I'd like to see wide coverage not just of Iraqi deaths but of the oil production agreements the Iraqi parliament is to sign with US and British oil companies. The media don't seem to think of it as "news," but these agreements could funnel most of the profits from oil sales to the companies instead of to Iraq. Since Iraq desperately needs money, why in the world don't they refuse to sign the agreements and ask their neighbors for help in restarting their oil production? Are they or are they not "sovereign?" Is the current surge in effect because Iraq needs to sign these agreements to "justify" our remaining to protect the oil companies for the 25-30 year periods of their leases? Sure would need those permanent bases and the largest embassy in the world, too. (Google "Greg Muttitt" for info. In addition, a letter writer to the Wash. Post noted that the companies are not required to hire Iraqi employees or to invest any of their profits into Iraq and are guaranteed profits for 25 years.)

Why am I not surprised? A few years ago, my views of John McCain were quite different. During the 2000 presidential campaign, he was "swiftboated" and made to appear even less of a good leader than George the Idiot's first reign of disaster. But that's all be forgotten by Mr.McCain. He's become a brown nosing, non-leader.
And of course he's going to say things are improving in Iraq. What is the most important part of Norman Solomon's article is the very true fact that we always see things only as they effect the USA. We are rarely allowed to see the other side of the story. Nothing in the US media is "fair and balanced."
The only thing that matters is if we got what we wanted. There isn't even an attempt to justify the ends through the means employed.
Of course Dick and George and many other neo-cons haven't leaned the lessons from Vietnam because they have never fought to defend this country. Sadly, McCain has fought and suffered in the sevice of the USA, but in today's world he can't make any comparisoms or mention any lessons we should have learned from Vietnam. That's simply taboo.
Arrogance is a roadblock on the highway of wisdom.

Bernice,

Colin Powell warned the Bush administration that if they attack Iraq then the Pottery Barn rule applies "You break it, you own it"

This wasn't a warning, rather, it became administration policy.

Bernice: My take on the "Hydocarbon Law" before the Iraqi government for passage, (its passage is one of the "benchmarks" neatly tucked into the supplemental funding bill), is extortion by the U.S. government. In effect, this benchmark tells the Iraqi's in no uncertain terms that if they don't turn over thier oil to Western corporations, the U.S. will continue to destroy their country and kill their citizens until they do. In essence, "Your oil or your life". That's why the Iraqis' are in such a bind. They are now confronted with a choice between giving up their oil and their economic future, or have no future at all.

CALL TO ACTION: I know Congress is in recess, but write them anyway. Tell them to "strip out" the Hydrocarbon Law
as a benchmark in the current supplemental funding bill BEFORE it goes to the president's desk for signature or veto!

#
fpal April 2nd, 2007 12:41 pm

Bernice,

"Colin Powell warned the Bush administration that if they attack Iraq then the Pottery Barn rule applies "You break it, you own it"

This wasn't a warning, rather, it became administration policy."

What a great rule! I think that under that rule we should immediately withdraw all of our troops. Then we should load Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Libby, Feith, Wolfowitz, and the rest of the Neocons into a plane, send it to Iraq, and dump them out. As the empty plane taxis down the runway to prepare to take off and return to the U.S. the pilot can yell to them, "Pottery Barn rule".

Lobo Gris

Bernice, the people signing those PSAs wouldn't be there to sign if the Americans weren't there protecting them.

REBEL FARMER

What you saying is true and correct....

The OTHER MAJOR COVER UP is the number of Iraqi Deaths....

Think about it.... If the US is supposedly fighting a so called "war on terrorism", wouldn't follow logically that the US military would want to know the precise METRIC on the causality rate of Iraq's civilians....

This would provide the US military valuable information in how efficient the military strategy would eventually be. In terms of minimizing collateral damage, for fear of creating more terrorists....

But then again, absolutely NOTHING about this worst foreign policy disaster in American history is LOGICAL.....

Except of course OIL....OIL....OIL....

