Thread: Iraq

Somebody mentioned on another thread on this site that Iraq is exporting some crude despite the chaotic environment. But it is less than what was being exported when Saddam was in power.

That may or may not be a fact -- their export of oil -- yet how much as each barrel cost since the military adventure stated? I won't even mentioned the loss of lives on both sides since that would really be a disgustingly low blow, but just in the financial cost of such an adventure.

Well, before the war began we could say the cost of Iraqi oil would also include the costs of keeping Saddam bottled up: no-fly zones, naval task force(s) steaming in the Persian Gulf, air bases in a few gulf nations, all the maintainence and upkeep, personnel, etc.

However, now, since Saddam was ousted that cost has increased how many fold? 20 times? 25 times? 40 times? 50 times? 100 times?

On the world market, well, that cost can be easily measured by the cost of a barrel of crude before the invasion and what it is today. But if we limit that cost to just Iraqi exports of crude, what would that price be per barrel? $1,000 a barrel? $5,000 a barrel? $10,000 a barrel?

I suppose it could be easily measured by the cost of the occupation -- in hundrends of billions of taxpayer dollars -- divided by the barrels of oil exported from Iraq since the occupation.

Mighty expensive oil ... and that is not counting the loss of life on both sides.

They are in the process of letting infrastructure contracts to outside companies world-wide. I wouldn't be surprised to see China show up to drill and produce. They will end up richer than the Sauds.

Originally Posted by Quips

Somebody mentioned on another thread on this site that Iraq is exporting some crude despite the chaotic environment. But it is less than what was being exported when Saddam was in power.

That may or may not be a fact -- their export of oil

First off, if you're going to cite what I said, identify me. Don't act like some anonymous entity chimed in on something and then question the factual validity of the claim.

As for the factual basis, do a little research - or if you would have me do the heavy lifting, here is my source: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L04489410.htm

I may or may not feel the need to respond to the rest - I have a feeling you've made up your mind on why we went into Iraq long ago, and no amount of argument is going to convince you otherwise. For the time being, I'll just say this: if we wanted Iraq's oil, and if that was the real reason for going there, we simply would've dispatched whatever force was necessary to secure their oil fields and refineries. Our military is certainly capable of handling that, yet we didn't do it. Maybe the reason for that is because it has nothing to do with the actual mission over there.

Putin Tells Bush Russia Doesn't Need a Democracy Like Iraq's
July 15 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. President George W. Bush held up Iraq today as a model of democracy for Russia to follow. Russian President Vladimir Putin was quick to say he wasn't interested.

Bush made clear before arriving in St. Petersburg for talks with Putin he would raise concerns Russia was rolling back some of the democratic advances made in the 1990s, a charge Putin firmly denies. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have all spoken out on the issue over the last year.

``I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like Iraq where there's a free press and free religion,'' Bush told a news conference with Putin after their talks. ``I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same thing.''

``We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, I will tell you quite honestly,'' Putin shot back.

Bush said he understood Russian democracy would develop in its own way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/wo...b67&ei=5087%0A

Dismembering the body politic in Iraq
By Ahmed Janabi

Thursday 22 June 2006, 8:31 Makka Time, 5:31 GMT


Iraqi nationalists fear the break-up of their country





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The US and British leaders may be getting domestic flak for their perceived mistakes in Iraq, but some observers in the Arab world see them as being quite successful - in carrying out a well-calculated plan to divide the country.



The debate dates back to July 13, 2003, when the Iraqi Governing Council was formed under Paul Bremer, the US administrator.

Sectarianism and ethnic extremism were strengthened in that council and various laws have since encouraged an aggressive sectarianism leading to a fierce militia war.

Anis Mansour, an Egyptian editor and author, believes the US is following the historical British policy of divide and rule.

He says: "What we are seeing now is just the beginning of a scheme to split the country up into regions.

"It is not true that the US has failed. It did what it wanted to do and this will last for a long time.

"It will stay the same whether a Democratic or a Republican president is to follow [George] Bush."

Continued chaos

US and other foreign soldiers continue to be killed in Iraq, while Iranian-backed militias take revenge on Iraqi officers who participated in the Iran-Iraq war.

Drive-by shootings are a daily occurrence, and mainly Sunni fighters are maintaining the battle against US-led forces as well as the Iraqi army and security forces backed and trained by the US.


Despite the exuberance, Iraqi
forces cannot keep law and order

The new government of Nuri al-Maliki is unlikely to succeed in curbing the violence.

