Surprise, surprise!

The Iraq Study Group may not have a solution for how to end the war, but it does have a way for its corporate friends to make money.

Welcome to the true meaning of the occupation of Iraq. Ever wonder why Dick Cheney and friends have worked so hard to keep those secret White House energy policy meetings from early 2001 a secret?

President Bush hired an employee from the U.S. consultancy firm Bearing Point Inc. over a year ago to advise the Iraq Oil Ministry on the drafting and passage of a new national oil law. As previously drafted, the law opens Iraq’s nationalized oil sector to private foreign corporate investment, but stops short of full privatization. The ISG report, however, goes further, stating that “the United States should assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise.” In addition, the current Constitution of Iraq is ambiguous as to whether control over Iraq’s oil should be shared among its regional provinces or held under the central government. The report specifically recommends the latter: “Oil revenues should accrue to the central government and be shared on the basis of population.” If these proposals are followed, Iraq’s national oil industry will be privatized and opened to foreign firms, and in control of all of Iraq’s oil wealth.

The proposals should come as little surprise given that two authors of the report, James A. Baker III and Lawrence Eagleburger, have each spent much of their political and corporate careers in pursuit of greater access to Iraq’s oil and wealth.

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Here’s a good follow up piece by Tom Engelhardt on Bush family consigliere Baker and cohorts who worked to ensure that while the ISG would be filled with notable movers and shakers from numerous previous administrations, no one on it, nor any expert ‘team’ advising it, would represent the one point of view that a majority of Americans have by now come to support - actual withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq on a set timeline.” We can’t do that, you silly prole. There’s still gold in them their hills! Black gold. Texas Tea.

Read his report “Fixing The War”

Oh yeah, and in case anyone hasn’t gotten the memo yet, “War Is A Racket”

I had heard of this, but was confused as to the story attribution since this exact same thing happened in a congressional hearing this year with the seven-term Alabama Congressman Terry Everett executing basically the same display of ignorance as Mr. Reyes here. I was wondering if this story was getting transposed, but then, I don’t doubt at all the probability that NOTHING will have been learned by the Corporacrats running all branches of our political system. This is truly absurd, and portends some increasingly deadly absurdity in the next few months and years. It will most likely also serve as dangerously distasteful fodder for the old argument that both parties have to be abandoned entirely (but for different reasons, much akin to the the differences inherent between a wife who leaves a husband out of neglect, and one because of direct abuse).

Law enforcement and intelligence experts are scratching their heads in disbelief upon discovering that the next House Intelligence Committee Chairman doesn’t possess even a basic understanding of terrorism or terrorist groups. In fact, he’s never heard of Hezbollah.

Representative Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), who was Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi’s second choice to head the sensitive and vital committee, did not know what Hezbollah was and incorrectly described Al-Qaeda as being Shiite rather than Sunni.

Rep. Reyes appeared disoriented when a reporter asked him basic questions about the Islamic groups that are the principal targets of America’s intelligence agencies, including Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and others.

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He also asked Reyes about the terrorist group Hezbollah. “Hezbollah. Uh, Hezbollah…” he said, laughing. “Why do you ask me these questions at five o’clock? Can I answer in Spanish? Do you speak
Spanish?”

“This is no laughing matter. Where was this man when Israel and Hezbollah battled for almost two weeks?” asked a former intelligence officer and now New York City detective.

“We went from an impeached judge to a man ignorant of the basic facts regarding terrorist groups. What kind of oversight will that be?” he added.

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Iraq’s massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.

Read the full article on the Future of Iraq: The Spoils of War

Want to know what exactly ‘victory’ means to George Bush and his Texan cronies? Look here. Looks like its shaping up to be a pretty big win in his eyes. Oh yeah, sorry about your dead kid, and that two trillion dollars it cost you to pull this off.