Bernice, re your other question "are they or are they not sovereign?", of course they aren't sovereign, they're an occupied country. We wrote their constitution, we pick who can run for office, we've created a Green Zone their leaders live in at our pleasure. If we leave, all hell will break loose at once. If we stay, it will break loose bit by bit, but it will get there. The utter ineptitude of this administration has opened a Pandora's box that can't be closed. We've started a bloodbath that will take years to resolve, and the longer we're there, the longer it will go on. The police force we're training is infiltrated with death squads. Most of the professional class, especially doctors (and they had one of the world's best health care systems until we got there) has been killed or fled the country. We cancelled the oil for food program and child malnutrition is skyrocketing. There is no stopping it from becoming a theocracy like Iran, but strewn with tortured corpses. You name it, we broke it. And this Bush administration really doesn't care. They've got their eye on the ball: OIL.

Hey, Rebel Farmer, I really like your point.

kathyodat April 2nd, 2007 2:18 pm

"If we leave, all hell will break loose at once. If we stay, it will break loose bit by bit, but it will get there. The utter ineptitude of this administration has opened a Pandora's box that can't be closed. We've started a bloodbath that will take years to resolve, and the longer we're there, the longer it will go on."

We could stop a blood bath from occuring after our departure. It could be done by providing the Sunni minority with relocation assistance and money. Even by allowing significant numbers of them to relocate to the U.S. Of course that is the one option that Bush and his minions refuse to consider, because then his oil company budddies don't get the oil and Iraq becomes a shiite theocracy aligned with Iran. That would also be tantamount to Bush admitting failure and God forbid that ever happening. (all sarcasm fully intended)

Lobo Gris

Lobo Gris

Glad to hear there's a solution even if it's a pipe dream.

For some reason, Colin Powell's version of the Pottery Barn Rule "If you break it, You own it" appears to be supplanting the actual warning signs that I've seen in small antique stores and other retail shops with fragile merchandise here in the Midwest.

Those real world signs (usually handwritten or printed, and rather discreet) usually state: "You break it, You buy it." The difference is more than just semantics, particularly where waging war is concerned.

As for Senator McCain, he typifies the major enduring difference in perspective between many infantry and air power guys, enlisted men and officers, where "learning the lessons of Vietnam" are concerned.

Like Robert McNamara, Curtis LeMay and others who have gone before, men who drop bombs from on high are distanced from the sober political realities on the ground. In victory, they tend to take too much credit, and in stalemate or defeat, it's always because the bombing campaign was not intensive enough, or else it was imprecisely targeted. A winning strategic or tactical mix lies always just beyond the horizon, if only the civilian policymakers would just hunker down and persevere.

For awhile, it looked like John McCain was going to perform a valuable public service by championing the Geneva Conventions in the face of Bush's enemy combatant torture policies based on his personal heroism as a POW. No such luck. Courtesy of the shameful bipartisan collapse in Congress on the Military Commission's Act just before the 2006 elections and the Supreme Court's apparent acquiescence in it, the new Congress will have to undo the dirty work and it's not at all clear that Senator McCain will play a constructive role in that process.

George Bush rejected the Iraq Study Group approach and gave McCain a surge/escalation instead, giving all concerned a worsened situation. Together, McCain and Bush/Cheney now stand completely out of touch with the flow of events in the Middle East and the downward spiral of ongoing military realities in the Iraqi civil war and US occupation.

As for the oil law and the PSA's, it's all revealing on the issue of motives for the invasion but I suspect any such victory for Big Oil will prove ephemeral. When a truly sovereign Iraqi government emerges, I'll bet the whole model is junked in favor of a system more like Hugo Chavez's.

But McNamara was smart enough to resign. Too bad he waited so long to tell the American public the truth.

Lobo - Are you suggesting that Sunnis should give up their homeland and immigrate to the U.S. for the mere purpose of staying alive because of the mess the U.S. has created? I think that you need to look at that suggestion a little more closely. Trying to imagine yourself in their shoes (the Sunni's) might help to invision the true consequences of what you are suggesting.

Bill - Thanks for the reminder of the distinction between "buy it" and "own it". BIG difference!

By the way - Just spent a couple of hours today at a presentation by Kucinich. He recognized the significance and the meaning of the "Hydrocarbon Law" benchmark buried in the Supplemental passed by both houses of Congress last week. He informed House members of the meaning of this benchmark. There is activity to have it striped from the bill before it gets to Shrub's desk. Yeah!!!!

