Deep Blade Journal

CBS reports “Dozens Of Sunnis Killed In Iraq Rampage: Shiite Cops And Militants Allegedlly Kill Sunni Civilians As Revenge For Dual Truck Bombings” in a city that CBS reporter Lara Logan helped the administration hold out as “a model for how to fight and win the rest of the war.”

Today both Atrios and the PBS News Hour coupled the news story of a grisly round of bombings and killings in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar with a review of the March 2006 pronouncement by President George W. Bush that this city was “a concrete example of progress in Iraq.”

I thought that the PBS News Hour did a pretty good job with this story. The analyst Ahmed Hashim from the Naval War College basically debunked Lara Logan’s angle on “Tal Afar: Al Qaeda’s Town,” and the US “battle to retake” it:

GWEN IFILL: For more on Tall Afar, we are joined by Ahmed Hashim, who worked in Tall Afar as a political adviser to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in 2005. He’s now an associate professor at the Naval War College, and he lectures at Harvard…. Mr. Hashim, given the latest violence, is it possible to assume at this point that perhaps the optimism that was expressed in 2005 about what was happening there was either overstated or premature?

AHMED HASHIM, Naval War College: I think it was overstated. Tall Afar was never consolidated after the 3rd ACR left.

The situation in the city has more to do with local grievances and identity conflicts between the Sunni Turkmen, and the Shia Turkmen. And it really is not al-Qaida who has infiltrated so much as the fact that what happened in 2003 is the formerly dominant Sunni-Turkmen majority there, that constitute 70 percent of the population, that controlled the police, the municipality, the security services.

They were primarily the teachers, and also there was about 20,000 Turkmen who were veterans of the former Iraqi army. Suddenly, they felt themselves having been thrown out of power.

And this is essentially their revenge on what they see as the empowerment of the Shia minority in the town, which has been helped by central power in Baghdad, which is, of course, now in the hands of the Shia.

This explanation for the violence in Tal Afar is completely missing from the tales told by Ms. Logan last year for the program 60 Minutes under the guidance of one Colonel H.R. McMaster, who according to the CBS story “should know” how “Al Qaeda in Iraq had a very sophisticated strategy for taking over the city” because he “served as one of the military’s top advisers on fighting the Iraqi insurgency.”

Even if there is some truth about the earlier incidents described in the CBS Tal Afar story, given today’s extreme violence it is obvious they had no interest in looking into the dynamics of the place beyond a deeply embedded, White-House-friendly view. “Success” is ethereal and fleeting for the US in Iraq.

President Bush simply never will quit. Last year’s falsely rosy portrait of Tal Afar is followed today by his upbeat remarks before the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association:

the Iraqi people are beginning to say — see positive changes. I want to share with you how two Iraqi bloggers — they have bloggers in Baghdad, just like we’ve got here — (laughter) — “Displaced families are returning home, marketplaces are seeing more activity, stores that were long shuttered are now reopening. We feel safer about moving in the city now. Our people want to see this effort succeed. We hope the governments in Baghdad and America do not lose their resolve.”

I want to read something that Army Sergeant Major Chris Nadeau says — the guy is on his second tour in Iraq. He says, “I’m not a Democrat or a Republican. I’m a soldier. The facts are the facts. Things are getting better, we’re picking up momentum.”

These are hopeful signs, and that’s positive.

That’s rich for dear leader to be citing “bloggers,” who just happen to write exactly what the White House likes, described on Olbermann’s show tonight by Rajiv Chandrasekaran as Baghdad dentists and who also were guests in the White House a couple of years ago. How much credibility does Bush have? My answer is none.

The “U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Health and Iraq Accountability Act” with nearly $100 billion more to fund the war passed the House of Representatives on a close 218-212 vote; while the measure is fatally flawed from an anti-war point of view, are its politics good?

