By Ramzy BAROUD

Much has been said and written about media bias and double standards in the West’s response to the Russia-Ukraine war, when compared with other wars and military conflicts across the world, especially in the Middle East and the Global South. Less obvious is how such hypocrisy is a reflection of a much larger phenomenon which governs the West’s relationship to war and conflict zones.

Like every NATO-led war since the inception of the alliance in 1949, these wars resulted in widespread devastation and tragic death tolls.

On March 19, Iraq commemorated the 19th anniversary of the US invasion which killed, according to modest estimates, over a million Iraqis. The consequences of that war were equally devastating as it destabilized the entire Middle East region, leading to various civil and proxy wars. The Arab world is reeling under that horrific experience to this day.

Also, on March 19, the eleventh anniversary of the NATO war on Libya was commemorated and followed, five days later, by the 23rd anniversary of the NATO war on Yugoslavia. Like every NATO-led war since the inception of the alliance in 1949, these wars resulted in widespread devastation and tragic death tolls.

None of these wars, starting with the NATO intervention in the Korean Peninsula in 1950, have stabilized any of the warring regions. Iraq is still as vulnerable to terrorism and outside military interventions and, in many ways, remains an occupied country. Libya is divided among various warring camps, and a return to civil war remains a real possibility.

Yet, enthusiasm for war remains high, as if over seventy years of failed military interventions have not taught us any meaningful lessons. Daily, news headlines tell us that the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, Spain or some other western power have decided to ship a new kind of ‘lethal weapons‘ to Ukraine. Billions of dollars have already been allocated by Western countries to contribute to the war in Ukraine.

In contrast, very little has been done to offer platforms for diplomatic, non-violent solutions. A handful of countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia have offered mediation or insisted on a diplomatic solution to the war, arguing, as China’s foreign ministry reiterated on March 18, that “all sides need to jointly support Russia and Ukraine in having dialogue and negotiation that will produce results and lead to peace.”

Though the violation of the sovereignty of any country is illegal under international law, and is a stark violation of the United Nations Charter, this does not mean that the only solution to violence is counter-violence. This cannot be truer in the case of Russia and Ukraine, as a state of civil war has existed in Eastern Ukraine for eight years, harvesting thousands of lives and depriving whole communities from any sense of peace or security. NATO’s weapons cannot possibly address the root causes of this communal struggle. On the contrary, they can only fuel it further.

If more weapons were the answer, the conflict would have been resolved years ago. According to the BBC, the US has already allocated $2.7bn to Ukraine over the last eight years, long before the current war. This massive arsenal included “anti-tank and anti-armor weapons … US-made sniper (rifles), ammunition and accessories.”

The speed with which additional military aid has poured into Ukraine following the Russian military operations on February 24 is unprecedented in modern history. This raises not only political or legal questions, but moral questions as well – the eagerness to fund war and the lack of enthusiasm to help countries rebuild.

After 21 years of US war and invasion of Afghanistan, resulting in a humanitarian and refugee crisis, Kabul is now largely left on its own. Last September, the UN refugee agency warned that “a major humanitarian crisis is looming in Afghanistan”, yet nothing has been done to address this ‘looming’ crisis, which has greatly worsened since then.

The amassing of NATO weapons in Ukraine, as was the case of Libya, will likely backfire. In Libya, NATO’s weapons fueled the country’s decade long civil war.

Afghani refugees are rarely welcomed in Europe. The same is true for refugees coming from Iraq, Syria, Libya, Mali and other conflicts that directly or indirectly involved NATO. This hypocrisy is accentuated when we consider international initiatives that aim to support war refugees, or rebuild the economies of war-torn nations.

Compare the lack of enthusiasm in supporting war-torn nations with the West’s unparalleled euphoria in providing weapons to Ukraine. Sadly, it will not be long before the millions of Ukrainian refugees who have left their country in recent weeks become a burden on Europe, thus subjected to the same kind of mainstream criticism and far-right attacks.

While it is true that the West’s attitude towards Ukraine is different from its attitude towards victims of western interventions, one has to be careful before supposing that the ‘privileged’ Ukrainains will ultimately be better off than the victims of war throughout the Middle East. As the war drags on, Ukraine will continue to suffer, either the direct impact of the war or the collective trauma that will surely follow. The amassing of NATO weapons in Ukraine, as was the case of Libya, will likely backfire. In Libya, NATO’s weapons fueled the country’s decade long civil war.

Ukraine needs peace and security, not perpetual war that is designed to serve the strategic interests of certain countries or military alliances. Though military invasions must be wholly rejected, whether in Iraq or Ukraine, turning Ukraine into another convenient zone of perpetual geopolitical struggle between NATO and Russia is not the answer.

commondreams.org

March 19 passed without a mention of its ghosts. The day was the 19th anniversary of Iraq War 2.0, the one about Saddam Hussein’s weapons’ of mass destruction. What have we learned over the almost two decades since?

While the actual Gotterdammerung for the new order took place just six months ago in Afghanistan, as the last American troops clambered aboard their transports, abandoning American citizens and a multi-million dollar embassy to the same fate as Saigon, Iraq is so much more the better example. The Afghan War did not begin under false pretenses as much as it began under no pretenses. Americans in 2001 would have supported carpet bombing Santa’s Workshop. Never mind we had been attacked by mostly Saudi operators, the blood letting would start in rural Afghanistan and the goal was some gumbo of revenge, stress relief, hunting down bin Laden in the wrong country, and maybe nation building, it didn’t matter.