By the way, after seeing him today, I won't vote for any other Dem candidate. Period. I don't care if he's short and maybe not the prettiest face in the line up. He is brilliant, articulate, passionate, and has integrity.

Fate is the course when men fail to act. We as a nation have failed to act and now everything is in the hands of Fate. We have failed completely in Iraq. It seems that the one thing this administration still has the chance of getting is the oil in Iraq; which is the true reason we invaded anyway.
In an earlier post, I listed many quotes from Sun Tzu's short list on how to win a war. Even if this war was justified, we lost before the first soldier arrived.
We failed to understand our foe - both the culture and it's history. We have not treated captured enemies and treated them kindly. No war should be fought without the neccessary supplies. We failed to invade with a sufficient number of soldiers and as a result, the war has become a protracted one. Sun Tzu said that no war has ever been won in this manner. I could go on but it's been obvious for a long time that the Generals and Colonels who know war were ignored and the military saps willing to say what the President wanted to hear were left to lead our brave soldiers to their deaths.
Now, in my mind, the best and only option is to leave. And leave we must; in an orderly fashion. There must be no bases left behind. The oil should be left to the people of Iraq. It's their oil, not ours.
Dick Cheney's constant claim that it's ridiculus to tell your enemy when you are leaving just doesn't hold water. As it is now, they're glad to have us there so as to improve their fighting skills. What's going to happen that's so terrible if we decide to leave? They'e cetainly not going to follow us back here to the states. If anything, they'll be sad to see us leave because there is practically nobody left to kill.
Once we do leave, the people of Iraq will be forced to seek a political solution. And if it becomes a Shite theocracy, we have no one to blame but ourselves. And I don't think the US will apply the Pottery Barn rule to ourselves. No, the people in Iraq will be left to clean up the mess.
It's good to know that Reid is willing to finally use control of the purse to force an and to this all. But what is really needed is impeachments and trials for war crimes. It won't bring back the dead, but it will bring some justice by holding those who started this war accountable. It will also set a precedent for future administrations who ignore the world and its own people.
As to "Fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here." all I can say is that the USA has plenty of its own home grown terrorists to worry about. Ashcroft and the press barely mentioned a man caught a few years ago somewhere near Texas who had enough fertilizer to use as an explosive that what Timothy McVeigh did would have been like an M-80 compared to the explosive power this man had in his possession. But we can't here news about Americans wanting to commit terrorist acts. Only Arabs do that sort of thing.

Rebel Farmer April 2nd, 2007 7:40 pm

"Lobo - Are you suggesting that Sunnis should give up their homeland and immigrate to the U.S. for the mere purpose of staying alive because of the mess the U.S. has created? I think that you need to look at that suggestion a little more closely. Trying to imagine yourself in their shoes (the Sunni's) might help to invision the true consequences of what you are suggesting."

The fact is that there are no good solutions. The one I proposed is the only one that avoids the inevitable blood bath that is already ongoing and will intensify when we leave.

If anyone has a better one I'm all ears.

Lobo Gris

hybridoma2001 April 2nd, 2007 9:28 pm

"Fate is the course when men fail to act. We as a nation have failed to act and now everything is in the hands of Fate. We have failed completely in Iraq. It seems that the one thing this administration still has the chance of getting is the oil in Iraq; which is the true reason we invaded anyway."

I have to disagree. We acted when we had no reason to which put us in an impossible situation for which there is no good solution. As for the oil, we won't see any of it, whether we stay or go. If we stay the Sunni insurgents will continue to disrupt supplies, and if we go, the Shiites are going to clean house on the Sunnis. The end result is a Shiite religious theocracy aligned with Iran. As for the contracts we are forcing them to sign, as per George Bush's quote about the Constitution, they are just g*d*mned pieces of paper.

Lobo Gris

I should like to add one more name to the "too little, too late" roster for Viet Nam and Iraq. . . McNamara, McCain AND Colin Powell.

>The fact is that there are no good solutions.

There are solutions. We just do not look at solutions that
suggest that the U.S.
troops/soldiers/mercenaries/diplomats/embassies/scum and all the
other shit that weve piled up must be removed immediately. We
must eat crow and involve the international community sincerely in trying to settle the dispute. Chances are the Iraqis would be far more amenable to listen to the Iranians and Syrians and Saudis
than to us. There are close to 200 other countries in the world outside the U.S. ! Who would have thunk that !!