More than three years since the US-led invasion, the foreign forces and the new Iraqi forces are both incapable of maintaining law and order.

Meanwhile, ordinary Iraqis are losing their sense of co-existence, in itself a dangerous characteristic of post-war Iraq.

US instigation

According to the Iraqi minister of expatriates and displaced people, sectarian violence has caused 14,000 Iraqi families to move.

Sunni families who lived in Shia majority areas have gone to Sunni majority neighbourhoods and vice versa.

The ongoing creation of ethnic and sectarian cantons worries Iraqi nationalists who fear a break up of their country.

The US is seen as the main instigator of sectarian sentiments, creating the right environment for the division of Iraq into sectarian and ethnic states unable to function without US protection.


Violence continues to be a part
of daily life for Iraqis

Hasan Nasr Allah, the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, says: "The US has driven the situation in Iraq to a state where they offer themselves to Shia as a guarantee [of protection] against Sunni, and offer themselves to Sunni as a guarantee against Shia.

"They present themselves to Arabs as a guarantee against Kurds, and present themselves to Kurds as a guarantee against Arabs.

"Their plot is doing just fine. Look at the situation in Iraq nowadays: What could possibly happen that is more appropriate for separatists to say that they have to split from Iraq to protect their community?"

Constitutional provision

Certain Iraqi politicians are also signalling that they favour a split. Masoud Barzani, the Kurdish leader who became president of Iraqi Kurdistan last year, cancelled his visit to China last May after Beijing refused to treat him as a head of state.

Barzani's move was seen as a renewed attempt to confirm the will of Kurdish politicians to secede from Iraq and form their long-desired independent Kurdish state.

"What we are seeing now is just the beginning of a scheme to split the country up into regions. It is not true that the US has failed. It did what it wanted to do and this will last for a long time"

Anis Mansour,
Egyptian editor and author

Maintaining the integrity of Iraq was the main issue that delayed approval of the new Iraqi constitution last year.

Iraqi nationalists were alarmed by an article in the constitution that allowed any governorate, alone or with other governorates, to form a ''region".

The constitution gives regions the right to form local security forces and freedom in managing the natural resources.

Kurds were the first to use that right when they announced their Kurdistan region and elected their government and president earlier this year.

Some Iraqi politicians say such entities will not be large enough to survive without foreign support.

Foreign aid

Haroun Muhammad, a London-based Iraqi political activist, says: "In addition to the seeds of separation in the new Iraqi constitution, separatists are getting foreign support, like Kuwait which has been backing both Kurdish and Shia leaders to separate from Iraq.

"It cannot be a coincidence that Ammar al-Hakim, the son of the senior Shia leader Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, makes periodic visits to Kuwait."

The senior al-Hakim had demanded on several occasions that Iraqi Shia be given a federal state in southern Iraq, his last call being made on August 11, 2005, in Najaf as he was delivering a speech to a Shia gathering.

Muhammad says: "The reason for that is that Kuwait fears another future invasion from big Iraq. It is to their benefit to break it up into smaller parts unable to move troops south."

Saddam Hussein was not the first Iraqi leader to claim Kuwait, but he was the only one who sent troops across the border.

Abd al-Karim Qasim, the then Iraqi president, claimed Kuwait as a historical part of Iraq and moved troops to the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border, but British and Arab diplomatic efforts ended that crisis peacefully.

Shia demands

Barzani and the al-Hakim clan share the view that separate federal states for Shia and Kurds would protect them from the "suppression of the central government".


Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim (L) and
Masoud Barzani favour federalism

Iraqi and Shia political parties believe if Iraq were a federated state, Shia and Kurds would have avoided much of the suppression they suffered at the hands of Baghdad's central government in the past.

Khalid al-Atiya, a Shia member of parliament and leading member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), said in a recent interview that his sect's leaders would not give up its demands to establish a Shia federal state in central and southern Iraq.

"Shia insist on federalism because history has learned the lesson. They have suffered enough from dictatorship and central government.

"The central government will always be a reason to enrage sectarian violence. Federalism is the only way to secure Shia's rights," al-Atiya said.

Dhafir al-Ani, a Sunni member of parliament and spokesman for the Iraqi Accordance Front, told Aljazeera.net: "I regret to say that it is unlikely we will be able to prevent the partition of Iraq. I think it is going to be the way they want."


Aljazeera

Whose war is it?

By Hamid Golpira
What exactly is happening in Iraq and whose war is it, anyway?

Many argue that it is an imperialist war for conquest and control of vast oil reserves, but that does not seem to be the case.