But if Afghanistan was a pubescent teenager’s coming to the scene too quickly, Iraq was a seduction. There was no reason to invade it, so one had to be created. The Bush administration tried the generic “Saddam is pure evil” approach, a fixture of every recent American conflict. He gasses his own people (also tried later in Syria with Assad.) Saddam is looking to move on NATO ally Turkey (substitute Poland in 2022.) But none of these stuck with the American public, so a narrative was cut from whole cloth: Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, WMDs, chemical and biological, soon enough nuclear. He was a madman who Had. To. Be. Stopped.

That this was completely untrue mattered not at all. The American MSM took up the story with great energy, first as stenographers for the Bush Administration fed by public statements, and then as amplifiers of the message fed by leaks from senior officials. At the same time, dissenting voices were stifled, including a number of whistleblowers who had been working inside Iraq and knew the weapons claims were a hoax. In an age before social media, the clampdown on other ideas was near total. When their true editor-in-chief George W. Bush stood up, a mix of Ben Bradley and Lou Grant, to proclaim “you were either with us or with the terrorists,” the media stifled dissent in its ranks nearly completely.

It became obvious from the initial days of the invasion there were no WMDs, but that mattered little. The WMDs were only the excuse to start the war. Once underway, the justification changed to regime change, democratization, nation building, and then as America’s own actions spawned an indigenous terrorist movement, fighting the indigenous terrorist movement. When all that devolved into open Sunni-Shia civil was in Iraq, the justification switched to stopping the civil war we had started. It was all a farce, with the media fanning the flames, rewriting its “takes” and creating new heroes (Petraeus) to replace the old heroes they had created who had failed (all the general before Petraeus.) The NYT issued a quiet mea culpa along the way and then like a couple caught having affairs who decided to stay married anyway, vowed never to speak of this again.

That mea culpa is worth a second look in light of Ukraine 2022. The Times wrote its reporting “depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on regime change in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate.” In other words, sources with a goal of their own are not reliable. The Times noted that information from all sources was “insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.” In other words, stenography is not good journalism. A reporter should ask questions, challenge veracity, and especially should do so as new information comes to light. The NYT also said “Articles based on dire claims tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.” The memory hole.

Those are of course Journalism 101-level errors admitted to by arguably the most prestigious newspaper in the world. It would be easier to be more generous to the NYT (and of course they are just a placeholder for all MSM who committed the same sins) if they had not gone on to purposefully repeat many of the same crimes reporting on Libya and Syria, Russiagate, the Covid crisis (“two weeks to flatten the curve”) and now, the war in Ukraine.

The big change is that while in its previous abetting of propaganda the Times, et al, took the side of the US government in supporting war, in Ukraine they are working for the Ukrainian government. Almost all of the video and imagery out of Ukraine comes from the government and those anonymous sources of 2003 have been replaced by no real sourcing at all, simply scary pictures and nameless English-speaking peasants somehow conversant in Zelensky’s own talking points.

Here’s eight seconds of a tank blowing up. Where was it shot? When? Was the explosion caused by a mine, a missile, or something internal to the tank? In most cases the media has no idea of the answers. Even if they tumble on to the basic who-what-where, the exploding tank video is devoid of context. Was that the lead tank hit, blunting the Russian advance toward a village? Or was it a Russian tank that lingered in an open field and got picked off in a lucky shot, strategically without much consequence? It is just a little jolt for the viewer. Such videos were immensely popular among terrorists in Iraq; nearly every one captured had inspirational video on his phone of a US vehicle being blown apart by a roadside IED. Now the same thing is on MSNBC for us.

Remember that stalled Russian convoy? The media stumbled on online photos of a Russian convoy some 40 miles long. Within hours those images became a story — the Russians had run out of gas just miles from Kiev, stalling their offensive. That soon led to think pieces claiming this was evidence of Russian military incompetency, corruption, and proof Ukraine would soon win. It all fit with the narrative of plucky, brave Ukrainians standing up to Putin the madman, the deranged psychopath threatening NATO and indeed democracy itself. If only the U.S. would step in an help! The whole of the American media has laid itself available to funnel the Zelensky message westward — go to war with Russia. We’re shown a photo of a destroyed building, maybe from 2016 maybe from yesterday. It soon becomes a hospital bombing by the Russians. A photo of a stationary vehicle is narrativized as the Ukrainians are capturing Russian gear. The media is once again taking whole information provided by sources with an agenda, drawing the US into this war, and reporting it uncritically and unchallenged.

Any information from the Russian side is instantly misinformation, and the pseudo-media of Twitter and Facebook not only call it fake, they make efforts to block it entirely so Americans cannot even view it long enough to make up their own minds. Pro-war journalists in America demand dissenters be investigated as foreign agents. You can’t see Facebook in Moscow and you can’t see RT in America. That’s not the equivalency a democracy should ascribe to.

As with Iraq, the goal is to present a one-sided, coordinated narrative of a complex event with the goal of dragging America into a new war. Will it work again this time?

wemeantwell.com

An important report published this week reveals in extensive detail the shocking scale of war crimes committed by the United States in the Middle East. Thousands of civilian deaths, including children, are documented as a result of aerial bombardments conducted by the U.S. military.

It is crucial to remark that the published survey – while voluminous involving thousands of pages and documents – represents only a fraction of the full scale of mass murder. The research focuses on Syria and Iraq over a three-year period between late 2014 and early 2018. Considering that U.S. forces have been occupying those two countries alone for over a decade and considering American military operations contemporaneously in other nations, one can safely assume that the full scale of murder perpetrated is orders of magnitude greater.

The report known as the Civilian Casualty Files was commissioned by the New York Times. It took five years to compile and tortuous legal wrangling to obtain secret Pentagon files. The survey also involved the authors visiting hundreds of locations in Syria and Iraq to record witness testimonies. A good summary is provided here.