I just spent 2 hours listening to Dennis tonight and he said there is a reasonable solution. Get out, and as we leave, be replaced with regional and UN peacekeeing missions. Take the $93 billion appropriation and use it to repair and restore Iraq, having Iraqis to do their own restoration. No Halliburtons allowed. I think he's right, if we get them busy, it will help to get them to stop fighting with each other. Of course, I don't think he will get elected or anyone else will carry out his plan. Too bad. If he does, I will vote for him, otherwise, back to the Greens or Ralph Nader.

He took questions at the end, and I had one. I asked him if the unthinkable happened and he didn't get the Democratic nomination, would he support a Democratic candidate who wouldn't end the war. He said he lived by imagining how it should be and then reaching for it. He then expanded on that theme until he had the crowd whooping. I understand it wasn't politic to give a yes/no answer. Maybe down the road he might be drafted as an Independent although I think he's pretty well married to the undeserving Democrats. Still, it worked for Lieberman.

He did have some bad news. He took the oil benchmark issue to the House Democratic leadership, said it was immoral and wrong and had to come out of the appropriation bil, they agreed and said they would pull it out, and then didn't.

Hi Lobo Gris. What you say is true. The failure to act I was referring to is the USA after it became obvious this invasion was a big lie and mistake. To be fair, it wasn't "we the people" so much as the media and our representatives in government. There were a lot of people, and continue to be a lot of people making daily, visible protests against the war and Bush/Cheney. But "we the people" continue to be ignored.
Oil. Yes, you or I won't see any of it, but I gaurantee you the major American and British oil firms will see about 80% of it. When it comes to oil firms, these oil contracts are definitely not just pieces of paper.
I also believe that the end result will be a Shite theocracy, and that the ethnic strife will continue. As it is now, they have been killing each other and disrupting oil lines for years now.
And that is why I used an old proverb at the beginning of my entry here. Men, in positions of power, failed to act, and now everything is in Fate's hands. But please, lets just leave. We are doing nobody any good by staying.

Dennis Kucinich may have quite reasonable stands on the issues, but he is no more than a lottery candidate -- a one in a million shot. Senator Russ Feingold is someone who, though slightly less progressive than Kucinich, progressives could have supported if he had run, but he realized the Presidency was not a realistic goal. He would have been more than a lottery candidate, though he recognized his chances were less than one in a hundred, and he saw no reason to embark on a narcissistic Quixotic campaign.

With that in consideration, it appears that progressives are wasting their time with Kucinich or any presidential campaign, and probably should focus more energy on alternative means of promoting progressive messages.

I'm with Kucinich now, as he's talking impeachment -- Pelosi in '07, Kucinich in '08. (Pelosi President, Warner Vice President, Pelosi leads off a rotation of selections for a "Lincoln" cabinet; stipulate neither Pelosi nor Warner, or any cabinet member can run for Pres. in '08 -- they are to deal with Iraq and the injustice of terrorism )

By sponsering Kucinich you can support the number one and most expediant action available for bringing security to America and the World: the process of impeachment of Bush/Cheney; emphasis on process.

Also, if Greens would bring their power to the Kucinich campaign, a campaign that artlculates 98% of the Green platform, articulating it clearer and at a nation level far higher then anyone else on or below the Green horizon, they could help Kucinich to start polling at 3-5% and eventually to that magic number around 7-9% where the mainstream media will add Kucinich to the primary debates.

This would be a major victory! It might not gain the White House for Kucunich, but it would inject a level of adult maturity to the debate and bring the Progressive argument back to the mainstream dialogue after a what? A 75 year absence -- not a bad step at all, actually a monumental one, doubly so if the early part of the campaign can bring about the process of impeachment.

We're bombing the Iraqis to hell and targeting Iran as we type: dialogue impeachment through the Kucinch campaign and let's start bending that arc of truth to justice!

I agree. As a Democrat, Kucinich will at least be able to participate in the debates as he did in 04. I heard even some mainstream commentators remark that he (and Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun) were bringing up more substantive issues than the other candidates. If we progressives support him wholeheartedly, instead of being distracted by Obama, Edwards, etc., he can make an impact on this campaign.

