Clipmarks | zizzy's 'iraq' clips

Palin's Church May Have Shaped Controversial Worldview

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 01:04:21 GMT

clipped by: zizzy
clipper's remarks: Go to the article to watch the video of Palin's speech. I wanted to watch the recorded sermons of Palin's Assembly of God pastor, Ed Kalnins at http://www.wasillaag.net. The server was overloaded.

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Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Speaking before the Pentecostal church, Palin painted the current war in Iraq as a messianic affair in which the United States could act out the will of the Lord.

"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God," she exhorted the congregants. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."

Religion, however, was not strictly a thread in Palin's foreign policy. It was part of her energy proposals as well. Just prior to discussing Iraq, Alaska's governor asked the audience to pray for another matter -- a $30 billion national gas pipeline project that she wanted built in the state. "I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that," she said.

what is Palin's faith and how exactly has it influenced her policies?

Chaching! Iraq government has $79 Billion in U.S. Bank

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:28:13 GMT

clipped by: zizzy

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

The soaring price of oil will leave the Iraqi government with a cumulative budget surplus of as much as $79 billion by year's end an American federal oversight agency has concluded in an analysis released on Tuesday.

The unspent windfall, which covers surpluses from oil sales from 2005 through 2008, appears likely to put an uncomfortable new focus on the approximately $48 billion in American taxpayer money devoted to rebuilding Iraq since the American-led invasion.

Over all, the report from the Government Accountability Office estimates, Iraqi oil revenue from 2005 through the end of this year will amount to at least $156 billion. And in an odd financial twist, large amounts of the surplus money is sitting in an American bank in New York -- nearly $10 billion at the end of 2007, with more expected this year, when the accountability office estimates a skyrocketing surplus.

Richard Perle, War Criminal, Back into Iraq for Oil

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:01:37 GMT

clipped by: zizzy

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

The Wall Street Journal reports that neoconservative war architect Richard Perle is getting back into Iraq:

Influential former Pentagon official Richard Perle has been exploring going into the oil business in Iraq and Kazakhstan, according to people with knowledge of the matter and documents outlining possible deals.

Mr. Perle, one of a group of security experts who began pushing the case for toppling Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein about a decade ago, has been discussing a possible deal with officials of northern Iraq's Kurdistan regional government, including its Washington envoy, according to these people and the documents.

Think Progress remembers that Perle "resigned from his position on the Defense Policy Board in an attempt to 'defuse a controversy over charges he stood to profit from the war in Iraq.'"

iraqi Prime Minister Backs Obama Troop Exit Plan

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 18:58:25 GMT

clipped by: zizzy

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told a German magazine he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months.

In an interview with Der Spiegel released on Saturday, Maliki said he wanted U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible.

"U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

It is the first time he has backed the withdrawal timetable put forward by Obama.

Dr. Susan Rice, senior national security advisor to the Obama Campaign, issued this statement

Senator Obama welcomes Prime Minister Maliki's support for a 16 month timeline for the redeployment of U.S combat brigades. This presents an important opportunity to transition to Iraqi responsibility, while restoring our military and increasing our commitment to finish the fight in Afghanistan.

Interpretion of Events: Bombings in Diyla and Mosul

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 06:33:12 GMT

clipped by: zizzy

Clip Source: www.juancole.com

The election of legitimate Sunni-majority provincial governments could undermine a key propaganda point of the guerrillas, which is that Iraq's government is a Shiite/Kurdish Iranian puppet that also is in Washington's back pocket.

Former vice president of Iraq Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, called on Iraqi guerrillas to drive the US out of the country on Tuesday. Duri's cell and other Baathists in the north have been one important source of Iraq's violence, but the press tends to ignore the neo-Baath in favor of Muslim fundamentalists.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned against a militarization of American foreign policy and stressed the role of the civilian state department. Translation: The Bush Senior Realists think Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith not only screwed up the Pentagon and almost destroyed the US armed forces but also imposed impossible burdens on it that other agencies should have borne.

