Who’s benefitting most from the current bloodbath in Iraq?
Surely it’s not the Iraqis, neither the Sunnis nor the Shias. None would like to see their sons and daughters being killed everyday. What we’re witnessing in Iraq these days is part of a wider plan, or I’d rather call it “Sectarian Conspiracy”, as Kuwait’s Al-Ray Al-Aam newspaper called it in one of its recent editorials, to divide the Iraqi nation and the Muslim world.
It’s the Bush administration’s most powerful weapon being used to divide the Iraqis to ensure a smooth implementation of its agenda in the war torn country on one hand, while spreading sectarianism, violence, and destruction throughout the Arab and Muslim world on the other hand.
It’s a Bush-sponsored campaign that’s being carried out with total disregard to the sanctity human life. If the International community and the Security Council did not intervene, the whole Middle East region will fall into turmoil, with the recently invented sectarian violence becoming the U.S. newest tool to kill as much Muslims as possible and cause as much destruction as possible throughout the Arab world.
Even foreigners won’t be harmed in the new wave of attacks and bloodshed the will sweep the Middle East, they wont be the target, the target will be Muslims from both parties, Sunnis and Shias.
So it’s Muslims who’re losing in this new war between Sunnis and Shias, the war that came with the U.S. invasion and kept getting worse as the occupation continued year after year.
Hundreds of thousands of Muslims died when the U.S. decided to equip the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein with all tools of death during his war against neighbouring Iran.
And hundreds of thousands more Muslims died when the U.S. decided it doesn’t need Saddam anymore and occupied his nation.
The U.S.’s ongoing game of sowing animosity between Sunnis and Shias threatens the safety of the whole Muslim world. The game is getting dirtier while the International Community, including Arabs themselves, stands silent.
We’re heading for a new security crisis in the region.
The U.S.’s ongoing game of sowing animosity between Sunnis and Shias threatens the safety of the whole Muslim world.
The usual paranoid rubbish and refusal to accept any blame. There was 'animosity' between Sunni and Shi'a a thousand years before there was a US, and there was in Iraq long before the US had any involvement there. If anyone is to be blamed, it's Saddam.
It really shouldn't be necessary to ask a moderator for the source, either. Yet again. SOURCE?!!
it seems the u.s. is up to many different games. among whatever else, this article alleges that it is "bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda."
this is a really long article by seymour hersch, but most interesting as to what the u.s. is up to in the mideast. i don't really have any comments on it other than because i consider seymour hersch more credible than many american journalists, i found this article esp. thought provocative about the complex mess the u.s. has gotten itself (as well as millions of others) into.
because it's so long i'll just post a few excerpts and those interested can read the whole article. link at the bottom.
Annals of National Security
The Redirection
Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?
by Seymour M. Hersh
March 5, 2007
"To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda."
"from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran."
"Administration officials, influenced by neoconservative ideologues, assumed that a Shiite government there could provide a pro-American balance to Sunni extremists, since Iraq’s Shiite majority had been oppressed under Saddam Hussein. They ignored warnings from the intelligence community about the ties between Iraqi Shiite leaders and Iran, where some had lived in exile for years. "
"The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat. They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations. "
"“It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s the biggest danger—Iran or Sunni radicals,” Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites, Iran, and Iraq, told me. “The Saudis and some in the Administration have been arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are the lesser enemies. This is a victory for the Saudi line.”
Western companies will officially control Iraq’s oil soon
Western companies will officially control Iraq’s oil soon 2/21/2007 9:00:00 PM GMT
By: Ahmed Abdullah
Nearly four years have passed since the U.S. sent its troops to “liberate Iraq” through an illegal war, described by most analysts and experts as well as most of Iraqis, as a hidden attempt by the Bush administration, which claimed that reasons for the war was the former Iraqi leader’s alleged link to Al Qaeda network and possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction, to lay hands on the country’s oil riches.
Today, the Iraqi government, under the control of the U.S., is considering a new oil law that would establish a framework for managing Iraq’s oil wealth, the third-largest oil reserves in the world.
Here Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi blogger and architect, who said he has obtained a copy of the new oil law, discusses the new legislation with Antonia Juhasz, author of "The Bush Agenda: Invading the World One Economy at a Time,” where she uncovers the economic gains of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
When asked by Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman about how he got a copy of the document and what it says, Mr. Jarrar, the Iraq Project Director for Global Exchange said that 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 different copies of it. Some are scanned, and others of the original document, but it just hit the internet last week.
“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.
“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.
“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.”
On the other hand, Antonia Juhasz, who was also asked by Amy Goodman about the significance of such law for Western oil companies, said that it “certainly opens the door to U.S. oil companies and the Bush administration winning a very large piece of their objective of going to war in Iraq, at least winning it on paper. The law does almost word for word what was laid out in the Baker-Hamilton recommendation, which I discussed previously on your show, which is, at the very basic level, to turn Iraq's nationalized oil system, the model that 90% of the world’s oil is governed by, take its nationalized oil system and turn it into a commercial system fully open to foreign corporate investment on terms as of yet to be decided. So it leaves vague this very important question of what type of contracts will the Iraqi government use. But what it leaves clear is that basically every level of the oil industry will be open to private foreign companies.
