Tony Blair’s Secret Oil Money
While everyone knew that Dick Cheney and George W. Bush wanted Iraq for its oil and the cash that would gush their way via Halliburton and other companies they had interests in, few suspected that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had a similar motivation. The Daily Mail reveals otherwise:
Tony Blair waged an extraordinary two-year battle to keep secret a lucrative deal with a multinational oil giant which has extensive interests in Iraq.
The former Prime Minister tried to keep the public in the dark over his dealings with South Korean oil firm UI Energy Corporation.
Mr Blair – who has made at least £20million since leaving Downing Street in June 2007 – also went to great efforts to keep hidden a £1million deal advising the ruling royal family in Iraq’s neighbour Kuwait.
In an…
Birth Defects on the Rise in Fallujah
Via the Daily Mail:
A Fallujah mother holds her little girl, who was born without a left forearm and hand.
A high number of children are being born with birth defects in an Iraqi city where U.S. forces may have used chemical weapons during a fierce battle in 2004.
Children in Fallujah are being born with limb, head, heart and nervous system defects.
There is even a claim that a baby was born with three heads. The number of heart defects among newborn babies is said to be 13 times higher than the rate in Europe.
The city, 40 miles west of Baghdad, was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the Iraq war in late 2004. U.S. Marines led Operation Phantom Fury to recapture it from insurgents.
British troops were involved in manning…
Iraq Opens Up to Foreign Oil Majors
From Business Week:
Western producers like BP, Exxon Mobil, and Shell are enjoying their best access to Iraq’s southern oil fields since 1972, but a weaker government could be on the way.
BP Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp. took the best deal they could get in Iraq last year when they won the largest oil contracts since addam Hussein was toppled in 2003. Oil companies may wait a long time to get a better one.Parliamentary elections may produce a weak or unstable government incapable of tendering new oil contracts, said Samuel Ciszuk, a London-based analyst at IHS Global Insight. He said he does expect the 10 technical-services contracts won by Exxon, BP and 20 other companies to be honored.
“One thing that’s fairly certain is there won’t be a strong coalition, so it…
The Video The United States Army Doesn’t Want You To See
As strong an anti-war film as you’re likely to see:
The Picture
By David Glenn Cox at Salon:
Photo by Eugene Richards
I want you to look very closely at this picture and try and keep it in your minds eye. This was a perfectly healthy twenty two-year-old young man who in the service of his country got half of his head blown off. I think that’s important, I think that’s newsworthy. Let me tell you how newsworthy I think it is. I think that it’s more important than chocolate cake recipes and far more important than comic book reviews. It is more important than who fell and whose swell at the winter Olympic games.
It is far more important than any self-serving load of crap banged out by Pseudo doctor Amy. It is more important than American Idol or Lost or any other mindless…
U.S. Returns 1,000 Historical Artifacts Stolen From Iraq
From Middle East Online:
US officials have returned more than 1,000 archaeological and historical items stolen from Iraq after the 2003 US-led invasion, Iraq’s ambassador here said Thursday.
Six pieces ranging from an ancient Sumerian stone tablet to an AK-47 rifle bearing Saddam’s image were handed over to Iraq at an embassy ceremony on Thursday.
“As Iraqis, we remain steadfast in our effort to return each and every one of these cultural treasures to their rightful home,” Ambassador Samir Sumaida’ie said at the ceremony.
Baghdad’s envoy said that the Iraqi National Museum lost some 15,000 items due to looting after the collapse of law and order due to the US-led invasion. Half of the items have since been found and returned “due to the diligence of our allies,” Sumaida’ie said.
Items returned included an Iraqi…
Kidnapping and Trading in Iraqi Children
Layla Anwar writes on uruknet.info:
While quite a bit of a fuss was raised regarding the kidnapping, smuggling and trafficking in Haitian children and rightly so, the same can’t be said about the fate of Iraqi children.