HIllary: I criticized that Iraq war before Obama

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 20:28:20 GMT

clipped by: zizzy

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

In Eugene, Oregon, Saturday. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, attempted to change the measure by which anyone might assess who criticized the Iraq war first, her or Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, by saying those keeping records should start in January 2005, when Obama joined the Senate. (A measure that conveniently avoids her October 2002 vote to authorize use of force against Iraq at a time that Obama was speaking out against the war.) She claimed that using that measure she criticized the war in Iraq before Obama did.

But Clinton's claim was false.

Read the whole story here.

KBR in Iraq dodges paying taxes

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:18:13 GMT

clipped by: zizzy
clipper's remarks:

KBR's top competitors in Iraq do not appear to have gone to the same lengths to avoid taxes. Other top Iraq war contractors - including Bechtel, Parsons, Washington Group International, L-3 Communications, Perini, and Fluor - told the Globe that they pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for their American workers.

KBR has almost completely stopped hiring Americans anyway, even though they receive $16B in American taxpayer dollars. Bosnians were preferred to Americans, but now even they are being replaced by workers from India - cheaper labor. Any hiring of an American has to be justified in writing.

Clip Source: www.boston.com

More than 21,000 people working for KBR in Iraq - including about 10,500 Americans - are listed as employees of two companies that exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard here in the Caribbean

Defense Department has known since at least 2004 that KBR was avoiding taxes by declaring its American workers as employees of Cayman Islands shell companies

With an estimated $16 billion in contracts, KBR is by far the largest contractor in Iraq, with eight times the work of its nearest competitor.

While KBR's use of the shell companies saves workers their half of the taxes, it deprives them of future retirement benefits

the practice enables KBR to avoid paying unemployment taxes in Texas, where the company is registered, amounting to between $20 and $559 per American employee per year, depending on the company's rate of turnover

workers hired through the Cayman Island companies cannot receive unemployment assistance should they lose their jobs

100 Years in Iraq is Fine with McCain

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 09:13:51 GMT

clipped by: zizzy

Clip Source: www.truthdig.com

When asked in a New Hampshire town hall meeting about the possibility of being in Iraq for 50 more years, John McCain says it could be 100 years and that would be “fine with me” so long as American troops aren’t getting killed. Comparing Iraq to South Korea and Japan, McCain suggests it would behoove America to maintain a long-term military presence there.

Lie by Lie: Chronicle of a War Foretold: August 1990 to March 2003

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 15:34:05 GMT

clipped by: zizzy
clipper's remarks: Go to site to view timeline: flash required.

Clip Source: www.motherjones.com

The first drafts of history are fragmentary. Important revelations arrive late, and out of order. In this timeline, we’ve assembled the history of the Iraq War to create a resource we hope will help resolve open questions of the Bush era. What did our leaders know and when did they know it? And, perhaps just as important, what red flags did we miss, and how could we have missed them? This is the first installment in our Iraq War timeline project.
HOW TO USE THIS TIMELINE | GET UPDATES | SUPPORT | LEARN MORE | COMMENT

Israel wants IAEA head fired

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 05:52:23 GMT

clipped by: zizzy

Clip Source: www.juancole.com

the Israeli government is trying to get the IAEA head, Mohammed Elbaradei, fired, because he is not producing the reports that the Kadima and Likud parties want him to produce. The Israeli government had also been a big proponent of the theory that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in 2002, with Efraim Halevy, the head of Mossad [Israeli intelligence], making wild charges that he may have known were not true.

Ironically, Israel is the country that broke the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in the Middle East and introduced nuclear weapons into the region, kicking off an arms race with Iraq that in many ways led to the Iraq War. US and American complaints about Iran's civilian energy research program never acknowledge Israel's own outlaw status with regard to nonproliferation.

