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New source [to me] of Iraq war photojournalism

Zoriah
6-23-08

Those darned Iranians

They need to just quit meddling in our Iraq.

Vandals

In 1258, the Mongols descended on Baghdad and emptied the libraries into the Tigris, ending the city's scholarly preeminence enjoyed for nearly 500 years. "Hence the legend developed," as one scholar wrote, "that the river ran black from the ink of the countless texts lost in this manner, while the streets ran red with the blood of the city's slaughtered inhabitants."

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The sacking of the library that began April 11, 2003, was a bad one. The current Director of Iraq's National Library and Archive, Dr. Saad Eskander, estimates that over three days, as many as "60 percent of the Ottoman and Royal Hashemite era documents were lost as well as the bulk of the Ba'ath era documents.... [and] approximately 25 percent of the book collections were looted or burned."

Heckuvajob, Blackie!

The State Department will renew its contract with Blackwater to provide security in Iraq, Greg Starr, acting assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, said Friday.

An Irresponsible Plan

The Congresscritters are finally beginning to notice the hoi polloi who sent/are sending/will continue to send them to Washington, and several good people have come up with A Very Serious Plan [PDF] to end the war in Iraq.

It looks like a good one: humanitarian and economic help for Iraq [and lots of it], no permanent bases there, promote peace and unity amongst the warring factions, restore a bunch of our Constitutional rights here at home, health care for veterans, fix the GI bill, go after the war profiteers, and break up the media conglomerates while we're at it.

Then I read this: Iraq Study Group Recommendation 23:

The President should restate that the United States does not seek to control Iraq’s oil.

Uh oh. Why do we need to reassure everyone on this point? Because we're leaving in this little bit:

Assist the Iraqi government in achieving certain security, political, and economic milestones, including better performance on issues such as national reconciliation, equitable distribution of oil revenues, and the dismantling of militias.

"Equitable distribution of oil revenues" is code for "Y'all decide among yourselves how you're going to split up what little oil revenue you'll have left after we take the bulk of it."

The US wrote a new Constitution for Iraq and an Oil Law too, both of which go into great detail on how Iraq is supposed to handle our their oil riches. Of course, we rigged it so that the four biggest oil companies in the world, two of them American, the other two of them British, would likely get the bulk of the contracts for extracting that oil and the bulk of the revenues from selling that oil. The remaining revenues are to be split equitably based on the population distribution in the country instead of where the oil fields are, because a large expanse, controlled primarily by the Sunnis, has no oil to speak of.

Also, in that same section of The Plan [page 13] are Support the unity and territorial integrity of Iraq and Help Iraq reach a mutually acceptable agreement on Kirkuk because the Kurds in the North want to go off and contract their oil drilling to some companies that aren't among The Approved Big Four Anglo-Americans, and the Shiites in the West will probably want to team up with Iran to sell their oil to China. Lord knows we can't have that.

via

I want a pony!

And damn it, I coulda had one. Or three!!!





Also, my entry for today's blogswarm.

IVAW Winter Soldier

MARCH 13-16, 2008 (Thursday-Sunday): Winter Soldier

Members of Iraq Veterans Against the War will testify in Silver Spring, Maryland to crimes witnessed and committed in Iraq. Audio and video of panels will be available live online, on satelite TV, and on Pacifica radio.

http://www.ivaw.org/wintersoldier

Local events supporting Winter Soldier, and other events for peace, justice, and impeachment:

http://www.5yearstoomany.org

I've also posted some videos on my war protest blog:

The original Winter Soldier hearings, Vietnam

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Previews for this year's IVAW Winter Soldier event

The officials who say NIE!

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell wants to keep the contents of the next National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, due out sometime this month, a secret. No surprise there.

"Overall, professional life is less complicated if nothing becomes public, and one doesn't have to organize classified assessments always having in the back of one's mind, 'If this is ever leaked, how would it read' " in the news media, a former intelligence analyst said.

Duh. We all learned that one in kindergarten --- it's way easier to get away with stuff you shouldn't be doing when nobody's looking.

Mark your calendars

Blogswarm

March 19th

h/t

We [heart] Iraq

No, really.

The Surge! brought to you in [formerly] living color

by the NYT.


This is a crappy way to illustrate technical information, way too busy and hard to read, but each one of those figures represents a human being, on "our" side, who was alive before 2007, and each one of those black blocks represents 500 more deaths.

Total for the year = 2,592


But hey, it's ok, because civilian deaths are down.

No word yet on when our oil, that they're hiding in their sand, will be transported to US gas tanks where it rightfully belongs.

Missions a grunt dreams about

I’m infantry…I lust for the blood of America’s enemies.

Proof

that the big guys listen to me.

Jami Miscik

I like her, I admire her, but she was George Tenet's right hand woman on that slam-dunk evidence of WMD in Iraq.

If Nellie Bly can go around the world in 72 days, can we get out out of Iraq in __?

