Plus:
*Iraq oil fuels insurgency, funds militias, corruption
*Baiji refinery power outage; Najaf refinery doubled
*Iraq 5 years after invasion
*Baghdad ballet school open
*Basra development board meets in Kuwait
*Winter Soldier
Iraq’s oil law debate is political, not technical, a top U.S. official said, adding Iraq has tagged billions of dollars to boost oil production regardless, Ben Lando reports for United Press International.
Charles Ries, U.S. State Department minister for economic affairs and coordinator for economic transition in Iraq, said the proposed law isn’t necessary for Iraq to produce oil “but it would clearly be much, much better and incentivize private investment to help Iraq produce more if a bill would pass.”
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is in Iraq Monday and said he’s pressing Iraqi leaders to move the controversial legislation forward.
Ries said Iraq has set aside $2.5 billion for Technical Support Agreements over the next two years. TSAs, being negotiated with BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Total, would see a transfer of technology, expertise and training to Iraq’s oil sector.
Further down the road, Ries said Iraq will sign production-sharing agreements to develop areas not currently producing. …
Read Ben Lando’s entire article HERE.
Iraq’s insurgency runs on stolen oil profits, Richard A. Oppel Jr. writes for The New York Times, a tale of Iraq’s largest refinery, an unaccountable oil flow, and frustrating corruption.
Sky-high oil prices are pumping tens of billions of dollars into Iraq’s coffers, reaping a windfall for a war-torn nation plagued by unpassable roads, dilapidated hospitals and crumbling schools, Gina Chon reports for The Wall Street Journal. Yet most of this desperately needed cash is languishing in the bank. The reason: Iraq’s government is so ill-equipped to handle the basics of finance, it is having trouble spending the money.
For more, see Iraq a Target for U.S. Spending by UPI’s Ben Lando.
A brief power outage idled Iraq’s largest oil refinery Sunday, an official with the nation’s oil ministry said, Sinan Salaheddin reports for The Associated Press.The disruption lasted five hours and was the third major production stoppage since January at the facility in Beiji, about 155 miles north of Baghdad.
Iraq has doubled the production capacity in its Najaf refinery, which, though a small facility, will help Iraqis facing massive fuel shortages, UPI reports.
Investors grab slice of oil-rich region, Financial Times Iraq Correspondent Steve Negus reports on the Khanzad American Village housing community in Irbil.
Iraq War – The 5-year mark
Iraq, 5 years and gaffes later, a review of mishaps and missteps by UPI Contributing Editor Claude Salhani.
The New York Times recapped the Iraq war with nine experts – all of whom supported the war in the first place, according to Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.
Five years after the US-led invasion, Iraq faces a major humanitarian crisis, with law and order and economic recovery a distant prospect, international aid and human rights groups said, Agence France-Presse reports.
When President Bush convened a meeting of his National Security Council on May 22, 2003, his special envoy in Iraq made a statement that caught many of the participants by surprise. In a video presentation from Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer III informed the president and his aides that he was about to issue an order formally dissolving Iraq’s Army, Michael R. Gordon reports for The New York Times.
The decree was issued the next day. But with the fifth anniversary of the start of the war approaching, some participants have provided in interviews their first detailed, on-the-record accounts of a decision that is widely seen as one of the most momentous and contentious of the war, assailed by critics as all but ensuring that American forces would face a growing insurgency led by embittered Sunnis who led much of the army.
The Institute for Policy Studies’ Foreign Policy in Focus has a roundup as well.
Security, Society & Politics
At the Baghdad School of Music and Ballet, near the Mansour district, a handful of 6-year-old beginners attempt the plié stance: Two little girls in pink leotards and bunned hair, four boys in white T-shirts and black shorts, Melik Kaylan reports for The Wall Street Journal. In a conflict zone, you train your emotions to resist all kinds of horrors and suddenly you can be unmanned by an unexpected moment of grace.
More than 2,000 delegates comprising Sunni and Shiite Arabs inhabiting the disputed Province of Kirkuk held a conference on Sunday to express their opposition to a Kurdish move to annex the province to their semi-independent entity in northern Iraq, Azzaman reports.
Basra Development Committee held its first conference in Kuwait, Alsumaria TV reports.
The U.N. agency in charge of overseeing procurement services unveiled 75 new projects by Iraqi non-profit groups working on an electoral education campaign, UPI reports.
The Iraq Press Roundup, by UPI’s Hiba Dawood.
Winter Soldier
Veterans and active duty U.S. military in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, following in the footsteps of Vietnam veterans and the prompted by Thomas Paine’s 1776 writing: “The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country,” went public with human rights abuses they witnessed or participated in, the lack of care given to emotional trauma of war on fighters, the racism of war, and how it will be U.S. troops themselves that will bring the war to an end.
The three-day event was sponsored by Iraq Veterans Against the War.
Below are some links to full coverage, but I’ll share some of the testimony that struck me silent, apologies for the rough notes:
A medic in the Iowa National Guard, at Abu Ghraib, said he was ordered not to transport a detainee needing insulin to the hospital, not to give him insulin, only water. He died.
Specialist Mike Prysner was at Abu Ghraib interrogations. One detainee, he said, was injured in his leg so bad, but was forced to stand and face a wall as Prysner’s superior yelled questions at him and Prysner was to slam a folding chair against the wall next to his head. After awhile the superior left and Prysner was to ensure the detainee kept standing with a face against the wall. But Prysner let him sit and hurried him to his feet when someone was coming.
“I was supposed to be protecting my unit from this detainee, but I found myself guarding this detainee from my unit.”
Vet in a SuitTestimony from the Iraq Veterans Against the War, by Anthony Swofford in Slate. Swofford is the author of Jarhead.
Here’s coverage by
Alternet
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