kurdish region] focused on convincing the Kurds to accept [the current version] after promising them that the new law would protect Kurdish interests,” and Othman explained: “The Kurds had wanted the authority to enter into contracts for oil and exploitation and the granting of operating permits to corporations, on a par with the authority of the central government [elsewhere in Iraq], while the Baghdad government wanted to have a presence in overseeing contracts [in Kurdistan] equal to that of the the Kurds.” Othman said: “That was finally agreed, but only after an agreement that one-half of the contracts signed would be within the jurisdiction of the Region of Kurdistan”.

The United States director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, is warning the violence in Iraq may get much worse.

Admiral McConnell has told the Senate’s armed services committee that sectarian violence in Iraq has become self-sustaining.

“The current security and political trends in Iraq are moving in a negative direction, particularly after the February 2006 bombing of the Mosque at Samara,” he said.

He said the latest US intelligence estimate paints a grim picture of the future.

“Unless efforts to reverse these conditions gain real traction during the 12 to 18-month time frame of this estimate, we assess that the security situation will continue to deteriorate at a rate comparable to the latter half of 2006,” he said.

Admiral McConnell says the violence would only get much worse if US troops were to leave.

The bleak security outlook came as the US agreed to take part in a regional conference to discuss ways of ending the violence in iraq.

The meeting, to be held in Baghdad in April, will involve all of Iraq’s neighbours including Iran and Syria, two countries the US has refused to negotiate with.

Into the breach: Once again, the Texas Legislature will consider baby steps that would make it somewhat easier for sick people to use marijuana to treat their ailments. We say “somewhat easier” because this session’s HB 1534 would not legalize medical marijuana. It would simply allow anyone busted for possession who had a legitimate medical need for weed to raise that fact as an issue in their defense. (It would also shield doctors who advise patients to try grass.)

But — wink, wink — it’s a Trojan horse, right? A wedge used by stoners to get marijuana decriminalized. Even we thought so. But then we talked with Garland resident Tim Timmons, who was heading down to Austin to lobby for the bill. After speaking to him, we’re ready to make a deal with the devil: Buzz loves us some grass, but we would gladly accept that it will be forever illegal for us if guys like Timmons could legally get the weed they need.

OK, so he’s a persuasive lobbyist. Or maybe we’re lying. Probably both. Timmons has had chronic multiple sclerosis for 20 years. He takes 18-23 prescribed medicines a day — barbiturates, amphetamines, antispasmodics, muscle relaxants — to deal with the painful effects of the illness.

They’re slowly trashing his liver, and they don’t always do the trick. “I still have spasms that can knock me out of bed,” Timmons says. If he takes enough muscle relaxants to halt the spasms, he can end up in a psychedelic nightmare. (He has called the Garland police to his home because of paranoid hallucinations.) Three tokes on a pipe, however, and he sleeps through the night.

And this guy is not a stoner. He tried marijuana a couple of times in high school but didn’t take up smoking medicinally until he got some at his 30th high school reunion. Yep, he’s a criminal—and former risk management consultant and part-time university teacher who’s now disabled.

So Timmons will go to Austin and aim his words at Governor Rick Perry, who declared in his inaugural address last month that Texas has “a responsibility to the most vulnerable among us, the young and the aged, those who are sick and those who live with disabilities, and that is to protect them, nurture them and empower them.” Back the words with action and pass the bill, Timmons says. Otherwise, Perry’s speech was “just noble words camouflaging heartless cowardice. “