Blair to be questioned on his part in Iraq

Tony Blair to be questioned on Iraq war timing

Blair needs to be pressed on the massive bombing mission against Iraq/Bagdad on February 16, 2001, when 75plus of US AND BRITISH PLANES BEGAN THE WAR ON IRAIS!

How come Mr. Blair?????

Investigation Time

Who cares when Blair decided to go.
WHY did he decide? Why was a war with Iraq being planned?

The war in Iraq should have started years earlier and maybe Kurd tribesmen and Iraqi citizens that were killed by tens of thousands would have been saved,sometimes the only way to stop the killing is by killing the killers.Of course there are some that repeatedly say lil Bush is a killer,but there are always those without good judgement.

Hey

I miss the good old days when I got made fun of for saying this.

Bush the killer

Bush the killer

When how and who began the War on Iraqis???

Obviously lil bush 'commanded' the war to begin prior to Feb. 16th, 2001, when the first attack of the War took place with the first bombings and killings took place. But it had to begin prior to the first attack. Even for lil bush to wake up on the 15th of Febyuary and just say go attack Iraq is to far fetched for 'him'!

Prior to the Nov 2000 Presidential Election, Members of the subsequent Administration, then Members of the PNAC were writting White Papers CALLING FOR WAR IN THE Middle East, 'similar to Pearl Habor'. So when did lil bush get into the act? An Article on the BBC News Site discusses the British Inquiry into how Britain got involved along the the timings.

The following exerpt provides some of the knowledge/answers to the questions I have posed here. Prior to lil bush taking over the control of the US, The PLOT/PLAN was being conspired to include the British. And by February 16th 2001 the dirty Wars BEGAN, less than three weeks into the lil bush gang’s taking over the USA! It did not begin after the gang took over the Administration of Our Office of President and the Executive Administration!

The Plan with the PNAC Gang in the 1990’s, where Bill Clinton turn them down! Some time in 2000 lil bush jumped on the train! And by the end of the year 2000 the Plan was developed and the conspiracy including the British had to be on the same train! Target picked! Spies Informations evaluated! Equipment selected and readied, with last minute changes occuring between lil bush’s first day in Office and February 16th, when the First attacks were made. Even the Lies were ready!

The Article Exerpt:



The inquiry is hearing on Tuesday from Sir Peter Ricketts, who was the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee - which oversees MI5, MI6 and GCHQ - from 2000 to 2001.

In early 2001, he said the UK and US agreed their policy of trying to contain Iraq - underpinned by sanctions, an arms embargo and no-fly zone - was failing and they must try to 'regain the initiative'.

'Saddam Hussein was feeling pretty comfortable,' he said of the situation at the time.

He noted there were 'voices' in Washington calling for Saddam Hussein to be removed even before the Bush administration came to power in early 2001 and that the 'rhetoric' about this possibility increased after that.

But he said there was not any 'operational consequence' from this and that, prior to the 9/11 attacks, the US was still seeking to try and make the containment policy work and sanctions more effective.

The nicities of the political speak greatly sanitize the Murders and Plottings, and the Excuse of Saddam being 'Comfortable' are the words of greedy killers with monies to be had from the wars! And all that’s needed to prove this conclusion is to read the PNAC White Papers! Those Papers are full of the Motives and the Plan!

Its about the yellowcake duh!!!

Deny all you want you bunch of mouth breathing nuts!
updated 6:10 p.m. EDT, Mon July 7, 2008

500 tons of uranium shipped from Iraq, Pentagon says

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The United States secretly shipped out of Iraq more than 500 tons of low-grade uranium dating back to the Saddam Hussein era, the Pentagon said Monday.

The U.S. military spent $70 million ensuring the safe transportation of 550 metric tons of the uranium from Iraq to Canada, said Pentagon spokesman Brian Whitman.

The shipment, which until recently was kept secret, involved a U.S. truck convoy, 37 cargo flights out of Baghdad to a transitional location, and then a transoceanic voyage on board a U.S.-government-owned ship designed to carry troops to a war zone, he said.

The “yellowcake” uranium transfer was requested by the Iraqi government at the encouragement of the U.S. government, Whitman said.

The United States approached Canadian company Cameco to bid for the material, according Cameco spokesman Lyle Krahn. He would not disclose the winning bid amount.

Krahn admitted that this was not a “routine transaction," but he said the agreement was approved by the Canadian government and was carefully monitored.

The undertaking, named “Operation McCall” by Pentagon officials, was in the planning stages for months and was completed Saturday after the material had been in transit for weeks, according to Whitman.

He said yellowcake uranium is a commonly traded commodity used for nuclear power generation. It is not enriched and cannot be used without first going through a complicated enrichment process, he said, but because of the unstable nature of Iraq, the United States and the Iraqi government decided it should be moved out of that country. Iraq has no nuclear power generating plants.

The uranium was packed into 110 shipping containers moved by convoy from a facility in Tuwaitha, Iraq, about 12 miles south of Baghdad. The containers were first moved to the secure International Zone in central Baghdad and then to Baghdad International Airport, where thery were loaded onto C-17 cargo planes.

It took 37 flights to move the shipping containers out of Iraq to a “third country," Whitman said.

A Pentagon official who asked not to be named said that third country was Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean where the United Kingdom and the United States operate a joint military base.

From that third country, Whitman said, the containers were loaded onto the SS Gopher State, a U.S.-owned crane ship normally used to haul equipment in and out of war zones. The ship carried the uranium to Canada, where it was bought by Cameco, a private firm.

The uranium will be sent by truck to two processing plants in Ontario, Krahn said. Once it has been enriched for energy use it will be sold to power plant operators, he said.

The United States is Cameco’s largest customer, Krahn said, but he did not specify if the Iraq yellowcake would ultimately end up in the United States.

Whitman said the Department of Defense’s cost of securing and transporting the uranium from Tuwaitha to Canada was $70 million, and the government of Iraq had agreed in principal to reimburse the United States for part of that cost.

He said he could not say how much Iraq intends to repay the United States.


Legality Of The Iraq War
From TruthAboutIraq
Jump to: navigation, search

The legality of the Iraq War is a matter both of international law and U.S. Constitutional Law.

From a legal perspective, it is also important to understand the 1991 cease-fire agreement between Iraq and the United States. Saddam Hussein clearly violated this cease-fire agreement, and thus the 2003 invasion of Iraq can be legally considered a continuation of the war that started in 1991.


1991 Cease-Fire

The 1991 Gulf War ended in a cease-fire agreement, ratified by the UN Security Council as Resolution 687. The cease-fire was conditional upon Iraq’s acceptance of the provisions of the Resolution. Some of those provisions included:

* Requiring Iraq to dismantle all WMD and all long-range missiles *under international supervision* (article C).
* Requiring Iraq to abandon all future WMD programs (article C)
* Comply with UN restrictions on the importation of conventional weapons (article F)
* Permenantly abandon support for terrorism (article H)

As there was no peace treaty following the cease-fire, the Gulf War coalition retained the right under international law to resume hostilities if Iraq violated the terms of the cease-fire. UNSCR 1441 found Iraq in material breach of the cease-fire.
[edit] U.S. Constitutional Law

Article I, section 8 of the United States Constitution grants Congress the power “To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water . . . "

A formal declaration of war is not necessary for Congress to authorize the use of force, and World War II was the last conflict the U.S. fought with an actual Declaration of War. Several major conflicts, including the Korean War and the Vietnam War, have been fought since that time without a Declaration of War. Furthermore, the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) provides the statutory equivalent of a Declaration of War:

(1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION. — Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.

The relevant section of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 reads (emphasis added):

(b) Within sixty calendar days after a report is submitted or is required to be submitted pursuant to section 4(a)(1), whichever is earlier, the President shall terminate any use of United States Armed Forces with respect to which such report was submitted (or required to be submitted), unless the Congress (1) has declared war or has enacted a specific authorization for such use of United States Armed Forces, ...

Per the War Powers Resolution of 1973, a “specific statutory authorization” by Congress grants the same powers as a formal Declaration of War.
[edit] AUMF

Congress granted the President broad powers to retaliate for the 911 attacks by passing the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) on September 18, 2001. Section II states as follows:

"(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."

AUMF Iraq

On October 11, 2002, the U.S. Senate passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution, also known as the 'Iraq War Resolution'. It was signed into law by President Bush on October 16, 2002.

The Iraq War Resolution in part states:

SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.

(a) Authorization. — The President is authorized to use the Armed
Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and
appropriate in order to —
(1) defend the national security of the United States
against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and
(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council
resolutions regarding Iraq.

Time to get over it and move on.
Girliejihad wipe the drool off your chin.

Seems the messianic coward believes the lies and misrepresentations...

... of the 'Leaders' he blindly and dumbly follows!

They have given him the the keywords and his messianics jump into control of his 'mouth'!

About the only thing missing from his 'authority' is 'god told me' and 'the bible says so'!

The poor coward site the same lil bush lawyers that decided as a Nation the lil bush could authorize crimes! Crimes of Tortute! Crimes against the Rights of Citizens! War Crimes! Crimes of espionage against the EU and the UN! Crimes of lying to the American Peoples! Which were all put into Our Policy by lil Bush, Executive Policy, and made into US Policy!

And just what is the Executive Branch Of Our Government charged with 'Doing'? The short answer is administering the lawful duties of Our Government! Which is not the case of the 'crimes' as it requires the rewritting of Our Laws, i.e., making laws by the Executive Department of Our Government! Forbidden by Our Constitution.

Secondly! The UN Treaty enacted into Our Constitution as Law, states the agressor in War is guilty of Murder. We are to understand that Our ATTACKS on other Nations are Murder by treaty and by Our Law. The above coward wants to dismiss the Laws of Nation because of misused as in out of context, words that say the president can do whatever he wants! No he cannot! He is to administer the laws we have! Not his own!

` ~galljdaj+;170136:
... of the 'Leaders' he blindly and dumbly follows!

They have given him the the keywords and his messianics jump into control of his 'mouth'!

About the only thing missing from his 'authority' is 'god told me' and 'the bible says so'!

The poor coward site the same lil bush lawyers that decided as a Nation the lil bush could authorize crimes! Crimes of Tortute! Crimes against the Rights of Citizens! War Crimes! Crimes of espionage against the EU and the UN! Crimes of lying to the American Peoples! Which were all put into Our Policy by lil Bush, Executive Policy, and made into US Policy!

And just what is the Executive Branch Of Our Government charged with 'Doing'? The short answer is administering the lawful duties of Our Government! Which is not the case of the 'crimes' as it requires the rewritting of Our Laws, i.e., making laws by the Executive Department of Our Government! Forbidden by Our Constitution.

Secondly! The UN Treaty enacted into Our Constitution as Law, states the agressor in War is guilty of Murder. We are to understand that Our ATTACKS on other Nations are Murder by treaty and by Our Law. The above coward wants to dismiss the Laws of Nation because of misused as in out of context, words that say the president can do whatever he wants! No he cannot! He is to administer the laws we have! Not his own!

More whinning and moaning about poor little girlyjihad.
More whinning and complaining about President Bush.

Again, girlyjihad, on 16 Feb 2001, Coalition aircraft attacked Iraqi air defense systems that were targeting and illuminating Coalition aircraft, in violation of the 1991 cease-fire.

The Coalition aircraft were within their rights to defend against aggressive moves by Iraqi air defenses.

Again, you cherry pick the info to make your view point the “correct” one. Facts actually paint a different picture in which you are a mental midget who whines for dictators, thugs, and criminals.

Try again, girlyjihad.

Your repating of the lies is pathetic!

Its been shown, proven and acknowledge as a 'mistake' by your lyinh hero lil bush through his 'voice box', and you like the pet messianic repeat and repeat because your a very stupid believer!

However, I am very happy with the Brits! The inquiry will get stuffed in both your ears and you mouth!

A point of concern for Honest Peoples...

...and ignored by the likes of the miget mental expert; The US has laws about dual or underground Administrations! Like what is described in the BBC excerpt I posted earlier, 'the lil bush gang was talking to the british prior to his taking over the US Administration! Such is an act of Treason!

Bill Clinton was and had that responsibility! And he had refused! He sent the gang packing!

Posted in black and white are the reasons and the justification and the truth!

` ~galljdaj+;170158:
Its been shown, proven and acknowledge as a 'mistake' by your lyinh hero lil bush through his 'voice box', and you like the pet messianic repeat and repeat because your a very stupid believer!

However, I am very happy with the Brits! The inquiry will get stuffed in both your ears and you mouth!

