Five Years In Iraq:Iraqis and Americans Offer Perspectives on the War

Karen DeYoung
Washington Post ,Wednesday, March 19, 2008

For a majority of Americans, today marks the fifth anniversary of the start of an Iraq war that was not worth fighting, one that has cost thousands of lives and more than half a trillion dollars. For the Bush administration, however, it is the first anniversary of an Iraq strategy that it believes has finally started to succeed.

It has been about a year since Army Gen. David H. Petraeus arrived to command U.S. forces in Iraq, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker took over as the chief U.S. diplomat, and the military deployed 30,000 more troops to protect and rebuild neighborhoods.

Officials now running the U.S. effort express frustration that the gains wrought by their new political, security and economic policies -- in particular, sharply reduced violence -- are continually weighed against the first four years of the war, when Iraq unraveled in insurgency and sectarian strife.

"I came to Washington to describe what we're doing," Charles P. Ries, Crocker's senior deputy in charge of reconstruction and the Iraqi economy, said during a visit last week. "At almost every meeting, somebody wants me to describe what we used to do. . . . I know why people raise these questions, but I don't feel it's something I can speak to. The times were different then."

Today's policy is fundamentally different from the impatient mind-set of 2003, in both lowered U.S. expectations and a less imperious approach to dealing with Iraqi authorities. "In those days," Ries said, "we decided what [the Iraqis] needed, and we built it." Today, he said, Iraqis are asked what they want, and then told that while the United States will help, they will have to pay for most of it themselves.

Yet as the administration requests additional war funding and calls for a pause in promised troop withdrawals, some question its right to a second chance. "Like a tourniquet," the troop increase "has stopped the bleeding," Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a former Army Ranger and senior member of the Armed Services Committee, reported last week after his 11th trip to Iraq. What he has not seen, Reed said, are the surgery and recovery that would begin to heal the wound that Iraq has become. And even U.S. officials acknowledge that the "surge" has not led to the political reconciliation the administration had hoped for.

Others see the past year's successes as fragile and reversible, and less consequential than the pain that preceded them. "I think they have it righter than they ever have before," Daniel P. Serwer, an Iraq expert with the U.S. Institute of Peace, said of the administration. "But the fact is that those four other years did exist, and they condition a lot of what can and cannot happen now. There's a history here, there's a lot of blood and guts on the floor -- literally."

The White House tends to dismiss such longer memories. While it recognizes the inclination to "relitigate the past" when a milestone such as the fifth anniversary is reached, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said, "our focus is on the way ahead and making sure that the current situation and the future situation gets better."

In addition to new directions on the ground in Iraq, officials point to a newly effective structure designed to avoid the kind of ad hoc decision-making that led to early bureaucratic gridlock and mistakes, such as decrees dissolving the Iraqi army and banning Baath Party members from government jobs. President Bush's appointment last spring of Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute as deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan has "helped streamline the process and made sure that there is . . . a senior-level official who can devote his full, undivided attention" to the subject, Johndroe said.

The once-bickering State Department and Pentagon are reporting new levels of cooperation. Diplomats who recall Donald H. Rumsfeld's insistence that the Defense Department control all aspects of early postwar policy note approvingly that it was his successor as defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, who recently called on Congress to increase the State Department's budget.

Many U.S. officials participating in the new efforts talk about those years as though they belonged to another administration. "We weren't here five years ago," said one who, like several interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity about past policy on the grounds that it would undermine the present.

"In the early days, they had an idea of something, a plan, of how it was going to be," the official said. "They would remove Saddam, and democracy would flower. They took this plan and rammed it down into the reality of Iraq, which nobody understood. What did they know about Iraq? Who were they listening to?" In the past year, the official said, "there has been a coming to grips across the board with Iraqi reality."

One of the more troublesome realities is that Iraqi leaders have been slow to take advantage of the "breathing space" that the troop increase was supposed to create. The administration has often noted that Washington and Baghdad operate on different clocks, with the U.S. timetable for demonstrable progress running far faster than its Iraqi counterpart. In an interview last week, Petraeus, the U.S. military commander, acknowledged that "no one" in the U.S. and Iraqi governments "feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation" or in the provision of basic public services.

In congressional testimony scheduled for early next month, both Petraeus and Crocker are expected to make the case that enough forward movement has been made to justify continuing the current strategy, and to warn that an abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops could jeopardize the gains of the past year.

But while a strong congressional appearance by the two men last September quieted talk of funding cutoffs and brought a brief rise in public attention, their upcoming testimony appears to have sparked little anticipation.

As the administration struggles to focus on Iraq's future, it is competing with a presidential race locked in debate about how the war began and how to end it, a Democratic Congress determined to fight over every additional dollar, and a weary, distracted public.

Indeed, once a top public concern, Iraq has been muscled aside by the economy and the political campaigns. In a survey released last week by the Pew Research Center, more people knew the names of the head of the Federal Reserve Board and the president of Venezuela than knew the approximate number of U.S. casualties in Iraq.

Some public views about the situation in Iraq have eased over the past year. But others, including baseline judgments about the war itself, have hardly budged. In the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, nearly two-thirds said the war was not worth waging. Less than half, 43 percent, think the United States is making significant progress, and majorities continue to judge the war's benefits as not worth its costs.

Polling director Jon Cohen contributed to this report.

Sinking in a Swamp Full of Blackwater

NYT, October 3
Op-Ed Columnist
Washington
MAUREEN DOWD

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster,” Nietzsche said. “And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

We’re gazing into the abyss all right, and Blackwater is gazing back.

Besides having an army for hire, brave kids who are paid to fight so that most Americans are not personally touched by war, we have the real mercenaries. And they’re a spooky cadre, careening outside the laws of Iraq, the United States and the military.

President Bush continues to preach that we must defeat the “dark ideology” of extremists with “a more hopeful vision.”

But the compromises W. makes to slog on in Iraq, be it with warlords, dictators or out-of-control contractors, are spreading a dark stain on America’s image.

“Blackwater appears to have fostered a culture of shoot first and sometimes kill, and then ask the questions,” said Representative Elijah Cummings, a Democrat, yesterday at a House hearing.

The Times reports today that Blackwater’s explanation of an incident in Baghdad on Sept. 16 that left 17 dead and 24 wounded is sketchy.

It seems as though a bullet struck an Iraqi man driving his mother to pick up his father, a pathologist, at the hospital. The dead man’s weight, The Times reports, “probably remained on the accelerator and propelled the car forward” toward a Blackwater convoy.

Blackwater guards then unleashed a spray of gunfire and explosives, even though witnesses did not see anyone shooting at the American convoy and even though Iraqis were turning their cars around and escaping the scene.

Newsweek quotes the Iraqi national police as saying that Blackwater vehicles “opened fire crazily and randomly, without any reason.”

The Blackwater desperados are a sinister symbol of how little progress we’ve made in Iraq, that V.I.P.’s — or “packages,” as the contractors call them — can’t make a move in the country without the high-priced hired guns of the State Department.

Americans have been antimercenary since the British sent 30,000 German Hessians after George Washington in the Revolutionary War.

But W. outsourced his presidency to Cheney and Rummy, and Cheney and Rummy went to war on the cheap and outsourced large chunks of the Iraq occupation to Halliburton and Blackwater. The American taxpayer got gouged, and so did the American reputation.

The mercenaries inflame Iraqis even as Gen. David Petraeus tries to win their trust.

Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, summoned the 38-year-old crew-cut chairman of Blackwater, Erik Prince, to defend his private security company yesterday.

Once there was the military-industrial complex. Now we have the mercenary-evangelical complex.

Mr. Prince, a former intern to the first President Bush and a former Navy Seal, is from a well-to-do and well-connected Republican family from Michigan.

He and his father both have close ties to conservative Christian groups. His sister was a Pioneer for W., raising $100,000 in 2004, and Erik Prince has given more than $225,000 to Republicans.

Blackwater, in turn, has been the beneficiary of $1 billion in federal contracts, including a no-bid contract with the State Department worth hundreds of millions.

Mr. Waxman yesterday called the State Department “Blackwater’s enabler.” His committee staff summarized State Department reports revealing a cascade of Blackwater trouble.

“In a high-profile incident in December 2006, a drunken Blackwater contractor killed the guard of Iraqi Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi. Within 36 hours after the shooting, the State Department had allowed Blackwater to transport the Blackwater contractor out of Iraq.”

The State Department chargé d’affaires “suggested a $250,000 payment to the guard’s family, but the Department’s Diplomatic Security Service said this was too much and could cause Iraqis to ‘try to get killed.’ ” In the end, they agreed on a $15,000 payment.

“The State Department took a similar approach,” the report stated, “upon receiving reports that Blackwater shooters killed an innocent Iraqi, except that in this case, the State Department requested only a $5,000 payment to ‘put this unfortunate matter behind us quickly.’ ”

Mr. Prince was pressed by Representative Paul Hodes about the penalty paid by the Blackwater employee who, while drunk and off-duty at a Christmas party, killed the Iraqi guard.

The man was fired. And he had to pay his own airfare home and forfeit his bonuses, amounting to a loss of about $14,697 — slightly less than the amount paid to the family of the Iraqi he blew away.