#
gyptian April 3rd, 2007 3:05 am

">The fact is that there are no good solutions.

There are solutions. We just do not look at solutions that
suggest that the U.S.
troops/soldiers/mercenaries/diplomats/embassies/scum and all the
other shit that weve piled up must be removed immediately. We
must eat crow and involve the international community sincerely in trying to settle the dispute. Chances are the Iraqis would be far more amenable to listen to the Iranians and Syrians and Saudis
than to us. There are close to 200 other countries in the world outside the U.S. ! Who would have thunk that !!"

We should be eating crow and plenty of it. There is however no indication that the international community has any interest whatsoever in bailing us out of the mess that Bush and the neo-cons have created, regardless of how much crow we eat.

Lobo Gris

hybridoma2001 April 3rd, 2007 5:34 am

"Oil. Yes, you or I won't see any of it, but I gaurantee you the major American and British oil firms will see about 80% of it. When it comes to oil firms, these oil contracts are definitely not just pieces of paper."

Don't count on it.

A short list of some of the countries that have nationalized oil assets originally developed by international oil companies.

Saudi Arabia and Iran in the 70's

Mexico in the 80's

Venezuela in the 00's

And we already know we can't enforce the contracts militarily.

The contracts currently being forced on the Iraqis heavily favor the oil companies and are far from the standard contracts that they operate under in other countries.

With a 95% certainty I assure you they will not stand beyond the length of our illegal occupation. China and Russia both are already chomping at the bit to go in and help the Iraqis develop their oil assets after we leave.

Lobo Gris

kathyodat April 3rd, 2007 4:06 am

"I just spent 2 hours listening to Dennis tonight and he said there is a reasonable solution. Get out, and as we leave, be replaced with regional and UN peacekeeing missions."

I like Kucinich but that assumes that the international community has an interest in helping us clean up the mess that Bush and the neo-cons have created.

We are neither well liked or respected by most of the world, Bush has destroyed what goodwill there was, and a large percentage of them are no doubt privately enjoying watching us stew in our own juices.

Lobo Gris

>I like Kucinich but that assumes that the international community
> has an interest in helping us clean up the mess that Bush and
> the neo-cons have created.

The problem is that you assume 'we' the united states actually has an interest in cleaning up the mess. We are not interested in cleaning up the mess. If bush agrees he created the mess and is genuinely interested in fixing it, the only solution would be complete extraction of anything american from Iraq. This will never happen. the intent is to keep american comtrol over iraq for the long run and prop up a compliant government. Its only a question of time before we insert Saddam the Second in there.

gyptian April 4th, 2007 12:05 pm

"The problem is that you assume 'we' the united states actually has an interest in cleaning up the mess."

You misunderstood my point. I have never claimed that Bush or any of the political front runners for 2008 have any interest in cleaning up the mess Bush and the neo-cons made.

You said:

"We must eat crow and involve the international community sincerely in trying to settle the dispute."

My point was that the international community has no interest in helping us no matter how much crow we were to eat. Most are quite happy to sit back and watch us wallow in the mess that was created by Bush. Most would be happy to see us become much less powerful than we are so that we no longer have the ability to bully others and flought international law.

Lobo Gris

>Most would be happy to see us become much less powerful than >we are so that we no longer have the ability to bully others >and flought international law.

I tend to agree with the international community on this one.
However if there was genuine interest by the americans in solving this problem the international community will definitely welcome it. The problem is that bush and his cronies have lost so much credibility that even if he bends over backwards and kisses ass there are no takers.

We cannot in any event blame the international community in
any way for the mess we created. Either we wait till this moron disappears and hope the next administration fixes it
( hillary will probably increase the friggin troop strength in keeping with the size of her giant sized cojones) OR we sit back and watch the tragedy unfold before our eyes and do nothing about it which is what we are doing now as a society.

Are they or are they not "sovereign?" Is the current surge in effect because Iraq needs to sign these agreements to "justify" our remaining to protect the oil companies for the 25-30 year periods of their leases? Sure would need those permanent bases and the largest embassy in the world, too.
http://docs.indymedia.org/pub/Main/AlexRid/all1.htm