The realpolitik of the 21st century is far more sophisticated than the colonialism of the 19th century.

Political analysts compare the occupation of Iraq to the Vietnam War. They are correct to make the comparison, but mostly for the wrong reasons.

The U.S. military and government lost the Vietnam War. Yet, it is said that some elements in the United States won the Vietnam War. How can that be?

The U.S. military-industrial complex earned billions and billions of dollars during the Vietnam War. This was the main objective of the major stockholders, and they didn’t care who won the war on the ground.

Now it seems that history is repeating itself, since the U.S. military-industrial complex is earning billions from the war in Iraq, with U.S. taxpayers footing the bill.

“No blood for oil” is the slogan of the peace activists, but this war is not about oil.

The extraction of oil requires engineers and oil workers.

The occupying forces have used over 500 tons of depleted uranium munitions in Iraq. On impact, a certain percentage of the DU fragments into dust, meaning thousands of kilos of uranium dust are blowing in the wind in Iraq, contaminating the people, the land, waterways, and crops and leaving large sections of the country an irradiated wasteland.

Very few engineers and oil workers will want to work in such an environment, so how can the war be about oil?

Yet, the so-called peace activists keep up the chorus about blood for oil. They do not realize they are being manipulated by forces that seek to neutralize the peace movement.

During the Vietnam War, peace activists were tricked into believing the peace movement was a one-issue struggle. Thus, when the war finally ended, most of them thought they had won, since their one issue had been resolved.

One day, the U.S. troops and their allies will leave Iraq, and most of the peace activists will retire from the struggle, just like an earlier generation of peace activists did after the Vietnam War, if all goes according to the evil plan.

The U.S. military-industrial complex will have made their billions, and those who sought to damage the gene pool of the Iraqi nation will also have attained their goal.

In addition, those who sought to neutralize the peace movement will have realized their objective.

However, there are still some things that peace activists can do now to prevent this bleak scenario from unfolding.

Many U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq have contracted Persian Gulf War Syndrome, a mysterious illness with no known cause, but which is probably caused by exposure to the uranium dust from DU weapons.

If a common struggle were to be established uniting the victims of depleted uranium munitions in the East and the West, maybe something could be accomplished.

An Iraqi citizen could very well say to a U.S. soldier: “GI Joe, don’t you get it? Wipe that uranium dust out of your eyes and take a good look at what’s happening. The same people who are killing us, are killing you, too.”

The military-industrial complex killing machine is basically a money-making machine. Therefore, it should be sued for damages.

And there could be very many plaintiffs.

At the height of the DU bombing, higher levels of radioactivity were even recorded in Britain.

Radiation detectors at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in Aldermaston and four other stations recorded a fourfold increase in uranium levels in the atmosphere within a few weeks after the attack on Iraq began in March 2003.

Furthermore, some physicians have put forth the theory that the worldwide rise in diabetes over the past few years is due to the use of depleted uranium weapons on battlefields across the globe, since the wind carried the uranium dust all over the planet.

Governments responsible for war crimes like the use of DU weapons and the targeting of civilians should be tried at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Charges should be filed against government officials and executives of the military-industrial complex involved in these war crimes at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Corporations that produce depleted uranium and other weapons of mass destruction that have been used against civilians should be sued for damages in national courts that have jurisdiction.

This won’t bring back the people who have been killed or cure the people affected by DU weapons or maimed, but it would be an effort to put the military-industrial complex killing machine out of business, which is what the peace activists say they are trying to do in the first place.

Jesus, give me a break.

Originally Posted by Birchtree

Jesus, give me a break.

Jesus will give some a break not sure what will happen to the rest.
That’s if U believes in that sort of stuff.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...st/4525412.stm
Iraq Body Count: War dead figures
The number of civilians reported to have been killed during the Iraq war and subsequent military presence is being recorded by the campaign group Iraq Body Count.
On 1 August 2006 it put the total number of civilian dead at 37,733 to 42,267 and the number of police dead at 2,280.
The issue of counting the number of Iraqis killed since the US-led invasion is highly controversial and the figure is disputed. ( Some reports say higher not many say lower)
The US and UK military authorities do not record the number of civilians killed by their forces. The security situation and administrative chaos also make counting extremely difficult.



http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/iraq/casualties.html
Military casualties provided by government sources
Figures represent total since the beginning of hostilities on March 20, 2003.
U.S.
Total military deaths: 2,568
Britain
Total military deaths: 114

Lets us not be so quick, to judge the views of others.

Going to the sandbar to have a few drinks on my day off
Happy investing