Pentagon Expects Long-Term Access to Four Key Bases in Iraq

THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
New York Times, Saturday 19 April 2003

WASHINGTON, April 19 � The United States is planning a long-term military relationship with the emerging government of Iraq, one that would grant the Pentagon access to military bases and project American influence into the heart of the unsettled region, senior Bush administration officials say.

American military officials, in interviews this week, spoke of maintaining perhaps four bases in Iraq that could be used in the future: one at the international airport just outside Baghdad; another at Tallil, near Nasiriya in the south; the third at an isolated airstrip called H-1 in the western desert, along the old oil pipeline that runs to Jordan; and the last at the Bashur air field in the Kurdish north.

The military is already using these bases to support continuing operations against the remnants of the old government, to deliver supplies and relief aid, and for reconnaissance patrols. But as the invasion force withdraws in the months ahead, turning over control to a new Iraqi government, Pentagon officials expect to gain access to the bases in the event of some future crisis.

Whether that can be arranged depends on relations between Washington and whoever takes control in Baghdad. If the ties are close enough, the military relationship could become one of the most striking developments in a strategic revolution now playing out across the Middle East and Southwest Asia, from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean.

A military foothold in Iraq would be felt across the border in Syria, and, in combination with the continuing United States presence in Afghanistan, it would virtually surround Iran with a new web of American influence.

"There will be some kind of a long-term defense relationship with a new Iraq, similar to Afghanistan," said one senior administration official. "The scope of that has yet to be defined � whether it will be full-up operational bases, smaller forward operating bases or just plain access."

These goals do not contradict the administration's official policy of rapid withdrawal from Iraq, and the United States is acutely aware that the growing American presence in the Middle East and Southwest Asia invites charges of empire-building and might create new targets for terrorists.

So without fanfare, the Pentagon has also begun to shrink its military footprint in the region, trying to ease domestic strains in Turkey and Jordan.

In a particularly important development, officials said the United States was likely to reduce American forces in Saudi Arabia, as well. The main reason for that presence, after all, was to protect the Saudi government from the threat Iraq has posed since its invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Already, in Turkey, where a newly elected government bowed to domestic pressure and denied the Pentagon access to bases and supply lines for the war with Iraq, the United States has withdrawn nearly all of its 50 attack and support airplanes at the Incirlik air base, from which they flew patrols over Iraq's north for more than a decade.

Turkish officials say a new postwar security arrangement with Washington will emerge.

"These issues will define a new relationship and a new U.S. presence abroad," said Faruk Logoglu, Turkey's ambassador to the United States. "But the need for an American presence in the region will not be diminished."

Regardless of how quickly the Americans reverse the buildup of the last several months, it is plain that since Sept. 11, 2001, there has been a concerted diplomatic and military effort to win permission for United States forces to operate from the formerly Communist nations of Eastern Europe, across the Mediterranean, throughout the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, and across Central Asia, from the periphery of Russia to Pakistan's ports on the Indian Ocean.

It is a swath of Western influence not seen for generations.

These bases and access agreements have established an expanded American presence, or deepened alliance ties, throughout one of the world's most strategic regions.

"The attacks of Sept. 11 changed more than just the terrorism picture," said one senior administration official. "On Sept. 11, we woke up and found ourselves in Central Asia. We found ourselves in Eastern Europe as never before, as the gateway to Central Asia and the Middle East."

The newest security agreements will come in Iraq. Col. John Dobbins, commander of Tallil Forward Air Base, said the Air Force plan envisioned "probably two bases that will stay in Iraq for an amount of time."

"That amount of time, obviously, is an unknown," he added.

In addition to Tallil, the other base for the Air Force is at Bashur, in the north, Pentagon officials said. The Army currently holds the Baghdad airport. The H-1 base in the west has allowed Special Operations forces to move out of their secret bases in Jordan and Saudi Arabia and set up a forward headquarters.

The establishment of these bases follows the strategy used in Afghanistan, where the American military first seized Forward Operating Base Rhino in the desert south of Kandahar, before moving that headquarters into the city. The American military has its senior headquarters in Afghanistan at Bagram airfield outside of Kabul, and it has a number of regional civil affairs offices elsewhere in the nation.

In Afghanistan, and in Iraq, the American military will do all it can to minimize the size of its deployed forces, and there will probably never be an announcement of permanent stationing of troops.

Not permanent basing, but permanent access is all that is required, officials say.

For the Afghan conflict, the Pentagon negotiated new basing agreements with Pakistan and two former Soviet republics, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. But the arrangements also signaled a long-term commitment to the region and gave the military the ability to deploy forces there quickly.

Although the new bases in Iraq are primarily for mounting comprehensive postwar security operations, senior administration officials make no secret that the American presence at those bases near Syria and Iran and long-term access to them "will make them nervous."

Or as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell put it on Thursday: "We have been successful in Iraq. There is a new dynamic in that part of the world."

Even so, administration officials are quick to echo Mr. Powell's assertions that Washington has "no war plan right now" for Syria and Iran.

"So don't ask if our tanks are going to move right or left out of Iraq," said one senior administration official. "There are a lot of political weapons that can be unleashed to achieve our goals."

Among the pressures to be exerted against Syria will be a campaign to focus the world's attention on a new administration message. "Syria occupies Lebanon," one senior administration official said. "This is the repression of one Arab state by another. Plus there are terror training camps in the Bekaa Valley."

In addition to tamping down public anxiety over possible military action against Syria, or even Iran, officials are quick to argue that these two nations have the most significant vote as to whether the United States will ever apply the template of "regime change" in Iraq to them.

"This does not mean, necessarily, that other governments have to fall," one senior administration official said. "They can moderate their behavior."

Administration officials express keen awareness that they must show humility, and not hubris, in the aftermath of their quick victory in Iraq. "We need to be flexible, and modulate our actions according to the political interests of our allies," said one senior administration official.

The senior official predicted that the American military would "modulate our footprint" in Saudi Arabia, which was so concerned about its role in the air war against Iraq that it blocked Pentagon efforts to station correspondents there.

Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley, who directed the air war from a sophisticated command center outside of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is expected to meet with senior Saudi officials in the next few days to continue discussions about the future of the American military presence there, a senior military official said.

But administration, Pentagon and military officials say it is unlikely that American forces will withdraw completely from the desert kingdom. Military officials are discussing a range of options.

In the Iraq war, American and British warplanes flew from 30 bases in about a dozen countries. In the postwar period, a senior military official said, "We will draw down from those 30 bases, but in a way that will allow us to flex or increase, when we need to."

The roles of many countries in support of the American war effort are only now coming to light.

Two Eastern European countries eager to join NATO quickly offered logistics bases when Turkey blocked the Pentagon's request to base support planes on its soil.

Romania allowed the American military to fly troops, cargo, fuel and vehicles from Europe aboard C-130, C-141 and C-17 transport planes from an air base near the Black Sea port of Constanta. Eight to 10 planes fly missions to Iraq from the base.

About 200 miles to the south, in Burgas, Bulgaria, the authorities opened a training camp and adjacent airfield to 400 Air Force personnel and about six KC-10 refueling planes.

Before the war started, some 900 Army troops established a training camp for Iraqi exiles at Taszar in Hungary, a new NATO member. The Iraqis were dispatched to serve as guides, interpreters and scouts for American ground troops in Iraq.

In the Persian Gulf, the Pentagon struck a new agreement with Qatar to allow Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the allied commander in the region, to establish his wartime headquarters outside of Doha, the capital, and to send many combat aircraft to Al Udeid air base, after the Saudis would not allow missions to be flown from their territory.

Bahrain and especially Kuwait, the staging area for the ground invasion, provided essential bases for the Iraq war. But with Iraq occupied, the Pentagon will now review its long-term force and access requirements in the gulf states.

"The subject of a footprint for the United States post-Iraq is something that we're discussing and considering," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said this week. "But that will take some time to sort through."

Iraq Far From U.S. Goals for Energy $50 Billion Needed To Meet Demand

Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post, 2 September

Iraq's crucial oil and electricity sectors still need roughly $50 billion to meet demand, analysts and officials say, even after the United States has poured more than $6 billion into them over more than four years.

Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration has focused much of its $44.5 billion reconstruction plan on oil and electricity. Now, with the U.S.-led reconstruction phase nearing its close, Iraq will need to spend $27 billion more for its electrical system and $20 billion to $30 billion for oil infrastructure, according to estimates the Government Accountability Office collected from Iraqi and U.S. officials.
Even with the funding, the GAO notes that it could take until 2015 for Iraq to produce 6 million barrels of oil a day and have enough electricity to meet demand. A commanding general of the Army Corps of Engineers says it could have enough electricity sooner -- 2010 to 2013.

"The U.S. money was intended to get those industries started on recovery," said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, who is charged with finding waste, fraud and abuse in the multibillion-dollar effort. "We were working with a dilapidated, run-down system. It still has a long, long way to go."

A former top-level Pentagon official who was involved in rebuilding the oil and electricity sectors put it more bluntly. "People said the money was to rebuild the country, but it was just a down payment," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he still works for the government. "The money was never enough to handle all that was there. It was merely a Band-Aid."

If the problems aren't fixed, it will be difficult to establish a strong economy and improve the standards of living, and could cause people to lose confidence in the government.

Oil and electricity are two of Iraq's most important industries, each depending heavily on the other. Iraq imports about $2.6 billion worth of petroleum products a year. Oil exports account for 90 percent of the Iraqi government's revenue, but oil production is crippled without enough electricity for refineries and pipelines. Electricity, in turn, cannot be generated without the fuel that powers most of Iraq's power plants.