US involvement is legal!
Are you refuting that Iraq violated numerous cease fire agreements?
Are you attempting to refute 550 tons of Yellow cake possession to include enriched uranium beyond what it takes to make nuclear power?
Are you refuting that any amount of WHAT IS CONSIDERED WMD was found in Iraq?
Talk about stupid pointless and wrong you take the cake for a person who is so dense you don’t even know why your wrong.
As far as British law I don’t know what constitutes a formal declaration of war for Britain in there case they may not have followed British law!
If they didn’t then Mr. Blair and company may just be in trouble.
Your continued hubris in this is very revealing to the extent of how sick you really are.

Jeez you have a vivid imagination. Guess its a quite deliberate ploy.

Of course I am NOT refuting anything!!!

There is nothing to refute, secrets are not refutable except for messianics! They refute and buy into based on beliefs rather than evidence!

There is no evidence on the table. What I have stated, is evidence and you only make acertations and claims that disregard law like it was a bible for pick and choose what fits your belief conclusion!

Part of your belief lie, that the attacks were legal that fails the evidence test is Bagdad is not and never was in the 'no fly zone' and Iraqis had every right to Protect the Citizens from the Attack! Your lie about Iraqis being the 'cause' of the February 16 TH 2001 WAR CRIME, IS EASY TO FIND! The 78 planes had no business flying into Bagdad! And the Number of Planes constitutes an Attack! And the evidence that the attack was planned, and even planned Prior to lil bush taking office, that act of treason, belies all your other lies! Your still left with murdering Peoples to do good! Such nonsense can only be believed by really dumb messianics!

` ~galljdaj+;170187:
There is nothing to refute, secrets are not refutable except for messianics! They refute and buy into based on beliefs rather than evidence!

There is no evidence on the table. What I have stated, is evidence and you only make acertations and claims that disregard law like it was a bible for pick and choose what fits your belief conclusion!

Proves that you suffer from a superiority complex. Your words provide NO evidence unless you back them with facts. I have and continue to do so.

Quote:
Part of your belief lie, that the attacks were legal that fails the evidence test is Bagdad is not and never was in the 'no fly zone' and Iraqis had every right to Protect the Citizens from the Attack! Your lie about Iraqis being the 'cause' of the February 16 TH 2001 WAR CRIME, IS EASY TO FIND! The 78 planes had no business flying into Bagdad! And the Number of Planes constitutes an Attack! And the evidence that the attack was planned, and even planned Prior to lil bush taking office, that act of treason, belies all your other lies! Your still left with murdering Peoples to do good! Such nonsense can only be believed by really dumb messianics!

You still lie, girlyjihad. Alyone can look it up and discover you are lying.

The Coalition aircraft did NOT fly into Baghdad as the following report covers.

16 Feb 2001 - From History Commons and Reuters:

[URL=“http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a021601baghdadbombed#a021601baghdadbombed”]February 16, 2001: US and British Bomb Iraq Outside of No-Fly Zone for First Time since 1998[/URL]sEL('1626004942-57994','57994')


Twenty-four US and British aircraft attack five military radar sites five to 20 miles from Baghdad. This is the first Western attack outside the no-fly zones in the north and south of the country since December 1998 (see [URL=“http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a021601baghdadbombed#a12980899nofly”]December 1998-August 1999[/URL]). Nine people are reportedly injured. British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon says, â��This was a proportionate response to a recent increase in the threat to aircraft carrying out legitimate humanitarian patrols in the southern no-fly zone.â�� President Bush, who authorized the strike, says, â��Weâ��re going to watch very carefully as to whether or not he develops weapons of mass destruction, and if we catch him doing so, weâ��ll take the appropriate action.â�� [[URL=“http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0216-03.htm”]Reuters, 2/16/2001[/URL]]

[URL]http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a021601baghdadbombed#a021601baghdadbombed[/URL]

From CNN:
U.S., British warplanes hit targets outside Baghdad

February 16, 2001
Web posted at: 1:55 p.m. EST (1855 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) — U.S. and British aircraft attacked two communications and control facilities outside [URL=“http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/02/16/iraq.airstrike/iraq.no.fly.zone.4.jpg”]Baghdad[/URL], Iraq, on Friday, Pentagon officials said.
The attack was the first in Baghdad since February 24, 1999, when U.S. aircraft attacked targets on the outskirts of the capital, killing and wounding several people.
The planes carried out their attack without crossing the 33rd parallel, the line that marks the boundary of the southern no-fly zone south of Baghdad, the Pentagon said.

The facilities targeted were outside the no-fly zone, which was set up by U.S. and British forces at the end of the Gulf War in 1991 but is not recognized by Iraq.
Pentagon officials said that intelligence indicated that anti-aircraft attacks carried out by the Iraqis against allied planes patrolling the no-fly zone have been directed from the control centers north of the 33rd parallel.
The United States has claimed the right to strike facilities outside the no-fly zone.
Iraqis celebrating the end of the week in Baghdad were interrupted by the wail of air raid sirens, although they were told at first the sirens were a test.
Some 10 minutes later, however, anti-aircraft fire erupted to the south and west of the city and several large explosions were heard. Iraqi television changed from its regular programming to military music.
Television also aired an image of a wounded Iraqi soldier.
British and U.S. warplanes also patrol a no-fly zone in the north of Iraq.
[CENTER]CNN Military Affairs Correspondent Jamie McIntyre and Correspondent Jane Arraf contributed to this report.[/CENTER]

[LEFT][URL]http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/02/16/iraq.airstrike/[/URL][/LEFT]


BUSTED yet again, girlyjihad, and proven to be the liar that everyone knows you are.

Seems like your Proving parts of what I have said...

... and after proving your lies are just that lies, you again try to put your belief lies on the table as 'proof' but you fail to say what the proof is of!

A mere claim that the US has the 'RIGHT' to bomb and Murder, does not make it so! And for very strong reasons of Law it makes you a liar in your claims! Inside your claims about the attacks, is the fact of 'Planning'! it was not spontaneous, Iraqis did not cause the Attack!

You now seem to be claiming CNN COUNTED THE PLANES IN THE ATTACK, WHICH OF COURSE THEY DID NOT, AND ITS LIKELY YOU ARE NOT MAKING THE CLAIM EITHER. So why are 24 planes mentioned, I do not recall the exact number but the British Quantity of Bombers Would be close to the Number I read in the British Documents that got Published a number of years Back. Which was said to be about half of what the US contingency was.

So we still have a treasonous planning of doing so prior to lil bush having the authority and doing so as a hidden second government! And your calling that to be legal right! Nonsense!

A treasonous act leading to the killing of innocent Iraqis is Murder in any country in the world! Claims made by the killers may be ok with your kind, but not Honest Peoples! And about the killings, why were 2000 pound bunker busting incendiary bombs used to target civilian bombshelters, another war crime!? Its been reported, and no doubt it will be presented again in the Brits' Investigation, the reason for the bunker busters was to Murder Sadam! It is and was Murder because he was personally named, targeted, and the entire mission was directed for that goal!

lil bush confirmed this, with his need to claim the US WAS NOLONGER GOING TO ABIDE BY INTERNATIONAL RULES OF WAR CRIMES! A policy that was displayed numerous times after the invasion of 2003, where the US TARGETED RESTURANTANTS KILLING CIVILIANS, BECAUSE 'INTELIGENCE' SAID saddam SOMETIMES EATS THERE AT THIS TIME! ANOTHER SET OF WAR CRIMES!

So what you posted is what I have been saying about you, and your arguments, its like your reading a bible and pulling out bits and pieces to justify your lies about not Murdering Peoples.

Its very clear as the the facts keep coming out, Trials are needed! lil bush and the gang only deserve the right to place their arguments before a Peoples Court!

` ~galljdaj+;170194:
... and after proving your lies are just that lies, you again try to put your belief lies on the table as 'proof' but you fail to say what the proof is of!

A mere claim that the US has the 'RIGHT' to bomb and Murder, does not make it so! And for very strong reasons of Law it makes you a liar in your claims! Inside your claims about the attacks, is the fact of 'Planning'! it was not spontaneous, Iraqis did not cause the Attack!

You now seem to be claiming CNN COUNTED THE PLANES IN THE ATTACK, WHICH OF COURSE THEY DID NOT, AND ITS LIKELY YOU ARE NOT MAKING THE CLAIM EITHER. So why are 24 planes mentioned, I do not recall the exact number but the British Quantity of Bombers Would be close to the Number I read in the British Documents that got Published a number of years Back. Which was said to be about half of what the US contingency was.

So we still have a treasonous planning of doing so prior to lil bush having the authority and doing so as a hidden second government! And your calling that to be legal right! Nonsense!

A treasonous act leading to the killing of innocent Iraqis is Murder in any country in the world! Claims made by the killers may be ok with your kind, but not Honest Peoples! And about the killings, why were 2000 pound bunker busting incendiary bombs used to target civilian bombshelters, another war crime!? Its been reported, and no doubt it will be presented again in the Brits' Investigation, the reason for the bunker busters was to Murder Sadam! It is and was Murder because he was personally named, targeted, and the entire mission was directed for that goal!

lil bush confirmed this, with his need to claim the US WAS NOLONGER GOING TO ABIDE BY INTERNATIONAL RULES OF WAR CRIMES! A policy that was displayed numerous times after the invasion of 2003, where the US TARGETED RESTURANTANTS KILLING CIVILIANS, BECAUSE 'INTELIGENCE' SAID saddam SOMETIMES EATS THERE AT THIS TIME! ANOTHER SET OF WAR CRIMES!

So what you posted is what I have been saying about you, and your arguments, its like your reading a bible and pulling out bits and pieces to justify your lies about not Murdering Peoples.

Its very clear as the the facts keep coming out, Trials are needed! lil bush and the gang only deserve the right to place their arguments before a Peoples Court!

It is clear that you are deranged and a liar, girlyjihad.

I have given you PROOF that you were wrong, yet you still stick to your deluded lies.

And I tell you that under the Rules of Engagement, if an air defense radar/missle site illuminated me or targeted me, I was fully justified to attack and destroy that target in self-defense. FYI: I was a Wild Weasel instructor electronic warfare officer and killing air defenses were my thang.

political `Discoveries` go nowhere

For any politicans`activities, common should not give too much attention on that. The politicans take their job from their people, and just want show their capability to prove what they supposed, what they predicated, or what they prejudged by their own value system. Almost, it is about the eligibility exploring with very limited liability concern. Today, reconstruction issue seems to be more urgent in the agenda than those infant playing.

Rules of engagement For theives murders occupiers are non existant!

You as an attacking agent have no such protections!

Your arguing the theive has the right to kill the home owner he is breaking into!

Argue such in Court of the Peoples! And you will get the conviction of being a midget mental expert!

Saddam opened the door by their illegal invasion of Kuwait!

` ~galljdaj+;170208:
You as an attacking agent have no such protections!

Your arguing the theive has the right to kill the home owner he is breaking into!

Argue such in Court of the Peoples! And you will get the conviction of being a midget mental expert!

Ah the line about arguing with idiots never ringed more true!
But!
Your arguments as usual lack merit.
You argue the wrong points at the wrong times and for the wrong reasons.
I suggest you reread or in your case read the below!


Legality Of The Iraq War
From TruthAboutIraq
Jump to: navigation, search

The legality of the Iraq War is a matter both of international law and U.S. Constitutional Law.

From a legal perspective, it is also important to understand the 1991 cease-fire agreement between Iraq and the United States. Saddam Hussein clearly violated this cease-fire agreement, and thus the 2003 invasion of Iraq can be legally considered a continuation of the war that started in 1991.


1991 Cease-Fire

The 1991 Gulf War ended in a cease-fire agreement, ratified by the UN Security Council as Resolution 687. The cease-fire was conditional upon Iraq’s acceptance of the provisions of the Resolution. Some of those provisions included:

* Requiring Iraq to dismantle all WMD and all long-range missiles *under international supervision* (article C).
* Requiring Iraq to abandon all future WMD programs (article C)
* Comply with UN restrictions on the importation of conventional weapons (article F)
* Permenantly abandon support for terrorism (article H)

As there was no peace treaty following the cease-fire, the Gulf War coalition retained the right under international law to resume hostilities if Iraq violated the terms of the cease-fire. UNSCR 1441 found Iraq in material breach of the cease-fire.
[edit] U.S. Constitutional Law

Article I, section 8 of the United States Constitution grants Congress the power “To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water . . . "

A formal declaration of war is not necessary for Congress to authorize the use of force, and World War II was the last conflict the U.S. fought with an actual Declaration of War. Several major conflicts, including the Korean War and the Vietnam War, have been fought since that time without a Declaration of War. Furthermore, the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) provides the statutory equivalent of a Declaration of War:

(1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION. — Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.

