U.S. GENOCIDAL STRATEGY IN FALLUJAH

"Iraqis in the volatile al-Anbar province west of Baghdad are reporting regular killings carried out by U.S. forces that many believe are part of a 'genocidal' strategy... U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces working with them are also executing people seized during home raids and other operations... In the face of the U.S.-backed violence, most Iraqis now openly support attacks against occupation forces..."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37151

IRAQI OIL LAW THE CULMNINATION OF U.S. BLOOD FOR OIL PLAN

"... By March of 2001, half a year before 9/11, (Vice President Cheney’s Energy) Task Force was poring secretly over maps of the Iraqi oil fields, pipe lines, and tanker terminals. It studied a listing of foreign oil company “suitors” for exploration and development contracts, to be executed with Saddam Hussein’s oil ministry. There was not a single American or British oil company included, and to Mr. Cheney and his cohorts that was intolerable. The final report of the Task Force was candid: “... Middle East oil producers will remain central to world security. The Gulf will be a primary focus of U.S. international energy policy.” The detailed meaning of “focus” was left blank...

"A secret NSC memorandum in 2001 spoke candidly of “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields” in Iraq. In 2002 Paul Wolfowitz suggested simply seizing the oil fields... The seizure of the oil would have to be oblique and far more sophisticated... The (seizure) package today is in the form of draft legislation, the hydrocarbon law... The Iraqi war has never been about terrorism. It is blood for oil."

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/30/201/

MAIN BENCHMARK: BUSH MUST CERTIFY THAT U.S. HAS ACCESS TO IRAQI OIL

"The Iraq Accountability Act... working its way through Congress... requires the Iraqi government to meet a series of “benchmarks”... the (Iraqi) hydrocarbon law... is the only “benchmark” that truly matters to (the Bush) Administration... if passed, the (Iraqi) law will make available to Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, BP/Amoco, and Royal Dutch/Shell about 4/5’s of the stupendous petroleum reserves in Iraq...

"The legislation pending now in Washington requires the President to certify to Congress by next October that the benchmarks have been met - specifically that the Iraqi hydrocarbon law has been passed.... he will certify the American and British oil companies have access to Iraqi oil. It is why we went to war..."

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/30/201/

BAGHDAD EMBASSY

"The fortress-like compound rising beside the Tigris River here will be the largest of its kind in the world... 21 buildings on 104 acres... the size of Vatican City, with... 5,500 Americans and Iraqis... the population of a small town, its own defense force, self-contained power and water... it will be a self-sufficient and “hardened” domain, to function in the midst of Baghdad power outages, water shortages and continuing turmoil... (with) its own water wells, electricity plant and wastewater-treatment facility, “systems to allow 100 percent independence from city utilities... Besides two major diplomatic office buildings, homes for the ambassador and his deputy, and the apartment buildings for staff, the compound will offer a swimming pool, gym, commissary, food court and American Club, all housed in a recreation building... ... Iraq’s interim government transferred the land to U.S. ownership in October 2004..."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20070124&articleId=4579

GREEN ZONE NO LONGER SECURE

"... The US embassy in Baghdad circulated a memo to all Americans working for the US government in the Green Zone. It ordered them to wear protective gear whenever they were outside in the Green Zone, including just moving from one building to another. Guerrillas have managed to lob a number of rockets into the area in recent days, and killed one US GI on Tuesday. The Green Zone is therefore actually the Red Zone. I.e., it is no longer an area of good security contrasting to what is around it..."
http://www.juancole.com/2007/03/bombers-kill-over-130-wounding-over-two.html

BUSH: DEFEAT EVIL IN IRAQ OR IT WILL FOLLOW US HOME

"... Some call this civil war; others call it emergency -- I call it pure evil. And that evil that uses children in a terrorist attack in Iraq is the same evil that inspired and rejoiced in the attacks of September the 11th, 2001. And that evil must be defeated overseas, so we don't have to face them here again. If we cannot muster the resolve to defeat this evil in Iraq, America will have lost its moral purpose in the world, and we will endanger our citizens, because if we leave Iraq before the job is done, the enemy will follow us here..."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/03/20070328-2.html

