The UN, US and Iraq IV

Whoa!

Whats happened ?

I've heard of an in depth comment, but nver one that wide.

B. ..... I have a photogenic memory

Another Setback For The Critics

now to await the meeting in Spain to find out who the money players are.

Oh, Walter, did you happen to notice that every one of those pie charts indicate perceptions were above 50% favorable?

No.

Besides, I only posted this in addition to dys' response and the quotation given there.

And sorry for this obviously widespread article!

GWB Sept 2000
"[E]ven the highest morale is eventually undermined by back to back deployments, poor pay, shortages of spare parts and equipment, and rapidly declining readiness. Not since the years before Pearl Harbor has our investment in national defense been so low as a percentage of GNP. Yet rarely has our military been so freely used - an average of one deployment every nine weeks in the last few years."

To deal with this problem, Governor Bush has called for a number of measures: He said that in his first military budget he will add $1 billion in salary increases. He will provide targeted bonuses for special skills. He has said that two-thirds of military family housing units are now substandard and must be renovated. He has called for improving the quality of training at our bases and at the national training centers.

But he has also said that our military requires more than good treatment. He has called for an end to open-ended deployments and unclear military missions. He has said he will "replace uncertain missions with well defined objectives." He has said that America will remain engaged in the world, providing leadership, and maintaining its commitments to friends and allies. But the goal of any military operation should be clear and readily achievable. Use of the military in this way will also enhance morale.

From those pie charts:
"How do you rate your personal Morale?"
34% Low to Very Low

"How do you rate your unit's morale?"
49% Low to Very Low
(Interesting here ... the troops have a higher opinion of individual morale than of unit morale)

"How closely is what you're doing now related to your training"
40% Nothing to do with training or Not close, 58% Close to Identical

An old military annecdote:
The general was inspecting the troops. He asked a grizzled old sergeant "How's the food, son?"
The sergeant replied "It's great, sir, when you can get enough of it."
Shocked, the general exclaimed "What? You're not being fed enough?"
To which the sergeant replied "Oh, no sir, there's more than plenty, as poor as it is"

On the great US victory at the UN (from today's NY Times) Appearance is all. Whack up a bit of plywood, paint it too look like a scene out the window of a villa on the Mediterranean, and voila...we are all happy Grecians.

Let's recall John DiIulio's experience with this White House. Now John is not yer typical radical liberal, of course, having headed up the Faith Based Inititatives program, and having written the following in the Weekly Standard a few years past where he described some of those lib types..."the radical-feminist faithful, the non-judgemental clergy, the Hollywood crowd, and the abortion-on-demand minions."

And Johnny (I'm sure we'd be buddies if we met over a glass of warm milk) said that pretty much everything this adminstration does is driven by the politics of appearance
legislative initiatives or policy proposals as far right as possible.

Timber, now there off you go to be fitted for your flight suit..
Try to be at the airport 1/2 hr early ..... make up and all ... break a leg and have a good landing :wink:

From Walter:



And here I thought it was jet lag..... :wink:

Unanimous vote meaning ....

Let's not overlook the fact that the only way the US could get a "unanimous" vote was to concede three important points:

Kofi Annan will be part of the development of the new Iraqi constitution.

That constitution will be worked on now and fast.

As soon as the constitution is voted in, US troops must get out of there.

Noooooo no no no no no
It's not about oil.
It's about oil annnnnd cronyism.


Houston Exec Gets Top Iraq Energy Post
By David Ivanovich
Houston Chronicle

Tuesday 23 September 2003

WASHINGTON -- Houston's Robert E. McKee III, a former ConocoPhillips executive, has been appointed the new senior adviser to the Iraqi Oil Ministry.

He will replace Philip J. Carroll, the one-time head of Shell Oil Co. who has overseen the often tumultuous effort to jump-start Iraq's oil sector for less than five months.

His selection as the Bush administration's energy czar in Iraq already is drawing fire from Capitol Hill 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 giant Houston oil well service and engineering firm.