U.S. officials say they found the country's infrastructure in worse shape than they expected, hit hard by the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91 and a decade of economic sanctions. Oil wells hadn't been cleaned. Power plants had antiquated equipment and no parts available for repairs. One U.S. auditor said he spent a day with 22 Iraqi electrical engineers who proudly showed him how they jury-rigged a generator using the sawed-off bottom of a Pepsi can.

The Americans put $4.6 billion into more than 2,600 projects to repair electricity-generation facilities, transmission lines and distribution networks. They put $1.75 billion into improving the country's oil infrastructure.

Another huge problem: Armed groups regularly attack oil and electricity facilities.

Analysts say Iraq needs to invest money to improve its infrastructure for pumping and processing oil, upgrade and maintain equipment, and train workers at power plants and refineries. One U.S. adviser said, "They need more of everything."

"Our piece was to jump-start the infrastructure here," Brig. Gen. Michael J. Walsh, commanding general of the Army Corps of Engineers' Gulf Region Division, said in a telephone interview from Baghdad. "Everything we've been doing in the last four years was just enough to start it. Now the Iraqi government needs to continue."

Distribution of Power

Iraq does not have enough electricity partly because Iraqis now consume more of it.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein, electricity demand soared 70 percent, as more Iraqis bought computers, televisions, refrigerators and air conditioners. Officials say the country now needs about 10,000 megawatts per day but it is producing only 4,110 megawatts -- although some days in August it has reached nearly 5,000 megawatts.

Although Hussein supplied Baghdad with nearly 24 hours of electricity a day and starved the provinces, the U.S.-led reconstruction has aimed to spread power more evenly throughout the country. Baghdad has six to eight hours of electricity, while the rest of Iraq gets about 13 hours a day.

Electricity Ministry officials control the flow of electricity from huge power plants in the north and south, often using cellphones to call regional officials and order them to manually flip switches. Local officials often refuse to follow orders because their lives have been threatened by armed groups, Electricity Minister Karim Wahid said at a recent news briefing in Baghdad. At night, he said, when power stations in rural areas are empty, armed groups take over the switches.

Nor is everyone sharing power. "Some provinces only supply the power to their citizens and isolate Baghdad," he said. "This greatly affected the equal distribution of power throughout Iraq."

Another problem is that insurgents regularly blow up the towers that support transmission lines. On one major line between Kirkuk and Diyala, U.S. officials say, damaged towers have been down for more than a year.

Attacks have taken a huge toll on people as well as infrastructure. Wahid said he lost more than 1,000 Electricity Ministry employees this year, mostly engineers working on repair teams. Four hundred were kidnapped and killed; 300 were injured and 300 were kidnapped, he said.

The lack of security has pushed many U.S. contractors off the job. Bechtel, a California contractor that was paid $1.5 billion to take on electricity projects, said it pulled its workers off jobs repairing electrical substations near Baghdad last year.

"The risk was just too high," said Bill Shoaf, program director of Bechtel's work in Iraq. "The insurgents and militia activity there just didn't allow us to do it."

Infrastructure Obstacles

Even if security improved enough to make infrastructure advances possible, Wahid says another big problem is that Iraq's oil refineries don't make enough fuel to run the country's power plants. Imported fuel has not been enough because power plants are competing with average Iraqis trying to run at-home generators.

U.S. officials say about 1,500 megawatts of power -- enough for well over a half-million homes and businesses -- are down at power plants across the country simply because they don't have enough fuel.

That problem stems partly from the unintended consequences of a U.S. reconstruction policy aimed at updating Iraq's aging infrastructure.

The United States spent millions of dollars on 35 turbines built to run on natural gas, replacing older thermal units that burned heavy fuel oil. Turbines are used to help generate electricity. Natural gas is cleaner and the gas-powered were easier to get and could be installed faster.

But while natural gas is an abundant by-product of Iraqi oil drilling, very little of it is captured. Instead, at Iraq's 52 gas-oil separation plants, the valuable gas is treated as a waste product -- ignited and allowed to burn off.

"The Americans came in and looked at their 1970s power plants and said, 'Throw it all out. Let's start over,' " said Joseph A. Christoff, director of the GAO's international affairs and trade teams who spent time recently with a group of two-dozen Iraqi engineers who talked about their experiences. "The Iraqi engineers were just shocked. . . . They felt they had no input in dealing with the electricity problems."

With little access to natural gas, Iraqis turned to running some of the newly installed gas turbines on diesel, crude or heavy fuel, causing them to break down faster and need more maintenance.

"It's like putting regular gas in a car that needs high-test," said Walsh, the commanding general for the Army Corps. "It's still going to run, but not as efficiently."

These days, inspectors say, 16 of the gas turbines the United States put in are running on crude oil or diesel, which could reduce their output by half. At the Qudas power plant, four of the eight gas turbines are down because they haven't been well-maintained and there's a lack of fuel to run them.

The electricity minister said he is developing a long-term plan to improve the electricity situation -- the first time in 30 years there has been any strategic planning for the sector. Wahid said the Planning Ministry has agreed to spend $40 million a year over the next four years to increase the electricity generated at major power plants, including crucial ones in the northern town of Baiji and Baghdad's Dora district -- where the United States has already spent millions.

But U.S. officials say there needs to be more coordination between the electricity and oil ministries and that the oil ministry lacks clear plans. Without a long-term program for turning around the oil industry and legislation that determines how Iraq's oil revenue would be divided, overseas companies won't invest in Iraq, and that could cost it substantial investment dollars.

"We've tried to help them, but we didn't," said Robert E. Ebel, energy expert and senior adviser at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "We thought they'd quickly take over and get production back up, but it hasn't happened."

The Ides of March 2003

FRANK RICH
March 17, 2007

TOMORROW night is the fourth anniversary of President Bush’s prime-time address declaring the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In the broad sweep of history, four years is a nanosecond, but in America, where memories are congenitally short, it’s an eternity. That’s why a revisionist history of the White House’s rush to war, much of it written by its initial cheerleaders, has already taken hold. In this exonerating fictionalization of the story, nearly every politician and pundit in Washington was duped by the same “bad intelligence” before the war, and few imagined that the administration would so botch the invasion’s aftermath or that the occupation would go on so long. “If only I had known then what I know now ...” has been the persistent refrain of the war supporters who subsequently disowned the fiasco. But the embarrassing reality is that much of the damning truth about the administration’s case for war and its hubristic expectations for a cakewalk were publicly available before the war, hiding in plain sight, to be seen by anyone who wanted to look.

By the time the ides of March arrived in March 2003, these warning signs were visible on a nearly daily basis. So were the signs that Americans were completely ill prepared for the costs ahead. Iraq was largely anticipated as a distant, mildly disruptive geopolitical video game that would be over in a flash.

Now many of the same leaders who sold the war argue that escalation should be given a chance. This time they’re peddling the new doomsday scenario that any withdrawal timetable will lead to the next 9/11. The question we must ask is: Has history taught us anything in four years?

Here is a chronology of some of the high and low points in the days leading up to the national train wreck whose anniversary we mourn this week [with occasional “where are they now” updates].

March 5, 2003

“I took the Grey Poupon out of my cupboard.”

— Representative Duke Cunningham, Republican of California, on the floor of the House denouncing French opposition to the Iraq war.

[In November 2005, he resigned from Congress and pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from defense contractors. In January 2007, the United States attorney who prosecuted him — Carol Lam, a Bush appointee — was forced to step down for “performance-related” issues by Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department.]

March 6, 2003

President Bush holds his last prewar news conference. The New York Observer writes that he interchanged Iraq with the attacks of 9/11 eight times, “and eight times he was unchallenged.” The ABC News White House correspondent, Terry Moran, says the Washington press corps was left “looking like zombies.”

March 7, 2003

Appearing before the United Nations Security Council on the same day that the United States and three allies (Britain, Spain and Bulgaria) put forth their resolution demanding that Iraq disarm by March 17, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, reports there is “no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq.”. He adds that documents “which formed the basis for the report of recent uranium transaction between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic.” None of the three broadcast networks’ evening newscasts mention his findings.

[In 2005 ElBaradei was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.]

March 10, 2003

Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks tells an audience in England, “We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas.” Boycotts, death threats and anti-Dixie Chicks demonstrations follow.

[In 2007, the Dixie Chicks won five Grammy Awards, including best song for “Not Ready to Make Nice.”]

March 12, 2003

A senior military planner tells The Daily News “an attack on Iraq could last as few as seven days.”

“Isn’t it more likely that antipathy toward the United States in the Islamic world might diminish amid the demonstrations of jubilant Iraqis celebrating the end of a regime that has few equals in its ruthlessness?”

— John McCain, writing for the Op-Ed page of The New York Times.

“The Pentagon still has not given a name to the Iraqi war. Somehow ‘Operation Re-elect Bush’ doesn’t seem to be popular.”

— Jay Leno, “The Tonight Show.”

March 14, 2003

Senator John D. Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, asks the F.B.I. to investigate the forged documents cited a week earlier by ElBaradei and alleging an Iraq-Niger uranium transaction: “There is a possibility that the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq.”

