BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 6 – American officials are talking with local Iraqi insurgent leaders to exploit a rift that has opened between homegrown insurgents and radical groups like Al Qaeda, and to draw the local leaders into the political process, according to a Western diplomat, an Iraqi political leader and an Iraqi insurgent leader.

Clashes between Iraqi groups and Al Qaeda have broken out in several cities across the Sunni Triangle, including Taji, Yusefiya, Qaim and Ramadi, and they appear to have intensified in recent months, according to interviews with insurgents and with American and Iraqi officials.

In an interview on Friday, a Western diplomat who supports the talks said that the Americans had opened face-to-face discussions with insurgents in the field, and that they were communicating with senior insurgent leaders through intermediaries.

The diplomat said the goal was to take advantage of rifts in the insurgency, particularly between local groups, whose main goal is to expel American forces, and the more radical groups, like Al Qaeda, which have alienated many Iraqis by the mass killing of Iraqi civilians.
nytimes.com

O what a tangled web…those elusive insurgents are right there to be found when you want to talk to them…you’re promoting death squads among them…the ‘Al Qaeda’ alienation campaign might be your project too…

Iraq war could cost US over $2 trillion, says Nobel prize-winning economist
The real cost to the US of the Iraq war is likely to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion (Ł1.1 trillion), up to 10 times more than previously thought, according to a report written by a Nobel prize-winning economist and a Harvard budget expert.

The study, which expanded on traditional estimates by including such costs as lifetime disability and healthcare for troops injured in the conflict as well as the impact on the American economy, concluded that the US government is continuing to underestimate the cost of the war.

…Any attempt to find out whether the US is, or is not, constructing permanent military bases meets with frustration. The few who have attempted to get a direct answer to this question are met with evasion and purposeful confusion over what is or is not “permanent”. But this is the ultimate test of true Bush administration intentions in Iraq. If we are, in fact, constructing permanent bases, “leaving” simply means a reduction of forces and the permanent stationing of US brigades in Iraq. If this “compromise” solution appeals to you, you might wish to refresh your memory about the disastrous French experience in Indochina or even certain phases of the British occupation of Iraq.

Under circumstances where Congress was performing its constitutional oversight responsibilities, and where the press was less intimidated by power, it would be a straightforward exercise to determine whether a final neoconservative trick is afoot. Congressional committees would have senior civilian and uniformed Pentagon and State department officials answer direct questions about US plans. “Mr or Madame secretary, are we, or are we not, constructing permanent military bases in Iraq and, if so, for what purpose?”
news.yahoo.com/huff post

(AP) BAGHDAD – The largest oil refinery in Iraq is closed again.

An Iraqi official says the refinery located about 155 miles north of Baghdad had to be closed after insurgents ambushed a tanker truck carrying gas from the facility Wednesday.

The official also tells Dow Jones Newswires that pumping to the refinery has stopped because its reserves are full.

The ambush saw four tankers destroyed, another 15 damaged and three Iraqi army vehicles blown up.

The refinery that pumps about 140,000 barrels a day had to be closed last month after insurgents threatened to kill drivers transporting oil and blow up their trucks.

Despite large oil reserves, Iraq frequently suffers from gas shortages because its refining capacity is so low.
uruknet.info

Kurdistan: Meet the New Bosses
The neocons in Washington love to talk about how they’re promoting freedom and democracy in Iraq. They often cite as their example the country’s Kurdish population, staunch allies of Washington, who have been protected by the American military since no-fly zones were imposed after the 1991 Gulf War.

But just how much freedom is there in northern Iraq?

Consider the case of Dr. Kamal Sayid Qadir, a well-known Kurdish writer, lawyer, and university lecturer who holds Austrian citizenship. He was picked up by the Kurdish security service in Arbil on Oct. 26 and sentenced to 30 years behind bars.

Qadir’s arrest is clearly an affront to freedom, and his case has been taken up by key human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and the international writers group PEN, as well as the Iraqi Journalists Guild. Dozens of prominent Kurdish journalists and intellectuals around the world have also signed a petition calling for his immediate release.