Separately, it has been previously estimated that the U.S. decade-long war in Iraq from 2003 onwards caused over one million deaths. What this latest report provides is granular detail of the countless incidents of violence from airstrikes and drone assassinations. Times, dates, villages, hamlets, towns, families, mothers, fathers and children are named in the atrocities that were carried out. But as noted, while the reported information is huge, it is still only a tiny fraction of the full extent of mass murder.

What is disturbingly clear too is the cold and barbaric logic of the Pentagon chiefs and senior figures in both the Obama and Trump administrations. Sitting president Joe Biden was vice-president in the Obama administrations (2008-2016). Civilian deaths were deemed acceptable as “collateral damage” in the pursuit of military-political objectives. Whole families were knowingly obliterated in a haphazard and vague effort to kill suspected terrorists or simply to extend the writ of U.S. imperial power.

What’s more, the Pentagon and the U.S. government covered up the extent of their psychopathic operations. Not one member of the American military or White House administration has ever been disciplined – even internally – for the rampant criminality.

A more recent incident outside of the published study period cited above would fall into the typical mold. That was the killing of a family of 10, including children, in Kabul during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan at the end of August. Recall how the Pentagon investigated itself and concluded that no one was to blame for that drone carnage. That case garnered some publicity because the circumstances of a historic U.S. retreat were in the news. Now just imagine how easy it was for the Pentagon to bury other mass murders of civilians that occurred in remote areas of Syria and Iraq.

The published Civilian Casualty Files is substantive evidence for prosecuting U.S. political and military leaders for war crimes. Realistically, this will not happen in the near future, but nevertheless, it is an important archive for future prosecutions and the historical record.

The information is also a devastating exposition of the moral bankruptcy pervading Washington. Thus, a mass-murdering regime in Washington has no authority to lecture, as it arrogantly presumes to do all the time, the rest of the world on human rights and rule of law.

Earlier this month, President Joe Biden convened a so-called “Summit for Democracy” for invited world leaders. Biden pointedly excluded Russia and China from the online videoconference, as well as other nations deemed to be “authoritarian” or “undemocratic” by Washington.

It truly is revolting that Washington has such hubris and shamelessness. U.S. governments have systematically waged illegal wars all around the planet involving the destruction of nations and millions of innocent lives. And yet the president of the U.S. has the audacity to pontificate to the whole world about the presumed virtues of democracy, human rights and upholding international law.

This grotesque duplicity and delusion of American leaders is why the U.S. is on a collision course with Russia and China. Washington relentlessly accuses Moscow and Beijing of alleged violations. The tensions being stoked by the United States over Ukraine and Taiwan are pushing the world to the brink of war.

Just this week, President Biden signed into law a ban on imports from China’s western province of Xinjiang. The U.S. accuses China of “genocide” against the minority Uighur Muslim population. Beijing categorically rejects the claims, pointing out that the Uighur population has actually grown over recent years. Beijing says that it takes security measures against radical Uighurs who have been weaponized as part of the U.S. 20-year war in neighboring Afghanistan. In any case, Washington does not provide credible evidence to substantiate its claims. The notable thing is that such lecturing by the United States towards China serves to aggravate tensions which exacerbate other issues over Taiwan and the Olympic Games that Washington is boycotting.

Washington has zero moral authority. It is a criminal regime as its illegal wars and deliberate mass murder demonstrate beyond any doubt.

It should be observed that the Western media largely remained silent this week over the shocking Civilian Casualty Files. The New York Times deserves some credit for publishing the information conducted by outside authors. However, the monstrous scale of criminality has been met with stunning relative silence. That illustrates how the Western media is actually a propaganda system that cannot compute or comment on information that is incongruous with its day-to-day coverage.

The injustice against imprisoned whistleblower Julian Assange should also be highlighted. The mass-murder programs uncovered by the Civilian Casualty Files vindicate Assange and Wikileaks’ earlier publications exposing U.S. war crimes. It is an abomination that Assange is being persecuted and awaiting extradition to the United States where he could be jailed for the rest of his life on fabricated charges of “hacking and espionage”.

The criminality and duplicity of U.S. governments is something to behold in a perverse sort of way. It is astounding that the world is being driven further towards dangerous tensions and possible confrontation by a regime whose record is so nefarious and hypocritical. How is such a gross deception enabled? That is partly due to the function of a Goebbels-like mass media that pretends to publish news instead of propaganda.

Colin Powell, creator of the viral anti-war meme featuring himself holding a stage prop while lying to the United Nations about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, has died at the age of 84.

Over the years Powell’s meme has been an invaluable asset for opponents of western military interventionism and critics of US propaganda narratives about empire-targeted nations, serving as a single-image debunk of any assertion that it is sensible to trust the claims US officials make about any government that Washington doesn’t like.

In online discourse the Powell meme makes the perfect response to anyone regurgitating an unsubstantiated claim about a government that has been targeted for disobeying the dictates of the US empire.

“We must remove Assad by any means necessary because he’s killing Syrians with poison gas!”

Oh yeah? Boom. Powell meme.

“Russian hackers are attacking our democracy!”

Boom. Powell meme.

“Iranian nuclear weapons program!”

Boom.

“Uyghur genocide!”

Boom.

“Maduro narco terrorism!”

Boom.

It stops the conversation in its tracks, using a single image that doesn’t even contain any words. Now the conversation is about what it should be about: the indisputable fact that US officials lie. They lie brazenly. They lie even if it can lead to the deaths of millions of people. Any narrative about any empire-targeted government that is backed by US officials must be presumed false unless and until it has been backed by mountains of independently verifiable evidence.

Other memes have emerged in recent years to criticize the absurdity of western war propaganda which are not without their own charm, like the “Really makes you feel like you’re part of history” one and all its variants:

Or the one about Republican bombs vs Democrat bombs:

But nothing has ever emerged that rises to the level of efficacy and utility as the simple image showing Colin Powell lying to the entire world about a government the Bush administration wanted to destroy.