The relevant section of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 reads (emphasis added):

(b) Within sixty calendar days after a report is submitted or is required to be submitted pursuant to section 4(a)(1), whichever is earlier, the President shall terminate any use of United States Armed Forces with respect to which such report was submitted (or required to be submitted), unless the Congress (1) has declared war or has enacted a specific authorization for such use of United States Armed Forces, ...

Per the War Powers Resolution of 1973, a “specific statutory authorization” by Congress grants the same powers as a formal Declaration of War.
[edit] AUMF

Congress granted the President broad powers to retaliate for the 911 attacks by passing the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) on September 18, 2001. Section II states as follows:

"(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."

AUMF Iraq

On October 11, 2002, the U.S. Senate passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution, also known as the 'Iraq War Resolution'. It was signed into law by President Bush on October 16, 2002.

The Iraq War Resolution in part states:

SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.

(a) Authorization. — The President is authorized to use the Armed
Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and
appropriate in order to —
(1) defend the national security of the United States
against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and
(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council
resolutions regarding Iraq.


Again girliejihad the braindead one wipe the drool off your chin you leftist turd.

` ~galljdaj+;170208:
Rules of engagement For theives murders occupiers are non existant!

You as an attacking agent have no such protections!

Your arguing the theive has the right to kill the home owner he is breaking into!

Argue such in Court of the Peoples! And you will get the conviction of being a midget mental expert!

You claim that the Rules of Engagement do not exist? MORON!!

ROE are developed for every situation.

Since the Iraqis started the issue, they are the attackers, mental midget.

You are arguing a insipid and moot point.

You have lost, been proven a liar, and are now branded as a posterior orrifice ape.

wow are you stupid!

You did not read what you posted! You better read it and start all over!

Bill Clinton was President when the gang planned and began the the conspiracy with the Brits to Attack Iraqis because the gang didn’t 'like' saddam! They murdered and injured millions of peoples and you stupid twits are claiming nonsense! Dragging up irrelivant points as cleaning your dirty deeds!

Information has been released through the freedom of information act that shows the first Iraq War was a lie job and a theft of the Oil exactly like Saddam Claimed! The oil barron daddy bush gang, that became part and parcel the lil bush gang were criminally responsible for stealing oil and causing the War! Now you are arguing that justifies murdering more peoples!

Pure stupidity! on your part! Argue that in the Peoples Court, it would be great to watch what they would do with you!

So now you claim Saddam did NOT invade Kuwait = )

` ~galljdaj+;170220:
You did not read what you posted! You better read it and start all over!

Bill Clinton was President when the gang planned and began the the conspiracy with the Brits to Attack Iraqis because the gang didn’t 'like' saddam! They murdered and injured millions of peoples and you stupid twits are claiming nonsense! Dragging up irrelivant points as cleaning your dirty deeds!

Information has been released through the freedom of information act that shows the first Iraq War was a lie job and a theft of the Oil exactly like Saddam Claimed! The oil barron daddy bush gang, that became part and parcel the lil bush gang were criminally responsible for stealing oil and causing the War! Now you are arguing that justifies murdering more peoples!

Pure stupidity! on your part! Argue that in the Peoples Court, it would be great to watch what they would do with you!

You are a moron!
I don’t give two squirts of crap when they planned out the attack to depose Saddam.
It doesn’t matter Saddam was breaking cease fire rules from day one of the cease fire agreement under the senior Bush and continued till the day they found him in a hole.
Saddam continued breaking ceasefire agreements under the Clinton Administration you ignoramus.
Many people wanted to call out Saddam while Clinton sat abusing interns and fornicating in the White house.
As far as the alleged millions of people killed you can blame the crazy ass Sunni Vs. Shiite schism for 90 percent of the deaths!
That seems to be all the modern day Muslim is good at breeding like roaches being angry and killing each other.
You really are so obtuse everyone must spell out verbatim why your wrong.
Shall I use little words like I’m talking to a six year old child...sorry to any six year old I might have insulted.

Shall we start with a rendition of see spot run?
See spot lift his leg on girliejihads oxygen bottle holder!
Did spot eat girliejihads Risperdal again?
That would explain the extreme stupidity, mindless ranting, lack of focus and irrational nonsense.
What an ignoramus what a maroon.

The 'blood for oil' cowards that messianically supported killing Iraqis and Afghanis...

... like to call names as their proof of their 'it wasn’t me mama' denials!

And in the end they supported lil bush, and to Today ply their lies attempting to cleans thenselves of the blood stains covering them! The lives wasted, the destruction committed, and all the damages and lives deminished, are at the feet of these messianic cowards!

The following Article is a hard read for a few reasons, the most pressing reason I had reading it was the anger I felt and still feel at the lies believed and still being replicated by these cowards! The blood for oil cowards of hate!

The Article that should be used as an introduction to the trials in the Peoples' Court of Justice:



NEWS YOU WON’T FIND ON CNN





Bush’s Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq’s Oil

Even as Iraq verges on splintering into a sectarian civil war, four big oil companies are on the verge of locking up its massive, profitable reserves, known to everyone in the petroleum industry as 'the prize.'

By Joshua Holland

10/18/06 'AlterNet' — — Iraq is sitting on a mother lode of some of the lightest, sweetest, most profitable crude oil on earth, and the rules that will determine who will control it and on what terms are about to be set.
The Iraqi government faces a December deadline, imposed by the world’s wealthiest countries, to complete its final oil law. Industry analysts expect that the result will be a radical departure from the laws governing the country’s oil-rich neighbors, giving foreign multinationals a much higher rate of return than with other major oil producers and locking in their control over what George Bush called Iraq’s 'patrimony' for decades, regardless of what kind of policies future elected governments might want to pursue.

Iraq’s energy reserves are an incredibly rich prize. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 'Iraq contains 112 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the second largest in the world (behind Saudi Arabia), along with roughly 220 billion barrels of probable and possible resources. Iraq’s true potential may be far greater than this, however, as the country is relatively unexplored due to years of war and sanctions.' For perspective, the Saudis have 260 billion barrels of proven reserves.

Iraqi oil is close to the surface and easy to extract, making it all the more profitable. James Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum, points out that oil companies 'can produce a barrel of Iraqi oil for less than $1.50 and possibly as little as $1, including all exploration, oilfield development and production costs.' Contrast that with other areas where oil is considered cheap to produce at $5 per barrel or the North Sea, where production costs are $12-16 per barrel.

And Iraq’s oil sector is largely undeveloped. Former Iraqi Oil Minister Issam Chalabi (no relation to the neocons' favorite exile, Ahmed

Chalabi) told the Associated Press that 'Iraq has more oil fields that have been discovered, but not developed, than any other country in the world.' British-based analyst Mohammad Al-Gallani told the Canadian Press that of 526 prospective drilling sites, just 125 have been opened.
But the real gem — what one oil consultant called the 'Holy Grail' of the industry — lies in Iraq’s vast western desert. It’s one of the last 'virgin' fields on the planet, and it has the potential to catapult Iraq to No. 1 in the world in oil reserves. Sparsely populated, the western fields are less prone to sabotage than the country’s current centers of production in the north, near Kirkuk, and in the south near Basra. The Nation’s Aram Roston predicts Iraq’s western desert will yield 'untold riches.'

Iraq also may have large natural gas deposits that so far remain virtually unexplored.

But even 'untold riches' don’t tell the whole story. Depending on how Iraq’s petroleum law shakes out, the country’s enormous reserves could break the back of OPEC, a wet dream in Western capitals for three decades. James Paul predicted that 'even before Iraq had reached its full production potential of 8 million barrels or more per day, the companies would gain huge leverage over the international oil system. OPEC would be weakened by the withdrawal of one of its key producers from the OPEC quota system.' Depending on how things shape up in the next few months, Western oil companies could end up controlling the country’s output levels, or the government, heavily influenced by the United States, could even pull out of the cartel entirely.

Both independent analysts and officials within Iraq’s Oil Ministry anticipate that when all is said and done, the big winners in Iraq will be the Big Four — the American firms Exxon-Mobile and Chevron, the British BP-Amoco and Royal Dutch-Shell — that dominate the world oil market. Ibrahim Mohammed, an industry consultant with close contacts in the Iraqi Oil Ministry, told the Associated Press that there’s a universal belief among ministry staff that the major U.S. companies will win the lion’s share of contracts. 'The feeling is that the new government is going to be influenced by the United States,' he said.

During the 12-year sanction period, the Big Four were forced to sit on the sidelines while the government of Saddam Hussein cut deals with the Chinese, French, Russians and others (despite the sanctions, the United States ultimately received 37 percent of Iraq’s oil during that period, according to the independent committee that investigated the oil-for-food program, but almost all of it arrived through foreign firms). In a 1999 speech, Dick Cheney, then CEO of the oil services company Halliburton, told a London audience that the Middle East was where the West would find the additional 50 million barrels of oil per day that he predicted it would need by 2010, but, he lamented, 'while even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow.'

Chafing at the idea that the Chinese and Russians might end up with what is arguably the world’s greatest energy prize, industry leaders lobbied hard for regime change throughout the 1990s. With the election of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in 2000 — the first time in U.S. history that two veterans of the oil industry had ever occupied the nation’s top two jobs — they would finally get the 'greater access' to the region’s oil wealth, which they had long lusted after.

If the U.S. invasion of Iraq had occurred during the colonial era a hundred years earlier, the oil giants, backed by U.S. forces, would have simply seized Iraq’s oil fields. Much has changed since then in terms of international custom and law (when then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz did in fact suggest seizing Iraq’s Southern oil fields in 2002, Colin Powell dismissed the idea as 'lunacy').

Understanding how Big Oil came to this point, poised to take effective control of the bulk of the country’s reserves while they remain, technically, in the hands of the Iraqi government — a government with all the trappings of sovereignty — is to grasp the sometimes intricate dance that is modern neocolonialism. The Iraq oil grab is a classic case study.

It’s clear that the U.S.-led invasion had little to do with national security or the events of Sept. 11. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill revealed that just 11 days after Bush’s inauguration in early 2001, regime change in Iraq was 'Topic A' among the administration’s national security staff, and former Terrorism Tsar Richard Clarke told 60 Minutes that the day after the attacks in New York and Washington occurred, '[Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq.' He added: 'We all said â�¦ no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan.'

On March 7, 2003, two weeks before the United States attacked Iraq, the U.N.'s chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, told the U.N. Security Council that Saddam Hussein’s cooperation with the inspections protocol had improved to the point where it was 'active or even proactive,' and that the inspectors would be able to certify that Iraq was free of prohibited weapons within a few months' time. That same day, IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei reported that there was no evidence of a current nuclear program in Iraq and flatly refuted the administration’s claim that the infamous aluminum tubes cited by Colin Powell in making his case for war before the Security Council were part of a reconstituted nuclear program.

But serious planning for the war had begun in February of 2002, as Bob Woodward revealed in his book, Plan of Attack. Planning for the future of Iraq’s oil wealth had been under way for longer still.

In February of 2001, just weeks after Bush was sworn in, the same energy executives that had been lobbying for Saddam’s ouster gathered at the White House to participate in Dick Cheney’s now infamous Energy Task Force. Although Cheney would go all the way to the Supreme Court to keep what happened at those meetings a secret, we do know a few things, thanks to documents obtained by the conservative legal group JudicialWatch. As Mark Levine wrote in The Nation($$):



â�¦ a map of Iraq and an accompanying list of 'Iraq oil foreign suitors' were the center of discussion. The map erased all features of the country save the location of its main oil deposits, divided into nine exploration blocks. The accompanying list of suitors revealed that dozens of companies from 30 countries — but not the United States — were either in discussions over or in direct negotiations for rights to some of the best remaining oilfields on earth.


Levine wrote, 'It’s not hard to surmise how the participants in these meetings felt about this situation.'

According to the New Yorker, at the same time, a top-secret National Security Council memo directed NSC staff to 'cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered melding two seemingly unrelated areas of policy.' The administration’s national security team was to join 'the review of operational policies towards rogue states such as Iraq and actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.'

At the State Department, planning was also underway. Under the auspices of the 'Future of Iraq Project,' an 'Oil and Energy Working Group' was established. The full membership of the group — described by the Financial Times as 'Iraqi oil experts, international consultants' and State Department staffers — remains classified, but among them, according to Antonia Juhasz’s 'The Bush Agenda,' was Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, who would serve in Iyad Allawi’s cabinet during the period of the Iraqi Governing Council, and later as Iraq’s oil minister in 2005. The group concluded that Iraq’s oil 'should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war.'