U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA) declares the blank-check era for Bush’s war is over

Click image to download video of March 23 floor speech by Nancy Pelosi (15 min, 25 MB, wmv format); Pelosi says this vote is a major step to end the war in Iraq; anti-war protest can be heard near the end of the file

Bush says the “House of Representatives abdicated its responsibility” with “an act of political theater”

I’m not crazy about the Iraq war funding bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives earlier today. After all, fundamentally it violates the theme of protests organized under the From Every Village Green banner in which I have been participating in recent weeks–NOT ONE MORE DEATH! NOT ONE MORE DOLLAR. The bill would spend a lot on the war and it would guarantee continued hideous levels of killing and death by and against American forces and the Iraqi population for months or years to come.

I spoke in person with an aid to Mike Michaud on Wednesday and implored that Mike should vote against the bill as a matter of conscience. I am happy to say that Mike was amongst a handful of Democrats who did vote AGAINST the bill because it continued funding the killing and maiming. I am very, very proud to be represented by Mike and to know that this Congressional district is chock full of people organized (From Every Village Green) to back him up on this. This is what democracy looks like. He could not vote this way without us. It’s that simple.

Before I agree with some of their arguments, I first want to point out that the way the liberal organizing campaign MoveOn.org handled this bill was very condescending to those who opposed it as a matter of conscience. I’m rather sickened by the way their email, “Rep. Allen does the right thing on Iraq”, quotes “progressive” writer David Sirota about how it is time to have “a seriousness about ending the war, rather than merely a seriousness about protesting the war.” Without naming anyone or discussing specific arguments, he accused those (I guess everyone) who campaigned against the bill of being “people just blowing off contrairian steam” who were the actual ones “selling out a viable way to end the war in order to grandstand for the cameras.”

The big thing missing in the MoveOn/Sirota argument is that there is incredible urgency about stopping this war. Tens of thousands of people are dying. The bill just passed would if it became law continue the killing for an undetermined period of time.

The case against the bill was well laid out by Military Families Speak Out in a March 15 document, partly reproduced below

MFSO TALKING POINTS – MARCH 15, 2007

The House Supplemental Appropriations Bill: “U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Health and Iraq Accountability Act”
These talking points cover why Military Families Speak Out is urging a “no” vote on this bill.

• The House Supplemental Appropriations Bill as written would give funds to President Bush to continue the war in Iraq.

• The House Leadership is trying to get all Members of Congress who oppose the war in Iraq to support this House Supplemental Appropriations Bill, which they named the “U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Health and Iraq Accountability Act”. They claim it has the following provisions which are supposed to support our troops and bring about the end of the war in Iraq, but their claims are not supported by the facts:

Claim: Troop Readiness Requirements: no funds can be appropriated to deploy any unit of the Armed Forces to Iraq unless the unit is fully trained, equipped and “mission capable”
Reality: The bill includes a provision that allows the President to waive troop readiness requirements

Claim: No Extended Deployments: no funds can be appropriated for extending the deployment of the Army, National Guard or Reserves beyond a 365-day deployment, or a Marine unit beyond a 210-day deployment.
Reality: The bill includes a provision that allows the President to waive the prohibition on extended deployments

Claim: Rest Period Between Deployments: no funds can be appropriated for deploying any Army unit that has been deployed within the previous 365 consecutive days, or an Marine unit that has been deployed within the previous 210 consecutive days
Reality: The bill includes a provision that allows the President to waive the specified rest periods between deployments.

Claim: Requirements for Iraqi Government Progress: if the Iraqi government isn’t making substantial progress by October 1, 2007 and again by March 1, 2008 in making the country secure, democratic and reducing sectarian violence, the Secretary of Defense shall commence the redeployment of the Armed Forces from Iraq within 180 days.
Reality: The bill allows the President to unilaterally certify “Iraqi Government Progress”

Claim: Date Certain for U.S. Withdrawal from Iraq: combat troops out of Iraq by August, 2008 at the latest
Reality: With three U.S troops dying each day the war continues, August, 2008 is not an acceptable deadline for withdrawal of US troops. It is not bringing our troops home now. Furthermore, the bill allows U.S. troops to remain in Iraq after the August, 2008 withdrawal date if they are “engaging in targeted special actions limited in duration and scope to killing or capturing members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations with global reach” NOTE: the terms “limited in duration and scope” are undefined in the bill]; and/or if they are “training members of the Iraqi Security Forces”. This provision could be used to keep tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq for years to come.