Powell’s deceitful performance was after all picked up and parroted as “irrefutable” proof about Saddam Hussein’s WMD operations by the very same mass media institutions which tell us we must ramp up aggressions against other foreign governments on equally insubstantial claims today. It was a pivotal moment in the propaganda war the US-centralized empire was waging upon our minds to convince us that it would be good and smart to do something evil and stupid.

Powell’s other contributions to the world include covering up and participating in war crimes in Vietnam, facilitating atrocities in Central America, and destroying Iraqi civilian infrastructure in the Gulf War. But it’s hard to dispute that his greatest lasting legacy will be his immortal reminder to future generations that there is never, ever a valid reason to trust anything US officials tell us about a government they wish to bring down.

Powell’s contribution to the war effort has been considerable. But as time grinds down the tall spires of artificial insanity that the powerful are continually imposing upon our species, when all is said and done his contribution to the anti-war effort will have been greater.

Be sure to remind everyone of Powell’s sociopathic facilitation of human slaughter often and loudly in the coming hours. Public opinion is the only thing keeping western war criminals from The Hague, after all, and those war criminals are keenly aware of this fact. At times like these, they suddenly become highly invested in making sure that regular people “respect the dead,” not because they respect any human alive or dead, but because they cannot allow the death to become an opportunity to amplify and change public opinion about their egregious murderous crimes.

There is a giant narrative management exercise that will be playing out over the next few days. Be sure to enthusiastically disrupt it with the truth.

caityjohnstone.medium.com

The 21^st century, geopolitically, so far has been shaped by the U.S.- engineered Forever Wars.

Forever Wars: Afghanistan-Iraq, part 2, ranging from 2004 to 2021, is the fourth in a series of e-books recovering the Pepe Escobar archives on Asia Times.

The archives track a period of 20 years – starting with the columns and stories published under The Roving Eye sign in the previous Asia Times Online from 2001 all the way to early 2015.

The first e-book, Shadow Play, tracked the interplay between China, Russia and the U.S. between 2017-2020.

The second, Persian Miniatures, tracked the Islamic Republic of Iran throughout the “axis of evil” era, the Ahmadinejad years, the nuclear deal, and “maximum pressure” imposed by the Trump administration.

Forever Wars is divided in two parts, closely tracking Afghanistan and Iraq.

Forever Wars, part 1 starts one month before 9/11 in the heart of Afghanistan, and goes all the way to 2004.

Part 2, edited by my Asia Times colleague Bradley Martin, starts with the Abu Ghraib scandal and the Taliban adventures in Texas and goes all the way to the “Saigon moment” and the return of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

The unifying idea behind this e-book series is quite a challenge: to recover the excitement of what is written as “the first draft of History”.

You may read the whole two-volume compilation chronologically, as a thriller, following in detail all the plot twists and cliffhangers.

Or you may read it in a self-service way, picking a date or a particular theme.

On part 1, you will find the last interview by commander Massoud in the Panjshir before he was killed two days before 9/11; the expansion of jihad as a “thermonuclear bomb”; life in “liberated” Kabul; life in Iraq in the last year under Saddam Hussein; on the trail of al-Qaeda in the Afghan badlands; who brought us the war on Iraq.

On part 2, you will revive, among other themes:

Abu Ghraib as an American tragedy.

Fallujah as a new Guernica.

Iraq as the new Afghanistan.

The myth of Talibanistan.

The counter-insurgency absurdities in “AfPak”.

How we all remain hostages of 9/11.

The Pipelineistan Great Game.

The failing surges – in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

How was life in Talibanistan in the year 2000.

NATO designing our future already in 2010.

Afghanistan courted as a player in Eurasian connectivity.

And since July 7, the chronicle of the astonishing end of the 20-year-long Forever War in Afghanistan on August 15, 2021.

The majority of the articles, essays and interviews selected for this two-part e-book were written in Afghanistan and in Iraq and/or before and after multiple visits to both countries.

So welcome to a unique geopolitical road trip – depicting in detail the slings and arrows of outrageous (mis)fortune that will continue to shape the young 21^st century.

Ride the snake.

Source: Asia Times

New documents show that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) still owes $137 million dollars to Genel Energy PLC, an Anglo-Turkish company that began exploiting Kurdistan’s oil fields just prior to the commencement of the US occupation of Iraq. The KRG owes the company this amount despite already paying Genel Energy $33.7 million dollars in June this year.

How international oil companies entered Iraqi Kurdistan

The development of hydrocarbons in Iraqi Kurdistan has been of tremendous importance for the political economy of the region. It has also been one of the main factors in allowing the Kurdish region the autonomy it enjoys today.

Exploitation of oil and gas in the region known as the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), however, has not always been this regularized.

A peek into recent history shows that oil exploration in the areas now part of the KRI were limited prior to 2004. Iraq’s assets had been fully nationalized by 1975, and the Baath government of Saddam Hussein was simply not interested in developing the regions primarily inhabited by Kurds.

Moreover, Kurdish opposition to central government activities in their areas were often met with acts of sabotage.

Yet there has been extensive knowledge of the hydrocarbon resources present in the region for well over a century. The Chemchemal gas field was discovered as early as 1921, the Khor Mor gas field in 1953, the Demir Dagh oilfield in 1960, and the Taq Taq oilfield in 1978.

The earliest well to be drilled – called Chia Surkh – has existed since 1901.

Between 1991 and 2004, during the Kurdish struggle for independence, there was little exploration in Taq Taq for local use, but with sanctions imposed on Iraq by the UN, and amidst the uncertain political and security situation, no international company could operate in the region.

Certainly, the Kurds had neither the knowledge nor the resources to do so.