March 16, 2003

On “Meet the Press,” Dick Cheney says that American troops will be “greeted as liberators,” that Saddam “has a longstanding relationship with various terrorist groups, including the Al Qaeda organization,” and that it is an “overstatement” to suggest that several hundred thousand troops will be needed in Iraq after it is liberated. Asked by Tim Russert about ElBaradei’s statement that Iraq does not have a nuclear program, the vice president says, “I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong.”

“There will be new recruits, new recruits probably because of the war that’s about to happen. So we haven’t seen the last of Al Qaeda.”

— Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism czar, on ABC’s “This Week.”

[From the recently declassified “key judgments” of the National Intelligence Estimate of April 2006: “The Iraq conflict has become the cause célèbre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.”]

“Despite the Bush administration’s claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, U.S. intelligence agencies have been unable to give Congress or the Pentagon specific information about the amounts of banned weapons or where they are hidden, according to administration officials and members of Congress. Senior intelligence analysts say they feel caught between the demands from White House, Pentagon and other government policy makers for intelligence that would make the administration’s case ‘and what they say is a lack of hard facts,’ one official said.”

— “U.S. Lacks Specifics on Banned Arms,” by Walter Pincus (with additional reporting by Bob Woodward), The Washington Post, Page A17.

March 17, 2003

Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, who voted for the Iraq war resolution, writes the president to ask why the administration has repeatedly used W.M.D. evidence that has turned out to be “a hoax” — “correspondence that indicates that Iraq sought to obtain nuclear weapons from an African country, Niger.”

[Still waiting for “an adequate explanation” of the bogus Niger claim four years later, Waxman, now chairman of the chief oversight committee in the House, wrote Condoleezza Rice on March 12, 2007, seeking a response “to multiple letters I sent you about this matter.”]

In a prime-time address, President Bush tells Saddam to leave Iraq within 48 hours: “Every measure has been made to avoid war, and every measure will be taken to win it.” After the speech, NBC rushes through its analysis to join a hit show in progress, “Fear Factor,” where men and women walk with bare feet over broken glass to win $50,000.

March 18, 2003

Barbara Bush tells Diane Sawyer on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that she will not watch televised coverage of the war: “Why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it’s going to happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it’s, it’s not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?”

[Visiting the homeless victims of another cataclysm, Hurricane Katrina, at the Houston Astrodome in 2005, Mrs. Bush said, “And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this — this is working very well for them.”]

In one of its editorials strongly endorsing the war, The Wall Street Journal writes, “There is plenty of evidence that Iraq has harbored Al Qaeda members.”

[In a Feb. 12, 2007, editorial defending the White House’s use of prewar intelligence, The Journal wrote, “Any links between Al Qaeda and Iraq is a separate issue that was barely mentioned in the run-up to war.”]

In an article headlined “Post-war ‘Occupation’ of Iraq Could Result in Chaos,” Mark McDonald of Knight Ridder Newspapers quotes a “senior leader of one of Iraq’s closest Arab neighbors,” who says, “We’re worried that the outcome will be civil war.”

A questioner at a White House news briefing asserts that “every other war has been accompanied by fiscal austerity of some sort, often including tax increases” and asks, “What’s different about this war?” Ari Fleischer responds, “The most important thing, war or no war, is for the economy to grow,” adding that in the president’s judgment, “the best way to help the economy to grow is to stimulate the economy by providing tax relief.”

After consulting with the homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge, the N.C.A.A. announces that the men’s basketball tournament will tip off this week as scheduled. The N.C.A.A. president, Myles Brand, says, “We were not going to let a tyrant determine how we were going to lead our lives.”

March 19, 2003

“I’d guess that if it goes beyond three weeks, Bush will be in real trouble.”

— Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel teaching at Boston University, quoted in The Washington Post.

[The March 2007 installment of the Congressionally mandated Pentagon assessment “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq” reported that from Jan. 1 to Feb. 9, 2007, there were more than 1,000 weekly attacks, up from about 400 in spring 2004.]

Robert McIlvaine, whose 26-year-old son was killed at the World Trade Center 18 months earlier, is arrested at a peace demonstration at the Capitol in Washington. He tells The Washington Post: “It’s very insulting to hear President Bush say this is for Sept. 11.”

“I don’t think it is reasonable to close the door on inspections after three and a half months,” when Iraq’s government is providing more cooperation than it has in more than a decade.

— Hans Blix, chief weapons inspector for the United Nations.

The Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that 71 percent of Americans support going to war in Iraq, up from 59 percent before the president’s March 17 speech.

“When the president talks about sacrifice, I think the American people clearly understand what the president is talking about.”

— Ari Fleischer

[Asked in January 2007 how Americans have sacrificed, President Bush answered: “I think a lot of people are in this fight. I mean, they sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images of violence on TV every night.”]

Pentagon units will “locate and survey at least 130 and as many as 1,400 possible weapons sites.”

— “Disarming Saddam Hussein; Teams of Experts to Hunt Iraq Arms” by Judith Miller, The Times, Page A1.

President Bush declares war from the Oval Office in a national address: “Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet our purpose is sure.”

Price of a share of Halliburton stock: $20.50

[Value of that Halliburton share on March 16, 2007, adjusted for a split in 2006: $64.12.]

March 20, 2003

“The pictures you’re seeing are absolutely phenomenal. These are live pictures of the Seventh Cavalry racing across the deserts in southern Iraq. They will — it will be days before they get to Baghdad, but you’ve never seen battlefield pictures like these before.”

— Walter Rodgers, an embedded CNN correspondent.

“It seems quite odd to me that while we are commenced upon a war, we have no funding for that war in this budget.”

—Hillary Clinton.

“Coalition forces suffered their first casualties in a helicopter crash that left 12 Britons and 4 Americans dead.”

— The Associated Press.

Though the March 23 Oscar ceremony will dispense with the red carpet in deference to the war, an E! channel executive announces there will be no cutback on pre-Oscar programming, but “the tone will be much more somber.”

March 21, 2003

“I don’t mean to be glib about this, or make it sound trite, but it really is a symphony that has to be orchestrated by a conductor.”

— Retired Maj. Gen. Donald Shepperd, CNN military analyst, speaking to Wolf Blitzer of the bombardment of Baghdad during Shock and Awe.

[“Many parts of Iraq are stable. But of course what we see on television is the one bombing a day that discourages everyone.”

— Laura Bush, “Larry King Live,” Feb. 26, 2007.]

“The president may occasionally turn on the TV, but that’s not how he gets his news or his information. ... He is the president, he’s made his decisions and the American people are watching him.”

— Ari Fleischer.

[The former press secretary received immunity from prosecution in the Valerie Wilson leak case and testified in the perjury trial of Scooter Libby in 2007.]

“Peter, I may be going out on a limb, but I’m not sure that the first stage of this Shock and Awe campaign is really going to frighten the Iraqi people. In fact, it may have just the opposite effect. If they feel that they’ve survived the most that the United States can throw at them and they’re still standing, and they’re still able to go about their lives, well, then they might be rather emboldened. They might feel that, well, look, we can stand a lot more than this.”

— Richard Engel, a Baghdad correspondent speaking to Peter Jennings on ABC’s “World News Tonight.”

Bush Compares Iraq to Vietnam - He Says Pullout Would Be Disastrous

Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post, August 23

KANSAS CITY, Mo., Aug. 22 -- President Bush defended his ongoing military commitment in Iraq by linking the conflict there to the Vietnam War, arguing Wednesday that withdrawing U.S. troops would lead to widespread death and suffering as it did in Southeast Asia three decades ago.

"One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 'reeducation camps' and 'killing fields,' " Bush told a receptive audience at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention.

The president's decision to draw an explicit link between Iraq and Vietnam comes as he seeks to marshal support for his war policy among Republicans and to blunt calls from Democratic members of Congress for a drawdown of U.S. forces in the coming months. Although his comments played well among the veterans here -- the speech was interrupted with repeated cheers and applause -- the references to the Vietnam conflict, which remains a divisive, emotional issue for many Americans, prompted strong criticism from Democrats.

"The president is drawing the wrong lesson from history," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

Bush also offered fresh support for embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, calling him a "good man with a difficult job." On Tuesday, speaking to reporters at a North American summit in Quebec, Bush had expressed his disappointment at the lack of political progress in Iraq and had said that widespread popular frustration could lead Iraqis to replace Maliki.

But in his speech to the veterans, Bush said "it's not up to the politicians in Washington, D.C., to say whether he will remain in his position. It is up to the Iraqi people who now live in a democracy and not a dictatorship."

Later Wednesday, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, echoed a call from Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, for Iraq's parliament to oust Maliki if he cannot quickly forge a political compromise.

"I share Senator Levin's hope that the Iraqi parliament will replace Prime Minister Maliki with a less divisive and more unifying figure when it returns in a few weeks," Clinton said in a statement.

Fed up with the criticism, Maliki fired back in comments to reporters early Wednesday, saying that the United States should not impose conditions on his government.

"No one has the right to place timetables on the Iraq government. It was elected by its people," he told reporters at the end of a three-day trip to Damascus, according to the Associated Press. "Those who make such statements are bothered by our visit to Syria. We will pay no attention. We care for our people and our constitution and can find friends elsewhere."

Bush's defense of his Iraq policy and the competing critiques of Maliki's leadership come as the White House prepares for its mid-September report to Congress on the progress of the war. Though the White House and even some of its Democratic critics say that the Bush administration's decision early this year to send 30,000 additional troops to Iraq has improved security in some parts of the country, both sides have expressed disappointment at the pace of political progress.