The Coalition Provisional Authority, in a brief statement released from Baghdad Monday, said McKee would take over as senior adviser next month.

He will report to L. Paul Bremer, the civil administrator of occupied Iraq, and serve as the liaison with Iraq's newly reconstituted oil companies.

The statement did not say why Carroll was leaving, except to note he would "return to private life."

Carroll could not be reached for immediate comment, but his wife, Charlene, reached by telephone in Houston, said Carroll had decided "it was time to hand it over to somebody else."

McKee also could not be reached for comment, despite repeated attempts.

Robin West, chairman of PFC Energy, a Washington-based energy consultancy, said the change in leadership is nothing more than a normal rotation out of Iraq, similar to the departure of Peter McPherson as the Provisional Authority's director of economic development.

Carroll, West said, "tried to do his best ... to bring order from chaos, but there were forces there beyond his control -- or anybody else's frankly."

McKee's appointment, however, comes as Iraq is still struggling to boost much-needed oil exports and meet basic domestic needs like gasoline and cooking oil.

Iraq has been able to ship only about 1 million barrels a day from its southern terminal, the London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies noted in a report.

That's a far cry from the export levels Bush administration officials had hoped to see by this time. But Iraq's oil workers have been forced to reinject the bulk of the crude production from the country's huge northern field of Kirkuk back into the ground, because a critical pipeline to Turkey has been shut down by repeated acts of sabotage.

On Sunday, Iraq produced 1.9 million barrels of oil, a record since the war, Bremer told a Senate panel. But he warned: "There will be bad days ahead. The saboteurs ... know how to attack ... where it hurts."

The chief responsibility of the senior oil adviser is to oversee the reestablishment of a functioning energy sector, purged of Baathist Party elements.

In a largely symbolic move to emphasize that transfer of power, Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, Iraq's newly appointed oil minister, will confer this week with other representatives from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in Vienna, Austria.

McKee's appointment already is coming under scrutiny because of his role as chairman of Houston-based Enventure Global Technology, an oil-field joint venture owned by Shell and Halliburton.

Halliburton's role in Iraq has been highly controversial, since the Corps of Engineers chose the firm once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney for the job of repairing Iraq's energy infrastructure without seeking bids from competing companies.

"The administration continues to create the impression that the fox is in charge of the hen house," said Rep. Henry Waxman of California, ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee and a persistent critic of the Halliburton contract.

"Given Mr. McKee's close relationship with Halliburton, he's an odd choice to hold them accountable for the billions of dollars they are charging American taxpayers."

Officials from both ConocoPhillips and Enventure declined to discuss McKee's appointment Monday.

McKee, a native of Wyoming, earned a bachelor's degree in petroleum engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and a master's in industrial management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 1967, he joined what was the Conoco in New Orleans and, over the next 36 years, worked his way up the ranks of the Houston-based oil giant.

In 1992, he was named executive vice president, responsible for the company's oil and gas exploration and production business, a position he would hold for a decade.

He retired in April, leaving what had become ConocoPhillips a wealthy man. McKee ranked second in the Houston Chronicle's latest list of 100 highest-paid executives, taking home $26.2 million in total compensation last year.

As the senior oil adviser, McKee will be responsible for both establishing energy policy for Iraq's new oil industry as well as operating a large petroleum operation, West noted. McKee is viewed as more of an operations man.

McKee also serves as co-chair of the volunteer committee for Super Bowl XXXVIII, to be played in Houston next year.

-------

Why do they feel they have to lie to us?

America's Hidden Battlefield Toll
Jason Burke in London and Paul Harris in New York
The Observer

Sunday 14 September 2003

New figures reveal the true number of GIs wounded in Iraq
The true scale of American casualties in Iraq is revealed today by new figures obtained by The Observer, which show that more than 6,000 American servicemen have been evacuated for medical reasons since the beginning of the war, including more than 1,500 American soldiers who have been wounded, many seriously.

The figures will shock many Americans, who believe that casualties in the war in Iraq have been relatively light. Recent polls show that support for President George Bush and his administration's policy in Iraq has been slipping.

