posted December 04, 2006 09:48 PM            

Bush intends to see this through, intends to stabilize the Iraqi government, intends to continue to train the Iraqi military and security forces until they are strong enough to protect Iraq from internal and external enemies.

The only way democrats will prevent that from transpiring is to cut off funds for military operations. If democrats do that, Bush and other Republicans will beat them black and blue and their new majority will not survive beyond the next election...in spite of what the fathead Michael Moore says.

A Perfect Failure
The Iraq Study Group has reached a consensus.
by Robert Kagan & William Kristol
12/11/2006, Volume 012, Issue 13

In the frenzied final week of the Iraq Study Group's deliberations, co-chairmen James Baker and Lee Hamilton took time out to pose for a photo spread for a fashion magazine, Men's Vogue. This might seem a dubious decision given the gravity of the moment and their self-appointed roles as the nation's saviors. The "wise men" who counseled Lyndon Johnson during Vietnam and the members of the Kissinger Commission who tried to reshape Ronald Reagan's Central American policies did not sit for Annie Leibovitz in the middle of their endeavors. Nor did they hire a mega-public relations firm to sell their recommendations (supposedly intended for the president) to the public at large, as Baker and Hamilton have done.

But we think the chairmen's self-promotion and big-time product marketing are perfectly understandable. They have to do something to distract attention from two unpleasant facts.

The first is that after nine months of deliberation and an unprecedented build-up of expectations that these sages would produce some brilliant, original answer to the Iraq conundrum, the study group's recommendations turn out to be a pallid and muddled reiteration of what most Democrats, many Republicans, and even Donald Rumsfeld and senior military officials have been saying for almost two years. Thus, according to at least six separate commission sources sent out to pre-spin the press, the Baker-Hamilton report will call for a gradual and partial withdrawal of American forces in Iraq, to begin at a time unspecified and to be completed by a time unspecified. The goal will

be to hand over responsibility for security in Iraq to the Iraqis themselves as soon as this is feasible, and to shift the American role to training rather than fighting the insurgency and providing security. The decision of how far, how fast, and even whether to withdraw will rest with military commanders in Iraq, who will base their determination on how well prepared the Iraqis are to take over. Even after the withdrawal, the study group envisions keeping at least 70,000 American troops in Iraq for years to come.

To say that this is not a new idea is an understatement. Donald Rumsfeld and top military officials have from the beginning of the occupation three years ago aimed to do precisely what the Baker-Hamilton group now recommends. In 2003, the Pentagon set a goal of reducing the forces from 130,000 to 30,000 by the end of the year, handing responsibility for Iraq to the newly formed Iraqi army. Every year since, the Pentagon has aimed to reduce U.S. forces substantially. This time last year, defense officials announced their intention to reduce the force of 150,000 to well under 100,000 by the end of 2006.

So now here comes the Iraq Study Group suggesting that the present force of about 140,000 should be reduced to around 70,000 by early 2008. But as with all similar plans previously devised by the Pentagon, the timing, according to the Washington Post's sources, "would be more a conditional goal than a firm timetable, predicated on the assumption that circumstances on the ground would permit it." As Democratic senator Jack Reed noted, the group's recommendations repeat "what some of us have been saying for a while." But, of course, the Baker plan will face the same challenges as all previous such suggestions. In the past, Pentagon desires to draw down the force foundered precisely because "circumstances on the ground" did not permit a reduction of American forces. Despite efforts to make it appear otherwise, then, the real recommendation of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group is "stay the course." For this we waited nine months?

One of the more striking aspects of the Iraq Study Group's report is that these recommendations are clearly not anyone's idea of the right plan. As the New York Times put it, they represent "a compromise between distinct paths that the group has debated since March." One commission source declared, "We reached a consensus, which in itself is remarkable." "Everyone felt good about where we ended up," said another. We're happy for them. But reaching consensus among the 10 members of the group was presumably not the primary goal of this exercise. The idea was to provide usable advice for the Bush administration that would help it move toward an acceptable outcome in Iraq. In that, the commission has failed.

There is another problem for Baker, of course, which justifies the money the commission is spending to hire the Edelman public relations firm. It is that the Baker commission report is, as the press likes to say, dead on arrival. Over the course of the past few weeks, and especially this past week, President Bush has made clear that he has no intention of following the commission's recommendations. In his press conference with the Iraqi prime minister this past Thursday, Bush took a direct slap at the Iraq Study Group. "I know there's a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there's going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq," he told reporters. But "this business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all."

As for Baker's other significant and more original recommendation--that the United States hold direct talks with Iran and Syria to get their help in Iraq--Bush nixed that idea, too. In Estonia last Tuesday, the president said, "Iran knows how to get to the table with us, and that is to do that which they said they would do, which is verifiably suspend their [uranium] enrichment programs." This the Iranians have steadfastly refused to do, of course. As for Syria, Bush continues to accuse Syria, rightly, of trying to retake control of Lebanon by means of assassination and support of terrorist violence. He gave no indication that he was willing to begin direct talks with Syria on Iraq.

