THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, ELEVENTH THREAD

Ican
with high respect and due regard may i humbly request you to wait for a while ( few days) to pour forth my views about this barbaric unprovoked criminal iraq war?
Await please.
Quote not Encyclo Brit.( mine is 1996).
Irrespective of our intellectual inadequacies let us uphold the rare product which is called TRUTH.

Every hour spent reading Banking on Baghdad will be well rewarded. The historical detail is fascinating; Edwin Black's mastery of it reads like a detective story and thriller combined, and the relevance of the past has seldom been so graphically portrayed. This is a gripping exposé of historic follies, fantasies and ferocity, taking place in a region that is today still a focus and storm center as it has so often been. Oil forms a twisting thread of wealth, corruption and greed. The cast of characters and their bizarre behavior could come out of a novel; but this is fact not fiction, more endlessly intriguing and absorbing than any novel could be.


Sir Martin Gilbert author of Churchill: a Life, Israel: A History,
First World War, and Second World War



In Banking on Baghdad, New York Times and international bestselling author Edwin Black chronicles the dramatic and tragic history of a land long the center of world commerce and conflict. Tracing the involvement of Western governments and militaries, as well as oil, banking, and other corporate interests, Black pinpoints why today, just as throughout modern history, the world needs Iraq's resources-and remains determined to acquire and protect them. Banking on Baghdad almost painfully documents the many ways Iraq's recent history mirrors its tumultuous past.

Banking on Baghdad is the first history of Iraq presented in a global context. Woven through the boardrooms and war rooms of London, Paris, Berlin, Istanbul, Washington, and the other centers that set the agenda for its tragic history, Black has pieced together the corporate hegemony, oil politics, religious extremism, Nazi alliances, and intersecting global upheaval--all with a compelling, contemporary perspective.

Now, with foreign troops once more occupying the "cradle of civilization," Banking on Baghdad gives us the opportunity to consider the present and future of Iraq through the lens of its complicated and turbulent history. While demonstrating that Iraq's tribal, religious, and political turmoil has combined to punish the nation, Black does not shy away from the uncomfortable truth that foreign governments--including our own--have played a defining role in creating the Iraq we know today. With his trademark mix of deeply mined history and investigative journalism, Black documents a long record of war profiteering in Iraq and takes a hard look at the corporations currently doing business there. With access to numerous oil company archives, the papers of a half dozen governments, and numerous other primary sources yielding some 50,000 documents gathered by an international team of some 30 researchers, Banking on Baghdad promises to tell a monumental story 7,000 years in the making. Banking on Baghdad has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

Vivid characters bring Banking on Baghdad to life. The followers of Islam consumed Iraq as the epicenter of a struggle between the minority Shiites and the Sunnis. The Mongol chieftain Hulagu utterly destroyed Iraq, but its remnant later came back to life. Winston Churchill solidly set the course of British petropolitics and military oil dependence on a collision course with Iraq and Iran, as the government-controlled company that became British Petroleum literally invented the geopolitical Middle East. During World War I, the British invaded Iraq for the oil they knew one day would be indispensable to all industry and militaries. C. S. Gulbenkian, the legendary Mr. Five Percent, through intrigue and high-drama created the Red Line Agreement monopoly, dividing Iraq's fabulous oil wealth between British, American, and French cartels. The Hashemites, from Sharif Hussein and King Faisal to his brutally-murdered progeny, fought alongside Lawrence of Arabia to achieve independence in Syria, but were given Iraq instead; in consequence the Arabs aborted a planned peaceful co-existence with Israel. The Mufti of Jerusalem, in his war against Zionism, using Iraq's oil and strategic location as bait, sealed an alliance with Hitler during World War II and lead a pro-Reich coup in Baghdad met by a British invasion to oust it. The post-World War II Ba'ath predecessors of Saddam Hussein ravaged Iraq's minorities and paved the way for the recently-deposed tyrant.

After Banking on Baghdad, no reader will ever see Iraq the same.

Regarding this I think there should be some way to make it unlawful for a president to make signing statements. To me it is deceitful and underhanded and I don't understand how a president can get away with it. I don't know if other presidents have done this; but Bush has done this so much that I am only now aware of this being done. Its like coming to an agreement between two parties and first one signs the agreement thinking thats the way it is going to be and then the other party signs the agreement changing the whole purpose of the agreement but its too late because the first party already signed the agreement. Those differences should be worked out before anyone signs and not allowed to change once a bill is finalized and one party already signs it.

Examples of the president's signing statements

I just don't understand why McCain fought so hard for the torture bill and then when Bush issued his signing statement taking away the whole purpose of the bill didn't say boo about it. Likewise with this Permanent Bases In Iraq Bill. Those who agreed with this bill should at least voice their displeasure over Bush signing it away. But I haven't heard anything from anyone.

