Iraq Oil Report

The KRG oil deals controversy is being raised in Parliament, the Associated Press reports.

There is likely little to be done outside of a back room settlement to the dispute. And that’s very unlikely. The Kurdistan Alliance is a necessary component of the current coalition government that is holding on by a thread. The KA holds a lot of power in that sense and crossing them on the oil deals is a major step. And this Parliament isn’t really big on major steps, in any direction.

More on the beef with Iraq Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani, by Eric Watkins for Oil & Gas Journal.

Shahristani, however, is being taken to task for his budgetary skills, even calls for a fraud investigation, Sabah Kamel reports for Azzaman.

Iraq looking at virtual oil project help, by Ben Lando, United Press International.

Jordan and Iraq are discussing a new oil pipeline, AME Info reports.

Iraq Politics

The Sunni-Shi’i divide in the Iraqi parliament is only one split complicating the passage of controversial legislation in the troubled state, Haider Ala Hamoudi writes in JURIST.

The Kurds in Post Saddam Iraq, a new report from the Congressional Research Service.

Sayyed Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) party and the leader of the United Iraqi Alliance block, will be at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Monday, Dec. 3.

U.S. in Iraq

Bush Executive Order On Iraq-related Asset Seizure Casts a Wide Net

Last July, President Bush issued a broadly-worded executive order authorizing the government to seize the assets of “any person” who threatens the stability of Iraq and, more controversially, any person who provides assistance to such a person.

The scope, objectives and precedents of the order — Executive Order 13,438, “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq” — were examined in a new report from the Congressional Research Service.

“The broad language of this executive order has been the subject of a degree of criticism as potentially reaching beyond insurgents in Iraq to third parties, such as U.S. citizens, who may unknowingly be providing support for the insurgency,” the CRS report noted, citing prior accounts in the Washington Post, TPM Muckraker, and elsewhere.

In fact, the potential application of the order appears to be technically unlimited since it includes a recursive clause that has no defined endpoint.

Thus, section 1(b) of the Order states that any person who provides goods or services to a person whose actions are proscribed under section 1(a) is himself subject to section 1(a). But then, anyone who provides similar support to that person could likewise be swept up in the expansive terms of the order. And so on, without end.

In practice, the application of the order will be defined by implementing regulations to be issued by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which will also prepare an initial list of blocked individuals and organizations. Those have still not been published.

A copy of the new CRS report was obtained by Secrecy News.

See “Executive Order 13,438: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq,” November 16, 2007

The text of executive order 13,438 is here.

Reproduced with permission from Steven Aftergood and the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy. www.fas.org/sgp/index.html

Long-Term U.S. Presence Requires Parliament Approval, Iraq Constitution Says, Spencer Ackerman reports for TPM Muckraker.

More here by the Voices of Iraq news agency.

Iraq Has Only Militants, No Civilians – the “Tactical Perception Management” in Iraq, by Dahr Jamail in TomDispatch.

Jamail is also the author of the new book Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq.

Iraq’s Refugees

While the U.S. and Iraqi leadership point to success via displaced Iraqis returning home by the hundreds, the Center for International and Regional Studies at Georgetown University has a new report on the millions who fled the country, Iraqi Refugees: Seeking Refuge in Syria and Jordan.

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