A Turkish company grabs oil rights right before the Iraq invasion

The 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein led to an influx of international companies into Kurdistan. Among these oil and gas operators were the Swiss Group Addax, Norway’s DNOASA, UAE’s Dana Gas and Crescent Petroleum, and Canada’s Western Zagros Resources.

Exploration of Iraqi-Kurdish oil fields started in 2004, and was enlarged under Natural Resources Minister Ashti Hawrami who was appointed in 2006.

With one exception. Several months before the March invasion of Iraq, a little-known company crept into Iraqi Kurdistan to sign a contract with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

The company, Genel Energy, backed by major Turkish investors, quietly signed a production-sharing contract for the Taq Taq field in July 2002, and amended it in January 2004. It was the first oil company to build a new oil well in Iraqi Kurdistan after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

In fact, Genel Energy was founded in 2002 for this precise purpose by the owner of Çukurova Holding, Mehmet Emin Karamehmet, and his business partner Mehmet Sepil. In 2011, Genel Energy merged with Nathaniel Rothschild’s Vallares.

This now Anglo-Turkish company retained the name Genel Energy upon the $2.1 billion dollar merger.

The next year, a secret energy deal was struck between Turkey and the KRG, to distance their activities from the central government in Baghdad, which is constitutionally responsibility for all Iraqi oil. The two conspired to bypass a traditional pipeline and build their own, so they could directly transport around one million barrels per day (at the time, a third of Iraq’s oil output) of Iraqi oil from Genel’s Kurdistan fields into Turkey. While awaiting the new pipeline, Genel Energy reportedly transported 500 trucks each day by land to the Turkish border.

The former British Petroleum (BP) chief executive running Genel Energy was followed in this scheme by major US oil companies Exxon Mobil, Chevron and others, bolstering Kurdish plans to break Baghdad’s control over oil shipments from the Kurdistan region.

A driving force behind these maneuvers was Turkish President Erdogan’s determination to reduce his country’s dependence on Russian and Iranian oil imports and seek cheaper sources. In early 2013, Erdogan made a deal with KRG Prime Minister Nechivan Barzani to increase Turkish stakes in Kurdish oil and negotiate terms for the direct pipeline to Turkey.

It was a blow to Iraq’s sovereignty, as the Turkish-Kurdish agreement would further diminish Baghdad’s oversight of its natural resources and its access to the funds derived from oil sales.

Today, Genel Energy owns rights in at least six production-sharing contracts (PSCs) in Iraqi Kurdistan, and is the largest oil producer in the region. It is the only company that holds more than one production license in the region, making the KRG’s cooperation with the Turkish oil company one of a kind. Genel Energy’s only other activities can be traced to Somaliland, another country that Turkey attempts to control.

The Baghdad–Erbil oil dispute

Disagreements between Baghdad and the KRG over oil production have been one of the most persistent reasons for Iraq’s lack of unity today. And there are three reasons why a lasting resolution of this dispute appears out of reach.

The first is legal, and it concerns the right to export oil under Iraq’s federal system. Iraq’s constitution, ratified in 2005, states that the country’s oil is “owned by all the people of Iraq,” and therefore oil revenues should be shared throughout the nation. The KRG obviously intends to have its cake and eat it too – as well as share much of it with the Turks.

The second is distrust, rooted in the KRG’s desire to control independent revenue streams free from Baghdad’s whims, and the latter’s reluctance to bankroll the Kurdish separatism that reared its ugly head in Erbil’s 2017 referendum.

The third is financial, as ties and dues concerning oil budget are further complicated by KRG obligations to creditors who lent the region billions of dollars against future oil deliveries. These debts actively threaten Iraq’s economy.

By 2014, the KRG had begun to unilaterally export oil via pipeline through Turkey. Soon it added Kirkuk’s fields – after Iraqi forces withdrew from the area during the ISIS onslaught – boosting exports to over 500,000 barrels per day (bpd). The Baghdad–Erbil clash reached its height in 2017 due to the referendum that threatened to sever an “independent” Kurdistan from Iraq.

Immediately after the referendum, in which Erbil attempted not only to politically split with Baghdad, but also unjustly claimed Kirkuk’s oilfields as its own, federal forces and allied militias advanced to reclaim Kirkuk and its oilfields.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) had been emboldened by the stream of income it received through Anglo-Turkish Genel Energy and other major US oil companies active in the region. Neither Turkey nor the US profit from a strong, unified and independent Iraq.

Turkey’s constant violations of Iraqi sovereignty

It is not only KRG’s oil dealings that frustrate the Iraqi government. Turkey’s repeated violations of Iraqi sovereignty have also heightened tensions between Baghdad and Erbil.

Turkey not only shows little regard for Iraqi sovereignty in its relentless cross-border airstrikes and ground offensives against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), but it also undermines Iraqi territorial integrity by establishing dozens of Turkish military bases, some of them a mere 30-40 kilometers from its border. There is little doubt it has the confidence to act this way, in no small part because of the military and political cover extended by the KRG in northern Iraq.

Ankara’s goals are more than military ones, however. Turkey seeks to dominate Erbil’s political course and KRG’s trade sector through institutions such as Çukurova Holding. This group of companies is not only active in the oil sector, but holds the largest stakes in KRG’s chemicals, paper, packaging, steel and textiles sectors.

It only takes a glance at Zakho’s border crossing or a brief stroll through the bazaar in Erbil or Duhok to realize how large, in fact, Turkey’s footprint is in Iraq today. Ankara’s influence in the KRG oil sector is only the tip of this iceberg.

And the Barzani family has always been eager to let the Turks in.

Allegations of a secret deal

It is no secret that the leading family of Iraq’s Kurdistan region, the Barzani family, and their political party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), have had a very close relationship with Turkey for decades.