I have already written several posts about this new lucrative business in Iraq, that of the kidnapping, trafficking and trading of children, and I am always aghast to see that no media or organization for the protection of children, like the famous UNICEF or Save the Child or OXFAM or anyone else, has given enough attention and dedicated effort to denounce and stop this tragedy…
Of course, before our “liberation” such criminality involving the selling, buying, trading, kidnapping, killing of children was unheard of…am I to deduce that Freedom and Democracy are baby killers? Am afraid…
KBR Tells Court It Was Following Military Orders When Employees Burned Toxic Waste in Open Pits
From Alternet:
The military’s largest contractor is trying to avoid liability for health risks associated with burn pits to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the truth is emerging.
In October a class action suit combining 22 lawsuits from 43 states was filed in US District Court in Maryland against KBR, Halliburton, and other military contractors for damages to health from open air burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to plaintiffs’ lawyers the military contracting giant had been paid millions of dollars to safely dispose of waste on bases but negligently burned refuse in open pits, spewing toxins, including known carcinogens, into the air. Last week, KBR sought to dismiss the charges. Their tack was not to deny that they burned lithium batteries, petroleum, asbestos, trucks, cars, paint, plastic, Styrofoam, medical…
China Cancels 80 Percent of Iraq Debt
Reported by the American Free Press via the Tehran Times:
BAGHDAD (AFP) — China has agreed to cancel 80 percent of the 8.5-billion-dollar debt it is owed by Iraq, the finance ministry in Baghdad said in an official statement on Tuesday.
It said a bilateral agreement was signed in Beijing, without specifying the date, and that China’s ambassador to Iraq had met officials in Baghdad to confirm the agreement.
The statement added that the two countries entered into trade deals valued at 3.8 billion dollars in 2009.
Iraq To Sue U.S., Britain Over Depleted Uranium Bombs
Via the Tehran Times:
Iraq’s Ministry for Human Rights will file a lawsuit against Britain and the U.S. over their use of depleted uranium bombs in Iraq, an Iraqi minister says.
Iraq’s Minister of Human Rights, Wijdan Mikhail Salim, told Assabah newspaper that the lawsuit will be launched based on reports from the Iraqi ministries of science and the environment.
According to the reports, during the first year of the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq, both countries had repeatedly used bombs containing depleted uranium.
According to Iraqi military experts, the U.S. and Britain bombed the country with nearly 2,000 tons of depleted uranium bombs during the early years of the Iraq war.
Atomic radiation has increased the number of babies born with defects in the southern provinces of Iraq.
Iraqi doctors say they’ have been…
Details of Iraq Whistleblower’s Alleged Suicide Sealed For 70 Years
Stephen C. Webster reports on RAW Story:
By 2080, anyone with a direct interest in learning how Dr. David Kelly died, will themselves be dead.
That’s how an Oxford coroner reacted to a recent ruling ordering the details of the former United Nations weapons inspector’s death locked away for 70 years, according to a Mail Online report.
Kelly’s story, however, was gravely important in 2003, just before he was found dead in the woods behind his home in Oxfordshire, U.K. As the BBC revealed in the wake of his passing, he had been the key source behind a story claiming intelligence on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction was “sexed up.”
1/3 of Women in U.S. Military Have Been Raped
Ole Ole Olson writes on News Junkie Post:
According to NPR, “In 2003, a survey of female veterans found that 30 percent said they were raped in the military. A 2004 study of veterans who were seeking help for post-traumatic stress disorder found that 71 percent of the women said they were sexually assaulted or raped while serving. And a 1995 study of female veterans of the Gulf and earlier wars, found that 90 percent had been sexually harassed.”
The BBC recently reported on “The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq” by Helen Benedict. This book examines the extreme difficulties female soldiers have in serving abroad. Benedict interviewed several women in the military to get a deeper understanding of the issue, and some of their stories were real eye…
DynCorp Accused Of Looting Billions Of Dollars From Iraq Contracts
Anyone who saw the Robert Greenwald documentary Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers will know that this story about DynCorp in the Wall Street Journal is only the tip of the iceberg in corporate looting of the United States Treasury (meaning taxes paid in by Americans):
The U.S. State Department is struggling with its accounting for billions of dollars spent on police-training contracts in Iraq with DynCorp International Inc.
A report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, to be released today, says that squaring away just how the money was spent may take years.