“It introduces this very unique model, which is that 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. It’s almost in all cases just another oil company among lots of other companies, including U.S. oil companies. And this council, the new oil and gas council, is going to be the decision making body to determine what kind of contract the Iraqis can sign, and all contract models are still on the table, yet to be determined. I think that’s left vague or open, so that the very necessary criticism to earlier drafts of the law, which included specifically production sharing agreements, might be quieted.
“But the law definitely sets up a very dangerous setup for Iraq's future economic stability, economic development, and certainly sets the stage for a tremendous amount of increased hostility and violence to U.S. soldiers positioned on the ground, as being seen as the implementers of this oil hijack."
Asked about the advocates’ argument for Western company involvement, that they need to come into Iraq to kick-start the oil development, Juhasz said that Iraq's oil development has actually been going quite well since the invasion under the guidance of the Iraqis themselves. Prior to the war, Iraq produced 2.5 million barrels of oil a day. Since the war, it’s been producing about 2.2 million barrels of oil a day. That’s definitely dropped most recently, because of the intense violence in Iraq of late. And there have definitely been targeted actions against the oil system as demonstrations of opposition to the occupation. So I believe there is a very concrete argument that can be made that the best thing that Iraq can do right now to see its oil infrastructure secure and pumping at a reasonable level is to see the U.S. occupation end.
“Given that Iraq's oil only costs less than a dollar per barrel to pump and oil is selling at over $50 per barrel, the Iraqis are already making a tremendous return on their oil. The danger is that under the different models of oil contract that are being put on the table, that the Iraqis would lose the vast majority of that profit to the foreign oil companies.
“Now, just really quickly, Iraqis have lost a fair amount of expertise, technical know-how, as technology has increased over the past eleven years and the Iraqis were shut out because of the sanctions. The answer to that is found in the models put forward by their neighbors, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and Iran, which are technical service contracts that countries sign with foreign companies to bring in that expertise, but under very limited time frames and very specific economic benefits to the companies and to the country, not these 35-year contracts, as Raed said, and the potential for vast profits leaving the country."
“No one in Iraq knows about the law,” said Raed Jarrar.
“The law has been kept in a very low profile, and there is a huge propaganda campaign by the government trying to portray the law as straight and good for Iraq, a law that will turn Iraq into heaven on earth, because it will bring all of the foreign investments. Even parliamentarians in the Iraqi government, the ones who will have the final say to pass this law, haven’t received a copy of this law yet. I sent them the copy three or four days ago, and I sent a copy to many of the other Iraqi bloggers and journalists, because I think it’s very important to raise awareness about this and make it an issue.
“The Iraqi government and the Bush administration are trying to keep a very low profile in Iraq on this law. I think they’re planning just to, you know, surprise the parliamentarians one morning and have them vote on it without any knowledge of what the law actually causes."
Umm...Then why are they fighting them? Why are UK and US and Iraqi troops dying trying to protect the Iraqi people from them?
That makes absolutly zero sense.
I agree with the poster above that the sunni's and Shia have only been held in check from killing each other by Saddam's murdorous rule for over 30 years.
Al Quada, Iran and Jihadists know that If Iraq succeeds as the first true democracy apart from israel in the region , then their whole house will come down. It's a time of maximum effort for them and they machine gunned a bunch of kids playing football last week. Is the US paying them? Do they work for the US? Are the Iraqi's dying at the moment from Western suicide bombs or muslim suicide bombs?
I left Iraq in 2003 and there was great hope at that time. Perhaps instead of hating each other and the west so much, the people may unite for the good of all. Reject the forign fighters and Jihadists?
The Terror stops...People are safe....The G.I's and Tommys all go home. Share power, peace and become a prosperous wealthy & happy people.
I heard a tale in 2003. five hundred odd Jihadists were put into Saddam International Airport by the baathists to defend it. About 16 survived the airstrikes and of those one of them tried to seek shelter in a Iraqi's house announcing proudly that they were "Fighters in the way of Allah". The Iraqi went to get his gun. A bit more of that early spirit is needed, it's the only way this will end.
(actually the way it will probably end is Domestic pressure in the US &UK to pull out before security is established and then the country will really rip itself to bits. Western fault for going in...western fault for coming out.
Taking out Saddam Hussein made sense. Nation building doesn't make sense.
did it? did we give any thought whatsoever as to what would happen next? was it sensible to bring about a state of anarchy in iraq - to unleash the nightmare that is still unfolding?
as far as i know, the u.s. has nothing against dictators per se.
each man thinks of his own fleas as gazelles
question authority
What Happens next is down to the people of Iraq. they can embrace peace & reject terror, or they can tear each other to bits. Nothing America or the UK can do will stop that.
did it? did we give any thought whatsoever as to what would happen next? was it sensible to bring about a state of anarchy in iraq - to unleash the nightmare that is still unfolding?
as far as i know, the u.s. has nothing against dictators per se.
Well, I said that because I believe Saddam should have been taken out in the first Gulf War. No occupation by U.S. troops, just a sizeable force of international soldiers, maybe Turks or something, under the flag of the U.N. to hold the infrastructure together while a new government is formed. This is all hindsight of course.
"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is."
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i have iran on my mind.
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