Bomb blast in Baghdad's pet market kills dozens

Baghdad: The death toll in the bomb blast that ripped through a popular pet market in Baghdad on Friday rose to 45 dead, police said.

Police earlier reported 35 killed by the bomb blast at the Ghazil market, which has been bombed at least three times last year.

Police initially said the blast was caused by a bomb hidden in a box of birds, but they later said it was a female suicide bomber who carried out the attack that also wounded 75 people.

In another attack, eight people were killed and 10 wounded at a separate bird market in southern Baghdad, police said.

Witnesses said that ambulances and police were trying to evacuate the wounded.

The Ghazil market only opens on Fridays and is popular among Iraqi pet lovers.

Iraq failure equals success for neocons
Hazel Davies and Maureen Jack
Thursday January 31, 2008
The Guardian

It was fascinating reading Jonathan Steele's articles about the lack of planning for the occupation of Iraq (G2, January 21, 22 & 23). However, he assumes that this equates with failure and that the current mayhem is a catastrophe. For all decent people, of course, it is; but as Naomi Klein indicates in her book, The Shock Doctrine, the lack of planning was actually planned. For the neocons who run the US the disaster has been a success. The Americans have an excuse to have permanent bases as long as the insurgency lasts; a largely state-run economy has been opened to foreign capital; America has control of large oil reserves; the Middle East has a wedge of US military to control and threaten any uppity Islamic state that dares threaten its interests or those of Israel; Halliburton and other American firms have made a packet. What's to regret? The main questions are: why did Blair agree to go along with this agenda? And why was the British parliament so obtuse and supine that it agreed to it?

Jonathan Steele is correct to stress the part played by the incident at the al-Qa'id school in building up anger at US forces in Falluja. When a group of us from Christian Peacemaker Teams visited the town in June 2003 everyone we met told us about the incident, and said US troops had even fired on those trying to evacuate the wounded. Nor should we underestimate the impact of small discourtesies. I saw a US tank take a shortcut over a central reservation on a Falluja street, destroying a planter with an attractive display of flowers; I saw too the anger on the faces of Iraqis as they watched this.
St Andrews, Fife

Gates Letter Causes Furor in Germany

A strongly-worded letter by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates requesting the deployment of German combat troops and helicopters to southern Afghanistan has caused a major political backlash in Berlin.

Both the content and timing of Gates's blunt letter to his German counterpart Franz-Josef Jung, which was leaked yesterday by the center-left paper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, have left even staunchly pro-American politicians from the conservative CDU/CSU parties supporting Chancellor Merkel astounded and annoyed. The German response was swift. Speaking at a hastily arranged press conference in Berlin earlier today, CDU defense minister Jung offered this terse statement:



"I remain convinced that we should continue and fulfill our (current Bundeswehr) mandate in Afghanistan."


Even Chancellor Merkel's usually soft-spoken spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm weighed in on the discussion, emphasizing that his boss had already made it very clear on a number of occasions that a change in the Bundeswehr's current Afghanistan mandate (which needs yearly parliamentary approval) "is not a topic for discussion."

The Pentagon's aggressive attempt to get this key ally to cough up more troops for Afghanistan (right now, Berlin has 3,500 soldiers there, the third-blargest NATO contingent overall) comes at the very time that the German government is considering a new NATO request to deploy about 250 additional Bundeswehr troops as part of the Alliance's Quick Response Force (QRF) in northern Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the Gates letter had the effect of putting those CDU/CSU politicians on the political defensive when they were already arguing in favor of Germany taking over the dangerous QRF mission in the North.

For example, even someone like Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg--a prominent CSU Bundestag member who sits on the foreign relations and defense committees and travels to Washington frequently--felt compelled today to issue a press release calling the tone of Gates's letter "inappropriate" and urging the Pentagon and the rest of the U.S. administration to "straighten its lines of communication."

Ramafuchs wrote:

Ican
with high respect and due regard may i humbly request you to wait for a while ( few days) to pour forth my views about this barbaric unprovoked criminal iraq war?
Await please.
Quote not Encyclo Brit.( mine is 1996).
Irrespective of our intellectual inadequacies let us uphold the rare product which is called TRUTH.

If I understand you correctly, you are requesting that I not respond to any of your posts about the USA invasion of Iraq until you complete your argument that the USA invasion of Iraq was a "barbaric unprovoked criminal" act. And you make this request in the name of upholding "the rare product which is called TRUTH."

I'm intrigued by the uniqueness of your request. I shall comply with your request until whichever comes first: Saturday; or you post you have completed pouring forth your views on this topic. At either time I shall repeat my last post and expect a truthful relevant response to it from you.

BAGHDAD -- The U.S. military said Monday it accidentally killed nine Iraqi civilians during an operation targeting al-Qaida in Iraq _ the deadliest known case of mistaken identity in recent months.

In northern Iraq, Turkish warplanes on Monday bombed some 70 Kurdish rebel targets, the Turkish military said. It was the fifth aerial attack against Kurdish rebel bases there in two months.