But the execs from Big Oil didn’t just want access to Iraq’s oil; they wanted access on terms that would be inconceivable unless negotiated at the barrel of a gun. Specifically, they wanted an Iraqi government that would enter into production service agreements (PSAs) for the extraction of Iraq’s oil.

PSAs, developed in the 1960s, are a tool of today’s kinder, gentler neocolonialism; they allow countries to retain technical ownership over energy reserves but, in actuality, lock in multinationals' control and extremely high profit margins — up to 13 times oil companies' minimum target, according to an analysis by the British-based oil watchdog Platform (PDF).

As Greg Muttit, an analyst with the group, notes:



Such contracts are often used in countries with small or difficult oilfields, or where high-risk exploration is required. They are not generally used in countries like Iraq, where there are large fields which are already known and which are cheap to extract. For example, they are not used in Iran, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, all of which maintain state control of oil.


In fact, Muttit adds, of the seven leading oil producing countries, only Russia has entered into PSAs, and those were signed during its own economic 'shock therapy' in the early 1990s. A number of Iraq’s oil-rich neighbors have constitutions that specifically prohibit foreign control over their energy reserves.

PSAs often have long terms — up to 40 years — and contain 'stabilization clauses' that protect them from future legislative changes. As Muttit points out, future governments 'could be constrained in their ability to pass new laws or policies.' That means, for example, that if a future elected Iraqi government 'wanted to pass a human rights law, or wanted to introduce a minimum wage [and it] affected the company’s profits, either the law would not apply to the company’s operations or the government would have to compensate the company for any reduction in profits.' It’s Sovereignty Lite.

The deals are so onerous that they govern only 12 percent of the world’s oil reserves, according to the International Energy Agency. Nonetheless, PSAs would become the Future of Iraq Project’s recommendation for the fledgling Iraqi government. According to the Financial Times, 'many in the group' fought for the contract structure; a Kurdish delegate told the FT, 'everybody keeps coming back to PSAs.'

Of course, the plans for Iraq’s legal framework for oil have to be viewed in the context of the overall transformation of the Iraqi economy. Clearly, the idea was to pursue a radical corporatist agenda during the period of the Coalition Provisional Authority when the U.S. occupation forces were a de facto dictatorship. And that’s just what happened; under L. Paul Bremer, the CPA head, corporate taxes were slashed, a flat-tax on income was established, rules allowing multinationals to pull all of their profits from the country and a series of other provisions were enacted. These were then integrated into the Iraqi Constitution and remain in effect today.

Among the provisions in the Constitution, unlike those of most oil producers, is a requirement that the government 'develop oil and gas wealth â�¦ relying on the most modern techniques of market principles and encouraging investment.' The provision mandates that foreign companies would receive a major stake in Iraq’s oil for the first time in the 30 years since the sector was nationalized in 1975.

Herbert Docena, a researcher with the NGO Focus on the Global South, wrote that an early draft of the constitution negotiated by Iraqis envisioned a 'Scandinavian-style welfare system in the Arabian desert, with Iraq’s vast oil wealth to be spent upholding every Iraqi’s right to education, health care, housing, and other social services.' 'Social justice,' the draft declared, 'is the basis of building society.'

What happened between that earlier draft and the constitution that Iraqis would eventually ratify? According to Docena:

While [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay] Khalilzad and his team of U.S. and British diplomats were all over the scene, some members of Iraq’s constitutional committee were reduced to bystanders. One Shiite member grumbled, 'We haven’t played much of a role in drafting the constitution. We feel that we have been neglected.' A Sunni negotiator concluded: 'This constitution was cooked up in an American kitchen not an Iraqi one.'
With a constitution cooked up in D.C., the stage was set for foreign multinationals to assume effective control of as much as 87 percent of Iraq’s oil, according to projections by the Oil Ministry. If PSAs become the law of the land — and there are other contractual arrangements that would allow private companies to invest in the sector without giving them the same degree of control or such usurious profits — the war-torn country stands to lose up to 194 billion vitally important dollars in revenue on just the first 12 fields developed, according to a conservative estimate by Platform (the estimate assumes oil at $40 per barrel; at this writing it stands at more than $59). That’s more than six times the country’s annual budget.

To complete the rip-off, the occupying coalition would have to crush Iraqi resistance, make sure it had friendly people in the right places in Iraq’s emerging elite and lock the new Iraqi government onto a path that would lead to the Big Four’s desired outcome.

Bush’s Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq’s Oil (Part Two)

With 140,000 U.S. troops on the ground, the largest U.S. embassy in the world sequestered in Baghdad’s fortified 'Green Zone' and an economy designed by a consulting firm in McLean, Va., post-invasion Iraq was well on its way to becoming a bonanza for foreign investors.
But Big Oil had its sights set on a specific arrangement — the lucrative production sharing agreements that lock in multinationals' control for long terms and are virtually unheard of in countries as rich in easily accessible oil as Iraq.

The occupation authorities would have to steer an ostensibly sovereign government to the outcome they desired, and they’d have to overcome any resistance that they encountered from the fiercely independent and understandably wary Iraqis along the way. Finally, they’d have to make sure that the Anglo-American firms were well-positioned to win the lion’s share of the choicest contracts.

Dealing with the most likely points of opposition began almost immediately. While the Oil Ministry, famously, was one of the few structures the invading forces protected from looters in the first days of the war, the bureaucracy’s human assets weren’t so lucky. With a stroke of the pen, Coalition Provisional Authority boss L. Paul Bremer fired hundreds of ministry personnel, ostensibly as part of the program of 'de-Baathification.' But, as Antonia Juhasz, author of 'The Bush Agenda,' told me, 'it wasn’t an indication that they were a party to Saddam Hussein’s crimes â�¦ they were fired because they could have stood in the way of the economic transformation.' Some fraction were certainly hard-core Baathists, but they were all veterans of the country’s oil sector; they knew the industry, they knew what the norms in neighboring countries were and they had no loyalty to the occupation forces. Some had to go.

That was true at the top as well. Serving as oil minister in the Iraqi Interim Government was Thamir Ghadbhan, a British-trained technocrat who at one time had been chief of planning under Saddam Hussein and was widely respected for his political independence and his opposition to the previous regime (Saddam had ended up imprisoning him at Abu Ghraib). But despite working closely with American advisors, Ghadbhan was replaced with Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, a close associate of Ahmed Chalabi, the exile favored by some war planners to run the country as a kindler and gentler — but no doubt just as corrupt — version of Saddam Hussein.

According to Greg Muttit, an analyst with the British oil watchdog Platform, Uloum at first seemed to be a malleable figure. He told the Financial Times that he personally favored PSAs and giving priority to U.S. oil companies 'and European companies, probably.'

But Uloum would later publicly protest the elimination of fuel subsidies, a key provision of the country’s economic restructuring, saying, 'This decision will not serve the benefit of the government and the people. This decision brings an extra burden on the shoulders of citizens.' He was, as the Associated Press reported, given 'a forced vacation.' It was, in the end, a permanent vacation; Chalabi, who was deputy prime minister at the time, took over the job himself (as 'acting' minister for 30 days, but his term would last a year). Chalabi had no previous experience in the oil biz, but was a reliable, pro-Western figure with little in the way of nationalist zeal to get in the way of being a good lap dog. As leader of the Iraqi National Congress, he had said he favored the creation of a U.S.-led consortium to develop Iraq’s oil fields. 'American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil,' Chalabi told the Washington Post in 2002.

According to Alexander Cockburn, Chalabi also orchestrated the ouster of Mohammed Jibouri, executive director of the state’s oil marketing agency, who had offended the Swiss giant Glencore by telling its executives that they couldn’t trade Iraqi oil after their extensive dealings with Saddam Hussein.

An emerging, although still fragile, civil society was another source of potential trouble. Iraqi trade unions were a thorn in the side of the CPA — shutting down the port of Khor az-Zubayr in protest of a rip-off deal with the Danish shipping giant Maersk, halting oil production in the south to demand the rehire of laid-off Iraqi workers and kicking Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root out of their refineries. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence, then, that the only significant law that Paul Bremer left on the books from the Hussein era was a prohibition against organizing public-sector workers. Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi analyst with the NGO Global Exchange, told me, 'They’re having a lot of legal problems.'

Of course, none of that guaranteed that the Iraqis would stay on the preferred path, especially after the election of an ostensibly sovereign government.

And that’s where the most common — almost ubiquitous — tool of neocolonialism, debt, came into play. In this case, massive, crushing debt run up by a dictator who treated himself and his cronies to palaces and other luxuries, spent lavishly on weapons for Iraq’s war with Iran — fought in part on behalf of the United States — and owed Kuwait billions of dollars in reparations for the 1990 invasion.

To put Iraq’s foreign debt in perspective, if the country’s economy were the size of the United States', then its obligations in 2004, proportionally, would have equaled around $55 trillion, according to IMF figures (and that doesn’t include reparations from the first Gulf War).

Clearly, that amount of debt was unsustainable, and the Bush administration launched a full-court press to get creditor nations to forgive at least part of the new government’s debt burden. Former Secretary of State James Baker, long the Bush family’s 'fixer,' was dispatched on a tour of the world’s capitals to cut deals on behalf of the Iraqis.

The administration raised eyebrows in the NGO community when it adopted the language of debt-relief activists to frame their pitch. Bush, and Baker, called it 'odious' debt, debt that financed the whims of a brutal dictator and used against the interests of the Iraqi population. Under international law, 'odious' debt, in theory at least, doesn’t need to be forgiven; it’s written off as a dictator’s illicit gains. As one might expect, wealthy creditor nations have long resisted the concept.

Debt-relief activists Basav Sen and Hope Chu wrote that the move 'seemed inexplicable at first.' But it soon became clear that Iraq’s debt-relief program was, in fact, a way of locking in Iraq’s economic transformation.

The largest chunk of debt, $120 billion, was owed to the Paris Club, a group of 19 industrialized nations. Baker negotiated a deal whereby the Paris Club would forgive 80 percent of Iraq’s debt, but the catch — and it was a big one — was that Iraq had to agree to an economic 'reform' package administered by the International Monetary Fund, an institution dominated by the wealthiest countries and infamous across the developing world for its painful and unpopular Structural Adjustment Protocols.

The debt would be written off in stages; 30 percent would be cancelled outright, another 30 percent when an elected Iraqi government accepted an IMF structural reform agreement and a final 20 percent after the IMF had monitored its implementation for three years. This gave the IMF the role of watchdog over the country’s new economy, despite the fact that its share of the country’s debt burden was less than 1 percent of the total.

Among a number of provisions in the IMF agreement, along with privatizing state-run companies (which resulted in the layoffs of an estimated 145,000 Iraqis), slashing government pensions and phasing out the subsidies on food and fuel that many Iraqis depended on, was a commitment to develop Iraq’s oil in partnership with the private sector. Then-Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mehdi said, none too happily, that the deal would be 'very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies.' The Iraqi National Assembly released a statement saying, 'the Paris Club has no right to make decisions and impose IMF conditions on Iraq,' and called it 'a new crime committed by the creditors who financed Saddam’s oppression.' And Zaid Al-Ali, an international lawyer who works with the NGO Jubilee Iraq, said it was 'a perfect illustration of how the industrialized world has used debt as a tool to force developing nations to surrender sovereignty over their economies.'

The IMF agreement was announced in December of 2005, along with a new $685 million IMF loan that was to be used, in part, to increase Iraq’s oil output. The announcement came a month after Iraqis went to the polls to vote for their first government under the new Constitution in order, according to the Washington Post, to spare Iraqi 'politicians from voters' wrath.' That was a wise idea; immediately following the agreement, gas prices skyrocketed and Iraqis rioted.

The icing on the cake is that the deal James Baker negotiated with the Paris Club refers to Iraq as an 'exceptional situation'; no precedent was set that would allow other highly indebted countries saddled with odious debt from their own past dictators to claim similar relief.

The deadline the Iraqi government must meet for the completion of its final oil law in December is a 'benchmark' in the IMF agreement.

In an investigation for the Nation, Naomi Klein discovered that Baker had pursued his mission with an eye-popping conflict of interest. Klein discovered that a consortium that included the Carlyle Group, of which Baker is believed to have a $180 million stake, had contracted with Kuwait to make sure that the money it was owed by Iraq would be excluded from any debt-relief package. When Baker met with the Kuwaiti emir to beg forgiveness for Iraq’s odious debt, he had a direct interest in making sure he didn’t get it.

Another major creditor was Saudi Arabia. The Carlyle Group has extensive business dealings with the kingdom and Baker’s law firm, Baker Botts, was representing the monarchy in a suit brought by the families of the victims of 9/11.

