The Greater Middle East Hot War… and Prayer Circles… 14 December 2006
Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, Big Box Blogs, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iraq War, U.S. Senate, WAR!.trackback
Via Information Clearing House, Pepe Escobar for Asia Times:
[O]nce again, it’s the oil. The Bush-Cheney system by all accounts went to Iraq to grab those fabulous reserves. The only way for an overall solution to the Iraqi tragedy would be for the Bush administration to give up the oil – with no preconditions, turning the US into an honest broker. Realpolitik practitioners know this is not going to happen.
Instead, the ISG is explicitly in favor of privatizing Iraq’s oil industry – to the benefit of Anglo-American Big Oil – after the impending passage of a new oil law that was initially scheduled to be passed this month by the Iraqi Parliament.
For Big Oil, the new oil law is the holiest of holies: once the exploitation of Iraq’s fabulous resources is in the bag, “security” is just a minor detail. Enter the ISG’s much-hyped provision of US troops remaining in Iraq until an unclear date to protect not the Iraqi population, but Big Oil’s supreme interests. This is really what ISG co-head James Baker means by “responsible transition”.
According to reports, the draft law, Iraq’s first postwar draft hydrocarbon law, proposes allowing – for the first time – local and international companies to carry out oil exploration in Iraq.
Dow Jones Newswires reports that the draft law stipulates that the Iraqi Oil Ministry “should set up a committee consisting of highly qualified experts to speed up the process of issuing tenders and signing contracts with international oil companies to develop Iraq’s untapped oilfields”. [snip]
The Mother of all proxy wars? … sounds like it…
[W]hen the ISG stressed that “the ability of the United States to influence events within Iraq is diminishing”, it was a sterling understatement at best. The US does not control much in Iraq apart from the Green Zone. The gruesome, daily accumulation of death proves the US Army provides no security and is distrusted by all parties. The troops don’t even know whom they are supposed to be fighting (apart from Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army). At the same time, the Pentagon’s aerial bombings – with scores of “collateral damage” victims – remain as relentless as counter-insurgency run amok.
The Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group implemented by the Pentagon is regarded by Sunnis and quite a few Shi’ites as being the mastermind of some of the car bombings, assassinations, sabotage, kidnappings and attacks on mosques fueling the civil war. The “Salvador option” has developed into the “Iraqification option”. US-trained death squads in Iraq are not much different from the death squads in El Salvador during the 1980s – subordinated to the same “divide and rule” tactics.
This is the “civil war” dirty secret: let the Arabs kill one another with the US posing as “victims”.
Although the House of Saud’s Interior Ministry will deny it, the ISG had to admit that Sunni Arab guerrillas are being financed – to the tune of tens of millions of dollars – by wealthy, private Saudi and, to a lesser extent, Gulf state donors, following instructions of powerful Wahhabi clerics. Thirty-eight of these have just released a statement on Saudi websites calling on Sunnis worldwide to “mobilize” against Iraqi Shi’ites. This has stopped short of being a formal declaration of jihad not only against Shi’ites in Iraq but also Shi’ites in Iran, as well as US troops. The guerrillas’ Russian Strela anti-aircraft missiles in Iraq have been paid for by Saudi money (according to Khudair al-Murshidi, a Ba’athist spokesman based in Damascus, “We have stockpiles of Strelas.”) There’s no US pressure capable of reverting the situation: this is a matter of Arab tribal solidarity – not a state affair. [snip]
The new Greater Middle East hot war is on…
[S]o the conclusion is grim: militia hell will continue – no matter what the US tries in desperation – because the Sunni Arab guerrillas will only disarm when the occupation is over, and when the Shi’ite militias also disarm; and the Shi’ite militias will only disarm when the Sunni Arab guerrilla war is finished. Not likely, on both counts.
No wonder Saudi King Abdullah is concerned, warning that Iraq is a “tinderbox”. The new Greater Middle East hot war is already on. Baghdad is its horrific microcosm – public executions, non-stop ethnic cleansing, the Tigris as the Sunni/Shi’ite border with Shi’ite district Kadhimiya and Sunni district Adhamiya as ghettos under siege on the “wrong” sides of the river.
Maliki is as irrelevant as Bush – who at least has his own militia, the US Army, just one more militia in militia hell or, as Hunter Thompson would put it, “just another freak in a freak kingdom”.
The neo-conservative hallucination of a puppet Iraqi regime as the centerpiece of a US-driven Greater Middle East – loads of cheap oil, Israel-friendly, anti-Iran – may have been derailed by a Mesopotamian sandstorm. But even with the defeat of the occupation, the US – or “the snake”, as Muqtada defines it – still is not going anywhere. The “snake” will redeploy. Sunni Arab US ally/client regimes fear that a US withdrawal would lead to a whole new regional ball game tilting toward pro-Iran or pro-al-Qaeda regimes.Not even a long-drawn civil war – Arabs killing one another – may save Bush and Cheney. And Iraq won’t succumb to “divide and rule” and break up – because its identity as the eastern flank of the Arab nation is a geopolitical fact. So the real tragedy is how much longer millions of Iraqis caught in the crossfire will be paying with their own blood for the United States’ cataclysmic folly.