Starting in 1992, and continuing through to 1998, Turkey helped the KDP gain control over the largest part of the Iraqi-Kurdish region. In return, the KDP has never opposed Turkey’s targeting of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on its territory. The PKK is a popular Kurdish socialist-nationalist political and military movement now primarily based in the Kurdish-majority regions of southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq, and has been a thorn in Turkey’s side for decades.

Relations between Turkey, which has persecuted Kurdish populations both inside and outside its borders, and the KDP are not, however, focused only on a political and security alliance. There are collaborations in every field. For years, there has been word of a secret 50-year deal between Turkey and the KDP, although it remains unclear what precisely this agreement entailed.

The establishment of Genel Energy just prior to the invasion of Iraq, with the purpose of exploring and producing Kurdistan’s untapped oil resources, however, fits right into the history of stealthy deals between the two.

But their interests do not always converge, and it is not unheard of for Turkey and the Barzanis to play hardball against the other.

“One of the allegations made in the region is that $42 billion of the Barzani family money is in banks in Turkey,” says Iraqi-Kurdish politician Polat Bozan. “Barzani has invested $42 billion from Kurdistan’s oil in Turkey’s banks, and this is being used by Turkey against Barzani.”

According to Bozan, Turkey holds the Barzani family in an iron grip through the assets it has placed in Turkey’s hands. “It is certain that Kurdish oil is included in the agreement,” he says.

Genel Energy’s hold on Kurdistan oil

What is certain is that the Anglo-Turkish company, Genel Energy, holds the KRG in an iron grip, despite the latter’s recent attempts to break that hold.

In an August 20 statement, Genel Energy said it had received notice from the KRG Ministry of Natural Resources of its intention to terminate the Bina Bawi and Miran production-sharing contracts (PSCs).

The company said it sees “no ground” for such a move and that it will “take steps to protect its rights.”

The gas fields of Bina Bawi and Miran contain an estimated 14.8 trillion cubic feet of raw gas, which Genel Energy planned to export to a growing market in Turkey, according to Bloomberg.

It is unlikely these contracts will be effectively terminated, as the Kurdistan Regional Government still owes Genel Energy $137 million dollars, despite having repaid the company $33.7 million dollars in June this year. So Kurdistan, and therefore Iraq, will remain under financial duress for the foreseeable future, unless political currents shift significantly, and Baghdad takes the lead in shrugging off its 18-year NATO noose.

Statement concerning receipt of payments for KRI oil sales.

“Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make,” President George W Bush declared during his Congressional address ten days after the September 11th attacks. ‘Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists’. The ensuing war had a grand design. The war was about more than getting Osama bin Laden and al Qaida. America’s goal was to remake the Middle East.

Two years after September 11th it seemed that the United States and allies like the UK, Canada and Australia had the momentum. The Anglosphere had liberated Kabul and Baghdad. The Israelis defeated the Palestinian’s Second Intifada.  President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair marginalized Yasser Arafat in favor of career kleptocrat Makmoud Abbas. The Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board led by Neocon Richard Perle openly talked about seizing Saudi oil fields for the kingdom’s complicity in the September 11th attacks.

But by 2006 President Bush’s grand plan for change in the Middle East was stalled. In Afghanistan the Taliban never really went away. By the end of the year more that 3000 were killed in fighting. Iranian backed Hezbollah battled Israel to a standstill and Hamas took over Gaza after the Israelis pulled out in 2005. After the initial liberation of Iraq, the nation devolved into a three way Civil War and Operation Iraqi Freedom dragged on and on.

The long-term enemy in Iraq was a troika of Saddam holdouts in the Suni Anbar province and Baghdad, Iranian backed Shia militias in the south, and al-Qaida. During five years of war the United States relearned the art of counterinsurgency operations. As such an Iraqi constitution was written and ratified, elections held, and a government formed. The Sunni insurgents formed Anbar Awakening during the summer of 2006, and turned on al-Qaida. In the new year president Bush ‘surged’ five brigades to the Baghdad area to secure the city once and for all. At the same time the rebuilt Iraqi army gradually took the field. In March of 2008 the Shia led government unleashed that army on the Iranian backed Shia militias in Basra and forced them to the negotiating table. The Iraq war was won.

But at what cost? In five years of war the United States lost about 4,500 dead and 40,000 wounded. About 150,000 Iraqis were killed in the war. President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed Saddam had huge stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction. This was not so and that fact undermined the war and faith in both leaders. Bush and Blair are both pariahs in their own political parties.

Over the last 20 years Iran slowly extended its influence in the Middle East. Democratic Iraq now maintains close ties with the Mullahs in Tehran. The Islamic Republic is also intimately involved in Assad’s Baathist Syria. Through Syria and Lebanon Iran arms its proxy, Hezbollah. The terrorist organization boasts a trained army of thousands and a missile arsenal of tens of thousands. It seems an existential war between Israel, Hezbollah and Iran is in the offing.

Insurgent remnants in Iraq retreated and reorganized, eventually becoming ISIS. In 2014 ISIS took over large swaths of Iraq and Syria until being defeated by an alliance of convenience that included Iraqi sectarian groups, the Syrian Arab Army and the United States. Today ISIS remnants are in Afghanistan. The ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011 plunged Syria into bloody civil war. Revolutionaries toppled President Mubarak in Egypt and elected the Muslim Brotherhood to lead, only to see that government overthrown by the military.

For all the talk of quagmires and endless war, the United States and allies did hit upon a way of war that worked. In Afghanistan American Special Forces and CIA paramilitary teams combined with the Northern Alliance of anti-Taliban rebels. Their weapons were SOFLAM man portable lasers that could guide aerial munitions on target, and briefcases of cash to bribe local warlords. The United States used this system again in 2006-2007 when Ethiopia overthrew the Islamist al-Shabab terrorist organization in Somalia. And in 2003 a few brigades of American paratroopers working with the Kurdish Peshmerga militia took northern Iraq from Saddam.

