The dust had barely settled from the last column of departing U.S. armoured vehicles when Iraq's rival Sunni and Shi'ite factions resumed the kind of political infighting that threatens a lurch back into turmoil.
Within hours of the last U.S. troops rolling out of Iraq on Sunday, Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had asked parliament to sack his Sunni deputy, and security sources said an arrest warrant was issued for the Sunni vice president.
Add to this a parliamentary boycott announced Saturday by the secular Iraqiya bloc, backed by many Sunnis, and the risk is growing of an intensified power struggle between Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish politicians that could leave Iraq vulnerable to meddling by Sunni Arab nations and Shi'ite Iran.
"This political dispute between the different blocs especially Iraqiya and (Maliki), needs to be resolved... to fill the security vacuum left in the country by the Americans," said political analyst Kadhim al-Meqdadi.
So take a breath....you have 1/3 of the worlds population within a 6 hour flight; you have the first or second largest oil reserves in the world, you could be the next Dubai...but you can't get it together. How totally stupid are you?
Iraq needs leadership, it doesn't need further exploitation. Pull it together or simply be boring and completely average!!!
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Showing posts with label iraq. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iraq. Show all posts
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Iraq War Closed but Let's not forget...the 4,500 Americans who did not need to die!! The 30,000 Americans who did not need to be wounded and the 100,000 dead Iraqis...WOW
This month, nearly all U.S. troops in Iraq will come home — except, of course, for the 4,500 who died there.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney launched the Iraq war in March 2003 based on lies and misinformation. Soon it turned into a brutal occupation. Besides the 4,500 troops killed, more than 30,000 Americans were wounded, and at least 100,000 Iraqis were killed, most of them civilians.
The war cost us more than $1 trillion, while the cost to our international relations and our own democracy is immeasurable. Think of the words that Bush and Cheney have added to our lexicon: Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, Blackwater, WMD, Halliburton, waterboarding and more.
Bush and Cheney now boast about their misdeeds in this misbegotten war.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney launched the Iraq war in March 2003 based on lies and misinformation. Soon it turned into a brutal occupation. Besides the 4,500 troops killed, more than 30,000 Americans were wounded, and at least 100,000 Iraqis were killed, most of them civilians.
The war cost us more than $1 trillion, while the cost to our international relations and our own democracy is immeasurable. Think of the words that Bush and Cheney have added to our lexicon: Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, Blackwater, WMD, Halliburton, waterboarding and more.
Bush and Cheney now boast about their misdeeds in this misbegotten war.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Massacre by US Forces of Civilians at Haditha, Iraq…… ”Mission Accomplished,” said George W Bush
Iraqi civilians were being killed all the time. Maj. Gen. Steve Johnson, the commander of American forces in Anbar Province, in his own testimony, described it as “a cost of doing business.”
The documents — many marked secret — form part of the military’s own internal investigation, and co nfirm much of what happened at Haditha, a Euphrates River town where Marines killed Iraqis, including a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair, women and children, some just toddlers.
The stress of combat left some soldiers paralyzed, the testimony shows. Troops, traumatized by the rising violence and feeling constantly under siege, grew increasingly twitchy, killing more and more civilians in accidental encounters. Others became so desensitized and inured to the killing that they fired on Iraqi civilians deliberately while their fellow soldiers snapped pictures, and were court-martialed. The bodies piled up at a time when the war had gone horribly wrong.
That sense of American impunity ultimately poisoned any chance for American forces to remain in Iraq, because the Iraqis would not let them stay without being subject to Iraqi laws and courts, a condition the White House could not accept.
The military said it did not know from which investigation the documents had come, but the papers appear to be from an inquiry by Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell into the events in Haditha. The documents ultimately led to a report that concluded that the Marine Corps’s chain of command engaged in “willful negligence” in failing to investigate the episode and that Marine commanders were far too willing to tolerate civilian casualties.
Many of those testifying at bases in Iraq or back in the United States were clearly in the hot seat for not investigating an atrocity and may have tried to shape their statements to dispel any notion that they had sought to cover up the events.
One enlisted Marine testified: “I had Marines shoot children in cars…” The documents uncovered by The Times — which include handwritten notes from soldiers, waivers by Marines of their right against self-incrimination, diagrams of where dead women and children were found.
The documents — many marked secret — form part of the military’s own internal investigation, and co nfirm much of what happened at Haditha, a Euphrates River town where Marines killed Iraqis, including a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair, women and children, some just toddlers.
The stress of combat left some soldiers paralyzed, the testimony shows. Troops, traumatized by the rising violence and feeling constantly under siege, grew increasingly twitchy, killing more and more civilians in accidental encounters. Others became so desensitized and inured to the killing that they fired on Iraqi civilians deliberately while their fellow soldiers snapped pictures, and were court-martialed. The bodies piled up at a time when the war had gone horribly wrong.
That sense of American impunity ultimately poisoned any chance for American forces to remain in Iraq, because the Iraqis would not let them stay without being subject to Iraqi laws and courts, a condition the White House could not accept.
The military said it did not know from which investigation the documents had come, but the papers appear to be from an inquiry by Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell into the events in Haditha. The documents ultimately led to a report that concluded that the Marine Corps’s chain of command engaged in “willful negligence” in failing to investigate the episode and that Marine commanders were far too willing to tolerate civilian casualties.