Qadir was arrested because he was a fierce critic of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) – the two armed Kurdish factions who have ruled northern Iraq under U.S. auspices.

Earlier this year, for example, he wrote that Kurdish leaders have failed to “transform Iraqi Kurdistan into a model democracy for Iraq, or even the Middle East, because, instead, the Kurdish parties transformed Iraqi Kurdistan into a fortress for oppression, theft of public funds, and serious abuses of human rights like murder, torture, amputation of ears and noses, and rape.”

Mourning Turns to Anger in Iraqi Shi’ite City

REVIVED INSURGENCY OR DESPERATE ACTS?
The insurgency has taken off again after what seemed to be a lull in activity.

U.S. officials have been insisting that there would be a rise in violence after the elections, but the ferocity of the attacks cannot be attributed to that reason alone.

Until yesterday most of the attacks were concentrated against the Iraqi police. But these last two days it seems the targets are more wide spread: a market place, a funeral, a convoy of gas tankers, the walkway between two shrines, as well as an Iraqi police recruiting center.

A visiting Iraqi journalist commented that the situation is going to get worse. He thinks the insurgents now feel empowered because they believe the American troops will start to pull out.

His fear and the fear of many Iraqis is that lawlessness is they something will have to live with for long time.

But today American officials emphasized that these are desperate acts by an insurgency in its dying throes to derail the march to democracy.

President Bush summoned most of the living former secretaries of state and defense to the White House yesterday for what participants described as a cordial but pointed discussion about the future of Iraq.

The bipartisan advice-seeking was virtually unprecedented for this White House, which has drawn criticism even from Republicans for being insular in its deliberations and dismissive of dissenters.

The session in the Roosevelt Room came complete with a photo opportunity and presidential statement after Bush spent an hour with such prominent foreign policy voices as Robert S. McNamara, a Democratic secretary of defense during the Vietnam era 40 years ago, and James A. Baker III, the secretary of state for Bush’s father during the Persian Gulf War of the early 1990s.
washingtonpost.com

The stench of the living dead in that room must have been terrific. Was Kissinger there?

Buried dead, Big Easy Profits

Joyce Green died on the roof of her Lower 9th Ward home as her New Orleans neighborhood flooded during Hurricane Katrina. Helplessly, her son watched her die as the water rushed dangerously below them. Just last week he was able to return to their collapsed house on Tennessee Street for the first time, and found her skeletal remains amidst the ruins. He was able to identify them because they were wrapped in the clothes she was wearing the day she died.

During Katrina, the Lower 9th Ward was deluged due to breaches in the Industrial Canal levee. Additionally, an enormous barge that was illegally left in the canal was launched into the neighborhood, destroying lives and property during its reckless trajectory. Four months later, many questions remain unanswered regarding the destruction in the Lower 9th Ward, including the question of possible criminal negligence. However, before those questions have been fully investigated, let alone answered, the City of New Orleans is rushing to bulldoze much of the neighborhood–without informing homeowners.

On the eve of the holiday season, Greg Meffert, the city’s chief technology officer, revealed that the city would immediately demolish about 2,500 “red-tagged” homes in the Lower 9th Ward. Before Meffert’s announcement, a red-tag merely meant that a home was unsafe to enter. The City of New Orleans website specifically states in bold italicized text that “a red sticker does not indicate whether or not a building will be demolished, only that the structure is currently unsafe to enter.”

Yet the City decided to bulldoze red-tagged homes without informing homeowners of the new meaning of the red tags or the demolition order. This is a clear violation of due process, guaranteed under federal and state constitutions, which protects property owners from the unlawful destruction of their property. It is also a clear, opportunistic attack on the Lower 9th Ward community, whose historically black roots run deep in the neighborhood. Boasting the highest level of black homeownership in the nation, the area is also where many black New Orleanians have traditionally been able to purchase their first homes.
counterpunch.org

by Michel Chossudovsky
The launching of an outright war using nuclear warheads against Iran is now in the final planning stages.

Coalition partners, which include the US, Israel and Turkey are in “an advanced stage of readiness”.