After their failure to destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon the Israelis developed wonder weapons like the tank mounted Trophy anti-missile system. Hamas’s rocket barrages are met in the air by Iron Dome launched interceptors. Israel has developed and deployed Arrow anti-ballistic missile batteries should Iran attack. Mossad agents have smuggled tons of documents out of Iranian nuclear facilities and even assassinated the head of Iran’s nuclear program. Israel has waged a covert war against Iranian infrastructure in Syria, bombing hundreds of targets. The Israeli Defense Force has trained endlessly for urban and mountain combat against Hezbollah. The next war will be to the hilt.

Twenty years after President Bush’s tough talk on terror, America bugged out of Afghanistan and left behind hundreds of Americans, Afghan allies and $85 billion worth of military equipment. The Taliban makes a grand show of parading in American uniforms and vehicles. Many have been shipped to Iran. America’s abandonment of Afghanistan is like Dunkirk, but without the triumphant evacuation.

infobrics.org

The story of Afghans fleeing their country seeking Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) is the story of the war.

In the hubris of conquest 20 years ago, no one could conceive the U.S. would need to evacuate locals who worked with us. Instead, they would form the vanguard of a New Afghanistan. Admitting some sort of escape program was needed was admitting our war was failing, and so progress implementing the SIV program was purposefully very slow. When it became obvious even in Washington that we were losing, an existing State Department perk for local employees was hastily remade into a covert refugee program.

Even then, with no one wanting to really acknowledge the historical scale our failures, the SIV program was never properly staffed to succeed. Instead it was just tarted up to appear to be doing something good while never having any plan in place to do good, like the war itself. Admitting we had a refugee program for countries we had liberated was a tough swallow. Now, at the end, the Afghans who trusted the SIV program — trusted us — will randomly be rushed through the pipeline to make a few happy headlines, or left behind to their fate on the ground. No one now in the government actually cares what happens to them, as long as they go away somehow. At best the SIV program will be used to create a few human interest stories help cover up some of the good we otherwise failed to do.

The current SIV story starts with the end of the Vietnam war, the desperate locals who worked for us at risk as collaborators, clambering aboard the last helicopters off the roof of the Embassy, followed by thousands of boat people. A sloppy coda to an expected unexpected ending. This is what the SIV program was supposed to be about, you know, never again.

During the first few years of the Iraq and Afghan wars (“the Wars”), the official vision in Washington was that the Wars would transform the countries into happy meals of robust prosperity and nascent democracy. Congress, imaging early local hires as our American Gurkhas, loyal brown people serving us, wanted to thank those who provided such service. They created a visa program modeled after the existing Special Immigrant Visa (SIV). The State Department employed the SIV program abroad for many years. Local employees, say a Japanese passport clerk working in Embassy Tokyo, after 15 years of service could be rewarded an SIV to the Homeland. Such a prize would encourage workers to stay around for a full career, and course they wanted to be like us anyway.

Congress had the same vision for the Wars. In 2006 they authorized 50 Special Immigrant Visas annually to Iraqi and Afghans working for the U.S. military. The cap was set at 50 because the visa was intended only for the very best, and besides, the locals would mostly want to live in their newly democratized countries anyway.

What seemed like a good idea in the hazy early days of the Wars turned out to not make any sense given events on the ground. Military leaders saw their local helpers murdered by growing insurgencies Washington pretended did not exist. The limit of 50 a year was a joke as soldiers helped their locals apply by the hundreds. Political winds in Washington went round and round over the issue. An amendment to Section 1059 expanded the total number of visas to 500 per year in Iraq only for two years. But to help keep the pile of applications in some form of check, lower ranking soldiers could not supply the necessary Letter of Recommendation. That still had to be addressed to the Ambassador (Chief of Mission) and signed by a General, Admiral or similar big shot. The military chain of command would be used to slow down applications until we won the Wars.

Despite a brave face, the SIV program quickly devolved into a pseudo-refugee route to save the lives of locals who helped us conquer. Section 1244 of the Defense Authorization Act for FY 2008 upped the number of Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) to 5,000 annually through FY 2012 for Iraqis (but not Afghans, we thought we were still winning there.) The changes reduced the necessary service time to only a year, but added the criteria “must have experienced or are experiencing an ongoing serious threat as a consequence of that employment.”

Importantly, the critical Letter of Recommendation no longer had to come from an inaccessible big shot per se. Officially the Letter still had to be co-signed by brass but in fact could be written by a lower level supervisor, such as the U.S. citizen who directly supervised the local. The Letter needed only to include a brief description of “faithful service” to the U.S. Government, nothing more. As conditions on the ground deteriorated, the standard of proof required to demonstrate the “ongoing serious threat” was reduced to a self-statement by the local. Visas out of the 5,000 allotted not used in one year could be rolled over into the next year. Documents could be submitted by email, ending the almost impossible task of accessing the fortress Embassies.

Though officially absolutely not a refugee program, SIVs were made eligible for the same resettlement assistance programs as regular refugees. SIV. The State Department would even loan them, interest free, the travel cost to the U.S. “Feel good” companies like Amazon and Uber offered special hiring consideration. You can read the full details of how to apply online. It all sounded good. But by the time one war ended, despite over 100,000 Iraqis being generally eligible for SIVs, the State Department only issued around 2,000 principal visas.

Like the Wars themselves, what seemed a good idea on paper was lost in the desert. In reality simple steps devolved into dead-ends, like whether the letter needed to be on DOD letterhead, a minor thing that became a game-ender if the American supervisor had left the service and was living stateside. The ever-prissy State Department also warns “all letters of recommendation should be proofread closely. Letters of recommendation with significant spelling and grammar errors may delay processing.”