[BOTTOM LINE:] The House Supplemental Appropriations bill as written would allow thousands of additional US troops and untold numbers of Iraqis to die before the U.S. occupation of Iraq is ended.

I do want to discuss, however, some reasons why I think the politics of the bill might turn out good for us, and why I am not overly upset with Rep. Allen for voting for it–yet. This opinion may be controversial with some in our movement, so I encourage lots of discussion. My own thoughts are just beginning to coalesce and are still somewhat fluid. But this is an area where we will be aided by having the largest number of people think this through that we can, and arrive at some positions and then focus and maximize our organizing power.

Here is what I mean by the plus for us of this bill, a point not so far from what MoveOn is saying (in its unfortunately condescending way): There is value in attaching troop-withdrawal language Bush does not like and will veto to to a bill that funds the war. In fact, if it does somehow get through the Senate and he does veto it, we win. Funds are cut off. This is the raw power of the House in the appropriation process. Bush does not get his war chest if the House decides not to let him have it without strings with which he objects enough to veto. The appropriation bill is a much easier way to stop the war than some policy-only resolution (as was tried in January).

The problem, of course, is that the House may drop the strings at some point, perhaps in a House-Senate conference committee, as if what happened today never happened. The president’s dismissal of the exercise of passing this bill as “political theater” would then be accurate. This is where we can come back in–we must force the House to stick to their guns. We must not let the strings get dropped or neutered to Bush’s liking. This won’t be easy. Busy hands in Washington will try to get the president his money. Already, there are “warnings” from the Pentagon (probably false) that the troops are about to run out of money, thus amping up the pressure on Congress that the only way to support the troops is Bush’s way. Our work is cut out for us. Let’s try to hammer out a good way to do it.

A political prisoner fights back

Maybe the Islamophobes within the US government who continue to persecute former University of South Florida Professor Sami Al-Arian view his 54-day hunger strike as “an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us,” as the US military did those unfortunate souls who hung themselves last summer in their Guantanamo dungeon cells.

The inability of these persecutors to obtain any convictions after waving a parade of trumped-up terrorism charges before a jury drawn from an O’Reilly-propagandized public during a six-month trial in US District Court in Tampa evidently royally has pissed them off. So much so that, according to a heartbreaking story today on Democracy Now!:

Sami Al-Arian has spent the past four years in jail despite a jury’s failure over a year ago to return a single guilty verdict on any of the 17 charges brought against him. He eventually signed a plea deal with the government in exchange for being released and deported.

This past January, with just three months left before his scheduled release, a judge found him in contempt after he refused to testify before a Virginia grand jury. The date of his release could now be extended by a year and a half. On January 22nd, Al-Arian - who is a diabetic - stopped eating in protest. Last month he was transferred to the Federal Medical facility in Butner Virginia as his health deteriorated.

It’s well worth listening to this whole story, and also reading a March 3 piece on Al-Arian by Alexander Cockburn, who describes the trial,

The government’s evidence against Al-Arian consisted of speeches he gave, magazines he edited, lectures he presented, articles he wrote, books he owned, conferences he organized, rallies he attended, news he heard and websites no one accessed. One bit of evidence consisted of a conversation a co-defendant had with al-Arian in his dream. The defense rested without calling a single witness or presenting any evidence since the government’s case rested entirely on First Amendment­protected activities.

