Iraq's desperate exodus | Published: April 22, 2007

And an incredible total of four million people - one out of every seven Iraqis - have been forced to flee their homes. If Iraq continues this descent, the refugee tide could turn into a regional tsunami, with potentially convulsive political consequences.

Yet, as with so much about this war, the Bush administration is refusing to acknowledge the human cost of its horrendous errors and pretending that the problem will be contained within Iraq's borders. It will not.

Half of Iraq's displaced people have already fled. Jordan, a country of six million people, is now sheltering 750,000 Iraqis. Syria, with a population of 19 million, has about 1.2 million Iraqi refugees. Their governments say they are unable to keep coping with such large inflows. Jordan has already moved to limit new arrivals - barring Iraqi men between the ages of 17 and 35.

Others have been less welcoming. Kuwait has completely shut its doors. Saudi Arabia is building a $7 billion border fence to keep Iraqis out.

And then there is the United States. Washington has taken in only some 500 Iraqi refugees since the war began. The Bush administration promises to do much better this year, and officials are floating hypothetical numbers as high as 25,000. That would help. But the bumbling track record of this administration's refugee bureaucracy makes it seem unlikely. And under current policy, some of Iraq's most desperate refugees could be deemed ineligible under provisions of the Patriot and Real ID Acts that treat ransom paid to free relatives from kidnappers as "material support" for terrorism. ...
- posted by Editor @ 10:39 AM

A monstrous war crimeWith more than 650,000 civilians dead in Iraq, our government must take responsibility for its lies | by Richard Horton | The Guardian | March 28, 2007

Our collective failure has been to take our political leaders at their word. This week the BBC reported that the government's own scientists advised ministers that the Johns Hopkins study on Iraq civilian mortality was accurate and reliable, following a freedom of information request by the reporter Owen Bennett-Jones. This paper was published in the Lancet last October. It estimated that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the American and British led invasion in March 2003.

Immediately after publication, the prime minister's official spokesman said that the Lancet's study "was not one we believe to be anywhere near accurate". The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, said that the Lancet figures were "extrapolated" and a "leap". President Bush said: "I don't consider it a credible report".

Scientists at the UK's Department for International Development thought differently. They concluded that the study's methods were "tried and tested". Indeed, the Johns Hopkins approach would likely lead to an "underestimation of mortality". The Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser said the research was "robust", close to "best practice", and "balanced". He recommended "caution in publicly criticising the study".

When these recommendations went to the prime minister's advisers, they were horrified. One person briefing Tony Blair wrote: "Are we really sure that the report is likely to be right? That is certainly what the brief implies?" A Foreign and Commonwealth Office official was forced to conclude that the government "should not be rubbishing the Lancet".

The prime minister's adviser finally gave in. He wrote: "The survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones". ...
- posted by Editor @ 7:56 AM

The rape of Iraq's oil | March 22, 2007 1:30 PM | Printable version

The Baghdad government has caved in to a damaging plan that will enrich western companies.

The recent cabinet agreement in Baghdad on the new draft oil law was hailed as a landmark deal bringing together the warring factions in the allocation of the country's oil wealth. What was concealed was that this is being forced through by relentless pressure from the US and will sow the seeds of intense future conflict, with serious knock-on impacts on the world economy.

The draft law, now before the Iraqi parliament, sets up "production sharing partnerships" to allow the US and British oil majors to extract Iraqi oil for up to 30 years. While Iraq would retain legal ownership of its oil, companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP that invest in the infrastructure and refineries would get a large share of the profits.

No other Middle Eastern oil producer has ever offered such a hugely lucrative concession to the big oil companies, since Opec has always run its oil business through tightly-controlled state companies. Only Iraq in its present dire condition, dependent on US troops for the survival of the government, lacks the bargaining capacity to resist.

This is not a new plan. According to documents obtained from the US State Department by BBC Newsnight under the US Freedom of Information Act, the US oil industry plan drafted early in 2001 for takeover of the Iraqi oilfields (after the removal of Saddam) was pushed aside by a secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, calling for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oilfields.

This secret plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas. However, Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA, who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme. As Ariel Cohen of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation later told Newsnight, an opportunity had been missed to privatise Iraq's oilfields. ...
- posted by Editor @ 12:35 PM