It's not as if the Baker commission has accomplished nothing, however. Although its recommendations will have no effect on American policy going forward, they have already had a very damaging effect throughout the world, and especially in the Middle East and in Iraq. For the Iraq Study Group, aided by supportive American media, has successfully conveyed the impression to everyone at home and abroad that the United States is about to withdraw from Iraq. This has weakened American allies and strengthened American enemies. It has exacerbated the problems in Iraq, as all the various factions in that country begin to prepare for the "inevitable" American retreat. Now it will require enormous efforts by the president and his advisers to dispel the disastrous impression that the Baker commission has quite deliberately created and will continue to foster in the weeks ahead. At home and abroad, people have been led to believe that Jim Baker and not the president was going to call the shots in Iraq from now on.

Happily, that is not the case. Although neither the American media nor many observers of the American political scene seem to realize it, there is nothing the Baker commission can do to force Bush to take a different course than the one he chooses. Nor is it easy for a Democratic majority in Congress to call the shots in Iraq. In the American system, the president always has enormous authority in foreign policy, if he wants to exercise it. President Bush clearly does. He intends to pursue steadfastly his own course in Iraq. He is determined not to withdraw before it becomes stable and, yes, democratic. He will not be buffeted by conventional wisdom or by Baker and his colleagues, no matter how much they employ public relations tactics to defeat him.

Yet there is one "power broker" that still matters: the American public. Unfortunately, and dangerously, the president appears to have largely lost their confidence. Certainly, the election results were a strong signal that Americans are unhappy with the war in Iraq. At the same time, we were struck by exit polls that showed the public was equally concerned with a too precipitous pullout from Iraq, suggesting the American people know quite well what is at stake in the war there. Many Americans, it would seem, are still open to a plan for Iraq that has a chance of working--if the president acts soon. If not, no matter how strong a position he has constitutionally, he will not be able to sustain his Iraq policy.

We remain dissatisfied with the way the president has allowed his Pentagon and top military officers to persist in what has proved to be an ineffective strategy in Iraq. We hope that he will now take the steps necessary to accomplish his stated objectives in Iraq, including a substantial increase in the number of U.S. forces in Baghdad and throughout the contested parts of the country, as well as a long overdue increase in the total size of American ground forces so that higher force levels in Iraq can be sustained. But right now we can only applaud the president's courage and determination and his willingness to resist the pressures of those who would now sound the retreat.

posted December 06, 2006 06:38 PM              

juniors invasion of iraq ....a perfect failure

***********

Panel: Bush Iraq Policy 'Not Working'

Dec 6, 1:23 PM (ET)

By ANNE PLUMMER FLAHERTY and DAVID ESPO

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush's policy in Iraq "is not working," a high-level commission said Wednesday in a blunt, bleak assessment that called for an urgent diplomatic attempt to stabilize the country and allow withdrawal of most U.S. combat troops by early 2008.

After nearly four years of war and the deaths of more than 2,900 U.S. troops, the situation is "grave and deteriorating," the bipartisan panel said. It also warned, "The ability of the United States to influence events within Iraq is diminishing."

It recommended the U.S. reduce political, military or economic support for Iraq if the government in Baghdad cannot make substantial progress toward providing for its own security.

The report said Bush should put aside misgivings and engage Syria, Iran and the leaders of insurgent forces in negotiations on Iraq's future, to begin by year's end. It urged him to revive efforts at a broader Middle East peace. Barring a significant change, it warned of a slide toward chaos.

In a slap at the Pentagon, the commission said there is significant underreporting of the actual level of violence in the country. It also faulted the U.S. intelligence effort, saying the government "still does not understand very well either the insurgency in Iraq or the role of the militias."

On the highly emotional issue of troop withdrawals, the commission warned against either a precipitous pullback or an open-ended commitment to a large deployment.

"Military priorities must change," the report said, toward a goal of training, equipping and advising Iraqi forces. "We should seek to complete the training and equipping mission by the end of the first quarter of 2008."

The commission recommended the number of U.S. troops embedded to train Iraqis should increase dramatically, from 3,000-4,000 currently to 10,000-20,000. Commission member William Perry, defense secretary in the Clinton administration, said those could be drawn from combat brigades already in Iraq.

Bush received the report in an early morning meeting at the White House with commission members. He pledged to treat each proposal seriously and act in a "timely fashion."

The report intensifies pressure on the president to change direction, but he is under no obligation to follow its recommendations. Still to come are options being developed in separate studies by the Pentagon, the State Department and the National Security Council. The White House says he will make decisions within weeks.

"If the president is serious about the need for change in Iraq, he will find Democrats ready to work with him in a bipartisan fashion to find a way to end the war as quickly as possible," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who is in line to become speaker when the new Congress convenes in January.