The administration has been trying to press Maliki to find some accommodation with his political rivals, particularly the Sunnis, who feel disenfranchised by his Shiite-led government. It also wants Maliki to make good on promises to disarm Shiite militias. Many Democrats, meanwhile, have pointed to the continuing political stalemate as a reason to end U.S. involvement in the conflict.

In his speech to the veterans, Bush said that to abandon Iraq now would be "devastating" and asserted that the troop buildup is contributing to military progress there. He said U.S. and Iraqi forces have killed or captured more than 1,500 al-Qaeda operatives every month since January.

"Our troops are seeing this progress on the ground," Bush said. "And as they take the initiative from the enemy, they have a question: Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they are gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq?"

Citing not just the Vietnam War but also the aftermath of other previous conflicts in Asia, Bush said U.S. action helped foster prosperous democracies in Japan and South Korea. By contrast, he said, the American withdrawal from Vietnam led to even more death, with hundreds of thousands of people dying at the hands of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, in Vietnamese re-education camps or at sea as they tried to flee communist rule in rickety boats.

"There are many differences between the wars we fought in the Far East and the war on terror we are fighting today. But one important similarity is that, at their core, they are all ideological struggles," Bush said. ". . . Today, the names and places have changed, but the fundamental character of the struggle has not. Like our enemies in the past, the terrorists who wage war in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places seek to spread a political vision of their own -- a harsh plan for life that crushes all freedom, tolerance and dissent."

"Prevailing in the struggle is essential to the future of our nation," Bush said. "And the question now that comes before us is this: Will today's generation of Americans resist the allure of retreat?"

The veterans warmly embraced Bush's comparison of the Iraq conflict with the other wars.

"I liked his speech. I agree with him. It is not time to pull out of Iraq," said Ronald Harshman, a Vietnam War veteran from Northern California. "I don't believe in giving up."

But Democratic senators, who will soon debate the future of the war, attacked Bush's analogies as flawed.

"Invoking the tragedy of Vietnam to defend the failed policy in Iraq is as irresponsible as it is ignorant of the realities of both of those wars," said Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), a Vietnam War veteran. "Half of the soldiers whose names are on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after the politicians knew our strategy would not work. The lesson is to change the strategy, not just to change the rhetoric."

Kennedy said the United States "lost the war in Vietnam because our troops were trapped in a distant country we did not understand, supporting a government that lacked sufficient legitimacy with its people."

From India, a Cautionary Tale

NYT, AUGUST 12, 2007

ROGER COHEN


If this week did not mark the 60th anniversary of the bloody British withdrawal from India, it would be easy to dismiss the latest attempt to involve the Uited Nations more deeply in Iraq as risible.

Scorn is seldom in short supply on Iraq. Why, the get-out-now brigade will ask, should a UN already battered by Baghdad and led by an unproven secretary general have any chance of easing the mayhem when the mightiest power on earth has labored in vain for four years?

Is the U.S. maneuver that led to the unanimous approval last week of a resolution giving the United Nations a central role in promoting regional and Iraqi national reconciliation not just the latest Bush administration attempt to kick failure far enough down the road for it to become somebody else's problem?

The argument is easy to make, as facile as all the cheap electoral point-scoring that makes up what passes for political debate on Iraq in an America counting the days to next year's presidential vote.

The untidy thing is that the fate of 26 million Iraqis and the fortunes of the Republican and Democratic parties do not mesh. The former is a lifelong affair, the latter often a matter of sound bites.

America has incurred a debt to Iraq, and the liability is weightier than the paper on the sub-prime mortgage market. Those in a hurry for neat resolutions in Mesopotamia might cast their minds back 60 years to the summer of 1947 when, on Aug. 15, after almost a century of direct rule, the British quit India, having drawn some hasty lines on a map.

The lines produced Pakistan. The rapid exit - independence and partition had only been approved a couple of months earlier by Parliament - produced a savage outbreak of killing and rape among millions of Hindus and Muslims attempting to disentangle entwined existences. India and Pakistan went to war over still-contested Kashmir.

I know, India is not Iraq, the world of 1947 is not that of 2007, and America's Iraqi foray amounts to a brief interlude compared to Britain's passage to India. But playing with fire still tends to produce explosions. Any U.S. withdrawal, or significant troop reduction, must be meticulously prepared.

Iraq right now involves a proxy war in which Iran wants to consolidate Shiite ascendancy, Saudi Arabia wants to ensure Sunnis have a share of power, and Turkey wants to prevent the Kurds from laying their hands on oil-rich Kirkuk, so establishing the economic basis for an independent Kurdistan.

A proxy war over the most explosive issue in the Middle East today - Persia ascendant - could easily become a direct war, absent America's offsetting influence, however costly that influence is. Which is where the UN comes in.

The resolution calls on the UN to "advise, support and assist" Iraq in "facilitating regional dialogue."

This, along with promoting political reconciliation at a time of national fissuring, will be the core task falling to the new UN envoy to Iraq, who will probably be Staffan de Mistura, a Swede with extensive Iraqi experience.

"The key factor will be getting very active regional diplomacy going, institutionalizing negotiations with neighbors, which we want to involve weekly or bi-weekly meetings," Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the UN told me. "It's hard for us to get a meeting with Iran, but this is something the UN can do."

Khalilzad, who has served as ambassador in both Afghanistan and Iraq since the 9/11 attack, identified the three critical regional powers as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey and said "they all fear that an outright U.S. withdrawal could suck them into an outright war in Iraq."

That fear will provide the UN with leverage. The ambassador has received assurances from President George W. Bush that the U.S. will provide full support for the UN as it expands its role. "We are talking about a UN backed by the U.S., not replacing our presence," he said.

Skepticism, tinged with fear, is rife at the UN. The memory is still vivid of the 2003 slaying in Baghdad of many of its best and brightest, led by Sérgio Vieira de Mello of Brazil. But a U.S. drawdown, ultimately inevitable, must be based on intertwined regional and national rapprochement. The UN, if it gets leadership, is better positioned to foster that than a discredited Bush administration.

I knew de Mello in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war. He liked his Black Label. He was also a man of courage with a deep sense of responsibility and the long arcs of history.

E-mail: rocohen@iht.com

Iraq's wealth in the balance

Hussein Abdallah*
Al Ahram Weekly, 2-8 August

The present draft Iraq oil law is virtually guaranteed to betray the vital interests of Iraqis.

The US administration considers the ratification of the hydrocarbon law in Iraq as one of the major targets of the US occupation. Therefore, it has been pressing Iraq's government to pass the law, ostensibly as part of efforts to promote "reconciliation" among the country's religious and ethnic groups. Moreover, since oil provides 95 per cent of Iraq's national income, the recovery of the country's oil sector would reduce the US economic and military burden in Iraq.

Recent US government reports, however, show that much-awaited approval of this law designed to govern the granting of exploration rights to foreign companies would be just the beginning in addressing the Iraq oil problem. This law would provide only a broad framework for handling the Iraqi oil industry, leaving many devilish details to be worked out later. Another part of the law -- the distribution of revenue based on regional population -- will require a politically sensitive census to be undertaken, which is a difficult task under conditions of war.

Given that the law has been passed by the Iraqi cabinet and will be debated in parliament, it is vital to shed light on the nature of the law that already elicits fierce controversy. Overall, the law should be put on hold for several reasons, the most important of which are as follows.

First, the draft law is expected to clearly assign roles, decentralise the development of oil and gas fields, centralise control of revenues, and grant regions and regional oil companies the right to draw up contracts with foreign companies for exploration and development of new oil fields. Therefore, the law refers to several laws to be legislated later on, examples of which are the Iraq national oil company (INOC) law, the Oil Ministry law, and the appendices that design the contract models to be negotiated with foreign companies, being a service contract or a production sharing agreement (PSA). Since these laws represent integral parts of the main hydrocarbon law, it would be wiser to work out the whole integrated legal matrix and debate it in one go later on.

According to a recent report by the US Government Accountability Office, leaked in May 2007, a great deal of corruption has dogged Iraq's oil industry. Between 100,000- 300,000 barrels of oil per day are stolen and oil production has dwindled from 3.5 million barrels per day to less than two million barrels per day. The market value of such smuggling ranges between $5 and $15 million a day, with the aggregate value of corruption in the oil sector estimated by the Iraqi Auditor General at $24 billion over the past four years. Since local corruption could not flourish without a foreign partner, who must market the stolen oil or pass bribes or launder funds, it would be better not to expand foreign participation in Iraq's oil industry, and surely not under the aegis of occupying powers.

Considering the lack of measuring gauges that identify the volume and quality of crude oil and gas at production points as well as at loading facilities and shipping ports, it is all the more important to put things on hold. Even such equipment as exists is faulty. It is imperative to immediately repair or install adequate measuring equipment, whether the hydrocarbon law is passed or postponed.

Contracts that sell the national wealth of an occupied country are illegal under international law and can be cancelled once the occupied country is liberated. Therefore, the Iraqi governments should not expect to receive offers from well-established and respectable oil companies. Even if some American companies offer to develop Iraqi oil and gas, they have to keep in mind the possibility of their being disqualified once American troops leave. In such a case, any investment will aim at making as much money as possible in the shortest possible time before abandoning Iraq. In the oil industry, this is the most wasteful type of investment. The industry is, by nature, based on far-sighted projections and requisite long-term infrastructure that the speculation-driven investor would be hesitant to undertake.