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Finally. Its been awhile waiting for someone to point out the obvious about the Bush/Blair regimes and the fact that the United States can’t give up on Iraq because it absolutely positively must have their oil on the market. This is a refreshingly well-written post, too.

Powell adds that more troops, more country boys from the National Guard, effectively, will not reverse a “grave and deteriorating” situation. Having been elbowed from the corridors of power for knowing more about soldiering than Rumsfeld, vice-president Dick Cheney, or the draft-dodger in the Oval Office, the former general is entitled to a certain satisfaction. Such is not his demeanour. To paraphrase: things are bad, getting worse, and won’t be fixed with still more casualties.

A rational White House might pause at that. A president marking time until the constitution evicts him from Pennsylvania Avenue might even decide to quit while he’s behind, and perhaps ameliorate a little of the vast damage he has caused. Be serious: this is the boy George. Despite the damning judgement of American voters, despite the slaughter, despite the failure to quell terrorism, and despite the conclusions of Pop’s old pal, Jim Baker, and the elders of the Iraq Study Group, he cleaves to an astounding conclusion. He still thinks he’s right. George, one suspects, would give a goofy grin at the prospect of Armageddon itself.

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If any of this is true, and it seems more likely by the day, a couple of conclusions are obvious. First, Bush means for America to remain in Iraq for many years to come. At this rate, he will unite all the warring factions against the stars and stripes. Secondly, if the US stays, Britain stays: Tony Blair has welded every British interest to American policy.

The anti-war movement did not quite think this one through, after all. There was a want, if you like, of historical memory, and a failure to take Bush and Blair at their words. They said that their war could last for unspecified generations. We marched up and down for a while and then went home. We did not quite grasp the scale of the thing. Yet if Bush now puts more troops into Iraq, Britain will somehow match the commitment and the “long haul” will begin to seem endless. That should be cause for another protest or two.

We forget about actions and consequences. Blair has changed Britain in ways most of us have yet to notice, far less understand.

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America could afford Vietnam. It cannot afford Iraq when Russia is turning carbon fuels into weapons, China is at the table and the Saudis are heading the way of all corrupt, mendacious regimes. In the end, the truth is slightly disorienting: for once, this pair were not lying. They meant what they said about endless wars. They intend to fight in Iraq, and across the globe, for a very long time to come. Short of uprisings in Britain and the US, that counts as the future, yours and mine.

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Time Magazine actually delivers some pretty good historical context to the goings ons in Iraq. This is all, of course, beyond the comprehension of those running American foreign policy today, and explains why we are in a real shit show when it comes to what the future holds for us, to say nothing about what the tortured land of Iraq is in store for.

Just as consequential, for Sunnis and anyone else who knows Iraqi history, Saddam’s executioners shouted the name of Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, Muqtada’s father-in-law. Ayatollah Sadr, whom Saddam executed in 1980, is perhaps as responsible as Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini for modern, resurgent Shi’a Islam. Sadr founded the Da’wa Party, a violent, secretive organization committed to the creation of an Iraqi Shi ‘a Islamic republic, and today a political party that counts none other than Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki as a member

In 1979, Sadr and the Da’wa took the side of the Iranian revolution, sparking demonstrations and unrest across Iraq. After Sadr’s Da’wa attempted to assassinate Hussein’s longtime foreign minister Tariq Aziz on April 1, 1980, Saddam, in fairly quick succession, executed Sadr and invaded Iran. Saddam was convinced that unless he pre-empted Sadr - in other words, Iran - he would end up on the gallows. Two years later, in Dujail, the Da’wa did try to assassinate Saddam. Saddam’s brutal retribution against Dujail is what got him hanged last Saturday.

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Only time will tell us what Sadr intends do with Iraq if he ever does take over. But the Sunnis today will tell you they don’t need to wait. On Saturday, they saw all the evidence they needed: the symbolism of executing Saddam on the Muslim High Holiday of Id al-Adha as a gift to the Shi’a, and and the decision of Maliki to get special approval from Iraq’s senior Shi’a clerics, the ‘marja’iya,’ to carry out the execution on that day.