Various military exercises have been conducted, starting in early 2005. In turn, the Iranian Armed Forces have also conducted large scale military maneuvers in the Persian Gulf in December in anticipation of a US sponsored attack.

Since early 2005, there has been intense shuttle diplomacy between Washington, Tel Aviv, Ankara and NATO headquarters in Brussels.

In recent developments, CIA Director Porter Goss on a mission to Ankara, requested Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan “to provide political and logistic support for air strikes against Iranian nuclear and military targets.” Goss reportedly asked ” for special cooperation from Turkish intelligence to help prepare and monitor the operation.” (DDP, 30 December 2005).

In turn, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has given the green light to the Israeli Armed Forces to launch the attacks by the end of March:

All top Israeli officials have pronounced the end of March, 2006, as the deadline for launching a military assault on Iran…. The end of March date also coincides with the IAEA report to the UN on Iran’s nuclear energy program. Israeli policymakers believe that their threats may influence the report, or at least force the kind of ambiguities, which can be exploited by its overseas supporters to promote Security Council sanctions or justify Israeli military action.

(James Petras, Israel’s War Deadline: Iran in the Crosshairs, Global Research, December 2005)

The US sponsored military plan has been endorsed by NATO, although it is unclear, at this stage, as to the nature of NATO’s involvement in the planned aerial attacks.
globalresearch.ca

Interview with Mordechai Vanunu: Israel preparing to use nuclear weapons against Iran
Each and every nuclear bomb is a Holocaust in itself. It can kill, devastate cities, destroy entire peoples.

Bad enough that the U.S. military is occupying Iraq.
Now the IMF is occupying the country.

In December, the International Monetary Fund, in exchange for giving a loan of $685 million to the Iraqi government, insisted that the Iraqis lift subsidies on the price of oil and open the economy to more private investment.

As the IMF said in a press release of December 23, the Iraqi government must be committed to “controlling the wage and pensions bill, reducing subsidies on petroleum products, and expanding the participation of the private sector in the domestic market for petroleum products.”

The impact of the IMF extortion was swift and brutal.

“Since the Dec. 15 parliamentary election, fuel prices have increased five-fold, mostly because the outgoing government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari has cut subsidies as part of a debt-forgiveness deal it signed with the International Monetary Fund,” the Los Angeles Times reported on December 28.

“The move has shocked Iraqis long accustomed to hefty subsidies of gasoline, kerosene, cooking gas, and other fuels.”

Iraqis are getting a nasty taste of the IMF’s medicine. “Over the summer, gas was selling for about five cents a gallon,” the LA Times noted. “Now it’s about 65 cents, and at the end of the price increases, gasoline will cost about the same in Iraq as it does in other countries in the Persian Gulf, about $1 per gallon. The prices of kerosene, diesel, and cooking gas have seen similar or steeper increases.” The price of public transportation has also gone up significantly.

Not surprisingly, these enormous price hikes have led to riots around the country, with police firing on 3,000 protesters in Nassiryeh, according to an account on Daily Kos. www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/20/11119/029,
Iraq’s oil minister quit to protest the government’s capitulation to the IMF. According to Daily Kos, Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum asked, “Is this how we repay the Iraq citizens who risked their lives to participate in the elections, by raising fuel prices in this way?”
progressive.org

Anger as Britain admits it was wrong to blame Iran for deaths in Iraq
MPs and soldiers’ families have demanded an explanation from the Government after a U-turn over claims that Iran was complicit in the killing of British soldiers in southern Iraq.

Britain has dropped the charge of Iranian involvement after senior officials had repeatedly accused the Tehran regime of supplying sophisticated explosive devices to insurgents. Government officials now acknowledge that there is no evidence, or even reliable intelligence, connecting the Iranian government to the infra-red triggered bombs which have killed 10 British soldiers in the past eight months.

whoops

The Iranian Left & the Iraq War
A glance at websites and newspapers of many Iranian “left” groups residing outside the country, gives one little impression that Iran’s neighboring country, Iraq, is in a state of war and occupation by the US Empire. There seems to be little concern among Iran’s traditional left about the United States’ intentions to take over and control Middle East’s oil resources. The neoconservative “Project for the New American Century (PNAC)” signifies little (if anything) to many of Iran’s left groups (1). Some, even, under the pretext of fighting fundamentalist Islamists(2), indirectly cheer the American incursion into Afghanistan and Iraq. In reality, however, Iraq is a mirror reflecting the many flaws and shortcomings of the left in the Middle East.