"The president has the ball in his court now ... and we're going to be watching very closely," said Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who will take over as Senate majority leader in January.

Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, who will take over as House Republican leader next year, said he was pleased there was no call for a firm deadline for a troop withdrawal. "We will not accomplish victory by setting arbitrary deadlines or negotiating with hostile governments," he said.

Bush was flanked at the White House meeting by the panel's co-chairmen, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, and former Rep. Lee Hamilton in a remarkable scene - a president praising the work of a group that had just concluded his policy had led to chaos and risked worse.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061206/D8LRGLN80.html

posted December 08, 2006 11:09 AM            

26 million Iraqis are free, have voted in 3 free elections for their own government and constitution, have elected women, minorities and a multitude of different voices to represent them. So, where is the failure?

If you're talking about terrorists, power hungry clerics, criminals and politicians organizing militias to kill those same citizens who rejected rule by an Iranian style theocracy or a criminal government composed of thugs...like Saddam's regime, then let it be noted these are exactly the same kind of people Bush called the Axis of Evil and Iraqi citizens voted to reject.

So tell me, how does it feel to have aligned yourself with the elements who are the ones actually killing innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, deliberately..to thwart the will of the Iraqi people?

posted December 08, 2006 11:39 AM            

One must also wonder what the world would look like today if Ronald Reagan had listened to the likes of James Baker and the other voices of surrender, the cut and run crowd, those attempting to appease the Soviet Union and the Surrender First brain dead morons of the left? Reagan didn't listen to them then and Bush should send them packing now.

These attempts to direct, control and usurp authority over the Foreign Policy of the United States by people who are not even in government should be firmly rejected and crushed. Foreign Policy is constitutionally, the province of the Executive branch, vested in the person of the President of the United States.

Iraq Study Group fails
Posted: December 8, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern
Melanie Morgan

The Iraq Study Group report was a noble undertaking by well-meaning bureaucrats and former politicians. But the report was a failure – a complete failure.
While their intentions may have been good, the group failed to construct a vision for a new way forward in Iraq that is significantly different from what the United States military and her allies are already doing there.

What they did manage to do was highlight the current problems in Iraq, and in doing so provide fodder for the news media to repeat the same doom and gloom mantra they've dished out over the past year.

The panel did not propose much in the way of meaningful solutions beyond what others have already proposed. The few new ideas the Iraq Study Group report does raise are for the most part dangerous and counterproductive.

No quest for victory

The most important element missing from the Iraq Study Group's report was any focus on how to achieve victory and success in Iraq.

Unfortunately, this omission was deliberate. Former Sen. Alan Simpson, one of the principals of the Iraq Study Group, boasted in a television interview on Wednesday that the Iraq Study Group went out of its way to avoid any discussions of "winning" in Iraq as the group found such notions polarizing.

Instead of winning, the Iraq Study Group calls for efforts to secure "international consensus." In the 1930s, international consensus involved giving away countries and their populations to Adolf Hitler in an effort to secure stability and peace. From the 1950s to the 1970s, international consensus meant a policy of tolerating the violent march of communism across the globe under policies of "containment" and "détente."

Margaret Thatcher said it best when she explained her view that to her consensus was "the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects."

With all due respect to the members of this panel, we're not interested in finding "unity" or "consensus" with the terrorists and their nation-state sponsors. We're interested in defeating the forces of Islamic jihadism.

To win the war on terrorism we need leaders who identify the problem and articulate the path to victory, not just a path "forward." The Iraq Study Group has totally failed in this regard.

Surrender to the terrorists?

There is a move by a number of conservatives, including former Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney, Ret. Col. Gordon Cucullu, Investors Business Daily and others to refer to the Iraq Study Group as the "Iraq Surrender Group." The derisive title is apt given the comments by Baker, Simpson and others stressing "unity" and "consensus" and dismissing an approach toward "victory" or "winning."

But the group advocates surrender in other ways as well, namely surrender in the war against terrorism.

The panel goes so far as to recommend that Iran and Syria – two nations identified by the U.S. as official state sponsors of terrorism – be invited to help solve the problems that exist in Iraq. The group says that Iran and Syria would play valuable roles in a "support structure" for Iraq's future.

This proposal is absurd. Iranian and Syrian conduct is part of what is currently going wrong in Iraq. Both nations have made deliberate efforts to further destabilize Iraq, and both are motivated by a desire to see U.S. foreign policy fail in the region.

We can't trust the Iranians to be true to their word on nuclear weapons programs, but now the Iraq Study Group wants us to invite the fox to come police the henhouse in Iraq? This is what the world waited with baited breath to hear as the "new way forward" in Iraq?

The entire premise for Operation Iraqi Freedom was to advance the war on terrorism, but now the Iraq Study Group wants us to start kissing the ring of nations President Bush properly identified as being part of the "Axis of Evil."