HOW ARAB ANALYSTS SEE IRAQ

"... analysts in the Arab world have little confidence that current US troop surge in Iraq will do much more than postpone a complete political-security breakdown in Iraq, which, they fear, could then spread across the Middle East... if US forces leave Iraq... there's a possibility this would concentrate the minds of (Arab countries)... on the need to find a workable reconciliation. But if the Americans stay, we can expect the situation to remain bad... Meanwhile, the broad deployment of US troops in Iraq has been transformed from an American asset in the region into a liability that erodes US power and standing... Bush's decision to invade Iraq looks increasingly like British Prime Minister Anthony Eden's decision to invade Egypt's Suez region in 1956: an exercise in ill-considered military over-reach that hastened the subsequent shrinkage of a quasi-imperial power..."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0329/p09s02-coop.html

SAUDI KING CALLS OCCUPATION ILLEGITIMATE

"Saudi King Abdullah, whose country is a close US ally, on Wednesday slammed the “illegitimate foreign occupation” of Iraq in an opening speech to the annual Arab summit in Riyadh... He also said that Arab nations... would not allow any foreign force to decide the future of the region..."
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2007/mar/29/yehey/opinion/20070329opi5.html

SOME SUNNI INSURGENTS SPLITTING WITH AL QAEDA

"... divisions between insurgent groups and Al Qaeda in Iraq have widened and have led to combat in some areas... Sunni Arab insurgent leaders said they disagreed with the leadership of Al Qaeda in Iraq over tactics, including attacks on civilians.. "Al Qaeda is pursuing a different agenda — an international one and not an Iraqi" agenda..."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-insurgents27mar27,0,4291272.story?coll=la-home-headlines

ROCKET IN GREEN ZONE

"A rocket made its way into the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad causing shock and awe in the US embassy, the buildings of the Iraqi government and those of other embassies housed there..."
http://www.arabmonitor.info/news/dettaglio.php?idnews=18281&lang=en

CHENEY: NO IRAQ PULL OUT

"... Cheney... used his appearance before the Republican Jewish Coalition in Manalaplan, Florida, to reassure allies that the current political struggle will not result in a precipitous US withdrawal from Iraq... vowed that the administration would not allow an early withdrawal of US forces from Iraq... regardless of whether Iraqi security forces are ready to take over from them..."
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/070325/1/47hm0.html

IRAN'S STRATEGY FOR IRAQ

"... A successful US withdrawal from Iraq would free up military resources and restore US political will to focus on Iran. On the other hand, a hopelessly deteriorating quagmire in Iraq may force to US to seek an alternative path to victory by widening the war with an attack on Iran, or instigate an internal coup by supporting Iranian dissident groups. Thus Iran's strategy for Iraq is neither US withdrawal nor escalation, just a slow bleed to drive home the awareness of superpower impotency to the whole world..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IC21Ak06.html

EFFECT ON IRAQ OF WAR ON TERRORISM

"... The US "war on terrorism", instead of igniting a "proactive democratic revolution", has transformed a secular Ba'athist regime in Iraq into an al-Qaeda Islamic state within US-occupied Iraq..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IC21Ak06.html

WILL COP SHOPS WORK?

"... "joint security stations"... The fears and distrust resulting from the subsequent warfare make it difficult, if not impossible, to persuade Iraqis to use the stations as they were intended: as friendly neighborhood cop shops where anyone can drop by with a tip on a suspected terrorist next door..."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-security20mar20,0,1812344.story?coll=la-home-headlines

U.S. RETAINING PERMANENT BASES TO CONTROL OIL

"The invasion of Iraq ... was designed to transform the oil-rich nation into an unsinkable U.S. aircraft carrier from which U.S. attacks and military interventions could be launched to “discipline” oil-rich Iran, Syria, and others...

"Post-invasion, the U.S. military established 110 bases in Iraq... As authority is turned over to the central government in Baghdad... the Pentagon is working feverishly to further consolidate the U.S. military presence to 14 “enduring bases”...

"Whether the U.S. retains five or 15 “enduring bases,” its goal is clear: to keep its military hand on the “jugular vein” of global capitalism – as former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Maxwell Taylor described Middle East oil. This requires an intimidating infrastructure of deadly high-tech fortresses and the warriors that go with them...."

