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Estimated Iraqi deaths
Analysis: Hunt, State talked on Iraq oil
Hunt, a good friend to the Bush family, gets to sign a huge oil deal with permission from the White house. Why am I not surprised.
By BEN LANDO
UPI Energy Editor
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 (UPI) — A representative from Dallas-based Hunt Oil Corp. did talk with the U.S. State Department prior to signing a controversial oil deal with Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government, according to an internal department communication obtained by United Press International.
Hunt Oil, whose chief executive officer is connected to the Bush administration by campaign donations and a seat on an intelligence advisory board, had previously denied the meeting.
The company now says the meeting took place but that Hunt did not seek advice from the U.S. government on investing in a country with the world’s third-largest proven oil reserves.
The Sept. 8 production-sharing contract with the KRG set off Baghdad, which accuses the region of unilaterally and illegally signing oil deals. The Hunt deal wasn’t the first or final such contract signed between private oil companies and the Kurds, who say they have the constitutional right to sign deals and blame Baghdad for its inability to make headway on a national oil law.
The U.S. government has been cautious in comment, aside from maintaining that it hurts their efforts in bolstering the ability of the central government to reconcile and rule the country.
A day after the Kurds announced two more oil deals, with Canadian and French companies, Hunt Chief Executive Officer Ray Hunt told the Wall Street Journal: “The State Department must have been misinformed. … We did not consult with anyone in the (U.S. government) prior to signing our agreement.”
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Biography of H.E. Dr. Ahmadi Nejad, Honourable President of Islamic Republic of Iran
Just an interesting bit of information.
Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad was born in 1956 in the village of Aradan in the city of Garmsar. He moved and stayed in Tehran together with his family while he was still one-year old and completed his primary as well as his low and high secondary education there. In 1975, he successfully passed the university entrance exam with high marks and started his academic studies on the subject of civil engineering in the Science and Technology University in Tehranp>
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Iran labels CIA ‘terrorist organization’
TEHRAN, Iran – Iran’s parliament on Saturday approved a nonbinding resolution labeling the CIA and the U.S. Army “terrorist organizations,” in apparent response to a Senate resolution seeking to give a similar designation to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The hard-line dominated parliament cited U.S. involvement in dropping nuclear bombs in Japan in World War II, using depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, supporting the killings of Palestinians by Israel, bombing and killing Iraqi civilians, and torturing terror suspects in prisons.”The aggressor U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency are terrorists and also nurture terror,” said a statement by the 215 lawmakers who signed the resolution at an open session of the Iranian parliament. The session was broadcast live on state-run radio.
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US Senate calls for Iraq’s partition
This would make it easier for the different factions to settle their differences?
No, it would make it easier to steal the oil. You just have to deal with the Kurds who already have made a deal with miljonair oil magnate Ray L. Hunt, who is a good friend and benefactor of, you guessed it, the Bush family.
Ching ,ching, game over.
Washington (dpa) – US lawmakers voted Wednesday to split Iraq into a loose federation of sectarian-based regions and urged President George W Bush to press Iraqi leaders to agree.
More than 20 Republicans joined Democrats to pass the non-binding measure in the Senate, 75-23, showing frustration in both parties about Bush’s war policy and lagging national reconciliation in Iraq.
Supporters of Iraqi partition believe it would let Shia, Sunni and Kurdish factions settle their differences and make it easier for US troops eventually to return home.
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Tomgram: Dilip Hiro, It’s the Oil, Stupid
Before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, discussion of Iraqi oil was largely taboo in the American mainstream, while the “No Blood for Oil” signs that dotted antiwar demonstrations were generally derisively dismissed as too simpleminded for serious debate. American officials rarely even mentioned the word “oil” in the same sentence with “Iraq.” When President Bush referred to Iraqi oil, he spoke only of preserving that country’s “patrimony” for its people, a sentiment he and Great Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair emphasized in a statement they issued that lacked either the words “oil” or “energy” just as Baghdad fell: “We reaffirm our commitment to protect Iraq’s natural resources, as the patrimony of the people of Iraq, which should be used only for their benefit.”