Good grief!

Blame the Israelis again?

Finally, a report on the Middle East from the appeasement crowd wouldn't be complete without taking shots at Israel, and the Iraq Study Group doesn't disappoint in this regard.

In Recommendation No. 13, the report states that to ensure peace in Iraq we must first resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Yes, now the problems of Iraq are Israel's fault.

That's OK, because with the Iraq Study Group's call for Iran to be part of the Iraq "support group," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call for wiping Israel off the face of the earth can take on even greater import.

The Iraq Study Group also advocates an intensification of "land for peace" diplomacy. For those unfamiliar with this policy, it involves Israel giving up more and more of its land to the Palestinians so that terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas can move their Katyusha rocket launchers ever closer to Israel's major cities.

posted December 08, 2006 11:44 AM            

quote:

---

These attempts to direct, control and usurp authority over the Foreign Policy of the United States by people who are not even in government should be firmly rejected and crushed. Foreign Policy is constitutionally, the province of the Executive branch, vested in the person of the President of the United States.

---

posted December 08, 2006 12:23 PM              

quote:

---

One wonders what the world would look like today if the Axis of Surrender, the appeasers, defeatists and other brain dead leftists had been listened to immediately prior to WWII? Fortunately, after at first listening to the "Peace in Our Own Time" appeaser Neville Chamberlain, the British people got on track with Winston Churchill and together, the allies defeated Hitler and Nazi Germany. But make no mistake, the world paid a heavy price for not confronting Hitler immediately when he began rearming Germany and gobbling up pieces of Europe.-jwhop

---

your analogy here is perfectly valid jwhop.....

first prescott bush supported the arming of hitlers war machine.....until he was forced to stop......

then hw bush supported the arming of saddam husseins war machine, which was poised to take over iran, kuwait, saudi arabia....etc.....until the u.n. action in 1990 expelled him from kuwait and dismantled that war machine.....

i'd be watching out for whoever's war machine junior is building up......

posted December 08, 2006 01:24 PM            

quote:

---

These attempts to direct, control and usurp authority over the Foreign Policy of the United States by people who are not even in government should be firmly rejected and crushed. Foreign Policy is constitutionally, the province of the Executive branch, vested in the person of the President of the United States.

---

You forget something "Dulce Luna" aka Sweet Moon Now don't go running off with your point UN-made.

Only Congress can declare WAR....and Congress authorized the use of military force against Iraq by a Joint Resolution of Congress.

I don't know Petron but Saddam's jet fighters looked suspiciously like French
F-1s and Soviet MiGs. His tanks looked suspiciously like the T-series Soviet tanks. His artillery looked suspiciously like French and Russian long range guns. His mortars looked suspiciously like Soviet manufactured items. Some of the rest of Saddam's armaments looked like Chinese. Finally, the AK-47 is a Soviet Union and Chinese manufactured item.

posted December 08, 2006 05:10 PM            

You may believe the reason for the war was oil but where's your proof the US or US oil companies have benefited or that one drop of Iraqi oil has been stolen by the US?

Have you ever read the Joint Resolution of Congress authorizing military force against Saddam Hussein's Iraq? I've posted it here several times whenever someone alleges the US went to war over WMD.

There were many reasons stated, WMD was only one. BTW, it might interest you to know undeclared WMD munitions were found in Iraq by coalition military forces.

posted December 09, 2006 04:12 PM              

JEFFREY SIMPSON

From Friday's Globe and Mail - Dec 8, 2006
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061208.wsimpson08/BNStory/International/home

The United States lost many more men in Vietnam than in Iraq, yet the Iraq invasion and its aftermath will rank as the greatest self-inflicted foreign policy disaster in American history.

The ghastly Vietnam War was limited to one country, although it reverberated in two others, Cambodia and Laos.

The Iraq fiasco, President George W. Bush's gift to the world, has enveloped Iraq in a civil war, inflamed the Muslim world, strengthened Iran, deepened Sunni-Shia tensions, heartened and recruited terrorists, and diminished the reputation of the United States almost everywhere.

As Robert Gates, the incoming secretary of defence, told Congress this week: The U.S. is not winning the war and there are no new ideas for winning it, but failure could ignite a “regional conflagration” in the Middle East.

After years of Orwellian misrepresentations from Mr. Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and the outgoing Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, it was at least refreshing to hear an administration official talk sense.

Asked whether Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden had posed a greater threat to the U.S. after 9/11, Mr. Gates gave the answer that ought to have guided U.S. foreign policy: Osama bin Laden. Had the Bush administration focused on al-Qaeda instead of invading Iraq, the world would be a safer place today.

The intractability of the Iraq mess was then underscored by the much-anticipated report from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group under Republican (and Bush family friend) James Baker and Democrat Lee Hamilton.