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0319-26.htm

TERRORISTS NOT WAITING TO "FOLLOW US HOME"

"... Shakir al-Abssi... a former associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi... trains fighters and spreads the ideology of Al Qaeda... He said killing American soldiers in Iraq was no longer enough to convince the American public that its government should abandon what many Muslims view as a war against Islam. “We have every legitimate right to do such acts, for isn’t it America that comes to our region and kills innocents and children?” Mr. Abssi said. “It is our right to hit them in their homes the same as they hit us in our homes."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/world/middleeast/16jihad.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

CHINA THE FIRST TO BENEFIT FROM IRAQ'S NEW OIL LAW

"... despite the US "investment" of more than 35,000 dead or wounded troops and over 400 billion dollars to secure access to Iraq's oil for itself, China is poised to sign the first major contract... the Ahdab oil field in south-central Iraq. It wasn't supposed to work this way. The US had a major role in developing Iraq's proposed oil law, with its scandalous long-term agreements enabling foreign oil companies to plunder the nation's most precious resource...."

"... the famed military strategist Sun Tzu... advised waiting quietly as an enemy self-destructs, then sweeping in to reap the profits, an effective plan for Beijing during the Bush years."

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar07/Wokusch15.htm

HIDDEN COST OF WAR

"The Pentagon is trying to silence economists who predict that several decades of care for the wounded will amount to an unbelievable $2.5 trillion... ... the administration has been putting out two entirely separate and conflicting sets of numbers of those wounded in the wars.... So far, more than 200,000 veterans from the current Iraq or Afghanistan wars have been treated at VA centers. Twenty per cent of those brought home are suffering from serious brain or spinal injuries, or the severing of more than one limb, and a further 20 per cent from amputations, blindness or deafness, severe burns, or other dire conditions... not only the number wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan is far higher than the Pentagon has been saying, but that looking after them alone could cost present and future US taxpayers a sum they estimate to be $536 billion, but which could get considerably bigger still... The projected $2.5 trillion price tag also includes the costs of replacing and replenishing military equipment in use...
http://www.newstatesman.com/200703120024

LOATHING OF SEARCHES BY FOREIGN TROOPS


"... (we) have underestimated is the loathing Iraqis have of foreign troops bursting into their houses... Foreign troops legitimize insurgency.... (the photo shows) four American soldiers, dressed in full, intimidating battle gear, around the periphery of a Baghdad living room. In the center, on the carpeted floor, lies a collapsed woman... A man, identified as her son, is holding her in his arms... what arrests the eye is the look of horror and terror on his face as he looks up at an armed, gesticulating soldier. Another soldier has taken the liberty of making himself at home on the sofa. The caption tells us only that the mother has fainted ... after she suffered a panic attack... when her son was "questioned."
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/03/13/surge_doomed_to_final_failure/

CHENEY'S MARCH 2001 OIL TASK FORCE HAS ACHEIVED GOAL

"... In March 2001, the National Energy Policy Development Group (better known as Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force), which included executives of America’s largest energy companies, recommended that the United States government support initiatives by Middle Eastern countries “to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment.” One invasion and a great deal of political engineering by the Bush administration later, this is exactly what the proposed Iraq oil law would achieve.... The Iraq hydrocarbon law would take the majority of Iraq’s oil out of the exclusive hands of the Iraqi government and open it to international oil companies for a generation or more.... It does so to the benefit of the companies, but to the great detriment of Iraq’s economy, democracy and sovereignty..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/opinion/13juhasz.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

INJURED TROOPS ORDERED BACK TO IRAQ

"The Army is ordering injured troops to go to Iraq... Some were injured on previous combat tours. Some of their ills are painful conditions from training accidents or, among relatively older troops, degenerative problems like back injuries or blown-out knees. Some of the soldiers have been in the Army for decades.... As the military scrambles to pour more soldiers into Iraq, a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Ga., is deploying troops with serious injuries and other medical problems, including GIs who doctors have said are medically unfit for battle. Some are too injured to wear their body armor... soldiers claim that the division and brigade surgeons summarily downgraded soldiers' profiles, without even a medical exam, in order to deploy them to Iraq... where else this might be happening and who is dictating it... How high does it go?"
http://www.salon.com/news/2007/03/11/fort_benning/

U.S. TO INSTALL ALLAWI AS A NEW SADDAM

"... Maliki and his helpless, corrupt government - whose only role is to enforce imperial US edicts in Iraq - will be blamed by the Bush administration for failing to help the Pentagon occupy and "pacify" the country... Maliki will be the fall guy and a new Washington/Green Zone-engineered "coalition", led by perennial favorite Allawi, will usurp his power in Parliament.... the "secret" US Plan B... is none other than installing the new Saddam Hussein: in this case the same old "Saddam without a mustache" (as he is known in Baghdad) Iyad Allawi... (who is, like Saddam, a former CIA asset)..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IC13Ak06.html

SHOULD HALLIBURTON SUBSIDIARY REPAY $400 MILLION TO U.S.?