The man presiding over al-Arian’s trial was US District Court Judge James Moody, a creature from the dark lagoon of Floridian jurisprudence. Hospitable to all testimony from Israelis, Moody ruled that al-Arian and his associates could not say a single word about the military occupation or the plight of the Palestinian people…

This is the picture of a political prosecution–the attempted condemnation of a man because he spoke and wrote in favor of justice for the Palestinians.

Gore was “arrogant” in 2000
Quite a twist on this story is Al-Arian was a big supporter of candidate George W. Bush during the 2000 presidential campaign. Nahla Al-Arian, Sami Al-Arian’s wife explained to Juan Gonzales and Amy Goodman today why she and her husband supported Bush, rejected Gore, and are now betrayed and persecuted,

JUAN GONZALEZ: Throughout this long ordeal, what’s your sense or your opinion about why your husband has been targeted in this way by the federal government?

NAHLA AL-ARIAN: Well, I feel, first of all, because he was very effective in talking about the Palestinian cause and in establishing ties with the larger society and in empowering the Muslim community, making them integrate into the larger society and exercise their political rights. Sami was very good in talking to everybody, helping and working with everybody, and what made things worse –

AMY GOODMAN: Also very good in supporting President Bush in his first run for office. The pictures of him and President Bush as they campaign through Florida — as Bush campaigned through Florida, Sami was with him.

NAHLA AL-ARIAN: Because Bush deceived us. Bush lied to the Muslim community. Bush gave us a picture of a compassionate person, and that’s completely the opposite. Later on, unfortunately, we found out. Al Gore was so arrogant, and he rejected talking to the Muslim community and addressing the issues that the Muslim community was worried about, such as the use of secret evidence against Muslims and Arabs. So that’s why, you know, we went to support Bush, because he’s the one who, in the second debate, came out and said we should support or we should stop the use of secret evidence and we should stop profiling Muslims and Arabs, so he was very outspoken. And that was unfortunately, you know, a very deceitful act. It wasn’t coming from his heart, as we found out later.

Of course they are not alone in the parade of those betrayed by President Bush. But it is highly illustrative to see how hostile the Democrats were towards Muslims in 2000, and have been since, doubtlesly at the relentless urging of the Israel lobby.

New York Times conveys Republican dissatisfaction

Via Think Progress, after Senator Chuck Schumer repeated calls for his head, I see that the New York Times is being used to communicate even Republican consternation with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, some of it apparently based in the White House itself.

After recitation of the regular White House statements in todays Times article, there is this:

‘Mistakes’ Made on Prosecutors, Gonzales Says

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and JEFF ZELENY
Published: March 14, 2007

…

With Democrats, including the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, insisting that Mr. Gonzales step down, his appearance underscored what two Republicans close to the Bush administration described as a growing rift between the White House and the attorney general. Mr. Gonzales has long been a confidant of the president but has aroused the ire of lawmakers of both parties on several issues, including the administration’s domestic eavesdropping program.

The two Republicans, who spoke anonymously so they could share private conversations with senior White House officials, said top aides to Mr. Bush, including Fred F. Fielding, the new White House counsel, were concerned that the controversy had so damaged Mr. Gonzales’s credibility that he would be unable to advance the White House agenda on national security matters, including terrorism prosecutions.

“I really think there’s a serious estrangement between the White House and Alberto now,” one of the Republicans said.

How much longer will Gonzales be around? Man, that guy really has stuck in my craw over the years, enough to fax the Senate Judiciary Committee THIS during the confirmation hearings for his current job. And also there was THIS on the day he was confirmed. Some of the better writing in the blog, if I don’t say so myself… well I’ll let readers judge if that’s saying much.