A certain eager desperation had preceded this report. Obviously, the Bush administration had no idea for improving the Iraq situation. So the great and good in Washington hoped that maybe the study group's eminent persons could find a way to make progress.

Predictably, the report dashed such hopes, not because it was bad or thoughtless — the panel's members were far too intelligent for that outcome — but because all the good options for calming Iraq are unlikely to happen.

The report emphasized engaging neighbouring countries in a common search for stability in Iraq, without offering any convincing evidence why Syria and Iran would not want the U.S. to continue to stew in the juice of its own incompetence.

Iran is obviously the most important player in the region. But, you'll recall, the Bush administration had demonized Iran as part of the “axis of evil,” one of the most nefarious and maladroit conceptualizations in U.S. foreign policy history.

“Regime change” in Iran had been a staple of neo-conservative thinking, notwithstanding the help Iran gave the U.S. in Afghanistan. Why, under the circumstances of Iran's growing strength in Iraq, Lebanon and the Shia world, would Tehran sit down with Washington to help extricate the Americans from the consequences of their own mistakes?

Obviously, the study group is right: Diplomacy should be tried. But diplomacy has severe limitations, given the existing circumstances and the Bush administration's track record.

In addition to engaging Iran and Syria, the Bush administration should re-engage in the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. But the administration has refused to do this since it was elected. Its political capital, meanwhile, has run out at home and abroad, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has worsened.

Read correctly, the study group's report represents an utter indictment of the Bush administration's policies.

Sadly, its recommendations for diplomacy and a phased withdrawal, coupled with a strengthened Iraqi military and government, are likely the stuff of false hopes. Iraq has degenerated too far for these ambitions to be realized.

A civil war is under way in Iraq. The government is weak. Corruption is endemic. Basic services do not work. The military remains poorly trained, and the police are largely incompetent. The ethnic groups hate each other. All these observations are supported in the study group's report. None of them are new.

Nearly 2,900 Americans have died. So have tens of thousands of Iraqis. Another 21,000 Americans have been wounded. As the study group notes, the U.S. has already spent $400-billion in Iraq and is spending $8-billion a month. When the costs of caring for veterans and replacing lost equipment are calculated, the U.S. invasion of Iraq — a discretionary war — might be around $2-trillion.

And for what? Says the study group: “Stability in Iraq remains elusive and the situation is deteriorating. ... The ability of the United States to shape outcomes is diminishing. Time is running out.”

Actually, time has run out.

jsimpson@globeandmail.com

posted December 09, 2006 06:43 PM            

Hey *******(as$hole) , just so you know everyone in the world isn't an idiot like you; someone needed to tell you those 10's of thousands of Iraqi civilians have mostly been killed by terrorists and insurgents from their own religious faith. It seems to have been left to me to give you that news.

Of course, no one could possibly expect you to know that. Having your head up your ass insulated you from facts. Facts, you know Simpson, facts, those pesky little bits of information you leftists find so elusive and inconvenient.

Now Simpson, since I've read one piece of your trash and found you incapable of thought, it's not necessary to concern myself with what you think in the future.

posted December 17, 2006 07:59 PM              

Linda McQuaig
Dec. 17, 2006. 01:00 AM

Advising the Bush administration on how to deal with the Iraq fiasco, the report of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group urges the president to clarify that Washington does not seek to control Iraq's oil.

It then gets down to business and sets out exactly how Washington should take control of Iraq's oil.

The report calls for Iraq to pass a Petroleum Law — to be drafted with U.S. help — that would allow foreign oil companies to develop Iraq's vast and largely undeveloped oil reserves (which, the report notes, are the second-largest in the world).

It's hard not to feel exasperated reading the report. Released in the wake of the Republican trouncing in the U.S. mid-term elections, it generated excitement that George Bush's imperial adventure was finally coming under sharp attack, and that senior figures from both parties would force the president into line.

Instead, the report reveals the extent of the imperial mindset — shared by both Democrats and Republicans — that is the very heart of the problem of American foreign policy in Iraq, and elsewhere.

Yes, the report acknowledges the extent of the Iraq debacle, and outlines a strategy for getting U.S. troops out.

But it's essentially the strategy of the Bush administration: Create an Iraqi army strong enough to handle security — within the context of a U.S.-controlled Iraq.

One senses the impatience inside the White House and the Iraq Study Group. For heaven's sake, it's almost four years since the invasion! How long does it take to get a competent puppet government and army up and running?

The report sets out a vision for extending U.S. control over Iraq. U.S. officials will be embedded everywhere: U.S. soldiers inside the Iraqi army, American trainers inside the Iraqi police, FBI agents inside the interior ministry, CIA agents inside intelligence operations.

The report even specifies that Iraqi consumers must pay more for oil, and that the Iraqi Central Bank must raise interest rates to 20 per cent — before the end of this month.