Second, besides several loopholes and ambiguities, the draft law is flawed by several shortcomings and matters overlooked. Most important is the lack of parliamentary sanction over concession contracts or agreements to be concluded with international oil companies (IOCs). Parliamentary oversight is an established rule in almost all oil producing countries. The fact that such oversight is entrusted to the Federal Council for Oil and Gas (FCOG) does not furnish guarantees that the most will be made of the country's vital wealth. The FCOG is only part of the executive authority because it is formed by the cabinet; concession contracts and agreements negotiated and prepared by the executive authority should be sanctioned, or not, by parliament.

Article 5 of the draft law provides that parliament shall approve all petroleum treaties that Iraq signs with other countries. Yet this article does not apply to concession contracts and agreements, which are negotiated and concluded with IOCs and should be approved by parliament as well.

Article 2 excludes from the scope of the draft law several major oil and gas activities -- for example, the refining of petroleum, its industrial utilisation, as well as the storage, transport and distribution of petroleum products. The wisdom of this shortcoming is not apparent because all such activities are interrelated and the exclusion of some may leave loopholes open for possible corruption. If these interrelated activities cannot be included in the draft oil law, they should be organised and legislated in a separate law.

Article 6 establishes the Iraq National Oil Company (INOC) as a holding company fully owned by the Iraqi government, its scope of operations defined. One aspect is for the company to carry out exploration and production operations in new areas on a competitive basis with foreign companies. Article 6 clearly leaves out a long-established clause which is usually embedded in hydrocarbon laws and gives priority to the national oil company in case of equal competitive standing with foreign companies.

We now come to the most crucial condition guaranteeing healthy management of the oil and gas sector: the free and independent decision of those Iraqi officials who are to negotiate and contract with IOCs. The model contract that will be approved by the law is designed in such a way that leaves many blank spaces to be filled later. In fact, these blanks are the most crucial clauses because they cover such vital matters as production bonuses, the amount of investment to be spent on operations, the periods of each exploration and production phase, the amount of oil produced to be allocated to the foreign company for cost recovery, the period over which such costs will be recovered, the portion of total production to be obtained by the foreign company as profit (known as equity oil), the basis of sharing natural gas as well as the pricing of portions needed for domestic consumption out of the foreign company's share, and the amount of oil that is to be obtained by the Iraq government in compensation for the depletion of its national wealth (known as royalties), becoming due regardless of loss and profit after production.

There are countless such crucial matters that are left to the discretion and integrity of Iraqi negotiators, including, at the beginning, the selection of those IOCs that are to be included in a shortlist and exclusively allowed to apply for exploration and production rights.

Article 10 sets up the mechanisms of negotiation and contracting for granting rights to explore and produce oil and gas. These responsibilities are distributed among several bodies of the executive authority, on both national and regional levels. Once initial procedures are complete, the contract must be submitted to the FCOG within 30 days from the day of signing. The FCOG, if it so decides, would then submit the contract to the "Panel of Independent Advisors" for analysis on the extent of its compliance with model contracts approved by the FCOG. If the executive body that negotiated the initial contract, being the Oil Ministry, INOC or regional authority, does not receive an objection from the FCOG within 60 days of receipt of the initial contract, the contract remains valid. This mechanism clearly assumes that the initial contract is valid unless the FCOG expresses its objection within 60 days by two-thirds majority, which may be difficult to secure in many cases.

This is a very rigid and inefficient way of handling the contracting process. The time allowed is too tight, squeezing the whole decision-making process into 90 days. In practice, it often takes much longer. Contract compliance with approved models is only a formal step -- clearly inadequate given the vital items that have to be negotiated. Such hastily concluded contracts can only give rise to problems, leaving real power in the hands of select Iraqi negotiators and IOCs, with increased possibility for corruption.

The fragmentation of the contracting process between federal and regional authorities, which is strongly favoured by the Kurdistan regional government, is an inefficient system. It allows IOCs to manoeuvre and play Iraqi regions against each other. The most recent experience in this regard proved a complete failure -- Sudan. Like Iraq, there was disagreement between the north and south over the distribution of Sudan's oil wealth, 80 per cent of which lies in the south. This prompted the government of southern Sudan to contract the UK White Nile Company to operate in a certain area that was also contracted by the national government to the French company Total. Conflicting claims were not resolved until the National Petroleum Commission was established in June 2007, representing Khartoum and Juba equally, ordering the White Nile Company to halt its activities and leave Sudan.

In light of the above, it is almost impossible for an Iraqi civil servant to freely and impartially select the best IOCs to deal with and get fair and just contractual terms for Iraq. It is now common knowledge that nothing of importance is done in Iraq without the approval of the US as an occupying power. The bottom line is, therefore, that the mere presence of US troops on Iraqi soil almost guarantees that this law will be a bad one.

* The writer is a consultant on energy and petroleum economics.

Resistance on the rise

Over 5,000 attacks are being staged monthly on US forces as the Bush "surge" continues to try to forcibly pacify Iraq:

Nermeen Al-Mufti
Al Ahram Weekly,26 July - 1 August


In a rare moment of jubilation, thousands of Iraqis took to the streets in various parts of the country, waving Iraqi flags and firing in the air, to celebrate the win of their national team in the Asian Cup games. But even that moment turned sour when stray bullets killed two bystanders in Baghdad.

Pentagon figures say that resistance attacks in June were among the highest since May 2003. A total of 5,335 attacks were mounted against the occupation forces and the Iraqi security forces in June, a figure that is 2.5 per cent lower than the record of 5,472 seen in October 2006. The Bush administration deployed 28,000 additional troops last month as part of its controversial plan to "stabilise" the country. Attacks against Iraqi civilians dropped by 18 per cent last month, from 932 in May to 763 in June. Attacks on coalition forces rose by seven per cent, from 3,423 to 3,671, during the same period.

The (Sunni) Accordance Front and the (Shia) Sadr Group ended their boycott of the parliament. The Sadr Group resumed its attendance of parliamentary sessions after five weeks of boycott, thanks to the intervention of parliamentary mediators. The Accordance Front (AF) said that it ended its boycott in response to pleas from other parliamentary groups and from President Jalal Talabani. The AF boycott was in protest against the suspension of speaker Mahmoud Al-Mashhadani, who is one of its members.

A statement released by the office of Tareq Al-Hashemi, vice president and AF member, says that Mashhadani was reinstated in his position as parliamentary speaker. AF leader Adnan Al-Duleimi said that his group was urging its ministers to resume attending cabinet meetings. AF ministers boycotted cabinet sessions after an arrest warrant was served on Culture Minister Asaad Al-Hashimi on 28 June. In statements to the media, Al-Duleimi said that talks with the prime minister concerning the culture minister were "positive", and that a mutually satisfactory solution was expected.

Meanwhile, parliament postponed its summer recess, but it has no plans to discuss thorny issues for the moment. The oil and de-Baathification laws will be debated after the recess, now scheduled for August. Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki has urged the cabinet to cancel, or at least shorten, the recess so as to "help the government resolve outstanding issues", according to a statement from his office.

President Bush and his administration are still pushing for a speedy promulgation of the controversial oil law. Former oil minister Essam Shalabi denounced the oil law as an attempt to partition Iraq. The Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) issued an edict prohibiting the implementation of that law. The edict, claimed AMS spokesman, prompted the Americans to raid Um Al-Qura Mosque, the AMS headquarters in Baghdad, early this week. US troops arrested 18 AMS officials and wrecked AMS offices during the raid.

The US administration says that violence is likely to escalate in August. But Operation Imposing Law in Baghdad and Operation Arrowhead Ripper in Diali, 75 kilometres northeast of Baghdad, are still in full swing. US statements speak of the arrest and death of dozens of "terrorists". Resistance forces claim in Internet statements that they are inflicting significant losses on occupation forces. Baquba inhabitants say that relative calm has been restored in their city, but they complain of food and fuel shortages.

In separate news, US helicopters strafed Al-Huseiniya in north Baghdad, believed to be a stronghold of the Mahdi army, killing 18 civilians and wounding dozens. Nassar Al-Rubiei, spokesman for the Sadr Group, called on parliament to denounce the US shelling. US forces searched Al-Adhamiyah neighbourhood of Baghdad following an attack on a US patrol. Al-Adhamiyah has for the past few months been surrounded by a five-metre high cement barrier.

In Kirkuk, 100 civilians were killed in a suicide attack mounted by a truck laden with explosives. The attack comes one week after the bombings in Amirli, considered to be the worst since April 2003. US Ambassador Ryan Crocker visited Kirkuk for talks with local officials following the attack. Once the ambassador left, the northern Kurdish administration announced plans to deploy 6,000 peshmerga, or Kurdish fighters, around vital institutions to pre-empt acts of "terror".

Oil-rich Kirkuk is a multi-ethnic city that has a strong Turkomen presence, but Kurdish political forces have been trying to incorporate it into their region. Their decision to deploy peshmerga in Kirkuk angered local Arab and Turkomen communities. Aydin Aksu, a key figure in the Iraqi Turkomen Front, told Al-Ahram Weekly that, "the presence of 6,000 peshmerga would increase tension and deepen the rift in this town. It would generate resentment among other communities in the city, for it is unconscionable for one community to have all the power. The protection of vital institutions is just an excuse."