That May, not long after the President declared “major combat” at an end in Iraq, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz did point out the obvious — that Iraq was a country that “floats on a sea of oil.” He also told a Congressional panel: “The oil revenue of that country could bring between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the course of the next two or three years. We’re dealing with a country that could really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”
But his relatively obscure comments, as well as his oil-based miscalculations, passed largely unnoticed in the mainstream. Had Iraq then produced a significant percentage of the globe’s toys rather than possessing the planet’s third largest oil reserves, the pre-war media would undoubtedly have been chock-a-block full of worried discussions about our children and the coming video drought; on the other hand, that there might have been any significant connections between the motivations of top administration officials planning an invasion and global oil flows or the garrisoning of the oil heartlands of the planet was clearly a laughable thought. It didn’t matter that our Vice President, when the CEO of a major energy firm, had worried quite publicly about global energy supplies, that our President had failed in the oil business, and that our national security advisor had once had a Chevron double-hulled oil tanker, the Condoleezza Rice, named in her honor. Now, it turns out that, among the simpleminded was former Federal Reserve head Alan Greenspan.
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War Inches Closer to Iran
U.S. Soldiers Create Military Base on Iraq-Iran Border to Halt Weapons Smuggling From Iran
The U.S. military is adding a base just 5 miles from the Iran-Iraq border. (ABC News)
From World News with Charles Gibson
It will be called Combat Outpost Shocker, and it will hardly come as a pleasant surprise to Iran that the United States will have a new base just 5 miles from their border. Col. Mark Mueller, of the 3rd Infantry Division, said it is the first time the U.S. military will be that close to Iran.
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U.S. military says it nabbed Iranian commando in Iraq
And Voila, now we have the argument. No worries about an accidental war, they started it and now they’ve got it coming.
Especially now that witness after witness confirms what we already know: Blackwater fired first.
And what with Greenspan finally saying what we also knew way back when that it is all about the oil.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Coalition forces on Thursday arrested a suspected member of an elite Iranian unit that has been accused of training and equipping insurgents in Iraq, the U.S. military said.
An Iraqi soldier guards the scene of a car bomb Thursday in eastern Baghdad.
The U.S. military calls the force “a covert action arm of the Iranian government responsible for aiding lethal attacks against the Iraqi government and coalition forces.”
The military said the Quds Force suspect was involved in bringing roadside bombs from Iran into Iraq and in training foreign terrorists in Iraq.
The man, captured in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya, is one of several Iranians in U.S. custody in Iraq.
Also on Thursday, an Iraqi National Police intelligence officer was taken into custody for “suspected involvement in illegal militia activities,” the U.S. military said.
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Foreign policy expert says Bush has ruled out first-strike on Iran; Worries about ‘accidental’ conflict
I think we can safely say Bush hopes for an accidental war.
John Byrne
Published: Wednesday September 19, 2007
Tells RAW he doesn’t believe Bush is in the ‘Cheney gang’ yet
President Bush is not going to bomb Iran — unless an “accidental” incident forces his hand, according to well-respected foreign policy moderate Steve Clemons, who laid out his case in Wednesday’s Salon article, “Why Bush Won’t Attack Iran.”
Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at New America Foundation and publisher of The Washington Note, says Bush has deviated from a Cheney-laid track to launch a first-strike on Iran, citing, as examples, frustrations that the vice president’s aides are airing, a conversation with a journalist who sat in on a December 2006 strategy meeting, and private conversations with high-level foreign policy players.
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Duty, Honor, Country 2007
An Open Letter to the New Generation of Military Officers Serving and Protecting Our Nation
By Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret., National Commander, The Patriots
9/14/07
“The Nuremberg Principles says that we in the military have not only the right, but also the DUTY to refuse an illegal order. It was on this basis that we executed Nazi officers who were ‘only carrying out their orders’… The Constitution which we are sworn to uphold says that treaties entered into by the United States are the ‘highest law of the land,’ equivalent to the Constitution itself. Accordingly, we in the military are sworn to uphold treaty law, including the United Nations charter and the Geneva Convention… Based on the above, I contend that should some civilian order you to initiate a nuclear attack on Iran (for example), you are duty-bound to refuse that order. I might also suggest that you should consider whether the circumstances demand that you arrest whoever gave the order as a war criminal.”
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France says possible war with Iran
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said his country must prepare for the possibility of war against Iran over its nuclear programme, but he did not believe any such action was imminent.