Tags: israel, iaea, mossad, bush administration, nuclear weapons, pakistan, war

Source of Faulty Iraq War Claims Revealed

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 14:04:31 GMT

clipped by: zizzy
clipper's remarks: An example of the art of telling people what they want to hear.

Clip Source: www.truthdig.com

Meet Rafid Ahmed Alwan, otherwise known as “Curve Ball” in intelligence circles. He’s an Iraqi defector who apparently won himself a green card with his fabricated claims about Saddam Hussein’s regime harboring biological weapons, which became the CIA’s (and Colin Powell’s) key justification for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

BBC report points out, the CIA was tipped off by German intelligence officials well before the Iraq war began that Alwan might not be a reliable source

60 Minutes has learned that Alwan’s university records indicate he did study chemical engineering but earned nearly all low marks, mostly 50s

He eventually wound up in the care of German intelligence officials to whom he continued to spin his tale of biological weapons. His plan succeeded partially because he had worked briefly at the plant outside Baghdad and his descriptions of it were mostly accurate. He embellished his account by saying 12 workers had been killed by biological agents in an accident at the plant.

Tags: iraq war, bush administration, rafid ahmed alwan, intelligence

Happy to be home from Iraq

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 06:52:22 GMT

clipped by: zizzy

Clip Source: cliffschecter.bravenewfilms.org

Soldiers in the 10th Mountain Division kissed the ground at Fort Drum, N.Y., after a 15-month tour in Iraq. They and their families face a new period of readjustment.

Tags: iraq war, photos

Oil Peak or Peak Oil? [Part 3]

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 22:23:31 GMT

clipped by: zizzy

Clip Source: www.juancole.com

Instead of bringing online a big new supplier (Iraq) they have actually reduced the average production from Iraq as compared to the days of the UN sanctions on Saddam! Instead of assuring the US position as a superpower by assuring it special access to Gulf petroleum through military means, Cheney and his friends have destabilized the key energy-producing regions of the world and are driving some producers to deliberately seek proprietary contracts with China s so as to avoid over-dependence on an overbearing US that openly announces it would like to overthrow their governments. (I'm thinking of Venezuela here; with tweaking the same thing could be said of Iran

Tags: energy wars, oil markets, bush administration, iraq, dick cheney

Oil Peak or Peak Oil? [Part 2]

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 22:12:15 GMT

clipped by: zizzy

Clip Source: www.juancole.com

On the other hand, nearly a fourth of US dwellings completely lack insulation, and most others have old windows that radiate away energy, just plain holes and gaps through which energy escapes, etc. If Bush had given tax breaks for putting in insulation and for conservation instead of giving away billions to rich people who don't need it, the US would have saved millions of barrels a day, replacing everything Iraq or Venezuela produces (and wiping out the reason for the Iraq War).

Insulation is better than war.

(Ethanol, by the way, is an expensive fraud from the same people that brought you sugar tariffs and corn syrup that promotes obesity.)

What is clear is that Dick Cheney's desperate bid to grab Iraq for US petroleum corporations and for proprietary contracts to supply the US is backfiring big time. Instead of reducing the importance of Saudi Arabia, Cheney and the Neocons have magnified it.

Tags: energy wars, oil markets, dick cheney, neocons, iraq, saudi arabia, bush administration

Commander in Chief Incompetent Declares U.S. General

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 00:01:32 GMT

clipped by: zizzy

Clip Source: www.truthdig.com

Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq, has issued a devastating critique of the “incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders” in planning and executing the Iraq war, which he called a “catastrophic failure.” Sanchez also warned that the president’s “surge” might “stave off defeat” but will not lead to victory.

“After more than fours years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism,” Mr. Sanchez said, at a gathering here of military reporters and editors.

“There was been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders,” he said, adding later in his remarks that civilian officials have been “derelict in their duties” and guilty of a “lust for power.”

Tags: bush administration, iraq war, incompetence, lust for power, dereliction of duty, impeachment