News reports have spoken of a meeting of the Baath Party (Ezzat Al-Duri wing) and other Iraqi resistance factions to form a united front. A source close to resistance factions told the Weekly that Ansar Al-Sunna, Iraq Hamas and the Ishrin Brigades have formed a front but "the Baath was not part of that front."

The second round of Iranian-US talks is expected to be held soon in Baghdad. Janan Ali, a specialist in domestic Iraqi affairs, says that the talks underline the importance of the Iranian role in Iraq. "No stability in Iraq is possible unless Iran and the US reach agreement," she said.

© Al-Ahram Weekly

How the U.S. war coalition is crumbling

Hasan Suroor
The Hindu, 6 March

Britain's decision to pull out troops from Iraq could trigger a domino effect with countries still undecided likely to follow its example.

FOR AMERICA, the stark message from Britain's decision to start pulling out its troops from Iraq is that President George W. Bush's "grand" war coalition has, finally, started to crumble as more and more member countries begin to realise the sheer foolhardiness of what is increasingly looking like a Sisyphean adventure. Any illusions Americans may have had about the state of the coalition have been wrecked by the British move significantly announced by Prime Minister Tony Blair himself in the Commons — a move widely seen as the beginning of the end of Britain's controversial involvement in an illegal invasion.

The announcement came on the day Denmark announced its decision to withdraw its 400-odd troops and several other coalition partners were reported to be reviewing their commitment. As many as 17 countries, cutting across Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, have already pulled out. They are: Italy, Spain, New Zealand, Japan, Hungary, The Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Portugal, Honduras, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Ukraine, Slovakia, and Tonga. And those still bogged down are looking for an early exit. It is more a question of "when" they get out rather than "if." Poland is committed to bringing home its troops by the end of the year, Romania is expected to decide soon, and South Korea is poised to withdraw half of its troops by April.

But Britain's decision has a significance of its own and could trigger a domino effect with countries still undecided likely to follow its example.

The argument is that when America's most loyal ally decides that enough is enough it sends out a powerful signal to smaller coalition partners that the endgame is nigh. It is not about how many troops Britain has in Iraq (even at full stretch, the British presence was a drop in the ocean compared with the U.S.' 132,000 troops and rising) but whether as America's staunchest ally it is willing to stay the course — hang on there with the Americans until they decide that it is time to go home. And the answer, evident from the recent announcement, is: no.

Mr. Blair sought to spin the decision as evidence that the situation in the British-controlled sector was improving (though in the same statement he also admitted that it was still a "dangerous" place) but the headlines next morning were all about a British "retreat."

Much has been made of Britain's involvement in Iraq but the fact is that, with just 7,000 troops and that too deployed in the relatively quiet southern Iraq, its military importance has been grossly exaggerated. It was the idea of Britain standing "shoulder-to-shoulder" with America in defiance of public opinion and at the cost of alienating its European neighbours that meant so much to President George W. Bush at a time when he was facing international isolation. In other words, sending troops to Iraq was essentially an act of political symbolism — a symbol of the strength of Britain's "special relationship" with America. As New Statesman noted last week: "It is worth remembering ... that Blair's main contribution to the U.S. war effort was more political than military. It was he, virtually alone, who gave Bush the veneer of respectability to flout the United Nations. British forces, as Donald Rumsfeld (the then U.S. Defence Secretary) reminded Ministers on the eve of war, were not vital for the invasion. There were, he famously said, `workarounds' if the British had a change of heart."

By the same logic, the planned withdrawal of British troops, or even a sharp reduction, when President Bush is struggling to keep the show going is hugely symbolic. It undermines the notion of special relationship that prompted Mr. Blair to go into Iraq in the first place. For Britain to draw down its troops while Pentagon is sending another 20,000 troops is nothing short of a snub to the Bush White House. No wonder, the Americans are said to be seething and there would be many in Washington muttering: "Et tu Blair?" Despite American attempts to put on a brave face and insistence in London that both sides are still on the "same page" — as the Defence Secretary Des Browne said — it is no secret that the wheels of the Blair-Bush axis are coming off.

America made its unhappiness clear weeks ago when it first emerged that Britain was planning to reduce its troops. The U.S. Ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, was quick to express his annoyance with what he described as "various reports that Brits want to draw down" their troops.

"We are committed to an increase of the force but Brits obviously are not committed to an increase ... We would like Britain to coordinate for us to have a joint plan. Our preference will be that the longer we stay together the better," he told the BBC.

The fact that the level of troops cut proposed by Mr. Blair is much more modest than had been initially suggested is believed to be the result of U.S. pressure. But what is significant is that it is "happening at all," as one commentator argued. The move is calculated to mark a break with a foreign policy that has seen Britain reduced to playing second fiddle to America. This is the first time in the post-9/11 "Brits-Americans bhai bhai" phase that the Blair government has had the courage to ignore American sensitivities on a key issue.

And it is not only over Iraq that the much-vaunted special relationship is showing cracks. A rift has also surfaced over Iran. Mr. Blair broke his own golden rule of never publicly disagreeing with America when he declared that it would not be right to attack Iran over its controversial nuclear programme even as Americans remained gung-ho insisting that all options, including military intervention, were still on the table.

"I can't think that it would be right to take military action against Iran ... What is important is to pursue the political, diplomatic channel. I think it is the only way that we are going to get a sensible solution to the Iranian issue," Mr. Blair said in a BBC interview.

His remarks surprised observers who recalled that a similar comment by Jack Straw, when he was Foreign Secretary, had so angered Washington that it cost him his job; or so it was thought at the time. "It was notable that Mr. Blair's remarks yesterday closely resembled those of Jack Straw last year who said that an attack on Iran was `inconceivable', angering Washington and perhaps contributing to his removal as foreign secretary," noted The Times.

Is it the legacy?

So, why is Mr. Blair suddenly cooing like a dove? Nobody seriously believes that he has had a change of heart. As a satirist noted: "It is the legacy thing, stupid." Mr. Blair's softened tone is seen as a "cynical" ploy to reinvent his image as a peacemaker as he prepares to leave office in a few months time. It is his desperate search for a legacy that, it is argued, has prompted him to pull back British troops from Iraq — something he was not even prepared to contemplate until recently despite warnings from the army top brass that the continuing British presence was "exacerbating" the situation in Basra. The upcoming elections in Scotland where Iraq has played particularly badly and the Labour party is up against a resurgent and anti-war Scottish Nationalist Party are also a factor. He knows that a Labour defeat would be laid on his doors and could intensify the pressure on him to quit sooner than his planned exit in the autumn.

Generally, the mood music in Westminster is changing ahead of the much-awaited change of guard at Downing Street and it is expected that Gordon Brown, Mr. Blair's putative successor, would demonstrably steer Britain away from the current subservient relationship with America.

Although he has been very much a part of the Blair strategy over Iraq, having never uttered a word of dissent, he will have to show that he is "different" from the unpopular Mr. Blair if he wants to win the next election against a revived Tory party under David Cameron's leadership.

And since it is Mr. Blair's slavishly pro-American foreign policy that has caused so much public anger, this is one area where Mr. Brown will have to chart a new course — and that means only one thing: disentangling British foreign policy from America's apron strings.

As for Iraq, the U.S.-led military coalition is as good as dead and the longer the Americans prolong the agony the chances are that they (and Australia?) will be the only ones left to clean up the mess. Obituaries anyone?

U.S. military fears Vietnam-style collapse

Simon Tisdall

Elite officers in Iraq fear low morale, lack of troops, and loss of political will back home.

AN ELITE team of officers advising the U.S. commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq — or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.

The officers — combat veterans who are experts in counter-insurgency — are charged with implementing the "new way forward" strategy announced by George W. Bush on January 10. The plan includes a controversial "surge" of 21,500 additional American troops to establish security in the Iraqi capital and Anbar province. But the team, known as the "Baghdad brains trust" and ensconced in the heavily fortified Green Zone, is struggling to overcome a range of entrenched problems in what has become a race against time, according to a former senior administration official familiar with their deliberations.

"They know they are operating under a clock. They know they are going to hear a lot more talk in Washington about `Plan B' by the autumn — meaning withdrawal. They know the next six-month period is their opportunity. And they say it's getting harder every day," he said.
By improving security, the plan's short-term aim is to create time and space for the Iraqi Government to bring rival Shia, Sunni, and Kurd factions together in a process of national reconciliation, American officials say. If that works within the stipulated timeframe, longer term schemes for rebuilding Iraq under the so-called "go long" strategy will be set in motion. But the next six months are make-or-break for the U.S. military and the Iraqi government. The main obstacles confronting General Petraeus' team are: insufficient troops on the ground; a "disintegrating" international coalition; an anticipated increase in violence in the south as the British leave; morale problems as casualties rise; a failure of political will in Washington and/or Baghdad.

"The scene is very tense," the former official said. "They are working round the clock. Endless cups of tea with the Iraqis. But they're still trying to figure out what's the plan. The President is expecting progress. But they're thinking, what does he mean? The plan is changing every minute, as all plans do."