Some in the Iranian left might be evasive on the issue of their silence about the US imperialism’s crimes in the region, but the Iraqi left’s direct collaboration with the Bush administration is undeniable. As part of the Iraqi Governing Council, the Iraqi Communist Party (with the exception of the breakaway faction) and the Kurdish forces headed by Jalal Talebani and Masoud Barezani, collaborated with the US occupation forces, not just in the arrest, torture, and murder of thousands of Iraqi insurgents, but also in the process of building a neo-liberal state that will sell out the future of Iraqis (Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites alike) to the capitalist institutions, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and such transnational corporations as Halliburton, Bechtel, etc. In their impotent (if not incompetent) quest against Saddam’s regime, they have ended up collaborating with a colonial power to topple a secular government, only to replace it with a fundamentalist, theocratic regime in a landscape leaning towards civil war. Do they really think they will have any following among the people of Iraq when the present puppet government is gone?

The same unfortunate parallels can be drawn with respect to the Iranian left. Instead of questioning their tactics and strategy as a result of which the Mullahs, not the left were able to take power after the fall of the Shah’s dictatorship, at a moment of ultimate debility, the Western-cultured leftists seem to be waiting for the overthrow of Iran’s Islamic Republic regime in the hands of the US imperialism without the slightest concern over (or understanding of) what will pursue in the aftermath.

Before disputing any of the above assertions, these intellectuals would have to explain their disregard, silence, or cheerleading for a number of issues, some of which are listed below:

A former National Security Agency official wants to tell Congress about electronic intelligence programs that he asserts were carried out illegally by the NSA and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Russ Tice, a whistleblower who was dismissed from the NSA last year, stated in letters to the House and Senate intelligence committees that he is prepared to testify about highly classified Special Access Programs, or SAPs, that were improperly carried out by both the NSA and the DIA.
washtimes.com

JOHN PERKINS:I think we’re seeing a real change in consciousness, which is something we called for here last year about this same time. One of the reasons I wrote the book — because people need to be aware — where you live in a democracy, and people need to be aware of what’s going on, and I think increasingly people are becoming aware of that. Yes, Bolivia voted for Evo Morales, who ran on a very strong anti- corporation, anti-U.S. platform; and now Evo Morales becomes one of seven presidents in South America, representing over 80% of the population of South America who have voted – presidents who have gone into office because they opposed American policy.

We see in the New York transit strike, laborers standing up to the corporatocracy, saying, ‘We deserve to have pension funds. We deserve to have health care. We deserve to have benefits.’ And, yes, at the World Trade Organization in Hong Kong, we basically saw the corporatocracy beaten. In the end, they put together, you know, a statement that made it sound like things were all hunky-dory; but, in fact, the developing countries really one in that one. Of course, that started in ‘99 in Seattle and then again in 2003 in Cancun with the World Trade Organizations there. So, I think in the last year we’ve seen a tremendous rise in consciousness among people that we want to move into new directions, becoming more democratic, make our leaders respond in democratic ways.

AMY GOODMAN: When you talk about yourself as an economic hit man, explain very briefly. Though we have spoken before, for people who didn’t hear that conversation, talk about your work as a consultant.

JOHN PERKINS: Well, as an – we economic hit men, basically in the last four decades, have managed to create the world’s first truly global empire; and I talk in detail in the book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, about this and in various countries where we went in to create this first truly global empire. We’ve done it primarily without the military. The military comes in only as a last resort. We’ve done it through economics, and we’ve done it very, very subtly, so it’s been a secret empire, unlike all of history’s previous empires. Most Americans don’t realize that we’ve created this empire. They don’t realize what we’ve done in Latin America.