All this is in line with Bush's contempt for meaningful Iraqi self-government, as illustrated by the massive, new $1 billion U.S. embassy he's built in Baghdad, which has 1,000 employees, only six of whom speak fluent Arabic. Six! Presumably the other 994 employees are busy bringing democracy to Iraq — by talking to each other or to Washington.

The reluctance to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq has nothing to do with fears of a bloodbath, which is already underway.

Washington contributes to the bloodbath, through its own violence and by allowing death squads, operating within the Iraqi army, to murder enemies of the U.S.-sponsored regime.

U.S. troops are only worsening the situation. They should leave. But that would involve giving up control over a country Washington has already spent $400 billion trying to subdue. And then how would America get control of all that oil?

posted December 17, 2006 08:05 PM            

At the same time, the longer the American troops stay, the more restment towards them increases.

posted December 18, 2006 12:26 AM              

18 December 2006

COMMON sense at last appears to have dawned on the present rulers of Iraq. At a national reconciliation conference in Baghdad yesterday, Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki reached out to the alienated Sunni community, appealing to ex officers and other top guns of Saddam Hussein era army and security forces to join Iraq’s newly raised army.

In the chaos following the US invasion, this newspaper and other Arab and Middle Eastern media had repeatedly warned the US-led coalition against messing with the security structure and upsetting the balance of power in Iraq. However, the hubris and myopia that accompanied the invasion eventually resulted in the disbanding of the Iraqi army, one of the best in the region, just as the rest of the government machinery collapsed.

Iraq has paid a monumental price for that incredibly shortsighted and disastrous move.

Insurgent groups and Shia militias effortlessly stepped into this political and security vacuum to unleash the most horrific destruction on Iraq’s unsuspecting people. More than half a million precious lives have already been lost, not to mention the exodus of hundred thousand plus people every month to neighbouring countries.

This is why Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki’s appeal to Sunni political parties and former military officers is significant. Iraq would have been spared much bloodshed, if its leaders had realised this earlier. Nevertheless, the move is welcome.

However, none of this will work if the government and the governing Shia alliance do not rein in the numerous militias being run and controlled by political parties that are part of the alliance. Moqtada Sadr’s group that has substantial presence in parliament and literally controls the government of Prime Minister Maliki is seen as being responsible for most of the sectarian killings in Sunni neighbourhoods. Scores of bodies with their hands tied behind their backs are daily discovered in Baghdad’s Sunni neighbourhoods.

The Iraqi government and its American minders cannot win the trust and confidence of the Sunni community and parties unless their security concerns are adequately addressed. Prime Minister Maliki will have to assert himself and control allies like Sadr if he wants to be seen as the leader of Iraqi people, not the guardian of a particular sect. Only honesty of intentions and commitment to fairness and justice can bring back peace and order to Iraq.

posted December 18, 2006 09:14 PM              

In a survey of the Iraqi population, the results of which were released last June, 76 percent of those surveyed gave as their first choice “to control Iraqi oil” when asked to choose three reasons that the United States invaded Iraq. The next most common answers were “to build military bases” and “to help Israel.” Less than 2 percent picked “to bring democracy to Iraq” as their first choice (University of Michigan News Service, June 14, 2006 [http://www.nsumich.edu], U.S. News & World Report, August 17, 2006). In the United States the “blood for oil” explanation for the war is regularly scorned by the powers that be, including the corporate media. However, there is no way of getting around the fact that nearly all questions regarding Iraq return in one way or another to oil.

How then do we explain Washington’s fervent denials that the United States has any interest in owning or controlling Iraqi’s oil? At about the same time that the above-mentioned survey was released, President George W. Bush, having just returned from a quick trip to Iraq, declared on the White House lawn: “The oil belongs to the Iraqi people. It’s their asset.” Moreover, Iraq’s oil reserves were conspicuously excluded from the sweeping privatization of the economy introduced by the U.S. proconsul Paul Bremer in 2003 and 2004. The United States early on vowed to the entire world that all decisions on Iraq’s oil would be determined by a future democratically elected Iraqi government.

The truth, however, is that plans have been underway for some time, beginning even before the invasion, to ensure U.S. and British domination of Iraqi oil. When neoconservatives in the early days of the occupation proposed the privatization of oil resources what they were referring to was legal ownership of the oil reserves in the ground, prior to extraction of the oil. It was this form of privatization that Washington adamantly rejected. But private ownership of oil in this sense exists in no country of the world except the United States and was never a genuine option. The real issues of privatization are not who owns the oil in the ground, but who gets the revenue from the oil once it is extracted and who controls its development and exploitation.