The most recent IMF report (PDF) shows how successfully he failed: 'While most Paris Club official creditors have now signed bilateral agreements, progress has been slow in resolving non-Paris Club official claims, especially those of Gulf countries,' it says. It’s likely that Iraq, a country occupied for three years, devastated by 12 years of sanctions and with a per capita GDP of $3,400, will end up paying reparations to Kuwait, a country with a per capita GDP of over $19,000, for the five months Saddam occupied his neighbor in late 1990 and early 1991.

Iraq will still face a mountain of debt even if it meets all of the 'benchmarks' required of it — the IMF expects the country’s debt service to equal five percent of its economic output in 2011 and warns that even a minor price shock in the oil market ' would require significant borrowing from the international markets to close the financing gaps.'

'Sovereign' debt is transferable between governments; if a new strongman arises or Iraq becomes a loose federation, the debt will remain on the books and defaulting on it, while a possibility, has serious long-term consequences.

All of this is about bringing different forms of pressure onto Iraq’s nascent government, not controlling it, and it’s an important distinction. Before and since the 'handover' to Iraq’s government, the Green Zone has been overrun with 'advisers' from Big Oil. Aram Roston wrote, 'It’s clear that there is not just the one Iraqi Oil Ministry, but a parallel 'shadow' ministry run by American advisers.' In business, that’s known as 'positioning.'

Phillip Carroll, a former chief executive with Royal Dutch/Shell and a 15-member 'board of advisors' were appointed to oversee Iraq’s oil industry during the transition period. According to the Guardian, the group ' would represent Iraq at meetings of OPEC.' Carroll had been working with the Pentagon for months before the invasion — even while the administration was still insisting that it sought a peaceful resolution to the Iraq crisis — 'developing contingency plans for Iraq’s oil sector in the event of war.' According to the Houston Chronicle, 'He assumed his work was completed, he said, until Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called him shortly after the U.S.-led invasion began and offered him the oil adviser’s job.' Carroll, in addition to running Shell Oil in the United States, was a former CEO of the Fluor Corp., a well-connected oil services firm with extensive projects in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and at least $1.6 billion in contracts for Iraq’s reconstruction. He was joined by Gary Vogler, a former executive with ExxonMobile, in Iraq’s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.

After spending six months in the post, Carroll was replaced by Robert E. McKee III, a former ConocoPhillips executive. According to the Houston Chronicle, 'His selection as the Bush administration’s energy czar in Iraq' drew fire from congressional Democrats 'because of his ties to the prime contractor in the Iraqi oil fields, Houston-based Halliburton Co. He’s the chairman of a venture partitioned by the â�¦ firm.'

The administration selected Chevron Vice President Norm Szydlowski to serve as a liaison between the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Iraqi Oil Ministry. Now the CEO of the appropriately named Colonial Pipeline Co., he continues to work with the Iraq Energy Roundtable, a project of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, which recently sponsored a meeting to 'bring together oil and gas sector leaders in the U.S. with key decision makers from the Iraq Ministry of Oil.'

Terry Adams and Bob Morgan of BP, and Mike Stinson of ConocoPhillips would also serve as advisors during the transition.

After the CPA handed over the reigns to Iraq’s interim government, the embassy’s 'shadow' oil ministry continued to work closely with the Iraqis to shape future oil policy. Platform’s Greg Muttit Platform, just weeks after the invasion, in a meeting with oil company execs and Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in London, former British Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind promised to personally lobby Dick Cheney for contracts on behalf of several firms, including Shell.

Meanwhile, major oil firms were positioning themselves so that they’d have the best contacts in the new government. According to the Associated Press, 'The world’s three biggest integrated oil companies' — BP, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch/Shell — 'struck cooperation or training deals with Iraq' in 2005. 'It’s a way to maintain contact and get the oil officials to know about them,' former Iraqi Oil Minister Issam Chalabi told the AP. And it seems to have worked; in May, Iraq’s current oil minister, Husayn al-Shahristani, said that one of his top priorities would be to finalize an oil law and sign contracts with 'the largest companies.'

Washington has its hands all over the drafting of that law. Early on, in 2003, USAID commissioned BearingPoint, Inc. — the new name for the scandal-plagued Arthur Anderson Consulting — to submit recommendations for the development of Iraq’s oil sector. BearingPoint was the firm that designed the country’s economic transformation under a previous USAID contract, so it was no surprise that its report reinforced the preference for PSAs that 'everybody [kept] kept coming back to' during meetings of the State Department’s 'Future of Iraq Project.'

In February, just months after the Iraqis elected their first constitutional government, USAID sent a BearingPoint adviser to provide the Iraqi Oil Ministry 'legal and regulatory advice in drafting the framework of petroleum and other energy-related legislation, including foreign investment.' According to Muttit, the Iraqi Parliament had not yet seen a draft of the oil law as of July, but by that time it had already been reviewed and commented on by U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman, who also 'arranged for Dr. Al-Shahristani to meet with nine major oil companies — including Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips — for them to comment on the draft.'

All of these points of pressure are only what we can see in the light of day. There is certainly much more occurring under the table. Raed Jarrar told me that he ' was personally familiar with the kind of intimidation that can be brought by both the U.S. military and civilian' personnel, and that he would be shocked if 'multiple millions of dollars in bribes' were not changing hands. The IMF noted in its latest report (PDF) that 'corruption related to the production and distribution of refined fuel products was rampant.' Last March, 450 Oil Ministry employees were fired for suspected corruption, and Mohammed al-Abudi, the Oil Ministry’s director general for rrilling, said that 'administrative corruption' was pervasive. 'The robberies and thefts are taking place on a daily basis on all levels,' he said, 'committed by low-level government employees and by high officials in leadership positions of the Iraqi state.' The same day that the U.N. legitimized the occupation, George Bush signed Executive Order 13303 providing full legal immunity to all oil companies doing business in Iraq in order to facilitate the country’s 'orderly reconstruction.'

Yet, despite a five-year effort, Big Oil still sits on the sidelines, wary of the disorder and violence that’s plagued the country. Ironically, it appears that China may well receive the first deal in post-Saddam Iraq (although it’s one negotiated with Hussein’s government before the war). The Kurdish autonomous zone has signed three PSAs — none with the majors — although there is some dispute about their validity (and, at this writing, there are reports that the Kurds are in negotiations with Royal Dutch/Shell and BP, among others).

At this point, the situation is very fluid. Last week, Iraqis were shocked when a controversial measure that might lead to the country’s effective breakup was passed by Parliament by one vote. The major Sunni parties and Muqtada al Sadr’s ministers boycotted the vote in outrage. Muddying the waters further is a heated debate about whether a somewhat ambiguous provision in the Iraqi Constitution already gives provincial governments the right to hold on to oil revenues rather than send them to the central government. The results of all of these debates will have an enormous impact on Iraq’s chances to build an autonomous and potentially prosperous country down the road.

It’s possible that the administration and its partners badly overplayed their hand. Iraq’s new government stands on the verge of a complete meltdown, faced with a crisis of legitimacy based largely on the fact that it is seen as collaborating with American forces. Overwhelming majorities of Iraqis of every sect believe the United States is an occupier, not a liberator, and is convinced that it intends to stay in Iraq permanently. 'If you go in front of Parliament, Raed Jarrar told me, 'and ask: ' who is opposed to demanding a timetable for the Americans to withdrawal?' nobody would dare raise their hand.' The passage of a sweetheart oil law could prove to be a tipping point. It’s also possible Iraq’s government won’t make it to December; at this writing, rumors of a 'palace coup' are swirling around Baghdad, according to Iraqi lawmakers.

What is clear is that the future of Iraq ultimately hinges to a great degree on the outcome of a complex game of chess — only part of which is out in the open — that is playing out right now, and oil is at the center of it. It’s equally clear that there’s a yawning disconnect between Iraqis' and Americans' views of the situation. Erik Leaver, a senior analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, told me that the disposition of Iraq’s oil wealth is 'definitely causing problems on the ground,' but the entire topic is taboo in polite D.C. circles. 'Nobody in Washington wants to talk about it,' he said. 'They don’t want to sound like freaks talking about blood for oil.' At the same time, a recent poll asked Iraqis what they believed was the main reason for the invasion and 76 percent gave 'to control Iraqi oil' as their first choice.

Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.

With all the below written

What is the political agenda of the writer?
A quick look shows he is an attack dog of the far left!
A far less successful and less talented leftist version of Rush, Michelle Malkin comes to mind.
I call into question his credibility to put out useful unbiased journalism.
Much like Randy Rhodes I would bet he runs around huffing about the criminal Bush family while ignoring the just as bad Clinton crime family or the massive short comings of our current crook and chief.
Has the United States actually been able to tap the oil?


I did enjoy his exposure of the IMF in all this that was nice to see some people have a clue how the IMF destroys other peoples lives and governments.
If there is corruption then there will be IMF involvement!


You never answered the question are you saying Saddam DID NOT attack Kuwait?
Your contention that the US illegally invaded Iraq is a lie.
Even if all the below is true Saddam still did the deed and he still broke the rules of the cease fire.

` ~galljdaj+;170312:
... like to call names as their proof of their 'it wasn’t me mama' denials!

And in the end they supported lil bush, and to Today ply their lies attempting to cleans thenselves of the blood stains covering them! The lives wasted, the destruction committed, and all the damages and lives deminished, are at the feet of these messianic cowards!

The following Article is a hard read for a few reasons, the most pressing reason I had reading it was the anger I felt and still feel at the lies believed and still being replicated by these cowards! The blood for oil cowards of hate!

The Article that should be used as an introduction to the trials in the Peoples' Court of Justice:



NEWS YOU WON’T FIND ON CNN because CNN couldn’t get away with the below screed.





Bush’s Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq’s Oil

Even as Iraq verges on splintering into a sectarian civil war, four big oil companies are on the verge of locking up its massive, profitable reserves, known to everyone in the petroleum industry as 'the prize.'

By Joshua Holland

10/18/06 'AlterNet' — — Iraq is sitting on a mother lode of some of the lightest, sweetest, most profitable crude oil on earth, and the rules that will determine who will control it and on what terms are about to be set.
The Iraqi government faces a December deadline, imposed by the world’s wealthiest countries, to complete its final oil law. Industry ****ysts expect that the result will be a radical departure from the laws governing the country’s oil-rich neighbors, giving foreign multinationals a much higher rate of return than with other major oil producers and locking in their control over what George Bush called Iraq’s 'patrimony' for decades, regardless of what kind of policies future elected governments might want to pursue.

Iraq’s energy reserves are an incredibly rich prize. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 'Iraq contains 112 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the second largest in the world (behind Saudi Arabia), along with roughly 220 billion barrels of probable and possible resources. Iraq’s true potential may be far greater than this, however, as the country is relatively unexplored due to years of war and sanctions.' For perspective, the Saudis have 260 billion barrels of proven reserves.

Iraqi oil is close to the surface and easy to extract, making it all the more profitable. James Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum, points out that oil companies 'can produce a barrel of Iraqi oil for less than $1.50 and possibly as little as $1, including all exploration, oilfield development and production costs.' Contrast that with other areas where oil is considered cheap to produce at $5 per barrel or the North Sea, where production costs are $12-16 per barrel.

And Iraq’s oil sector is largely undeveloped. Former Iraqi Oil Minister Issam Chalabi (no relation to the neocons' favorite exile, Ahmed

Chalabi) told the Associated Press that 'Iraq has more oil fields that have been discovered, but not developed, than any other country in the world.' British-based ****yst Mohammad Al-Gallani told the Canadian Press that of 526 prospective drilling sites, just 125 have been opened.
But the real gem — what one oil consultant called the 'Holy Grail' of the industry — lies in Iraq’s vast western desert. It’s one of the last 'virgin' fields on the planet, and it has the potential to catapult Iraq to No. 1 in the world in oil reserves. Sparsely populated, the western fields are less prone to sabotage than the country’s current centers of production in the north, near Kirkuk, and in the south near Basra. The Nation’s Aram Roston predicts Iraq’s western desert will yield 'untold riches.'

Iraq also may have large natural gas deposits that so far remain virtually unexplored.

But even 'untold riches' don’t tell the whole story. Depending on how Iraq’s petroleum law shakes out, the country’s enormous reserves could break the back of OPEC, a wet dream in Western capitals for three decades. James Paul predicted that 'even before Iraq had reached its full production potential of 8 million barrels or more per day, the companies would gain huge leverage over the international oil system. OPEC would be weakened by the withdrawal of one of its key producers from the OPEC quota system.' Depending on how things shape up in the next few months, Western oil companies could end up controlling the country’s output levels, or the government, heavily influenced by the United States, could even pull out of the cartel entirely.