The Iraqi civilians were killed Saturday near Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of the Iraqi capital, Navy Lt. Patrick Evans told The Associated Press. Three wounded civilians were taken to U.S. military hospitals nearby, he said.

Evans did not say exactly how the civilians died, but said the killings occurred as U.S. forces pursued suspected al-Qaida in Iraq militants. The incident is under investigation, he said.

Iraqi police said the victims, including two women, were in two houses in the village of Tal al-Samar, which was bombed by American warplanes late Saturday. They were all Sunni members of the al-Ghrir tribe, an officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The U.S. airstrike occurred after an American convoy came under enemy fire in Tal al-Samar and soldiers called for air support, the Iraqi officer said.

Shortly after the airstrike, American officers met with a Muslim sheik representing area residents, Evans said.

"We offer our condolences to the families of those who were killed in this incident, and we mourn the loss of innocent civilian life," he said in a statement e-mailed to the AP.

The Turkish bombings early Monday hit the Avasin-Basyan and Hakurk regions of northern Iraq, the Turkish military said on its Web site.

Turkey has frequently targeted members of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, in cross-border raids into Iraq, where thousands of the rebels are based. The PKK has been fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey for more than two decades.

Since Dec. 16, the Turkish military has confirmed five cross-border aerial raids into Iraq, though Iraqi Kurdish officials have reported other airstrikes. Turkey's military says the raids have killed as many as 175 PKK rebels.

Adem Uzun, a member of the rebel command, said 15 to 20 Turkish jets bombed rebel areas in northern Iraq on Monday, according to Firat, a Kurdish news agency. Uzun told a Denmark-based Kurdish television station that the rebels had not suffered any casualties, the agency reported.

Senior Iraqi Kurdish officials earlier Monday confirmed that Turkish jets bombed areas near the towns of Khnera, Khwakurd and Sidakan in Irbil province. The rebel group is believed to have a large base in Khnera, but it was unclear whether the base was damaged.

The United States _ which like Turkey and the European Union considers the PKK a terrorist organization _ has cautioned Ankara against a large incursion into Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, fearing it could disrupt one of Iraq's more stable regions.

Also Monday, Iraqi police said at least five Iraqis died in separate attacks, including a senior Iraqi Foreign Ministry official killed when gunmen opened fire on his car in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Mansour.

Gunmen packed into two cars shot dead Waleed Haithem, a Foreign Ministry attache, police said.

Two policemen were also killed when a roadside bomb exploded on their patrol in northeast Baghdad's Azamiyah area. And gunmen opened fire on a bus east of Baqouba, killing two passengers, police said.

Meanwhile, an al-Qaida front group said in a statement posted on the Web that it was launching its own campaign in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, and urged volunteers to carry out suicide attacks on U.S. troops, Iraqi Shiites and Kurdish troops.

Iraqi officials have said a military push to clear al-Qaida-linked insurgents from Mosul is imminent.

The Sunni militant group, known as Mosul's regional command of the Islamic State of Iraq, said its campaign would be a "vengeance raid" but gave no details.

Also, criticism mounted among some Sunni lawmakers over a new law that will allow thousands of Saddam Hussein-era officials to return to government jobs. One Sunni bloc's leader predicted the legislation would have a "short life."

The measure _ issued a day earlier by the Iraqi presidency council _ is the first of 18 key U.S.-set benchmarks to become law, and the Bush administration views it as central to mending deep differences between minority Sunni Arabs and Kurds and the majority Shiites who now wield power. But it was issued without the signature of Iraq's Sunni vice president, and the presidency council itself plans to seek changes in the bill _ clouding hopes it would encourage reconciliation.

Saleh al-Mutlaq, head of the National Dialogue Front, said the law "was approved by a strange way. ... We expect it to have a short life." His 11-seat bloc combined Monday with the Arab Independent bloc, which holds 11 of parliament's 275 seats.

If we could just find a way to convince those al-Qaeda people to stop killing Iraqis, we could reduce our propensity to make mistakes killing Iraqis, while trying to kill those al-Qaeda people in order to protect Iraqis.

ican711nm wrote:

If we could just find a way to convince those al-Qaeda people to stop killing Iraqis, we could reduce our propensity to make mistakes killing Iraqis, while trying to kill those al-Qaeda people in order to protect Iraqis.

So you are willing to admit that we are not currently experiencing success convincing AQ to stop?

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

ican711nm wrote:

If we could just find a way to convince those al-Qaeda people to stop killing Iraqis, we could reduce our propensity to make mistakes killing Iraqis, while trying to kill those al-Qaeda people in order to protect Iraqis.

So you are willing to admit that we are not currently experiencing success convincing AQ to stop?

Cycloptichorn

Obviously, not yet!

I am convinced that nothing will really stop al-Qaeda short of their extermination.