Classical oil imperialism in the early decades of the twentieth century took the form of long-term concessions that the colonial countries and their giant oil companies imposed on the oil-producing countries in the periphery. The corporations of the colonial powers took charge of the development and exploitation of oil fields and got the revenue from the sale of the oil, paying royalties and taxes to the governments of the subject states. By the early 1970s, however, most large oil-producing states in the third world had managed to break away from this system, nationalizing their oil industries. In the nationalized model, which included all major oil producers in the Middle East, the development of the oil fields, the extraction of the oil, and the selling of it were all in the hands of the oil states themselves—although they often entered into various technical agreements with foreign oil companies.

With the old imperial concessions model increasingly no longer feasible, Western oil companies and their governments concocted a new model called the “production sharing agreement” (PSA). PSAs provide political camouflage while embodying the material equivalent of the old concessions regime. The oil states appear to retain control, but both the revenue stream and decisions on the development of oil fields are under the control of the giant oil corporations, which are in a position to reap enormous profits from the extraction and sale of the oil in accord with these agreements. The future actions of oil states are severely constrained under such agreements, since provisions in the PSAs make them immune to the passage of any subsequent legislation that might alter the basic rules. PSAs grant to corporations exclusive rights to exploit oil reserves for decades. Moreover, they allow them to “book” these reserves as assets, increasing the total asset value of their companies.

Although PSAs are not uncommon for small oil producing countries with high extraction costs, often involving offshore fields, they are non-existent among major Middle East producers, and only cover about 12 percent of oil reserves worldwide. Of the seven biggest oil exporting countries (including Iraq) only Russia, as a result of the Western-dominated shock therapy regime after the collapse of the Soviet Union, has PSAs, but these are extremely controversial, costing the state billions of dollars, and additional ones are unlikely to be signed (Greg Muttitt, Crude Designs: The Rip-Off of Iraq’s Oil Wealth [PLATFORM, 2005] http://www.carbonweb.org).

The Iraqi government is required to complete its final oil law by the end of this month in accord with an agreement concluded with the IMF a year ago. The new draft oil law was written mainly by Washington and London and by the representatives of the giant oil corporations. As leading British oil industry analyst and critic Greg Muttitt observed in Foreign Policy in Focus (http://www.fpif.org, August 28, 2006): “Last month, the administration and major oil companies reviewed and commented on a new law governing Iraq’s crucial oil sector, before it has even been seen by the Iraqi parliament” (emphasis added). Although written behind closed doors, it is clear that the new draft legislation strongly promotes PSAs. While the actual details of the draft legislation are not yet public, in an earlier stage of negotiations over the Iraqi oil industry it appeared that foreign companies would be given control of all currently undeveloped Iraqi oil fields, potentially allocating to global oil corporations control over 80 percent or more of Iraq’s known oil reserves. For the first time in more than three decades, since Iraqi oil was nationalized in 1975 under Saddam Hussein, foreign firms would gain control of Iraq’s oil, booking it under their own assets. Given the present occupation, U.S. and British firms would obviously be well positioned to obtain the lion’s share of such contracts.

posted December 18, 2006 10:09 PM            

The Iraq Oil Ministry is in complete charge of Iraq's oil fields, Iraq's storage and pumping stations and Iraq's ports where onloading ship facilities are located. Further, Iraq is in charge of it's nationalized oil industry and lets contracts to whomever they decide to contract with.

The Iraq Oil Ministry was one of the first Iraqi institutions the US got up and running and turned over to Iraq...before there was even a permanent government of Iraq.

I keep reading this bullsh*t but no one can cite one instance where the US or any other coalition nation has stolen or appropriated Iraqi oil. In fact, the fuel and oil for US and coalition military equipment is trucked in from Kuwait.

posted December 18, 2006 10:13 PM              

United Press International is reporting: "Five Iraqi trade union federations have condemned federal oil law negotiations for being too corporation-friendly."

Washington, D.C. - Institute for Public Accuracy

The wire service quoted Hasan Jum'a, president of the Federation of Oil Unions, as saying: "This law has a lot of problems. It was prepared without consulting Iraqi experts, Iraqi civil society or trade unions." Link

Dow Jones reports: "Iraqi trade unionists criticized the major role for foreign companies in the draft law, which specifies that up to two-thirds of Iraq's known reserves would be developed by multinationals, under contracts lasting 15 to 20 years. The negotiations for a new Iraq hydrocarbon law continued this week with the circulation of a draft law that recommends the government sign production sharing agreements and other service and buyback contracts."

Greg Muttitt ( greg@platformlondon.org ) met with Iraqi union leaders while in Amman this week and has just returned to London. He is lead researcher at the British group Platform and primary author of the report "Crude Designs: The Rip-Off of Iraq's Oil Wealth," which outlines the structure of production sharing agreements.

Muttitt said yesterday: "The opposition by Iraq's powerful trade unions will dismay the U.S. government, which is keen to see the law in place by the end of the year. Since the summer, U.S. officials have been calling for an oil law to encourage foreign investment in Iraq's oil -- a call reiterated by the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group in its report last week. ...