Both independent ****ysts and officials within Iraq’s Oil Ministry anticipate that when all is said and done, the big winners in Iraq will be the Big Four — the American firms Exxon-Mobile and Chevron, the British BP-Amoco and Royal Dutch-Shell — that dominate the world oil market. Ibrahim Mohammed, an industry consultant with close contacts in the Iraqi Oil Ministry, told the Associated Press that there’s a universal belief among ministry staff that the major U.S. companies will win the lion’s share of contracts. 'The feeling is that the new government is going to be influenced by the United States,' he said.

During the 12-year sanction period, the Big Four were forced to sit on the sidelines while the government of Saddam Hussein cut deals with the Chinese, French, Russians and others (despite the sanctions, the United States ultimately received 37 percent of Iraq’s oil during that period, according to the independent committee that investigated the oil-for-food program, but almost all of it arrived through foreign firms). In a 1999 speech, Dick Cheney, then CEO of the oil services company Halliburton, told a London audience that the Middle East was where the West would find the additional 50 million barrels of oil per day that he predicted it would need by 2010, but, he lamented, 'while even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow.'

Chafing at the idea that the Chinese and Russians might end up with what is arguably the world’s greatest energy prize, industry leaders lobbied hard for regime change throughout the 1990s. With the election of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in 2000 — the first time in U.S. history that two veterans of the oil industry had ever occupied the nation’s top two jobs — they would finally get the 'greater access' to the region’s oil wealth, which they had long lusted after.

If the U.S. invasion of Iraq had occurred during the colonial era a hundred years earlier, the oil giants, backed by U.S. forces, would have simply seized Iraq’s oil fields. Much has changed since then in terms of international custom and law (when then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz did in fact suggest seizing Iraq’s Southern oil fields in 2002, Colin Powell dismissed the idea as 'lunacy').

Understanding how Big Oil came to this point, poised to take effective control of the bulk of the country’s reserves while they remain, technically, in the hands of the Iraqi government — a government with all the trappings of sovereignty — is to grasp the sometimes intricate dance that is modern neocolonialism. The Iraq oil grab is a classic case study.

It’s clear that the U.S.-led invasion had little to do with national security or the events of Sept. 11. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill revealed that just 11 days after Bush’s inauguration in early 2001, regime change in Iraq was 'Topic A' among the administration’s national security staff, and former Terrorism Tsar Richard Clarke told 60 Minutes that the day after the attacks in New York and Washington occurred, '[Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq.' He added: 'We all said â�¦ no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan.'

On March 7, 2003, two weeks before the United States attacked Iraq, the U.N.'s chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, told the U.N. Security Council that Saddam Hussein’s cooperation with the inspections protocol had improved to the point where it was 'active or even proactive,' and that the inspectors would be able to certify that Iraq was free of prohibited weapons within a few months' time. That same day, IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei reported that there was no evidence of a current nuclear program in Iraq and flatly refuted the administration’s claim that the infamous aluminum tubes cited by Colin Powell in making his case for war before the Security Council were part of a reconstituted nuclear program.

But serious planning for the war had begun in February of 2002, as Bob Woodward revealed in his book, Plan of Attack. Planning for the future of Iraq’s oil wealth had been under way for longer still.

In February of 2001, just weeks after Bush was sworn in, the same energy executives that had been lobbying for Saddam’s ouster gathered at the White House to participate in Dick Cheney’s now infamous Energy Task Force. Although Cheney would go all the way to the Supreme Court to keep what happened at those meetings a secret, we do know a few things, thanks to documents obtained by the conservative legal group JudicialWatch. As Mark Levine wrote in The Nation($$):



â�¦ a map of Iraq and an accompanying list of 'Iraq oil foreign suitors' were the center of discussion. The map erased all features of the country save the location of its main oil deposits, divided into nine exploration blocks. The accompanying list of suitors revealed that dozens of companies from 30 countries — but not the United States — were either in discussions over or in direct negotiations for rights to some of the best remaining oilfields on earth.


Levine wrote, 'It’s not hard to surmise how the participants in these meetings felt about this situation.'

According to the New Yorker, at the same time, a top-secret National Security Council memo directed NSC staff to 'cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered melding two seemingly unrelated areas of policy.' The administration’s national security team was to join 'the review of operational policies towards rogue states such as Iraq and actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.'

At the State Department, planning was also underway. Under the auspices of the 'Future of Iraq Project,' an 'Oil and Energy Working Group' was established. The full membership of the group — described by the Financial Times as 'Iraqi oil experts, international consultants' and State Department staffers — remains classified, but among them, according to Antonia Juhasz’s 'The Bush Agenda,' was Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, who would serve in Iyad Allawi’s cabinet during the period of the Iraqi Governing Council, and later as Iraq’s oil minister in 2005. The group concluded that Iraq’s oil 'should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war.'

But the execs from Big Oil didn’t just want access to Iraq’s oil; they wanted access on terms that would be inconceivable unless negotiated at the barrel of a gun. Specifically, they wanted an Iraqi government that would enter into production service agreements (PSAs) for the extraction of Iraq’s oil.

PSAs, developed in the 1960s, are a tool of today’s kinder, gentler neocolonialism; they allow countries to retain technical ownership over energy reserves but, in actuality, lock in multinationals' control and extremely high profit margins — up to 13 times oil companies' minimum target, according to an ****ysis by the British-based oil watchdog Platform (PDF).

As Greg Muttit, an ****yst with the group, notes:



Such contracts are often used in countries with small or difficult oilfields, or where high-risk exploration is required. They are not generally used in countries like Iraq, where there are large fields which are already known and which are cheap to extract. For example, they are not used in Iran, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, all of which maintain state control of oil.


In fact, Muttit adds, of the seven leading oil producing countries, only Russia has entered into PSAs, and those were signed during its own economic 'shock therapy' in the early 1990s. A number of Iraq’s oil-rich neighbors have constitutions that specifically prohibit foreign control over their energy reserves.

PSAs often have long terms — up to 40 years — and contain 'stabilization clauses' that protect them from future legislative changes. As Muttit points out, future governments 'could be constrained in their ability to pass new laws or policies.' That means, for example, that if a future elected Iraqi government 'wanted to pass a human rights law, or wanted to introduce a minimum wage [and it] affected the company’s profits, either the law would not apply to the company’s operations or the government would have to compensate the company for any reduction in profits.' It’s Sovereignty Lite.

The deals are so onerous that they govern only 12 percent of the world’s oil reserves, according to the International Energy Agency. Nonetheless, PSAs would become the Future of Iraq Project’s recommendation for the fledgling Iraqi government. According to the Financial Times, 'many in the group' fought for the contract structure; a Kurdish delegate told the FT, 'everybody keeps coming back to PSAs.'

Of course, the plans for Iraq’s legal framework for oil have to be viewed in the context of the overall transformation of the Iraqi economy. Clearly, the idea was to pursue a radical corporatist agenda during the period of the Coalition Provisional Authority when the U.S. occupation forces were a de facto dictatorship. And that’s just what happened; under L. Paul Bremer, the CPA head, corporate taxes were slashed, a flat-tax on income was established, rules allowing multinationals to pull all of their profits from the country and a series of other provisions were enacted. These were then integrated into the Iraqi Constitution and remain in effect today.

Among the provisions in the Constitution, unlike those of most oil producers, is a requirement that the government 'develop oil and gas wealth â�¦ relying on the most modern techniques of market principles and encouraging investment.' The provision mandates that foreign companies would receive a major stake in Iraq’s oil for the first time in the 30 years since the sector was nationalized in 1975.

Herbert Docena, a researcher with the NGO Focus on the Global South, wrote that an early draft of the constitution negotiated by Iraqis envisioned a 'Scandinavian-style welfare system in the Arabian desert, with Iraq’s vast oil wealth to be spent upholding every Iraqi’s right to education, health care, housing, and other social services.' 'Social justice,' the draft declared, 'is the basis of building society.'

What happened between that earlier draft and the constitution that Iraqis would eventually ratify? According to Docena:

While [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay] Khalilzad and his team of U.S. and British diplomats were all over the scene, some members of Iraq’s constitutional committee were reduced to bystanders. One Shiite member grumbled, 'We haven’t played much of a role in drafting the constitution. We feel that we have been neglected.' A Sunni negotiator concluded: 'This constitution was cooked up in an American kitchen not an Iraqi one.'
With a constitution cooked up in D.C., the stage was set for foreign multinationals to assume effective control of as much as 87 percent of Iraq’s oil, according to projections by the Oil Ministry. If PSAs become the law of the land — and there are other contractual arrangements that would allow private companies to invest in the sector without giving them the same degree of control or such usurious profits — the war-torn country stands to lose up to 194 billion vitally important dollars in revenue on just the first 12 fields developed, according to a conservative estimate by Platform (the estimate assumes oil at $40 per barrel; at this writing it stands at more than $59). That’s more than six times the country’s annual budget.

To complete the rip-off, the occupying coalition would have to crush Iraqi resistance, make sure it had friendly people in the right places in Iraq’s emerging elite and lock the new Iraqi government onto a path that would lead to the Big Four’s desired outcome.

Bush’s Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq’s Oil (Part Two)

With 140,000 U.S. troops on the ground, the largest U.S. embassy in the world sequestered in Baghdad’s fortified 'Green Zone' and an economy designed by a consulting firm in McLean, Va., post-invasion Iraq was well on its way to becoming a bonanza for foreign investors.
But Big Oil had its sights set on a specific arrangement — the lucrative production sharing agreements that lock in multinationals' control for long terms and are virtually unheard of in countries as rich in easily accessible oil as Iraq.

The occupation authorities would have to steer an ostensibly sovereign government to the outcome they desired, and they’d have to overcome any resistance that they encountered from the fiercely independent and understandably wary Iraqis along the way. Finally, they’d have to make sure that the Anglo-American firms were well-positioned to win the lion’s share of the choicest contracts.

Dealing with the most likely points of opposition began almost immediately. While the Oil Ministry, famously, was one of the few structures the invading forces protected from looters in the first days of the war, the bureaucracy’s human assets weren’t so lucky. With a stroke of the pen, Coalition Provisional Authority boss L. Paul Bremer fired hundreds of ministry personnel, ostensibly as part of the program of 'de-Baathification.' But, as Antonia Juhasz, author of 'The Bush Agenda,' told me, 'it wasn’t an indication that they were a party to Saddam Hussein’s crimes â�¦ they were fired because they could have stood in the way of the economic transformation.' Some fraction were certainly hard-core Baathists, but they were all veterans of the country’s oil sector; they knew the industry, they knew what the norms in neighboring countries were and they had no loyalty to the occupation forces. Some had to go.

That was true at the top as well. Serving as oil minister in the Iraqi Interim Government was Thamir Ghadbhan, a British-trained technocrat who at one time had been chief of planning under Saddam Hussein and was widely respected for his political independence and his opposition to the previous regime (Saddam had ended up imprisoning him at Abu Ghraib). But despite working closely with American advisors, Ghadbhan was replaced with Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, a close associate of Ahmed Chalabi, the exile favored by some war planners to run the country as a kindler and gentler — but no doubt just as corrupt — version of Saddam Hussein.

According to Greg Muttit, an ****yst with the British oil watchdog Platform, Uloum at first seemed to be a malleable figure. He told the Financial Times that he personally favored PSAs and giving priority to U.S. oil companies 'and European companies, probably.'

But Uloum would later publicly protest the elimination of fuel subsidies, a key provision of the country’s economic restructuring, saying, 'This decision will not serve the benefit of the government and the people. This decision brings an extra burden on the shoulders of citizens.' He was, as the Associated Press reported, given 'a forced vacation.' It was, in the end, a permanent vacation; Chalabi, who was deputy prime minister at the time, took over the job himself (as 'acting' minister for 30 days, but his term would last a year). Chalabi had no previous experience in the oil biz, but was a reliable, pro-Western figure with little in the way of nationalist zeal to get in the way of being a good lap dog. As leader of the Iraqi National Congress, he had said he favored the creation of a U.S.-led consortium to develop Iraq’s oil fields. 'American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil,' Chalabi told the Washington Post in 2002.

According to Alexander Cockburn, Chalabi also orchestrated the ouster of Mohammed Jibouri, executive director of the state’s oil marketing agency, who had offended the Swiss giant Glencore by telling its executives that they couldn’t trade Iraqi oil after their extensive dealings with Saddam Hussein.