No one is ever going to take a poll, but it’s safe to say that most Sunni fear Ayatollah Sadr’s dream of an Iraqi Shi’a Islamic republic has already come true.

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There is more on the whole sorry affair of how the hanging of Saddam Hussein went down and the sure blowback to result from it this piece Lynching The Dictator in Slate, by Christopher Hitchens of all people. The references to George Orwell’s tract Revenge Is Sour was particularly apt.

This guy is pretty much on the money here. Sad it took a few hundred thousand lives and a few hundred billion dollars stolen and wasted for people to start figuring this out, but alas, what to do?

It was a rigged game from the start. All but the wildest zealots in Washington knew that the South Vietnamese would not and could not meet our ultimatums: an end to corrupt, revolving-door governments; an officer corps based on merit, not cronyism; and the creation of a national state that enjoyed popular allegiance strong and broad enough to control the political and cultural rivalries that had ripped the country’s fabric for a thousand years.

During the eighteen months I was in Vietnam, I met almost no Americans in the field who regarded Vietnamization as a serious military strategy with any chance of success. More years of American training could not possibly make a difference in the outcome of the war, because what was lacking in the South Vietnamese Army was not just combat skills but belief in a cause worth fighting for.

But none of that was the point. Vietnamization was not a military strategy. It was a public-relations campaign.

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Now we have the Iraq Study Group Report, advising that the mission of US forces shift from fighting a war to training Iraqi troops and police. The report calls for the US to lay down a series of performance conditions for the Iraqis, including that the Iraqis end their civil war and create a viable national state.

I’ve lived through this one before.

Deteriorating conditions on the ground will soon force President Bush to accept this shift in mission strategy. It is Vietnamization in all but name. Its core purpose is not to win an unwinnable war, but to provide political cover for a retreat, and to lay the grounds for blaming the loss on the Iraqis. Based on what I saw in Vietnam, here’s what I think will happen next:

What’s interesting about this piece isn’t just the work itself, but check out the bio on the guy who wrote it.

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Mort Kondracke’s (of Fox News) new column in Roll Call is as Josh Marshall at TPM notes, “sickening.”

All over the world, scoundrels are ascendant, rising on a tide of American weakness. It makes for a perilous future.

President Bush bet his presidency — and America’s world leadership — on the war in Iraq. Tragically, it looks as though he bit off more than the American people were willing to chew.

The U.S. is failing in Iraq. Bush’s policy was repudiated by the American people in the last election. And now America’s enemies and rivals are pressing their advantage, including Iran, Syria, the Taliban, Sudan, Russia and Venezuela. We have yet to hear from al-Qaida.

- Mort Kondracke

As Marshall points out…

It really does seem as though the cardinals of DC punditry are constitutionally incapable of believing that George W. Bush has ever — in the real sense — gotten anything wrong or that they, the Washington establishment, has gotten anything wrong over the last six years.

I don’t like to use such words but I can only think to call the denial and buck-passing sickening. I can’t think of another word that captures the gut reaction.

This is all right out of the playbook of any despot or megalomaniac. Comparisons to Hitler are always dangerous rhetorical devices, but in the case of ‘The Decider’, they are becoming increasingly apt. Particularly in this instance, as it was while Hitler’s delusional fantasies came crumbling to the ground under the weight of Allied bombs, he proceded to blame the collapse of the Third Reich not on his overambitious and ideologically driven war plans, but on the weakness and inabilities of the German people. These being the same German people he had built an entire political career and short-lived empire upon by exclaiming to be the Ubermensch Aryan race, for whom defeat was all but impossible, under the leadership and command of the Nazis.