What will slake our thirst for blood and chaos? Time to call it what it is…
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Honestly I wanted to avoid the Democrats for a while… but this is just too much. Hillary of the Holy Prayer Circle. Or however she views herself…
December 14, 2006
Hillary Clinton: The Faith Angle
[C]linton is part of not one, but two, prayers groups with distinctly conservative bents: an exclusive Senate prayer group that meets on Wednesday mornings, and a women’s prayer group that she’s been a part of since her early White House days. The women’s group is run by Holly Leachman, a layperson at the McLean Bible Church in Virginia, itself magnet for prominent conservatives, including former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, Republican senators John Thune and James Inhofe, as well as several Bush staffers and their families.
Leach’s prayer group includes many prominent Republican wives, among them Susan Baker, wife of Iraq Study Group co-chairman James Baker, who along with Leachman ministered to Hillary Clinton in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. (Leachman, mentioned briefly in Clinton’s memoir, Living History, is the wife of Washington Redskins chaplain Jerry Leachman).
Both prayer groups are affiliated with The Fellowship, a reclusive and often controversial evangelical organization with a decades-long history of ministering to powerful people in government including Clinton, who herself has spoken at The Cedars, a mansion that The Fellowship maintains in Arlington. [snip]
Spare me…
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Ooops!… almost forgot… 
From Beltway Blogroll:
[C]oincidentally or not, the FTC yesterday announced … that companies using the Internet and other methods for paid word-of-mouth marketing must disclose those relationships. The Washington Post reported that the advertising approach can take any form of peer-to-peer communication, such as blog postings or MySpace pages for a movie character.
WOMMA lauded the FTC in a press release, noting that the agency appears to understand “the distinctions between buzz marketing, which is a legitimate marketing tactic and strategy, and stealth marketing, a practice we strongly condemn and oppose.”
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UPDATE, 4:20 pm – cold, grey and rainy in San Francisco…
Who is IOZ on La Noonan, not to be missed on a day the Dow skyrockets… touching the face of god, you might say… ;)
[N]o matter how far the flying nun of conservativism has drifted from the actual centers of political power, she can’t help but write in the cadences of bad political oratory. Neither nor. Either or. “Not fully right, or fully fair.” Like many politicos of her generation, she internalized Kennedy as Cicero, and always went for the easy reverse. She loves windy abstraction. “It would more likely have been about a number of things, and another son, and more than him.” The “things” thuds against the ear. What she wants to write is: “He wasn’t just upset about Jeb’s loss in the gubernatorial race, but about George’s failures and plenty more besides.” Noonan is a writer who feels compelled to unburden her vast store of poetical sentiments on her readers. She murders syntax and thinks of it as scansion. [...]
It’s a mackerel-crowded sea away from drowning. “The force of whatever it is you’re feeling.” “Thinking about what was.” “Touched you in some way.” More “things.” “The order is expressed by the mysterious force of a fragment of a moment.” La Noonan really is sailing to Byzantium, folks, full steam ahead. [snip]
Lordy.
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UPDATE, 10:15 am Friday
Brian Lamb’s letter to Pelosi to let the C-Span cameras into the House. Currently it is fixed position cameras controlled by congress… [thanks to Madman]
She should do it…
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Btw, speaking of congress, been catching panels at Brookings on congress and long range planning. Daschle was on the first one. Tired, broken, propagandistic tropes he threw out… and one of the worst was on medical care: people want too much as they do not pay and the doctors want to supply too much as the insurers pay. He was in congress at the trough too fucking long.
Plus watching him, was he born in a full body tourniquet? That is one stiff (uselessly) man. Seeing him or Gep always reminds me of the Rose Garden with Bush.
Wasn’t only Lieberman doing body shots with BushBaby…
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UPDATE, 11:15 am Friday.
Whoo Hoo. Someone just popped me this via email… what a hoot! But check the drop offs… Addicts v Passers-by v Drop-ins… (what? you thought I’d be nice for Fucking Christmas?)
AND someone emailed that Kos has posted to the FP on the raids. Hmmm No mention of the Harkin links bayprairie has in the thread below. Hmmm… that would screw with electing Dems wouldn’t it? Who does he link to? FDL. Not even an original report… other than that, they are onto Lieberman! Quel Nooz! Here is what comes up at Dkos under the tag “immigration“.
Way way back, those of us interesting in discussion, politics and thrashing it out, moved to diaries (advent October 13, 2003 with the move to scoop) as soon as they were a going operation. The FP has LONG been a boring fucked sell out.
You know, for COLLUDING and AIDING and ABETTING Bush the Dems get shelf space reserved in hell.
Values and all you know. …
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eugene, mcjoan, Exurban Mom, chumley, ek hornbeck, pico
the finest diary that you will see in the next 24 hours.