Entwined flags

Vice President Cheney threatens Iran at the 2006 event

Here is how critical the US Israel lobby sees the Christian Zionists and their effect on Congress. According to Bruce Wilson at the Talk to Action website:

Pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United For Israel, a new and nominally “pro-Israel” American national political lobbying group, has built a career on aggressive support for hard right to fringe right Israeli politics and is now making inroads towards convincing the mainstream American Jewish community that he and CUFI are the best tactical allies Jews and Israel can expect to find. This Sunday, March 11th, Pastor John Hagee will make an evening address at a the American-Israel lobby AIPAC’s star-studded yearly convention which AIPAC’s website says may be attended by a substantial fraction of the US Congress and Senate.

To me, this guy, Hagee, sounds like an ultra-fringe nutcase:

At the center of it all is Pastor John Hagee, a popular televangelist who leads the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. While Hagee has long prophesized about the end times, he ratcheted up his rhetoric this year with the publication of his book, “Jerusalem Countdown,” in which he argues that a confrontation with Iran is a necessary precondition for Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. In the best-selling book, Hagee insists that the United States must join Israel in a preemptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West. Shortly after the book’s publication, he launched Christians United for Israel (CUFI), which, as the Christian version of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, he said would cause “a political earthquake.”

Christ, 18,000-member Cornerstone Church?? “Precondition for Armageddon”????

Furthermore, the Israel lobby seems to be willing to overlook Hagee’s ties to the antisemitic past, associated with Klan, neo-Nazi, and John Birch beliefs, including screeds where he

“blames the Holocaust on Jews themselves and states that Nazi persecution of Jews was God’s way of driving Jews to Israel, seems to blame Jews for the death of Jesus Christ, holds that Jews cannot get into heaven, calls liberal Jews “poisoned” and “spiritually blind”, believes that the preemptive nuclear attack on Iran that he advocates will lead to a Mideast conflict that will kill most Jews in Israel and perhaps also lead to the Nuclear destruction of the East and West coasts of the United States of America”

I guess the AIPACers are satisfied that Hagee’s furies are sufficiently directed towards Muslims. Makes no sense considering what he has written, given that the Christian Zionist kooks merely see Israel as a temporary ally in the wars preceeding Armageddon, and that unconverted Jews will be dispatched.

Despite the appeal to the fringes, plenty of political luminaries–Democrat and Republican–will join Hagee on the AIPAC stage, a literal Who’s Who of Washington,

Featured speakers will include Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and House Republican Leader John Boehner - as well as Vice President Dick Cheney and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni…

Last year, Vice President Cheney used the event to threaten Iran with “meaningful consequences.” If that sounds familiar, it is just slightly off of the language inserted in UN Security Council Resolution 1441 (November 2002), that promised Iraq “serious consequences.” That came true with a vengeance. What bellicose rumblings will Cheney issue this year? Whatever, they seem sure to be compatible with Hagee’s. Expect that no Democrat either will stray from the party line.

This guy is poison

Jonathan Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution describes Beck’s propaganda technique, “Locate the most extreme statements by anyone on the other ’side,’ and hype it as much as you possibly can to your ’side’ as embodying the true spirit and goals of your ‘enemies.’

I’ve become quite a fan of MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann in recent months. My appreciation is very strong for his fighting spirit in taking on bigoted right-wing media figures like O’Reilly and the utterly bombastic Glenn Beck, wingnut purveyors of war, and fascistic violence against whole groups and classes, perceived as their “enemies.”

So I was glad today to read about Olbermann’s recent remarks about Beck at Think Progress,

Olbermann, on Beck: A wolf in sheep’s clothing. The very dangerously bigoted guy who is selling himself as a pragmatic philosopher. I don’t think he sees his own bigotry. There’s something about him that suggests that, one night, he’ll say something that will cost him his career in television.

Oh, that’s good, perfect. “He doesn’t see his own bigotry.” That probably describes 90% of the Little Green Footballs crowd that hangs on Beck’s every word.

This provoked a response from Beck. He tried to turn the tables on Olbermann, saying that if he were to be shut down, it would be because of an “intolerant ideologue like Keith Olbermann” and that would “smack of the same McCarthyism [Edward R.] Murrow fought so valiantly against.” Beck added, “Hey, Keith, you’re not saving the world’s democracy; you’re killing it, my friend, by trying to limit the marketplace of ideas to only those that reflect your own.”