Seeking to ratchet up the pressure on Iran, Kouchner also told RTL radio and LCI television that the world’s major powers should use further sanctions to show they were serious about stopping Tehran getting atom bombs, and said France had asked French firms not to bid for tenders in the Islamic Republic.
“We must prepare for the worst,” Kouchner said in an interview, adding: “The worst, sir, is war.”
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Bush setting America up for war with Iran
By Philip Sherwell in New York and Tim Shipman in Washington
Last Updated: 3:20am BST 16/09/2007
Senior American intelligence and defence officials believe that President George W Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
Dick Cheney (‘The Man’) with George W BushPentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran, amid growing fears among serving officers that diplomatic efforts to slow Iran’s nuclear weapons programme are doomed to fail.
Pentagon and CIA officers say they believe that the White House has begun a carefully calibrated programme of escalation that could lead to a military showdown with Iran.
Now it has emerged that Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, who has been pushing for a diplomatic solution, is prepared to settle her differences with Vice-President Dick Cheney and sanction military action.
In a chilling scenario of how war might come, a senior intelligence officer warned that public denunciation of Iranian meddling in Iraq – arming and training militants – would lead to cross border raids on Iranian training camps and bomb factories.
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Alan Greenspan claims Iraq war was really for oil
AMERICA’s elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.
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U.S.: Syria on nuclear watch list
Uh oh!
By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 49 minutes ago
ROME – A senior U.S. nuclear official said Friday that North Koreans were in Syria and that Damascus may have had contacts with “secret suppliers” to obtain nuclear equipment.
Andrew Semmel, acting deputy assistant secretary of state for nuclear nonproliferation policy, did not identify the suppliers, but said North Koreans were in the country and that he could not exclude that the network run by the disgraced Pakistan nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan may have been involved.
He said it was not known if the contacts had produced any results. “Whether anything transpired remains to be seen,” he said.
Syria has never commented publicly on its nuclear program. It has a small research nuclear reactor, as do several other countries in the region, including Egypt. While Israel and the U.S. have expressed concerns in the past, Damascus has not been known to make a serious push to develop a nuclear energy or weapons program.
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Krugman: Bush backer banks on Iraq’s failure
A Texas oil company whose CEO is a longtime confidant of President Bush with access to the most closely held US intelligence has entered into an agreement to explore for oil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.
The agreement shows that Dallas-based Hunt Oil Co. and its chief executive Ray L. Hunt are “effectively betting against the survival of Iraq as a nation,” argues New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.
Hunt raised about $100,000 for Bush during the president’s 2000 campaign, and he serves on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which gives him access to some of the most exclusive data collected by US spy agencies.
“What’s interesting about this deal is the fact that Hunt, thanks to his policy position, is presumably as well-informed about the actual state of affairs in Iraq as anyone in the business world can be,” Krugman observers. “By putting his money into a deal with the Kurds, despite Baghdad’s disapproval, he’s essentially betting that the Iraqi government — which hasn’t met a single one of the major benchmarks Bush laid out in January — won’t get it’s act together.”
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Anti-Iran drumbeat continues from US diplomat
The top US diplomat in Iraq sat down with the Washington Post Wednesday to push the Bush administration’s case that harsher action needs to be taken against Iran because of allegations that country’s leaders are funding and training militants in Iraq.Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, coming off two days of congressional testimony, told the Post that the administration was building support for a third United Nations resolution that would impose harsher sanctions against Iran. He accused Tehran of pursuing a “fairly aggressive strategy” on the ground in Iraq, according to the Post.
“We know what you’re doing in Iraq. It needs to stop,” Crocker told his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad, he said in the Post interview.
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U.S. mounts charm offensive for new Africa Command
By Mark Trevelyan, Security Correspondent
LONDON (Reuters) – The launch of a new U.S. military command for Africa is aimed at helping the continent to boost its own security and not at projecting American power or countering Chinese influence, a U.S. official said on Monday.
Ryan Henry, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, rejected what he called a series of “myths” surrounding October’s launch, also including the idea that it was linked to growing U.S. appetite for West African oil exports.
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Enough fear.
I got this from sergeant Kokesh’s site.
If you have the time than it might be good idea to let the folks in Iran know that like a lot of them you also know the truth about 9/11.
Spread the word and make this a huge site.
Go here
Ron Paul endorsement
All you need is a crazy rich guy with a private army 