An emerging, although still fragile, civil society was another source of potential trouble. Iraqi trade unions were a thorn in the side of the CPA — shutting down the port of Khor az-Zubayr in protest of a rip-off deal with the Danish shipping giant Maersk, halting oil production in the south to demand the rehire of laid-off Iraqi workers and kicking Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root out of their refineries. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence, then, that the only significant law that Paul Bremer left on the books from the Hussein era was a prohibition against organizing public-sector workers. Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi ****yst with the NGO Global Exchange, told me, 'They’re having a lot of legal problems.'

Of course, none of that guaranteed that the Iraqis would stay on the preferred path, especially after the election of an ostensibly sovereign government.

And that’s where the most common — almost ubiquitous — tool of neocolonialism, debt, came into play. In this case, massive, crushing debt run up by a dictator who treated himself and his cronies to palaces and other luxuries, spent lavishly on weapons for Iraq’s war with Iran — fought in part on behalf of the United States — and owed Kuwait billions of dollars in reparations for the 1990 invasion.

To put Iraq’s foreign debt in perspective, if the country’s economy were the size of the United States', then its obligations in 2004, proportionally, would have equaled around $55 trillion, according to IMF figures (and that doesn’t include reparations from the first Gulf War).

Clearly, that amount of debt was unsustainable, and the Bush administration launched a full-court press to get creditor nations to forgive at least part of the new government’s debt burden. Former Secretary of State James Baker, long the Bush family’s 'fixer,' was dispatched on a tour of the world’s capitals to cut deals on behalf of the Iraqis.

The administration raised eyebrows in the NGO community when it adopted the language of debt-relief activists to frame their pitch. Bush, and Baker, called it 'odious' debt, debt that financed the whims of a brutal dictator and used against the interests of the Iraqi population. Under international law, 'odious' debt, in theory at least, doesn’t need to be forgiven; it’s written off as a dictator’s illicit gains. As one might expect, wealthy creditor nations have long resisted the concept.

Debt-relief activists Basav Sen and Hope Chu wrote that the move 'seemed inexplicable at first.' But it soon became clear that Iraq’s debt-relief program was, in fact, a way of locking in Iraq’s economic transformation.

The largest chunk of debt, $120 billion, was owed to the Paris Club, a group of 19 industrialized nations. Baker negotiated a deal whereby the Paris Club would forgive 80 percent of Iraq’s debt, but the catch — and it was a big one — was that Iraq had to agree to an economic 'reform' package administered by the International Monetary Fund, an institution dominated by the wealthiest countries and infamous across the developing world for its painful and unpopular Structural Adjustment Protocols.

The debt would be written off in stages; 30 percent would be cancelled outright, another 30 percent when an elected Iraqi government accepted an IMF structural reform agreement and a final 20 percent after the IMF had monitored its implementation for three years. This gave the IMF the role of watchdog over the country’s new economy, despite the fact that its share of the country’s debt burden was less than 1 percent of the total.

Among a number of provisions in the IMF agreement, along with privatizing state-run companies (which resulted in the layoffs of an estimated 145,000 Iraqis), slashing government pensions and phasing out the subsidies on food and fuel that many Iraqis depended on, was a commitment to develop Iraq’s oil in partnership with the private sector. Then-Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mehdi said, none too happily, that the deal would be 'very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies.' The Iraqi National Assembly released a statement saying, 'the Paris Club has no right to make decisions and impose IMF conditions on Iraq,' and called it 'a new crime committed by the creditors who financed Saddam’s oppression.' And Zaid Al-Ali, an international lawyer who works with the NGO Jubilee Iraq, said it was 'a perfect illustration of how the industrialized world has used debt as a tool to force developing nations to surrender sovereignty over their economies.'

The IMF agreement was announced in December of 2005, along with a new $685 million IMF loan that was to be used, in part, to increase Iraq’s oil output. The announcement came a month after Iraqis went to the polls to vote for their first government under the new Constitution in order, according to the Washington Post, to spare Iraqi 'politicians from voters' wrath.' That was a wise idea; immediately following the agreement, gas prices skyrocketed and Iraqis rioted.

The icing on the cake is that the deal James Baker negotiated with the Paris Club refers to Iraq as an 'exceptional situation'; no precedent was set that would allow other highly indebted countries saddled with odious debt from their own past dictators to claim similar relief.

The deadline the Iraqi government must meet for the completion of its final oil law in December is a 'benchmark' in the IMF agreement.

In an investigation for the Nation, Naomi Klein discovered that Baker had pursued his mission with an eye-popping conflict of interest. Klein discovered that a consortium that included the Carlyle Group, of which Baker is believed to have a $180 million stake, had contracted with Kuwait to make sure that the money it was owed by Iraq would be excluded from any debt-relief package. When Baker met with the Kuwaiti emir to beg forgiveness for Iraq’s odious debt, he had a direct interest in making sure he didn’t get it.

Another major creditor was Saudi Arabia. The Carlyle Group has extensive business dealings with the kingdom and Baker’s law firm, Baker Botts, was representing the monarchy in a suit brought by the families of the victims of 9/11.

The most recent IMF report (PDF) shows how successfully he failed: 'While most Paris Club official creditors have now signed bilateral agreements, progress has been slow in resolving non-Paris Club official claims, especially those of Gulf countries,' it says. It’s likely that Iraq, a country occupied for three years, devastated by 12 years of sanctions and with a per capita GDP of $3,400, will end up paying reparations to Kuwait, a country with a per capita GDP of over $19,000, for the five months Saddam occupied his neighbor in late 1990 and early 1991.

Iraq will still face a mountain of debt even if it meets all of the 'benchmarks' required of it — the IMF expects the country’s debt service to equal five percent of its economic output in 2011 and warns that even a minor price shock in the oil market ' would require significant borrowing from the international markets to close the financing gaps.'

'Sovereign' debt is transferable between governments; if a new strongman arises or Iraq becomes a loose federation, the debt will remain on the books and defaulting on it, while a possibility, has serious long-term consequences.

All of this is about bringing different forms of pressure onto Iraq’s nascent government, not controlling it, and it’s an important distinction. Before and since the 'handover' to Iraq’s government, the Green Zone has been overrun with 'advisers' from Big Oil. Aram Roston wrote, 'It’s clear that there is not just the one Iraqi Oil Ministry, but a parallel 'shadow' ministry run by American advisers.' In business, that’s known as 'positioning.'

Phillip Carroll, a former chief executive with Royal Dutch/Shell and a 15-member 'board of advisors' were appointed to oversee Iraq’s oil industry during the transition period. According to the Guardian, the group ' would represent Iraq at meetings of OPEC.' Carroll had been working with the Pentagon for months before the invasion — even while the administration was still insisting that it sought a peaceful resolution to the Iraq crisis — 'developing contingency plans for Iraq’s oil sector in the event of war.' According to the Houston Chronicle, 'He assumed his work was completed, he said, until Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called him shortly after the U.S.-led invasion began and offered him the oil adviser’s job.' Carroll, in addition to running Shell Oil in the United States, was a former CEO of the Fluor Corp., a well-connected oil services firm with extensive projects in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and at least $1.6 billion in contracts for Iraq’s reconstruction. He was joined by Gary Vogler, a former executive with ExxonMobile, in Iraq’s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.

After spending six months in the post, Carroll was replaced by Robert E. McKee III, a former ConocoPhillips executive. According to the Houston Chronicle, 'His selection as the Bush administration’s energy czar in Iraq' drew fire from congressional Democrats 'because of his ties to the prime contractor in the Iraqi oil fields, Houston-based Halliburton Co. He’s the chairman of a venture partitioned by the â�¦ firm.'

The administration selected Chevron Vice President Norm Szydlowski to serve as a liaison between the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Iraqi Oil Ministry. Now the CEO of the appropriately named Colonial Pipeline Co., he continues to work with the Iraq Energy Roundtable, a project of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, which recently sponsored a meeting to 'bring together oil and gas sector leaders in the U.S. with key decision makers from the Iraq Ministry of Oil.'

Terry Adams and Bob Morgan of BP, and Mike Stinson of ConocoPhillips would also serve as advisors during the transition.

After the CPA handed over the reigns to Iraq’s interim government, the embassy’s 'shadow' oil ministry continued to work closely with the Iraqis to shape future oil policy. Platform’s Greg Muttit Platform, just weeks after the invasion, in a meeting with oil company execs and Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in London, former British Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind promised to personally lobby Dick Cheney for contracts on behalf of several firms, including Shell.

Meanwhile, major oil firms were positioning themselves so that they’d have the best contacts in the new government. According to the Associated Press, 'The world’s three biggest integrated oil companies' — BP, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch/Shell — 'struck cooperation or training deals with Iraq' in 2005. 'It’s a way to maintain contact and get the oil officials to know about them,' former Iraqi Oil Minister Issam Chalabi told the AP. And it seems to have worked; in May, Iraq’s current oil minister, Husayn al-Shahristani, said that one of his top priorities would be to finalize an oil law and sign contracts with 'the largest companies.'

Washington has its hands all over the drafting of that law. Early on, in 2003, USAID commissioned BearingPoint, Inc. — the new name for the scandal-plagued Arthur Anderson Consulting — to submit recommendations for the development of Iraq’s oil sector. BearingPoint was the firm that designed the country’s economic transformation under a previous USAID contract, so it was no surprise that its report reinforced the preference for PSAs that 'everybody [kept] kept coming back to' during meetings of the State Department’s 'Future of Iraq Project.'

In February, just months after the Iraqis elected their first constitutional government, USAID sent a BearingPoint adviser to provide the Iraqi Oil Ministry 'legal and regulatory advice in drafting the framework of petroleum and other energy-related legislation, including foreign investment.' According to Muttit, the Iraqi Parliament had not yet seen a draft of the oil law as of July, but by that time it had already been reviewed and commented on by U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman, who also 'arranged for Dr. Al-Shahristani to meet with nine major oil companies — including Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips — for them to comment on the draft.'

All of these points of pressure are only what we can see in the light of day. There is certainly much more occurring under the table. Raed Jarrar told me that he ' was personally familiar with the kind of intimidation that can be brought by both the U.S. military and civilian' personnel, and that he would be shocked if 'multiple millions of dollars in bribes' were not changing hands. The IMF noted in its latest report (PDF) that 'corruption related to the production and distribution of refined fuel products was rampant.' Last March, 450 Oil Ministry employees were fired for suspected corruption, and Mohammed al-Abudi, the Oil Ministry’s director general for rrilling, said that 'administrative corruption' was pervasive. 'The robberies and thefts are taking place on a daily basis on all levels,' he said, 'committed by low-level government employees and by high officials in leadership positions of the Iraqi state.' The same day that the U.N. legitimized the occupation, George Bush signed Executive Order 13303 providing full legal immunity to all oil companies doing business in Iraq in order to facilitate the country’s 'orderly reconstruction.'

Yet, despite a five-year effort, Big Oil still sits on the sidelines, wary of the disorder and violence that’s plagued the country. Ironically, it appears that China may well receive the first deal in post-Saddam Iraq (although it’s one negotiated with Hussein’s government before the war). The Kurdish autonomous zone has signed three PSAs — none with the majors — although there is some dispute about their validity (and, at this writing, there are reports that the Kurds are in negotiations with Royal Dutch/Shell and BP, among others).

At this point, the situation is very fluid. Last week, Iraqis were shocked when a controversial measure that might lead to the country’s effective breakup was passed by Parliament by one vote. The major Sunni parties and Muqtada al Sadr’s ministers boycotted the vote in outrage. Muddying the waters further is a heated debate about whether a somewhat ambiguous provision in the Iraqi Constitution already gives provincial governments the right to hold on to oil revenues rather than send them to the central government. The results of all of these debates will have an enormous impact on Iraq’s chances to build an autonomous and potentially prosperous country down the road.

It’s possible that the administration and its partners badly overplayed their hand. Iraq’s new government stands on the verge of a complete meltdown, faced with a crisis of legitimacy based largely on the fact that it is seen as collaborating with American forces. Overwhelming majorities of Iraqis of every sect believe the United States is an occupier, not a liberator, and is convinced that it intends to stay in Iraq permanently. 'If you go in front of Parliament, Raed Jarrar told me, 'and ask: ' who is opposed to demanding a timetable for the Americans to withdrawal?' nobody would dare raise their hand.' The passage of a sweetheart oil law could prove to be a tipping point. It’s also possible Iraq’s government won’t make it to December; at this writing, rumors of a 'palace coup' are swirling around Baghdad, according to Iraqi lawmakers.