Okay, Glenn, here’s a peek at the contents of your store in that marketplace of ideas. Readers are free to judge whether or not these ideas have a damn thing to do with democracy, freedom, or any other positive values.

BECK (August 10, 2006): The world is on the brink of World War III… All you Muslims who have sat on your frickin’ hands the whole time and have not been marching in the streets and have not been saying, ‘Hey, you know what? There are good Muslims and bad Muslims. We need to be the first ones in the recruitment office lining up to shoot the bad Muslims in the head.’ I’m telling you, with God as my witness… human beings are not strong enough, unfortunately, to restrain themselves from putting up razor wire and putting you on one side of it. When things—when people become hungry, when people see that their way of life is on the edge of being over, they will put razor wire up and just based on the way you look or just based on your religion, they will round you up. Is that wrong? Oh my gosh, it is Nazi, World War II wrong, but society has proved it time and time again: It will happen.

It’s typical Beck technique. He blurts out a statement reflecting a “final solution” mentality from the deepest recesses of fascism while clumsily trying to distance himself from it, but not really.

Media Matters has 183 items (today) on examples of misinformation and bigotry broadcast by the insufferable Glenn Beck.

Update: And he’s a lascivious creep too, on the air no less. Check this from Crooks & Liars.

Iran-contra redux, this time with radical Sunni enemies of Iran & Hezbollah; trouble is, these radicals are of the same strain as those responsible for the 9/11 plot

Click image for mp4 video of entire Hersh interview on CNN Late Edition for February 25 (quicktime plugin recommended, 50 MB download, about 3-5 minute delay with minimum 2 Mbit connection, not recommended for dial-up. Think Progress has a Flash excerpt that will play faster.)

Seymour Hersh has a new article in The New Yorker magazine. This one is a real blockbuster. In it Hersh writes that he has learned from confidential sources that off-the-books aid to anti-Iran, anti-Hezbollah factions in the Lebanon’s Siniora government—possibly diverted from swampy Iraq slush funds—is making its way to “the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south.”

Hersh writes that these groups “are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.”

Furthermore, concerning former National Intelligence Director John Negroponte,

I was subsequently told by the two government consultants and the former senior intelligence official that the echoes of Iran-Contra were a factor in Negroponte’s decision to resign from the National Intelligence directorship and accept a sub-Cabinet position of Deputy Secretary of State. (Negroponte declined to comment.)

The former senior intelligence official also told me that Negroponte did not want a repeat of his experience in the Reagan Administration, when he served as Ambassador to Honduras. “Negroponte said, ‘No way. I’m not going down that road again, with the N.S.C. running operations off the books, with no finding.

Wow. Negoponte–a guy who had little compunction about running death squads out of the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa during the 1980s, or helping implement the “Salvador option” for Iraq–is the moralist who can’t sanction the activities emanating from the Veep’s office. Cheney seems to have thrown down the covert gauntlet, daring someone to stop him. I think that spate of articles a few months ago suggesting Vice President Crooked Scowl’s diminished power were premature.

In a wide-ranging interview today with Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s Late Edition, Hersh discussed plans long underway for an attack on Iran. I found this item to be quite interesting:

Well, I don’t think there’s any question but much of the senior military leadership do not think it’s the wise thing to do. Of course, if the president orders it, it will happen. But they are very skeptical.

For example, I was told — I hinted at it in the article — that we could have a carrier in trouble in the Straits of Hormuz. There’s very little room to maneuver, and a carrier, when it’s recovering planes that are, you know, landing after attacking and trying to recover the planes, their motions, their movements are predictable. They have to have the wind in a certain direction. They could be vulnerable to attack.

Iran has hundreds of PT boats they can load up and make them more or less suicide boats. So the Navy is extremely worried about that possibility. We could have some serious damage to our fleet. And also, what’s Iran going to do in response?

