Hope is given for the sake of the hopeless
9.22.2013 Leave a comment
Rob Urie has provided us with a concisely written essay which identifies the predicaments generated by the capitalist democracies in the West as well as by the global empire governed by power elites located in Washington, DC and Wall Street. Reading Urie’s essay is worth the effort.
6.23.2011 Leave a comment
CNBC reports:
The New York Fed is refusing to tell investigators how many billions of dollars it shipped to Iraq during the early days of the US invasion there, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction told CNBC Tuesday.
The Fed’s lack of disclosure is making it difficult for the inspector general to follow the paper trail of billions of dollars that went missing in the chaotic rush to finance the Iraq occupation, and to determine how much of that money was stolen.
The New York Fed will not reveal details, the inspector general said, because the money initially came from an account at the Fed that was held on behalf of the people of Iraq and financed by cash from the Oil-for-Food program. Without authorization from the account holder, the Iraqi government itself, the inspector general’s office was told it can’t receive information about the account.
The problem is that critics of the Iraqi government believe highly placed officials there are among the people who may have made off with the money in the first place.
4.19.2011 Leave a comment
It’s just amazing that the Iraq invasion and occupation were about Oil. The Independent now reports that:
Plans to exploit Iraq’s oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world’s largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.
As Patrick Cockburn points out:
The supposed disinterest expressed by international oil companies in the outcome of the invasion of Iraq in the year before it was launched never quite made sense. Iraqis used to ask ironically if the rest of the world would have been quite so interested in the fate of their country if its main export had been cabbages.
Nevertheless, Cockburn believes:
It has never seemed likely that the US and Britain invaded Iraq primarily for its oil. Reasserting US self-confidence as a super-power after 9/11 was surely a greater motive. The UK went along with this in order to remain America’s chief ally. Both President Bush and Tony Blair thought the war would be easy.
But would they have gone to war if Iraq had been producing cabbages? Probably not.
Cockburn is right about the role of oil in the push for war. After all, the United States can invade and decimate nearly any country it wants to destroy. But Iraq and its oil had strategic value for the faltering superpower, and Iraq could serve to announce to the world that the United States could defend its interests when pushed. Fortunately, the Iraqis also had designs on their country! The Iraq invasion and occupation have thus produced a political nightmare for the United States and Great Britain. It can be said that the United States prevailed in Iraq. But it is clear that it weakened America as a whole and as a military power.
All Tied Up and Nowhere to Go by Stephen Zielinski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
All Tied Up and Nowhere to Go 
The Iraq genocide
1.11.2014 2 Comments
Barry Lando, at one time an investigative producer for 60 Minutes, made a succinct yet indirect case for identifying America’s efforts in Iraq as a genocide. About the United States’ post-9.11 war Lando wrote the following: “The military onslaught and the American rule that immediately followed, destroyed not just the people and infrastructure of Iraq, but the very fiber of the nation.”
Why genocide? When one couples the invasion and occupation with American long-term support for Saddam Hussein, with George H.W. Bush‘s inciting a rebellion in Iraq which he later would not support, with America’s attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure during and after the Gulf War, with the murderous sanctions regime of the 1990s, the United States has directly or indirectly killed or displaced millions of Iraqis. It has also provoked the peoples of Iraq to take up arms and use them in the struggle for power and advantage in their country. The United States destroyed a nation. This, indeed, is a genocide.
Filed under Commentary, Recommended Tagged with 2003 invasion of Iraq, Barry Lando, Bill Clinton, Empire, Genocide, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Gulf War, Imperial Aggression, Imperialism, Iraq, Iraq Occupation, Iraqi, Iraqi people, Middle East, Politics, Saddam Hussein, Sanctions Regime, United States