The State Department lacks adequate staff in Iraq to closely monitor the work, its biggest contract there, according to the report. DynCorp invoices were regularly found to have errors and often lacked sufficient documentation, the auditors found. “As a…
U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret ‘Jesus’ Bible Codes
JOSEPH RHEE, TAHMAN BRADLEY and BRIAN ROSS write on ABC News:
Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.
The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.
U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious “Crusade” in its war against al Qaeda…
New Turkish Film On Israeli War Crimes
From PRESSTV:
A damning Turkish motion picture, aimed at depicting the “Israeli crimes against humanity,” is set to further alienate Ankara from Tel Aviv.
The movie would “depict Israel as it is – with bloody hands, merciless… flouting all human values,” against a backdrop of the Palestinian suffering in the blockaded Gaza Strip, the national daily Vatan quoted Turkish scriptwriter Bahadir Ozdener as saying, according to an AFP report.
“What we do is fiction,” said Ozdener. “But what about what they do, their crimes against humanity? They are real.”
Tel Aviv took issue with Ankara over the “Valley of the Wolves” – the TV series boasting Ozdener’s contribution which, besides other patriotic depictions, featured the emancipation of a Turkish boy captured by the Israeli intelligence apparatus, Mossad.
Reacting to the series, Israel called Turkish ambassador…
Cancer – The Deadly Legacy of the Invasion of Iraq
Jalal Ghazi for oneworld.net:
Forget about oil, occupation, terrorism or even Al Qaeda. The real hazard for Iraqis these days is cancer.
Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment.
Here are a few examples. In Falluja, which was heavily bombarded by the US in 2004, as many as 25% of new- born infants have serious abnormalities, including congenital anomalies, brain tumors, and neural tube defects in the spinal cord.
The cancer rate in the province of Babil, south of Baghdad has risen from 500 diagnosed cases in 2004 to 9,082 in 2009 according to Al Jazeera English.
In Basra there were 1885…
Tony Blair’s £1m-A-Year Paymaster Seeks Giant Iraqi Oil Deal
Jon Ungoed-Thomas writes in the Times:
A Middle Eastern investment fund that pays Tony Blair about £1m a year as an international adviser is in talks to develop one of Iraq’s biggest oilfields.
Mubadala, a United Arab Emirates investment firm, is in negotiations to join a consortium of western oil companies developing the Zubair oilfield in southern Iraq. More than £6 billion of investment is required for the project.
Blair has always insisted that the Iraq conflict was never linked to the country’s vast oil reserves, but he was facing criticism this weekend over his role with Mubadala. The investment firm, which receives 80% of its revenues from oil and gas, intends to build the biggest oil company in the eastern hemisphere.
It has been confirmed that Mubadala’s oil and gas division is in…
Official Army History: Bush Administration Neglected Afghan War, Diverted Resources to Iraq
From Think Progress:
During President Obama’s December speech announcing a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, he noted that the effort was finally getting the resources it needed. During the previous administration, Obama said, “commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.” “In early 2003, the decision was made to wage a second war, in Iraq,” Obama said, and “for the next six years, the Iraq war drew the dominant share of our troops, our resources, our diplomacy, and our national attention.”Former Bush administration officials fired back, claiming the Iraq war did not deprive resources from Afghanistan. Former White House adviser Karl Rove said “the United States had, at the time what the military felt was an appropriate level of resources.” Bush’s Defense Secretary…
Blackwater Employees Cleared Of Murder Charges
Once again, the year comes to a close with good news for the Blackwater corporation. From the New York Times:
Iraqis on Friday reacted with disbelief, anger and bitter resignation to news that criminal charges in the United States had been dismissed against Blackwater Worldwide security guards who opened fire on unarmed Iraqi civilians in 2007.
The attack left 17 Iraqis dead and 27 wounded. Investigators concluded that the guards had indiscriminately fired on unarmed civilians in an unprovoked and unjustified assault.
Many Iraqis viewed the prosecution of the guards as a test case of American democratic principles…On Thursday, Judge Ricardo M. Urbina threw out manslaughter and weapons charges against five Blackwater guards because he said prosecutors had violated the men’s rights by building the case based on sworn statements that had been…