Heh.
More at TalkLeft
by Big Tent Democrat on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 09:12:16 PM PST”
do we have a grand drag-on here or what?
how many hours to go in the competition?
hey hey Miss Devore!
You survived the mediocre onslaught of blunt arrows and small easy to throw stones over at the ORange Crush Joint.
Lovely to see you..
Thanks for the tip.
oh…reading the Big Drahma Tent diary, pardon me while I laugh really hard.
… and then laugh MORE!
It is a classic. Quick! shrink wrap it!
marisa, you beat me to the punch! i was just about to put up a relevant link also.
love those holiday fruitcakes, don’t you?
They sound so much like our former Sec State who was just on Charlie Rose:
Are we so exceptional that exceptions must be made for us?
According to Mme Albright that is the question we must ask ourselves as we face the future.
barely a word to our massive fuck ups for decades.
No! we are divine. Listening to her was a great back drop to reading the driven snow over at Dkos and Whacks.
And the whacks are slithering and me-owing!
marisacat,
I have stumbled on your page trying to do research into what is clearly payola and click scam on what had been a favorite orange bannered site. (much higher UID) My hypothesis is an extensive use of shills, bogus accounts, mutiple personae, bots etc. What is most disconcerting is the use of scripting on unsuspecting users and extensive personal demographic surveying conducted on the front page with the apparent practice of “backroom” coordination , loyalty tests, inner sanctums, etc.
I have accessed statistical data showing average pages viewed as @ 1.2 per visit, and visits averaging little over a second. Any human proudly liberal political junky will read far longer and in greater depth than this on average. Thus: bots to drive up hits. Please respond if you wish with email to cigarettebreath at *yawho dot com
nice to see at least one democrat doing outreach to the latino community. in Iowa.
Lawmakers say ID fraud can’t be ignored
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., said it is appropriate for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to enforce immigration law and investigate fake IDs used to gain employment at the meatpacking plant.
“The individuals engaged in producing these documents appear to be engaged in wide-scale fraud that puts law-abiding citizens at risk,” Harkin said.
It’s nice that the Big Fucking Fantasy Tent has such a clever clown that can bend over backwards in the misguided attempt to appease white racist anger in his community. Be even nicer if his backflippery had any truth behind the trick.
Of course there isn’t much. not quite your “wide-scale fraud”.
“Identity Theft” a Red Herring in DHS Raids, Numbers Show
Big Fucking Fantasy Tent Partay forever!
god. I was just emailing someone that the Dems will take the raids LYING DOWN.
I don’t note any BBBlahhger coverage of the raids… despte SEIU AFL CIO and UNITE CA$H being all over the netteries.
They hvae been waved off.
Thanks bay.
btw, the sweeps are continuing… XicanoPwr over at BMT.
This is disgusting of the Democrats. Not even two months from election. Silencio or worse AGREEMENT – after so many groups bumped their numbers to vote for the Democrats.
That being the only other game in town.
That is the part really gets to me, the press acting like this is all new while the Dumbocrats thinking they can fool the people into thinking it is all about ID theft.
What is happening is that the right wing nativist are adopting rhetoric of the left to sell their right wing depoliticized message to the gullible public. While the Dumbocrats only focuses on issue-by-issue reforms without ever trying to change the consciousness of the American public.
And those who do are label loons like McKinney or Henry B Gonzalez. They knew the real deal, but the history books will be cruel to them by leaving them out of the text so nobody will ever know what really happened.
The only reason Kos cared about this issue, he knows his and his wife’s brown ass can be on the next bus to nowhere if the neocons feel he is beginning to step out of line.
Xicano Power, I checked under immigration tag at Dkos. That lame entry today is his only. Tho there were 2 or 3 decent diaries… it fell like a rock.. and the 3 posts at FDL are to be blunt, lame. I think the Dixiecrat bothered (2 ae hers) as she was at a DC panel on poverty this week and felt a halo on her head.
LOL Might as well laugh. Or cry…
Well there is a immigration diary at the Orange Crush that’ve been slugging it out at with racist author:
Annex Mexico? Might As Well
Because, as the author explained to me in the comments if we don’t “secure our borders” we’d be better off as a” hybrid rather than a pretense of two different countries”.
Anti-mecegenist merengue, anyone?
Some Big Fucking Fantasy Tent jacksonian $dimocrat$ said
what a soulless racist fuck.
par for the course in the Big Fucking Fantasy Tent though. lots of room for soulless fucks.
not much room for anyone else.
says the fuckin’ Cuban who’s countrymen don’t have to obey any laws b/c they have a distorted open door policy to enter this country, thanks to distorted fears over Marxism and several electoral votes in Southern FL.
Well, here you go… For FL, Wet Foot/Dry Foot
For Mexico, Survived the Desert Meant to Kill Me.
I am sufficiently fine with both. But not one, alone
duke1676 of migra matters posted one on the raids yestersay, that’s the only reason why i knew about it. but yeah, generally the silence has been deafening.