And the way economic hit men work, we use many different techniques, but probably the most typical is that we’ll identify a company [country] that has resources that corporations covet, like oil. We’ll arrange a huge loan from an organization like the World Bank for that country; but the money won’t go to that country at all. It goes to big U.S. corporations — Bechtel, Haliburton, ones we all hear about all the time — to build infrastructure projects in that country.

These projects, like industrial parks and power plants, benefit the very rich of those countries and do nothing for the poor, except to leave the country in a huge debt, one it can’t possibly repay, which means it can’t give social services, education, health to its poor, and it’s put in a position where it doesn’t repay its debts; so, at some point, we economic hit men go back in and we say: ‘Look, you can’t repay your debts, so give us a pound of flesh. Sell oil to our oil companies real cheap or vote with us at the next U.N. vote, or send troops in support of ours some place in the world.’ And that’s how we’ve created this empire; and we’ve done it without most Americans even realizing that it’s happening.

AMY GOODMAN: And explain who you were working for.

JOHN PERKINS: Well, I was recruited by the National Security Agency, the agency that’s getting so much attention right now because of spying on Americans, while I was still in college at Boston University; and the National Security Agency put me through a series of very extensive tests, including lie detector tests, personality tests. And I was in business school. They determined that I could be a good economic hit man.

They also discovered a lot of weaknesses in my character (I like to think of them as kind of the big — the three big drugs of our culture: money, power, and sex) that they could use as a hook to bring me in. So, I was told from the very beginning by this amazing woman, Claudine, (who’s described in detail in the book) who is basically my trainer that, ‘Look, you’re going into a dirty business. Once you’re in, you can never get out of this business; but we’re going to make it very attractive for you to go into this business.’

AMY GOODMAN: Now, you didn’t join the N.S.A.?

JOHN PERKINS: No, I never worked directly for the N.S.A., I worked for a company called Chas T. Main, big consulting firm out of Boston. And these days almost all of this work is done by private contractors. It’s not done directly by the C.I.A. or the N.S.A. They may recruit us, but we work for private industry.

The same is true of the jackals, Amy. If economic hit men fail, which we don’t usually do (but I did in Panama, for example, and I tell in detail in the book about how that ended up) – but my failure ended up in a jackal going in and assassinating Omar Torrijos, the president of Panama. When economic hit men fail, the jackals go in and either overthrow governments or assassinate leaders; and they, too, do not work directly for the government. These days, they’re private contractors. The days of the government agent, the 007, who’s licensed to kill, are long gone.

AMY GOODMAN: When you say you failed, you mean what?

JOHN PERKINS: Well, I was sent in to Panama to bring Omar Torrijos around, to bring him into our system, and he refused to do that. He said, ‘Look, I know if I play your game’ — he told me directly — ‘If I play your game, I’ll become very rich. But that’s not what interests me. I want to help my poor people.’ And, so he said, ‘You can either get out of Panama or play the game my way.’ Well, we decided to stay and try to bring him around. He never would come around. And I knew all along that if I failed to bring this man around something dire would happen to him. And, you know, this is what’s going on in Latin America right now. Evo Morales is being visited this week by an economic hit man who’s going into his office saying, ‘Congratulations, Mr. President –’
democracynow.org

JOHN PERKINS:I think we’re seeing a real change in consciousness, which is something we called for here last year about this same time. One of the reasons I wrote the book — because people need to be aware — where you live in a democracy, and people need to be aware of what’s going on, and I think increasingly people are becoming aware of that. Yes, Bolivia voted for Evo Morales, who ran on a very strong anti- corporation, anti-U.S. platform; and now Evo Morales becomes one of seven presidents in South America, representing over 80% of the population of South America who have voted – presidents who have gone into office because they opposed American policy.

We see in the New York transit strike, laborers standing up to the corporatocracy, saying, ‘We deserve to have pension funds. We deserve to have health care. We deserve to have benefits.’ And, yes, at the World Trade Organization in Hong Kong, we basically saw the corporatocracy beaten. In the end, they put together, you know, a statement that made it sound like things were all hunky-dory; but, in fact, the developing countries really one in that one. Of course, that started in ‘99 in Seattle and then again in 2003 in Cancun with the World Trade Organizations there. So, I think in the last year we’ve seen a tremendous rise in consciousness among people that we want to move into new directions, becoming more democratic, make our leaders respond in democratic ways.