Unusual mix

The team is an unusual mix of combat experience and academic achievement. It includes Colonel Peter Mansoor, a former armoured division commander with a Ph.D in the history of infantry; Colonel H.R. McMaster, author of a well-known critique of Vietnam and a seasoned counter-insurgency operations chief; Lt.Col David Kilcullen, a seconded Australian officer and expert on Islamism; and Colonel Michael Meese, son of the former U.S. attorney-general Edwin Meese, who was a member of the ill-fated Iraq Study Group.

According to the U.S. military's revised counter-insurgency field manual, FM 3-24, written by General Petraeus, the optimum "troop-to-task" ratio for Baghdad requires 120,000 U.S. and allied troops in the city alone. Current totals, even including often unreliable Iraqi units, fall short and the deficit is even greater in conflict areas outside Baghdad.

"Additional troops are essential if we are to win," said Lt-Col John Nagel, co-author of the manual, in an address at the U.S. Naval Institute in San Diego last month. One soldier for every 50 civilians in the most intense conflict areas was key to successful counter-insurgency work.

Compounding the manpower problems is an apparently insurmountable shortage of civilian volunteers from the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Treasury. They are needed to staff the additional provincial reconstruction teams and other aid projects promised by Mr. Bush.
The cut in British troops in southern Iraq, coupled with the actual or anticipated departure of other allies, has heightened the Petraeus team's worries that the international coalition is "disintegrating" even as the U.S. strives to regain the initiative in Iraq, the former official said.

Increased violence in the south is expected, caused in part by the "displacement" of Shia militias forced out of Baghdad by the U.S. crackdown. American and Iraq forces entered the militant Shia stronghold of Sadr City on Tuesday for the first time since the surge began. No other major operation has yet been attempted there but "we or the Iraqis are going to have to fight them," one U.S. officer said.

According to a British source, plans are in hand for the possible southwards deployment of 6,000 U.S. troops to compensate for Britain's phased withdrawal and any upsurge in unrest.

Morale is another concern in the Green Zone headquarters: American forces are preparing for a rise in casualties as the crackdown gathers pace. In a message to the troops after he assumed overall command last month, General Petraeus praised their sacrifices while warning of more "difficult times" to come.

"It's amazing how well morale has held up so far," the former official said. "But the guys know what's being said back home. There is no question morale is gradually being sapped by political debates."

Possibly the biggest longer term concern of General Petraeus' team is that political will in Washington may collapse just as the military is on the point of making a counter-insurgency breakthrough. According to a senior administration official, speaking this week, this is precisely what happened in the final year of the Vietnam War. Steven Simon, the National Security Council's senior director for transnational threats during the Clinton administration, said a final meltdown in political and public backing was likely if the new strategy was not seen to be working quickly.

"The implosion of domestic support for the war will compel the disengagement of U.S. forces. It is now just a matter of time," Mr. Simon said in a paper written for the Council on Foreign Relations. "Better to withdraw as a coherent and at least somewhat volitional act than withdraw later in hectic response to public opposition... or to a series of unexpectedly sharp reverses on the ground," he said.

"If it gets really tough in the next few months, it will throw fuel on the fire in Washington," the former official said. "Congress will be emboldened in direct proportion to the trouble in Iraq." If the policy was not judged to be working by Labour Day (the first Monday in September which marks the start of the new political year), Mr. Bush could lose control of the policy to Congress and be forced to begin a phased pullout, he suggested.

A senior Pentagon official said this week that it was too early to gauge the strategy's chances of success — but preliminary reports were encouraging. "There are some promising signs. There is a new overall Iraqi commander in Baghdad. A number of joint operations have just begun. The number of political murders has fallen. Iraqi forces are showing up as promised, admittedly a little bit under strength, and are taking up some of the responsibilities that Maliki said he would," the Pentagon official said. "We have to be realistic. We're not going to stop the suicide bombers and the roadside explosive devices for some time.

And the military alone are certainly not going to solve the problem. Maliki has to meet the benchmarks. A civilian surge is needed, too. The Iraqis have to do it themselves."

U.S. officials say they also have rising hopes of a breakthrough in Sunni-dominated Anbar province where tribal chiefs are increasingly hostile to Al-Qaeda and foreign fighters — and are looking to build bridges with moderate Shias. But this week's U.S. decision to join talks on Iraq with Iran and Syria, after previously refusing to do so, is nevertheless seen as an indication of the administration's growing alarm at the possibility of a historic strategic failure.

— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007

After Saddam, it will be oil

K.S. Dakshina Murthy
The Hindu, January 10

Now that the U.S. establishment has succeeded in removing Saddam, it is bound to turn its attention to securing unshakeable control over supplies of oil from Iraq.

PUSH ASIDE the smog, mist, fog or whatever is clouding the real motive behind United States' invasion of Iraq and two things stand out clearly: Washington's perception of Saddam Hussein as a threat and the U.S. dependence on Iraqi oil.

The U.S. has successfully manoeuvred the elimination of deposed President Saddam Hussein. What remains to be done is ensure that oil supplies to the U.S. remain stable and secure. In other words, total oil security.

After Iraq's attack on Kuwait and the subsequent Gulf War in 1991, the U.S. attempted in myriad ways to topple Saddam. Though the U.S. along with an international coalition at that time managed to push Iraq out of Kuwait, it stopped short of counter-invading Baghdad. George Bush (Sr.) as the U.S. President at that time faced severe criticism for leaving unfinished his task, which was to remove Saddam from power.

However, the U.S. with the help of the United Nations Security Council ensured that economic sanctions were imposed on Iraq, resulting in severe hardship to common Iraqis. One of the unstated aims was to build internal pressure and create adverse conditions that would favour replacement of the Saddam Hussein regime, preferably by another ruler friendly to the U.S. But Saddam's internal control was ironclad. Despite hostility from the Shias and the Kurds, he remained firmly ensconced in office and continued to defy the U.S. government.

U.S. intelligence agencies propped up dissidents, ensured funds for disgruntled sections within Iraq, and actively encouraged the regime's opponents in exile. The dissidents used generous media space and basked in the international limelight, "exposing" the so-called misdeeds of the Saddam Hussein government including the proliferation of chemical weapons and a nuclear weapons arsenal.

The U.S. leadership, after waiting for a decade, finally went on the offensive and put to good use the bogey of "weapons of mass destruction." Leveraging the momentum generated by the September 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. invaded Iraq 16 months later, dethroning Saddam.

But the task was unfinished as long as Saddam was alive. Despite being out of power, he was perceived to have the strength, charisma, and the backing to become the focus point of resistance against the U.S. invasion. Sections in the U.S. establishment even feared he could garner anti-U.S. sentiments in Iraq and stage a comeback. To prevent this and to achieve the long-term aim of eliminating Saddam from the scene, a trial was set up, charges framed against him, and a court backed by the U.S. sentenced Saddam to death. Despite protestations worldwide, which were not too many, the deposed President was hanged. The U.S. had achieved its long-term goal of eliminating Saddam.

In late-2003, when Saddam Hussein was captured on the run from U.S. forces, many were wonderstruck at the deposed President giving himself up without resistance. A few weeks earlier, his sons Uday and Qusay had died resisting capture. Their father's surrender was met with a measure of disappointment in the Arab world as it did not tally with his image as a fighter. Though there was a measure of speculation about his eventual fate in U.S. custody, it was fairly clear Saddam would not be spared by his captors, and that he was living on borrowed time.

Now that the U.S. establishment has succeeded in removing Saddam forever from the physical world, it is bound to turn its attention to the next important item on its agenda — to secure unshakeable control over supplies of oil from Iraq.

Already, the U.S.-engineered constitution of Iraq has elements in it that if implemented will ensure this. Within Iraq, it so happens that oil supplies are in abundance and extracted in areas controlled by the Shias and the Kurds. The so-called Sunni triangle has no major oilfields in comparison.
The new Iraqi constitution in the initial draft contained within it sections that allowed for the oil trade to be controlled by a federated arrangement. In other words, regions ruled by the Shias, the Kurds, and the Sunnis were accorded the authority to decide how and where oil supplies in their territories could be routed. And the finances from the sale of the oil would go directly to the regions with a share of it to the centre. This was opposed by the Sunnis and by a section of nationalists hostile to the U.S. on the grounds that it would dilute the hold of the federal government and pave the way for the break up of the country.

The U.S. and its loyalists in the Iraqi government tactically gave in as it was important at that time to get the constitution passed and a semblance of an independent government installed. In the constitution that came into being in October 2005, the contentious sections in the original draft were amended. But, importantly, not removed. For instance, Article 110 other than stating that oil revenue is to be distributed among the country's regions does not go into specifics. If the U.S. continues to remain in control, and all indications are that it will, it is possible for the constitution to be reworked to Washington's advantage at any time it sees fit in the near future.

For the U.S., this decentralised element is crucial as it will enable it to have a separate arrangement with the Shias and the Kurds for the supply of oil. The Sunnis may be antagonistic to the U.S., but they will not able to stop the supply of oil. If incessant resistance by the Sunni community endangers oil supplies to the U.S., a split of Iraq can be engineered into three independent nations, using the leeway provided by the constitution.

In recent months, there has been much speculation as to when Washington will decide to pull back its troops from Iraq. It is clear that a withdrawal hinges on how secure the arrangement of oil supplies is to the U.S. Now that Saddam Hussein is gone, in the coming weeks and months one can look to see events that will help consolidate oil security for the U.S. Even at the cost of Iraq's balkanisation.

The writer was formerly Editor with Al-Jazeera in Doha, Qatar.