What is clear is that the future of Iraq ultimately hinges to a great degree on the outcome of a complex game of chess — only part of which is out in the open — that is playing out right now, and oil is at the center of it. It’s equally clear that there’s a yawning disconnect between Iraqis' and Americans' views of the situation. Erik Leaver, a senior ****yst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, told me that the disposition of Iraq’s oil wealth is 'definitely causing problems on the ground,' but the entire topic is taboo in polite D.C. circles. 'Nobody in Washington wants to talk about it,' he said. 'They don’t want to sound like freaks talking about blood for oil.' At the same time, a recent poll asked Iraqis what they believed was the main reason for the invasion and 76 percent gave 'to control Iraqi oil' as their first choice.

Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.

So in the end next to nothing this person typed above has come true. and the ocean of oil still is out of American companies hands!!
So what is the point?
Is the point you trying to avoid answering a simple question as always?

DID SADDAM INVADE KUWAIT!

A big long post full of leftist propaganda just to avoid the obvious question!

Are you saying Iraq lead by Saddam did not invade kuwait?

Why is it you demand answers from others but NEVER answer non-personal questions directly posed to you?

The long winded post with a write up from a far left blogger proves nothing.
I was happy to see he wrote about the IMF it gives me hope that people are starting to wake up to the threat of international banking consortiums.
I decided to see what your little blogger buddy blogs about and was not surprised to see he writes about Republican pecadillos and ignores the short comings of Democrats.
Shame really because both parties are the problem.:confused:

To that end Saddam broke cease fire rules from day one!
The hostilities could have resumed under the first Bush!
Even Clinton was sick of Saddams blatent disregard for the cease fire.:p


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Desert_Fox
Bombing of Iraq (December 1998)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Operation Desert Fox)
Jump to: navigation, search
Operation Desert Fox

Date December 16�19, 1998
Location Persian Gulf
Result Ceasefire; much of Iraqi infrastructure destroyed.


Casualties and losses
None 600-2,000 dead



Iran-Iraq War � Opera � Al-Anfal Campaign � Gulf War � 1991 uprisings � Provide Comfort � Southern Watch � 1993 cruise missile strikes � Kurdish Civil War � Desert Strike � Northern Watch � Desert Fox � Kurdistan Islamist Conflict � Southern Focus � Iraq War


The December 1998 bombing of Iraq (code-named Operation Desert Fox) was a major four-day bombing campaign on Iraqi targets from December 16â��19, 1998 by the United States and United Kingdom. These strikes were officially undertaken in response to Iraq’s failure to comply with United Nations Security Council resolutions as well as their interference with United Nations Special Commission inspectors. Although many believe that the operation was named for German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who earned the nickname “Desert Fox” during the North African Campaign of World War II, this was not the case; the operational name was one of at least a half dozen contingency plans that U.S. Central Command developed to respond to a range of possible crises involving Iraq. Others included “Desert Lion," “Desert Badger," “Desert Viper," and “Desert Raptor” and were not used in order to mitigate an offensive perception of the operation, although the reference to Rommel was not thought of beforehand.

It was a major flare-up in the Iraq disarmament crisis. The stated goal of the cruise missile and bombing attacks was to disrupt Saddam’s ability to maintain his grip on power.

On October 31, 1998 US President Bill Clinton had signed into law H.R. 4655, the Iraq Liberation Act.[2] The new Act appropriated funds to Iraqi opposition groups in the hope of removing Saddam Hussein from power and replacing his regime with a democracy.

The Act also said that:

Nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize or otherwise speak to the use of United States Armed Forces (except as provided in section 4(a)(2)) in carrying out this Act.

Section 4(a)(2) states:

The President is authorized to direct the drawdown of defense articles from the stocks of the Department of Defense, defense services of the Department of Defense, and military education and training for [Iraqi democratic opposition] organizations.

The bombing campaign had been anticipated since February 1998 and incurred wide-ranging criticism and support, at home and abroad.[3] Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates initially announced they would deny US military the use of local bases for the purpose of air strikes against Iraq.[4]


Again sunshine why do you ignore facts to glom onto anything to avoid answering key question that punch holes into your hatred of George Bush.
Bush was a puppet just like Barry O is a puppet.





http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/khartoumbomb.html

girlyjihad

Pontotoc Bill;170404:
You claim that the Rules of Engagement do not exist? MORON!!

ROE are developed for every situation.

Since the Iraqis started the issue, they are the attackers, mental midget.

You are arguing a insipid and moot point.

You have lost, been proven a liar, and are now branded as a posterior orrifice ape.

Have you ever come across anyone as bone stupid as girlyjihad? No wonder Cuba and the Middle East are centuries behind.

Our lil coward is upset I WON'T ANSWER A QUESTION

Well I won’t answer his question, because he lies in his question, when he miss states my posting. I did not say, what his poor comprehension or lie says.

A truthful question, I will answer!

I will continue posting relative Articles regarding the inquirey in the murderous wars and the traitorous conspiracy that created the Wars on Iraqis and Afghanis.

The following Article deals with lighting up the conflict of interestes, profits, to be made by Warring!

The Article:

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

The Nation
Foreign Affairs
Iraq

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Carlyle Covers Up lookout
By Naomi Klein
This article appeared in the November 15, 2004 edition of The Nation.

Less than twenty-four hours after The Nation disclosed that former Secretary of State James Baker and the Carlyle Group were involved in a secret deal to profit from Iraq’s debt to Kuwait, NBC was reporting that the deal was 'dead.' At The Nation, we started to get calls congratulating us on costing the Carlyle Group $1 billion, the sum the company would have received in an investment from the government of Kuwait in exchange for helping to extract $27 billion of unpaid debts from Iraq.

We were flattered (sort of), until we realized that Carlyle had just pulled off a major public relations coup. When the story broke, the notoriously secretive merchant bank needed to find a way to avoid a full-blown political scandal. It chose a bold tactic: In the face of overwhelming evidence of a glaring conflict of interest between Baker’s stake in Carlyle and his post as George W. Bush’s special envoy on Iraq’s debt, Carlyle simply denied everything. The company issued a statement saying that it does not want to be involved in the Kuwait deal 'in any way, shape or form and will not invest any money raised by the Consortium’s efforts' and, furthermore, that 'Carlyle was never a member of the Consortium.' A spokesperson told the Financial Times that Carlyle had pulled out as soon as James Baker was appointed debt envoy, because his new political post made Carlyle’s involvement 'unsuitable.' Mysteriously, there was no paper trail — just Carlyle’s word that it had informed its business partners 'orally.'

You have to hand it to them: It was gutsy. In the leaked business proposal from the consortium to the Kuwaiti government — submitted almost two months after Baker’s appointment — the Carlyle Group is named no fewer than forty-seven times; it is listed first among the companies involved in the consortium; and its partner James Baker is mentioned by name at least eleven times. In interviews, other consortium members, including Madeleine Albright’s consulting firm, the Albright Group, confirmed that Carlyle was still involved, as did the office of the Prime Minister of Kuwait. Shahameen Sheikh, the consortium’s CEO, told me that when Baker was named envoy in December, Carlyle was 'very clear with us that they wanted to restrict their role to fund managers,' but she said the firm was very much still a part of the deal.

That was exactly what Carlyle spokesman Christopher Ullman had told me. He also admitted that Carlyle would land a $1 billion investment if the proposal was accepted. After I reported these facts, Ullman even called to thank me for quoting him accurately.

So when I heard about Carlyle’s about-face, I called Ullman to see what was up. I felt like I was talking to one of the brainwashed characters in The Manchurian Candidate, the Jonathan Demme remake about a Carlyle-esque company that conspires to put a mind-controlled candidate in the Oval Office. 'We learned today that we did not even join the consortium,' Ullman told me, drone-like. 'When I spoke to you yesterday, I did not know that.'

Amazingly, it worked. The story — which made front-page news around the world — vanished almost as soon as it had appeared in the press at home. The New York Times has not printed a word about Baker’s conflict, despite the fact that when Baker was first appointed envoy, it published an editorial calling on him to resign from Carlyle in order to 'perform honorably in his new public job.' The Kerry campaign has been equally silent, apparently for fear that any criticism would boomerang onto the Democrats because of Albright. This was Carlyle’s stroke of genius: When Baker was appointed, the consortium recruited Albright to front the deal; when they got caught, Carlyle denied all involvement in this 'unsuitable' activity and left a prominent Democrat holding the bag.

As the story disappeared under Carlyle’s spell, it was as if the entire US media had been implanted with Manchurian memory chips. Here was hard evidence that the Carlyle Group — the 'ex-Presidents' club,' run so much like a secret society that Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity once described researching the firm as 'shadowboxing with a ghost' — had participated in a scheme to use Baker to undermine US policy, possibly in violation of multiple conflict-of-interest regulations, including criminal statutes. Yet Carlyle was slipping out of reach once again.

Crucially, the central question remains unanswered by the White House: Have James Baker’s business interests compromised his performance as debt envoy? That question does not go away simply because $1 billion will stay in the coffers of a wealthy oil emirate rather than in a Carlyle equity fund. The week after losing the deal, Carlyle handed a record-breaking $6.6 billion payout to investors. 'It’s the best 18 months we ever had,' boasted Carlyle chief investment officer Bill Conway to the Financial Times. 'We made money and we made it fast.'

In Iraq, the last eighteen months have been markedly worse, and the stakes for Baker’s job performance there are considerably higher. This was underlined on October 13, when Iraq’s health ministry issued a harrowing report on its post-invasion health crisis, including outbreaks of typhoid and tuberculosis and soaring child and mother mortality rates. A week after the report came out, Iraq paid out another $195 million for war reparation debts, mostly to Kuwait. Meanwhile, the State Department announced that $3.5 billion for water, sanitation and electricity projects was being shifted to security in Iraq, claiming that, according to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, debt relief is on the way.

Is it? In fact, Iraq is being plunged deeper into debt, with $836 million in new loans and grants now flowing from the IMF and the World Bank. Meanwhile, Baker has not managed to get a single country to commit to eradicating Iraq’s debts. Iraq’s creditors know that while Baker was asking them to show forgiveness, his company was offering Kuwait a special side deal to push Iraq to pay up. It’s not the kind of news that tends to generate generosity and good will. And the timing couldn’t be worse: The Paris Club is about to meet to hash out a final deal on Iraq’s debt.

But that doesn’t happen until November 12. And if 2000 is any indication, by then Baker could be on to bigger deals. Look out for him in swing states, if another election needs stealing.

girlyjihad=leftist lunatic

Girlyjihad, you post and repost the same disinformation, leftist propaganda on more than one thread. Why are you so incredibly disingenuous, or are you really just dumb?

` ~galljdaj+;170635:
Well I won’t answer his question, because he lies in his question, when he miss states my posting. I did not say, what his poor comprehension or lie says.

Typical of the libtard moron. Refuses to answer a question, and then makes up one to simulate an answer.

Try again, IDIOT!!

Answer the original question.

The explanation will be complex, so you will have to get mama to explain it to you

Its similar to what a dental prosthesis can do for teeth, so I twist those panties you wear around your head so as to shrink your skull to match the two celled thing you call your brain. The bouncing back and forth semms to be causing you to have lil boy foot stamping spasams. When I get your skull to match you two cells you’ll likely get better.

Good luck, the Peoples of the Yukon will be pleased if you get better.

Sad sad really sad

` ~galljdaj+;171060:
Its similar to what a dental prosthesis can do for teeth, so I twist those panties you wear around your head so as to shrink your skull to match the two celled thing you call your brain. The bouncing back and forth semms to be causing you to have lil boy foot stamping spasams. When I get your skull to match you two cells you’ll likely get better.

Good luck, the Peoples of the Yukon will be pleased if you get better.

You have no ability to rationally defend your errant belief system.
Your even afraid to take ownership of the ridiculous stance you take by not answering a simple question that shreds all your pompous arrogant arguments.

` ~galljdaj+

` ~galljdaj+;171060:
Its similar to what a dental prosthesis can do for teeth, so I twist those panties you wear around your head so as to shrink your skull to match the two celled thing you call your brain. The bouncing back and forth semms to be causing you to have lil boy foot stamping spasams. When I get your skull to match you two cells you’ll likely get better.

Good luck, the Peoples of the Yukon will be pleased if you get better.

Your ignorance and stupidity are exceeded only by your arrogance, girlyjihad. LOLAY!!!!

` ~galljdaj+;171060:
Its similar to what a dental prosthesis can do for teeth, so I twist those panties you wear around your head so as to shrink your skull to match the two celled thing you call your brain. The bouncing back and forth semms to be causing you to have lil boy foot stamping spasams. When I get your skull to match you two cells you’ll likely get better.

Good luck, the Peoples of the Yukon will be pleased if you get better.

Your brain is so twisted that you cannot tell reality from fiction. To you, truth is a lie and a lie is the truth.

Girlyjihad Detector = Read what he says and take the exact opposite for the truth.