I will tell you also that there’s a lot of evidence — I didn’t get into this that much into the piece — that the Iranians are digging more holes, moving their leadership into underground bunkers in other places besides Tehran in case of a bombing. They are anticipating the worst.

Big questions now are: Will any other media pick this up? Will Congress take any interest in the Pentagon’s evidently extremely deep, extremely murky covert operations?

Blogger translates leaked copy, scoops the New York Times

This should be a major story. Iraq-born blogger Raed Jarrar has obtained a leaked copy of Iraq’s new oil law. You also can get a look at this document here. Today on Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman interviewed Raed Jarrar along with the important Iraq oil policy researcher, Antonia Juhasz.

New Iraq Oil Law To Open Iraq’s Oil Reserves to Western Companies

RAED JARRAR: The document was leaked by Professor Fouad Al-Ameer and published on a website called al-ghad.org. And then it was leaked to other important websites like niqash.org and other places. There are different ways of — different copies of it. Some of it are scanned, and others of the original document, but it just hit the internet last week.

AMY GOODMAN: And explain what it says, now that you’ve finished translating it.

RAED JARRAR: It said so many things. I don’t think we can summarize it this short, because it’s a very long document, around thirty pages. But majorly, there are three major points that I think we should talk about. Financially, it legalizes very unfair types of contracts that will put Iraq in very long-term contracts that can go up to thirty-five years and cause the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars from Iraqis for no cause.

And the second point is concerning Iraq’s sovereignty. Iraq will not be capable of controlling the levels — the limits of production, which means that Iraq cannot be a part of OPEC anymore. And Iraq will have this very complicated institution called the Federal Oil and Gas Council, that will have representatives from the foreign oil companies on the board of it, so representatives from, let’s say, ExxonMobil and Shell and British Petroleum will be on the federal board of Iraq approving their own contracts.

And the third point is the point about keeping Iraq’s unity. The law is seen by many Iraqi analysts as a separation for Iraq fund. The law will authorize all of the regional and small provinces’ authorities. It will give them the final say to deal with the oil, instead of giving this final say to central federal government, so it will open the doors for splitting Iraq into three regions or even maybe three states in the very near future.

To me, it is very clear that what the Iraq oil law seeks to preserve is the ability of hyrocarbon-connected elites in Washington to make fundamental decisions about development and distribution of profits from Iraq’s oil. It will keep the Iraqi public in the dark and at bay while very, very costly decisions about oil are made below the table. The basic effect of the law will be to ensure that, according to Antonia Juhasz,

ultimate decision making on contracts rests with a new council to be set up in Iraq, and sitting on that council will be representatives — executives, in fact — of oil companies, both foreign and domestic. In addition, it does maintain the Iraq National Oil Company, but gives the Iraq National Oil Company almost no preference.

Whatever oversight the Iraqi people may have, foreign oil executives will be responsible for all decisions and all accounting concerning Iraq’s oil.

Blogger scooped the New York Times
It is difficult to recognize and interpret the complex, clandestine methods Bush administration officials and their collaborators in the Iraqi government are using to insure Iraq will pay a heavy price for development of its key resource with the boot of Washington on its neck. To misdirect public scrutiny officials give lip service to the claim that the new law will be a great thing for Iraq. According to yesterday’s story by regular New York Times Iraq oil correspondent James Glanz, “the law is considered an essential element of creating a stable and functioning government.”

The way Glanz sources his knowledge of the draft law seems to me to be pathetic, “Earlier drafts of the law” were “described to The New York Times”. With all the resources of the Times no actual text of the law could be published. But a mere blogger has been able to issue the whole thing.

There is some disconnect between the Times interpretation and Raed’s. Raed notes that the law empowers regions the “final say to deal with the oil”, while Glanz reports that under the law, “Iraq’s central government in Baghdad would retain substantial control over oil revenues and the right to review the contracts that regional governments sign with Iraqi and international companies to develop the fields and to pump oil.”