100,000 U.S. troops could leave soon: Iraq president

By Susan Cornwell | October 7, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At least 100,000 U.S. troops could return home from Iraq by the end of 2008, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said in an interview aired on Sunday, although he proposed that several American military bases stay in Iraq.

Speaking on CNN television, Talabani envisioned faster U.S. troop reductions than U.S. commanders have discussed in public. But he stressed that the pace of withdrawal was up to those commanders and did not explain w hy he foresaw a faster pullout.

Probably the Kurds just want us out of there [Talabani is Kurdish] because they are gearing up to start pumping and [more importantly] selling oil. They've already signed several prodution sharing agreements, and expect to sign more of them shortly. The rest of Iraq has been recalcitrant about signing onto the BushCheney Oil Law -- PSAs for All! -- but the Kurds, who are living on top of about 40% of Iraq's oil, are gung ho on them. Perhaps the Bush administration is counting on a Kurdish President, one whose province is [soon to be] making money hand over fist, to sucker the rest of the Iraqis into following suit.

It would certainly help the Republican Party in the 2008 elections if all that happened.


Of course, the part that I hate is that my little project of the past week has now been scooped [but you get to hear about it anyway].

Just how fast could we leave Iraq?

Not so long ago, the Democratic candidates were all tripping over each other to be the one who was least precipitous. Three months! No, six months! No, a year! No, two years! We can't possibly move 150,000 troops in anything less than a [pick one] time frame.

I call horsefeathers. Some nice round numbers for ya: we have 160,000 troops in Iraq, we can move 4000 troops/day [3000-3500 regularly, nearly 5000 if we try harder] = 40 days. And that's bringing a few hundred tons of cargo along for the ride each time too.

According to all those daily airpower summaries, Air Force C-17s [of which there are 150 total] and C-130s [314 total] have been doing all the heavy lifting [!], but the Air Force has also got 111 C-5s. That's 575 big fat aircraft, each of which can carry, give or take, 100 troops at a time. Plus, the Navy's got some C-130s, though they're not saying how many. That's 57,500+ people in one swell foop.

So, if we really got in a hurry, if we decided to cut and run and leave a lot of stuff behind, if we pressed each one of those aircraft into service, and if each one flew once every 24 hours, we could be out of there in 2-3 days.

I'm just sayin'.


And just in case you were wondering: the Multi-National Force - Iraq has an official website.

People don't talk about this, because it's embarrassing

Some of what's been happening with regard to the improvement in al-Anbar has been behind the scenes big Saudi money and Jordanian interventions of various sorts.... If they can do that now, they can do that after the US troops are out, and in fact, US troops had almost nothing to do with the changed situation in al-Anbar.

Juan Cole, [whose walls look like mine] in a Sept 18 interview with Josh Marshall. I assume Dr Cole is referring to the recent improvements in Anbar province that Petraeus was touting.


Hmmm, speaking of Jordan and Iran....

Benchmark: Whenever

Initial Benchmark Assessment Report
July 12, 2007 [pdf]

Benchmark Boogie: A Guide to the Struggle over Iraq's Oil

Egg ... Chicken ... Chicken ... Egg

I was just reading my favorite columnist over at my favorite subversive blog, Krugman, expressing contempt of Bush's "taking care of" Libby, when I noticed a couple of things.

First off, Krugman refers to the Where Are They Now? wrap-up that Think Progress has done on the architects of the invasion of Iraq. The link he provides is to Think Progress' front page, rather than to the article in question. I did a little detective work and found it for you: THE ARCHITECTS OF WAR: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Secondly, I couldn't help noticing something else, as I skimmed down the list of those architects. A question: does being ugly make you a warmonger, or does being a warmonger make you ugly?

Why the surge is working. Or not.

Iraq's cabinet has approved changes to a draft oil law and sent it to parliament in a step seen as vital to curbing sectarian violence.

Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, said it was the "most important" law in the country.

"The law was approved unanimously ... it was referred to the parliament which will discuss it tomorrow," he said.

"I call on all our partners in the political process and in this national unity government to respect this deal."

A couple of years ago, I wasn't entirely convinced that our invasion of Iraq was entirely about OIL. These days I'm not so sure of that.

They've toned down the language a bit, made some concessions on some percentages, and shortened some timeframes for leases, but the Iraq Oil Law is still all about production sharing agreements, and a few troublesome folks aren't buying off on it.

Followers of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Thursday joined a growing chorus of Sunni, Kurdish and Shiite opposition to a draft oil law approved by Iraq's cabinet and backed by the US government.

Sadr's supporters said they would not support any law that would allow firms 'whose governments are occupying Iraq' -- a reference to the US, Britain and their coalition allies -- to sign Iraqi oil deals.

My guess is that the surge was all about stabilizing just enough of Baghdad and buying just enough time to get the infamous oil law signed, and not about anything else.

Presentation of the draft to parliament after the cabinet approved it on Tuesday was a big step towards meeting a key political target set by the US.

Please prove me wrong.