"In a joint statement, the trade unions rejected 'the handing of control over oil to foreign companies, whose aim is to make big profits at the expense of the Iraqi people, and to rob the national wealth, according to long-term, unfair contracts that undermine the sovereignty of the state and the dignity of the Iraqi people.' The statement added that this was a 'red line' they would not allow to be crossed." www.carbonweb.org/iraq

Director of 50 Years Is Enough, Sameer Dossani ( sameer@50years.org ) said yesterday: "In announcing its agenda for the privatization of Iraqi oil, the Baker-Hamilton report leaves no doubts as to what the U.S. must achieve in order to call its mission successful. It is an agenda laid out by U.S. corporate interests, by what will benefit their bottom line in a world of shrinking oil reserves. By these terms, what President Bush and others are calling a U.S. victory would be a defeat for the Iraqi people who have struggled for decades to control their own fates, their own destinies and their own resources."

"The institutions that the report suggests should enforce these policies are the same institutions that are in charge of ensuring that corporate profits take priority over public need in the rest of the world, namely, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank." 50years.org

posted December 21, 2006 05:11 PM            

The ructions on the periphery of the Saudi lobby in Washington—over whether Saudi Arabia would or should become the protector of its Sunni brethren in Iraq—obscures the extent to which what might or could happen has actually been happening already. The Sunni insurgents currently enjoy quite a lot of informal and unofficial support from Saudi circles (and are known by the nickname "the Wahabbis" by many Shiites). Saudi Arabia has long thought of Iraq as its buffer against Iran and for this reason opposed the removal of Saddam Hussein and would not allow its soil to be used for the operation. Saudi princes and officials have long been worried by the state of opinion among the Shiite underclass in Saudi Arabia itself, because this underclass—its religion barely recognized by the ultra-orthodox Wahabbi authorities—happens to live and work in and around the oil fields. Since 2003, there have been increasing signs of discontent from them, including demands for more religious and political freedom.

In 1991, which is also the year when the present crisis in Iraq actually began, it was Saudi influence that helped convince President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker to leave Saddam Hussein in power and to permit him to crush the Shiite intifada that broke out as his regime reeled from defeat in Kuwait. If, when reading an article about the debate over Iraq, you come across the expression "the realist school" and mentally substitute the phrase "the American friends of the Saudi royal family," your understanding of the situation will invariably be enhanced.

Many people write as if the sectarian warfare in Iraq was caused by coalition intervention. But it is surely obvious that the struggle for mastery has been going on for some time and was only masked by the apparently iron unity imposed under Baathist rule. That rule was itself the dictatorship of a tribal Tikriti minority of the Sunni minority and constituted a veneer over the divisions beneath, as well as an incitement to their perpetuation. The Kurds had already withdrawn themselves from this divide-and-rule system by the time the coalition forces arrived, while Shiite grievances against the state were decades old and had been hugely intensified by Saddam's cruelty. Nothing was going to stop their explosion, and if Saddam Hussein's regime had been permitted to run its course and to devolve (if one can use such a mild expression) into the successorship of Udai and Qusai, the resulting detonation would have been even more vicious.

And into the power vacuum would have stepped not only Saudi Arabia and Iran, each with its preferred confessional faction, but also Turkey, in pursuit of hegemony in Kurdistan. In other words, the alternative was never between a tranquil if despotic Iraq and a destabilizing foreign intervention, but it was, rather, a race to see which kind of intervention there would be. The international community in its wisdom decided to delay the issue until the alternatives were even fewer, but it is idle to pretend that Iraq was going to remain either unified or uninvaded after the destruction of its fabric as a state by three decades of fascism and war, including 12 years of demoralizing sanctions.

The disadvantage of an American-led intervention, it might be argued, was that it meant the arbitration of foreigners. But the advantage was, and is, that these foreigners at least have a stake in the preservation of a power-sharing system. Iraq has only three alternatives before it. The first is dictatorship by one faction or sect over all the others: a solution that has been exhausted by horrific failure. The second is partition, which would certainly involve direct intervention by all its neighbors to secure privileges for their own proxies and would therefore run the permanent risk of civil war. And the third is federalism, where each group would admit that it was not strong enough to dictate terms to the others and would agree to settle differences by democratic means. Quixotic though the third solution may seem, it is the only alternative to the most gruesome mayhem—more gruesome than anything we have seen so far. It is to the credit of the United States that it has at least continued to hold up this outcome as a possibility—a possibility that would not be thinkable if the field were left to the rival influences of Tehran and Riyadh.

I once heard U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad say that he was surprised by how often the different factions in the Iraqi parliament (the very existence of which, by the way, is itself a miracle) would come to him and ask his help as a broker. It was often possible to perform this role to some extent, he went on to say, as long as each group understood that it could not get what it wanted by force. The necessary corollary of this, though, was that nobody believed they could drive the U.S. presence out of the country.