And that,

Negotiations had snagged because of the insistence by the Kurds that they maintain a degree of autonomy in managing their northern fields. But two members of the negotiating committee confirmed that a draft had been sent to the cabinet, indicating that a compromise might be in sight.Neither of those negotiators — Hussain al-Shahristani, the current oil minister, and Thamir Ghadban, a former oil minister — provided details of the compromise. But a senior official in the Kurdish regional government also said that a deal was near and hinted that the Kurds had received concessions on how the law would affect existing contracts with oil companies that agreed to work in the north.

My question to Raed would be, at what stage of this “compromise” does the available version of the document reflect? I guess it will be important to follow Raed’s blog.

Iraqi opposition to the oil law
In a speech two weeks ago, Hasan Jum`ah `Awwad al-Asadi, head of the Federation of Oil Unions gave called on the international community to, “Open the way to Iraqis to manage their own oil affairs.”

He disputes the notion that there should be a rush to invite foreign companies into the country while giving them such dominant, long-term control.

They [Iraqis] are able to do that [manage their own oil affairs]; they have the experience in the field and the technical training, have overcome hardships and proven to the world that they can provide the best service to Iraqis in the oil industry. The best proof of that is how after the entry of the occupying forces and the destruction of the infrastructure of the oil sector the engineers, technical staff and workers were able to raise production from zero to 2,100,000 barrels per day without any foreign expertise or foreign capital. Iraqis are capable of further increasing production with their present skills. The Iraqi state needs to consult with those who have overcome the difficulties and to ask their opinion before sinking Iraq into an ocean of dark injustice. Those who spread the word that the oil sector will not improve except with foreign capital and production-sharing are dreaming. They must think again since we know for certain that these plans do not serve the sons and daughters of Iraq.

The crux of the matter behind the US occupation of Iraq is denial by the US of what al-Asadi clearly states Iraqis want—control of their own affairs. A permanent military occupation is the only way the US will be able to hold this new oil law in force. Otherwise, Iraqis would be able to develop their oil in their own best interests.

Not much is heard these dark days from Riverbend, a long-time Iraqi blogger. But today she has a most disturbing post.

Riverbend: … She might have been one of those subtitles you read on CNN or BBC or Arabiya, “13 insurgents captured by Iraqi security forces.” The men who raped her are those same security forces Bush and Condi are so proud of- you know- the ones the Americans trained… I translated what she said below,

“I told him, ‘I don’t have anything [I did not do anything].’ He said, ‘You don’t have anything?’ One of them threw me on the ground and my head hit the tiles. He did what he did- I mean he raped me. The second one came and raped me. The third one also raped me. [Pause- sobbing] I begged them and cried, and one of them covered my mouth. [Unclear, crying] Another one of them came and said, ‘Are you finished? We also want our turn.’ So they answered, ‘No, an American committee came.’ They took me to the judge.

Riverbend concludes,

Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.

You know it’s bad when…

Pre-Iraq war propagandist Judith Miller’s co-author writes today in the New York Times:

Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran, U.S. Says
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran.

The assertion of an Iranian role in supplying the device to Shiite militias reflects broad agreement among American intelligence agencies, although officials acknowledge that the picture is not entirely complete.

In interviews, civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies provided specific details to support what until now has been a more generally worded claim, in a new National Intelligence Estimate, that Iran is providing “lethal support” to Shiite militants in Iraq.

For analysis, Alexander Cockburn quotes Col. Sam Gardiner:

we know there is a National Security Council staff-led_group whose mission is to create outrage in the world against Iran. Just like before Gulf II, this media group will begin to release stories to sell a strike against Iran. Watch for the outrage stuff…

The entire Cockburn column is essential reading.

Also see Jonathan Schwarz. He has Gordon’s sourcing in a nutshell.