AMY GOODMAN: When you talk about yourself as an economic hit man, explain very briefly. Though we have spoken before, for people who didn’t hear that conversation, talk about your work as a consultant.

JOHN PERKINS: Well, as an – we economic hit men, basically in the last four decades, have managed to create the world’s first truly global empire; and I talk in detail in the book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, about this and in various countries where we went in to create this first truly global empire. We’ve done it primarily without the military. The military comes in only as a last resort. We’ve done it through economics, and we’ve done it very, very subtly, so it’s been a secret empire, unlike all of history’s previous empires. Most Americans don’t realize that we’ve created this empire. They don’t realize what we’ve done in Latin America.

And the way economic hit men work, we use many different techniques, but probably the most typical is that we’ll identify a company [country] that has resources that corporations covet, like oil. We’ll arrange a huge loan from an organization like the World Bank for that country; but the money won’t go to that country at all. It goes to big U.S. corporations — Bechtel, Haliburton, ones we all hear about all the time — to build infrastructure projects in that country.

These projects, like industrial parks and power plants, benefit the very rich of those countries and do nothing for the poor, except to leave the country in a huge debt, one it can’t possibly repay, which means it can’t give social services, education, health to its poor, and it’s put in a position where it doesn’t repay its debts; so, at some point, we economic hit men go back in and we say: ‘Look, you can’t repay your debts, so give us a pound of flesh. Sell oil to our oil companies real cheap or vote with us at the next U.N. vote, or send troops in support of ours some place in the world.’ And that’s how we’ve created this empire; and we’ve done it without most Americans even realizing that it’s happening.

AMY GOODMAN: And explain who you were working for.

JOHN PERKINS: Well, I was recruited by the National Security Agency, the agency that’s getting so much attention right now because of spying on Americans, while I was still in college at Boston University; and the National Security Agency put me through a series of very extensive tests, including lie detector tests, personality tests. And I was in business school. They determined that I could be a good economic hit man.

They also discovered a lot of weaknesses in my character (I like to think of them as kind of the big — the three big drugs of our culture: money, power, and sex) that they could use as a hook to bring me in. So, I was told from the very beginning by this amazing woman, Claudine, (who’s described in detail in the book) who is basically my trainer that, ‘Look, you’re going into a dirty business. Once you’re in, you can never get out of this business; but we’re going to make it very attractive for you to go into this business.’

AMY GOODMAN: Now, you didn’t join the N.S.A.?

JOHN PERKINS: No, I never worked directly for the N.S.A., I worked for a company called Chas T. Main, big consulting firm out of Boston. And these days almost all of this work is done by private contractors. It’s not done directly by the C.I.A. or the N.S.A. They may recruit us, but we work for private industry.

The same is true of the jackals, Amy. If economic hit men fail, which we don’t usually do (but I did in Panama, for example, and I tell in detail in the book about how that ended up) – but my failure ended up in a jackal going in and assassinating Omar Torrijos, the president of Panama. When economic hit men fail, the jackals go in and either overthrow governments or assassinate leaders; and they, too, do not work directly for the government. These days, they’re private contractors. The days of the government agent, the 007, who’s licensed to kill, are long gone.

AMY GOODMAN: When you say you failed, you mean what?

JOHN PERKINS: Well, I was sent in to Panama to bring Omar Torrijos around, to bring him into our system, and he refused to do that. He said, ‘Look, I know if I play your game’ — he told me directly — ‘If I play your game, I’ll become very rich. But that’s not what interests me. I want to help my poor people.’ And, so he said, ‘You can either get out of Panama or play the game my way.’ Well, we decided to stay and try to bring him around. He never would come around. And I knew all along that if I failed to bring this man around something dire would happen to him. And, you know, this is what’s going on in Latin America right now. Evo Morales is being visited this week by an economic hit man who’s going into his office saying, ‘Congratulations, Mr. President –’
democracynow.org