The number of casualties will also increase pressure on Bush to share the burden of occupying Iraq with more nations. Attempts to broker an international alliance to pour more men and money into Iraq foundered yesterday when Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, brusquely rejected a French proposal as 'totally unrealistic'.

Three US soldiers were killed last week, bringing the number of combat dead since hostilities in Iraq were declared officially over on 1 May to 68. A similar number have died in accidents. It is military police policy to announce that a soldier has been wounded only if they were involved in an incident that involved a death.

Critics of the policy say it hides the true extent of the casualties. The new figures reveal that 1,178 American soldiers have been wounded in combat operations since the war began on 20 March.

It is believed many of the American casualties evacuated from Iraq are seriously injured. Modern body armour, worn by almost all American troops, means wounds that would normally kill a man are avoided. However vulnerable arms and legs are affected badly. This has boosted the proportion of maimed among the injured.

There are also concerns that many men serving in Iraq will suffer psychological trauma. Experts at the National Army Museum in London said studies of soldiers in the First and Second World Wars showed that it was prolonged exposure to combat environments that was most damaging. Some American units, such as the Fourth Infantry Division, have been involved in frontline operations for more than six months.

Andrew Robertshaw, an expert at the museum, said wars also claimed casualties after they were over. 'Soldiers were dying from injuries sustained during World War I well into the 1920s,' he said.

British soldiers are rotated more frequently than their American counterparts. The Ministry of Defence has recently consulted the National Army Museum about psychological disorders suffered by combatants in previous wars in a bid to avoid problems.

The wounded return to the USA with little publicity. Giant C-17 transport jets on medical evacuation missions land at Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington, every night.

Battlefield casualties are first treated at Army field hospitals in Iraq then sent to Landstuhl Regional Medical Centre in Germany, where they are stabilised.

Andrews is the first stop back home. As the planes taxi to a halt, gangplanks are lowered and the wounded are carried or walk out. A fleet of ambulances and buses meet the C-17s most nights to take off the most seriously wounded. Those requiring urgent operations and amputations are ferried to America's two best military hospitals, the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre, near Washington, and the National Naval Medical Centre, Bethesda.

The hospitals are busy. Sometimes all 40 of Walter Reed's intensive care beds are full.

Dealing with the aftermath of amputations and blast injuries is common. Mines, home-made bombs and rocket-propelled grenades are the weapons of choice of the Iraqi resistance fighters. They cause the sort of wounds that will cost a soldier a limb.

The less badly wounded stay overnight at the air base, where an indoor tennis club and a community centre have been turned into a medical staging facility. Many have little but the ragged uniforms on their backs. A local volunteer group, called America's Heroes of Freedom, has set up on the base to provide them with fresh clothes, food packages and toiletries. 'This is our way of saying, "We have not forgotten you,"' said group founder Susan Brewer.

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Here is the connection between Iraq and al-Qaida
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1063759,00.html

Eh, Tartarin, that sounds a bit optimistic ...

Kofi Annan - or rather, his Special Representative - will get to "lend the unique expertise of the United Nations to the Iraqi people in this process of political transition" - "at the time of the convening of the conference or, as circumstances permit".

The US-appointed governing council will have to come up with a timetable about when they will get to work on the Constitution.

And though the resolution "recognizes the "temporary nature" of the power exercised by the Coalition Provisional Authority", thats not by a long stretch ordering US troops to get out as soon as the constitution is voted in, is it?

Course, I'm going on the summary at the UN site, cause the actual resolution text there is in PDF, and I cant read those ...

[my translation, hence the bad English]

As to our good-hearted and deeply moral drive into Iraq...to help the poor downtrodden Iraqis, of course...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1062451,00.html

Well, blatham, whether you consider the US to have "liberated" or "occupied" Iraq, in either case it does make sense for it to take on a special (financial) responsibility for its immediate future prospects ... Post-invasion, Iraq is a different case than Ethiopia or Mozambique. Interesting update on Liberia here, btw.