Many of those testifying at bases in Iraq or back in the United States were clearly in the hot seat for not investigating an atrocity and may have tried to shape their statements to dispel any notion that they had sought to cover up the events.
One enlisted Marine testified: “I had Marines shoot children in cars…” The documents uncovered by The Times — which include handwritten notes from soldiers, waivers by Marines of their right against self-incrimination, diagrams of where dead women and children were found.
Friday, December 9, 2011
The price of Oil = The price of War for citizens of Falluja, Iraq & their Babies...
As U.S. forces pull out of Iraq, residents and officials in Falluja say they leave behind bullet-riddled homes, destroyed infrastructure and a worrying increase in birth defects and maladies in a city polluted by weapons and war chemicals.
Amir Hussain and Awfa Abdullah got married in Falluja in 2004 but their lives were turned upside by the birth of their two babies.
Their first child, a baby boy born in 2006, had brain damage and died last year. The second, a baby girl who was born in 2007, suffers from severe skin rashes and has one leg longer than the other.
"We've decided to stop having babies. We don't want any more, because it means new suffering and a new battle against new diseases," Hussain said. "It is our bad luck. Maybe because we got married in the wrong time and in the wrong place."
Falluja, in the desert province of Anbar, served as a base for Iraqi fighters after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and witnessed two major conflicts in 2004. U.S. troops used overwhelming force, tanks, fighter jets and helicopter gunships to crush insurgents there.
Falluja's residents await the U.S. withdrawal by year-end with a mixture of relief and fear that al Qaeda militants might return. Some are still seeking compensation for the suffering they endured.
At Falluja Hospital, pediatrician Samira al-Ani said the most insidious legacy of the war is seen every day in a startling increase in deformed newborns since 2005.
Amir Hussain and Awfa Abdullah got married in Falluja in 2004 but their lives were turned upside by the birth of their two babies.
Their first child, a baby boy born in 2006, had brain damage and died last year. The second, a baby girl who was born in 2007, suffers from severe skin rashes and has one leg longer than the other.
"We've decided to stop having babies. We don't want any more, because it means new suffering and a new battle against new diseases," Hussain said. "It is our bad luck. Maybe because we got married in the wrong time and in the wrong place."
Falluja, in the desert province of Anbar, served as a base for Iraqi fighters after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and witnessed two major conflicts in 2004. U.S. troops used overwhelming force, tanks, fighter jets and helicopter gunships to crush insurgents there.
Falluja's residents await the U.S. withdrawal by year-end with a mixture of relief and fear that al Qaeda militants might return. Some are still seeking compensation for the suffering they endured.
At Falluja Hospital, pediatrician Samira al-Ani said the most insidious legacy of the war is seen every day in a startling increase in deformed newborns since 2005.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Baghdad Texas Tea
USA oil drilling companies will make tens of billions of dollars from the new petroleum activity in Iraq long before any of the oil producers start seeing any returns on their investments.
Lukoil and many of the other international oil companies that won fields in the auction are now subcontracting mostly with the four largely American oil services companies that are global leaders in their field: Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Weatherford International and Schlumberger. Those four have won the largest portion of the subcontracts to drill for oil, build wells and refurbish old equipment.
“Iraq is a huge opportunity for contractors,” Alex Munton, a Middle East analyst for Wood Mackenzie, a research and consulting firm based in Edinburgh, said by telephone.
Mr. Munton estimated that about half of the $150 billion the international majors are expected to invest at Iraqi oil fields over the next decade would go to drilling subcontractors.
The 11 contracts Iraq signed with oil majors, including the six for the largest fields, are intended to raise Iraqi output from about 2.8 million barrels of oil a day now to 12 million barrels daily in 2017. On average in 2002, the year before the United States invasion, Iraq produced only 1.9 million barrels of oil a day.
Most outside experts, including those at the International Energy Agency in Paris, are skeptical of the production targets. The I.E.A. predicts that Iraq will not surpass six million barrels a day until 2030.
Investment ideas: HAL, BHI, WFT, & SLB
Lukoil and many of the other international oil companies that won fields in the auction are now subcontracting mostly with the four largely American oil services companies that are global leaders in their field: Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Weatherford International and Schlumberger. Those four have won the largest portion of the subcontracts to drill for oil, build wells and refurbish old equipment.
“Iraq is a huge opportunity for contractors,” Alex Munton, a Middle East analyst for Wood Mackenzie, a research and consulting firm based in Edinburgh, said by telephone.
Mr. Munton estimated that about half of the $150 billion the international majors are expected to invest at Iraqi oil fields over the next decade would go to drilling subcontractors.
The 11 contracts Iraq signed with oil majors, including the six for the largest fields, are intended to raise Iraqi output from about 2.8 million barrels of oil a day now to 12 million barrels daily in 2017. On average in 2002, the year before the United States invasion, Iraq produced only 1.9 million barrels of oil a day.
Most outside experts, including those at the International Energy Agency in Paris, are skeptical of the production targets. The I.E.A. predicts that Iraq will not surpass six million barrels a day until 2030.
Investment ideas: HAL, BHI, WFT, & SLB
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