"... (Should) KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary responsible for more than 50,000 personnel in Iraq and billions in government contracts... be forced to repay the government nearly half a billion dollars because it hired private security forces in Iraq... when the Army itself was supposed to be providing it with protection?... Under the terms of KBR's master contract, the Army is specifically tasked with providing force protection for KBR's thousands of employees.... If the Army was responsible for providing security for KBR's 50,000 employees, why didn't it do so? Is the command and control in Iraq in such disarray that $400 million in private security services that should have been provided by the Army was not, and no one noticed? Did no one realize that tens of thousands of private soldiers were performing the Army's security duties?... It's a scandal that has been brewing for more than two years..."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070326/scahill_ordower

WHY THE U.S. FIGHTS FOR IRAQ'S OIL

"... Ghawar... the mother-of-all oil fields. She was once a veritable sea of light sweet crude 174 miles long and 12 miles wide, under the sands of... Saudi Arabia and now she is dead... Saudi (2006) production is down a whopping 8%... Kuwaiti oil production from the world's second-largest field (Burgan) is ‘exhausted’ and falling after almost six decades of pumping”... “Production at Cantarell, the world's second-largest oil complex, which provides about 60% of Mexico's crude... (had) a 13% drop from 2005... The famous North Sea basin... is about to experience a precipitous production decline. Back in 2000 we learned that China’s only super-giant field, Da Qing was also at death’s door..."
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0307-33.htm

BUSH AND TORTURE

"President Bush on Monday defended U.S. interrogation practices and called the treatment of terrorism suspects lawful. “We do not torture.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9956644

"The American Civil Liberties Union today made public... autopsy and death reports of detainees held in U.S. facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom died while being interrogated... According to the documents, 21 of the 44 deaths were homicides. Eight of the homicides appear to have resulted from abusive techniques used on detainees... The autopsy reports list deaths by "strangulation," "asphyxiation" and "blunt force injuries" ... autopsy reports for two detainees... present irrefutable evidence that U.S. operatives tortured detainees to death during interrogations.."
http://www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/gen/21236prs20051024.html

OIL LAW WILL KEEP U.S. IN IRAQ TO PROTECT OIL COMPANIES

"The U.S.-backed Iraqi cabinet approved a new oil law Monday that is set to give foreign companies the long-term contracts and safe legal framework they have been waiting for... (but) transferring ownership to the foreign companies would give a further pretext to continue the U.S. occupation on the grounds that those companies will need protection...."
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36754

WHY IRAQ IS A SUCCESS AND WE ARE THERE TO STAY

"... many in Congress... like the idea that we have gone into Iraq, we have built four mega bases, they are complete. Most of the money we gave to Halliburton was for construction and completion of these bases. We have probably, of the 150,000, 160,000 troops we have in Iraq probably 110,000 of those folks are associated with one of those four mega bases. Safely ensconced behind acres and acres of concrete. To operate there indefinitely, no matter what happens in Baghdad, no matter who takes over, no matter if the country splits into three pieces or it stays one. No matter what happens, we have those mega bases... Part of the reason I think that we went into Iraq was to reestablish a stronger foothold than we had in Saudi Arabia, but also a more economical, a more flexible, in terms of who we want to hit. If you want to hit Syria, can you do it from Iraq? Of course you can. And now you can do it from bases that will support any type of airplane you want, any number of troops in barracks. I mean we can do things from Iraq. And this is what they wanted. So... many people in the Congress, and certainly this administration, when they call Iraq a success, they mean it, and this is why. We’re in Iraq to stay."
--Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (ret.), a veteran of the Pentagon
http://www.truthdig.com/interview/page2/20070227_pentagon_whistleblower_on_the_coming_war_with_iran/

SIX MONTHS TO WIN, OR COLLAPSE

"... the elite group of officers advising the top US commander in Iraq believes the US and the Iraqi government have six months to win the war - or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support back home that could force the military into a hasty retreat...

"The problems identified by the Petraeus team are a mix of old and new: insufficient troops on the ground, a "disintegrating" international coalition, an anticipated increase in violence in the south as the British leave, morale problems as casualties rise and political squabbling continues, and worries that the White House and Pentagon may lose control of the policy to Congress...

"Petraeus may provide the ultimate service to the troops and the nation ... not by winning, but by speaking the truth about Iraq."

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/simon_tisdall/2007/03/six_months_to_win_the_war.html