Another good TPM Post on the topic points out…

This is a central, perhaps the central issue in the whole shambling, tragic, dingbat debate. But we don’t return to it often enough. Saying the American people don’t have what it takes to finish the job, or come up with a new job or, really, figure out a way to help George W. Bush keep his job in Iraq amounts to blaming the public for the lies this White House told to get the country into the war. It’s really that simple.

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Here is a prescient prediction from historian Gwynne Dyer, first published in March of 2003. Of particular interest here, one which we have noted on episodes of UnCommon Sense TV, is the origins of the use of the term “Shock and Awe.” From Prescott to George Herbert to Dubya, those Bush boys sure have something for that Reich thing.

Historical analogies are often misleading, but have you noticed that Saddam Hussein, in recent TV broadcasts, looks more and more like Joseph Stalin? That’s how he’s positioning himself politically, too. Like Stalin during the Second World War, he is effectively telling Iraqis to forget about the socialist ideology, the purges and all the rest, and unite against the foreign invader. As in the old Soviet Union, a lot of the citizens seems to be listening.

Stalin’s finest hour was in 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union with the confident expectation of destroying it in a matter of weeks. He had this brilliant new military technique, blitzkrieg, which allowed relatively small numbers of German troops to spread ’shock and awe’ among the defenders (the phrase was first used in the Nazi magazine ‘Signal’) and achieve a rapid victory at low cost.

The blitzkrieg technique had beaten France in six weeks in 1940, and Hitler calculated that it ought to work even better against the Soviet Union because the vast majority of Soviet citizens hated Stalin and the Communist Party. Stalin’s secret police had murdered millions of people, and all the non-Russian citizens of the multi-national empire Soviet Union (essentially, the old Russian empire) hated Russian rule. So masses of Soviet troops would defect at the first opportunity, and the non-Russian half of the population would greet the Germans as liberators. Sound familiar?

In July of 1941 the German army launched its armored columns into the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, and within weeks its tanks were many hundreds of kilometres (miles) inside the country. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops were cut off and left behind as the tank spearheads raced for Moscow; points of resistance were bypassed in the interest of speed; ’shock and awe’ was the essence of the strategy.

But the cut-off Soviet troops did not surrender, the garrisons of the bypassed towns attacked the German supply lines, and the people did not strew roses at the feet of the invaders. Most Soviet citizens remained loyal to their country despite the monstrous character of its ruler. The German spearheads ultimately got quite close to Moscow, but after such delays that winter closed their offensive down and the Soviet capital was never captured. Instead the war turned into a nightmare battle of attrition that eventually destroyed the German army.

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Add America’s “Decider” George III to the list. Robert Fisk brings up some good points here, though the assumption that Bush’s public statements necessarily match his true thoughts and beliefs is unsupported by any empirical evidence that I’m aware of.

More than half a million deaths, an army trapped in the largest military debacle since Vietnam, a Middle East policy already buried in the sands of Mesopotamia - and still George W Bush is in denial. How does he do it? How does he persuade himself - as he apparently did in Amman yesterday - that the United States will stay in Iraq “until the job is complete”? The “job” - Washington’s project to reshape the Middle East in its own and Israel’s image - is long dead, its very neoconservative originators disavowing their hopeless political aims and blaming Bush, along with the Iraqis of course, for their disaster.

History’s “deniers” are many - and all subject to the same folly: faced with overwhelming evidence of catastrophe, they take refuge in fantasy, dismissing evidence of collapse as a symptom of some short-term setback, clinging to the idea that as long as their generals promise victory - or because they have themselves so often promised victory - that fate will be kind. George W Bush - or Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara for that matter - need not feel alone. The Middle East has produced these fantasists by the bucketful over past decades.

Stay the course. That’s what they said at Stalingrad, isn’t it?

Read the complete article in The Independent

This is an interesting little animated piece detailing the changing map of empires coming and going throughout history. Puts things in some historical perspective (something many citizens of the United States of Amnesia do not have a lot of, I’m afraid to say).

View The Map