But the biggest hurdle was always the security advisory opinion, SAO, a background clearance check showing the applicant was not a bad guy. The problem, exacerbated in the Wars’ countries where names and dates of birth can be flexible, is the loyal translator hired in haste in 2010 and known to Sergeant Snuffy as “Suzy” might also have been trying to save her family in 2020 by passing information to the Taliban, if not the Chinese, Afghanistan was always the Great Game after all. The SAO was a whole-of-government file check and took time; average processing was over three years. (Aside: I had a State Department colleague whose job it was to work these. Because the CIA would not release its most secret files, once a week he had to drive over to Langley and take handwritten notes inside a vault. If his boss had a concern, he had to go back a week later to resolve it. He did not close many cases.)

Despite over 26,000 SIV visas available for Afghans (the Iraqi program sunsetted in 2014) at no point in the two decade war were more than 4,000 principals ever issued in a year (inflated numbers from State include tag-along spouses and children for each principal applicant.) The estimate is some 20,000 active Afghan SIV applications are still somewhere in the pipeline. Congress even created a whole new application category, Priority 2, simply for those who could not quite meet the statutory requirements of the SIV program. As recently as July 30, 2021 Congress authorized 8,000 additional SIVs for Afghans, so supply is not the issue, processing is and always has been. One NGO which helps Afghans in the SIV process bemoans their efforts to speed up things have stumbled across three administrations, seven Congresses, seven Secretaries of Defense, and five Secretaries of State.

None of this is new. State had agreed in 2018 to clear the backlog of SIV applications as part of a class action lawsuit but never did. A 2020 State Department Inspector General report found the SIV program’s understaffing made it unable to meet a congressionally mandated nine-month response time. SIV staffing levels hadn’t changed since 2016, despite a 50 percent increase in applicants. There was only one analyst dedicated to SAO security checks. The program was supposed to be overseen by a senior official but the position was left unfilled for three years. State never built a centralized database to verify applicants’ USG employment and instead relied on multiple computer systems which could not connect to each other, leading to workers manually typing in information. A little late, but in February President Biden issued an executive order demanding another review of delays. Meanwhile, in the first three months of 2021 the State Department issued only 137 SIVs.

There is now pressure on Biden to “do something” about the SIVs in Afghanistan. What happens to the ones left behind is up to the Taliban. For those evacuated, to where and what purpose? Will they still be wading through the bureaucracy years from now, out of sight in refugee camps? Or will the SIV rules be thrown out and everyone rapidly approved to avoid another Biden disaster?

That’s the beast of the Afghan War, SIV version, all too little, too late, all uncertain, all based on thrown together plans, stymied by hubris, failure to admit we screwed up, and a failure to coordinate a whole-of-government approach. So people suffer and people die in chaos in some far away place. Again.

wemeantwell.com

By Fabian SCHEIDLER

The headless flight of NATO troops from Afghanistan and the havoc they leave behind are only the last chapter in a devastating story that began in October 2001. At that time, the US government, supported by allies including the German administration, announced that the terror attacks of September 11 should be answered by a war in Afghanistan. None of the assassins were Afghan. And the Taliban government at the time even offered the US to extradite Osama bin Laden—an offer the US did not even respond to. Virtually no word was said about the country of origin of 15 of the 19 terrorists—Saudi Arabia. On the contrary: members of the Bin Laden family were flown out of the USA in a night-and-fog operation so that they could not be interrogated. After classified parts of the 9/11 commission report were released in 2016, it emerged that high-ranking members of the Saudi embassy in Washington had been in contact with the terrorists before the attacks. Consequences? None. They are our allies.

Thörner predicted that the complicity of the NATO troops in the war crimes and the “counterinsurgency methods from the colonial era” would turn the population more and more against the West and strengthen fundamentalism.

So Afghanistan was attacked. Already during the Cold War, the US and Saudi Arabia had supported Islamists there on a large scale against the Soviet Union. Now the Islamist warlords of the “Northern Alliance” were the new allies. The German Armed Forces flanked the US troops. While their deployment was shrouded in the narrative of a “humanitarian intervention”, the Bundeswehr in fact worked hand in hand with the warlords, as investigative journalist Marc Thörner reported. (He was the only German reporter on site who was not embedded in the military.) Thörner predicted that the complicity of the NATO troops in the war crimes and the “counterinsurgency methods from the colonial era” would turn the population more and more against the West and strengthen fundamentalism. We see the result today: the triumph of the Taliban across the country.

The US troops as well as the Bundeswehr and other allies not only supported war criminals on the ground, they also committed serious crimes themselves. None of the perpetrators was ever convicted in court for this. Take Kunduz, for example: in September 2009 the Bundeswehr bombed a mainly civilian trek here, with over one hundred dead or seriously injured, including children. The proceedings against those primarily responsible, Colonel Georg Klein and Defense Minister Jung (CDU), ended with acquittals. In 2010, WikiLeaks published 76,000 previously classified documents about the war, containing references to hundreds of other war crimes. But instead of investigating these cases and bringing the guilty to justice, the messenger, Julian Assange, was pursued. Today he is sitting, critically ill, in a British high-security prison and has to fear being extradited to the USA, where he is threatened with life imprisonment under inhumane conditions. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, came to the conclusion, after an in-depth investigation of the case, that Assange had been and is systematically tortured by Western authorities. Most of the big media, which got a lot of attention and made money with the leaks of their journalist colleague, have now largely dropped him. And with it the defense of the freedom of the press, which is especially crucial when it comes to questions of war and peace. So Assange is on trial—and not the war criminals.

All those who warned against the Afghanistan war were ridiculed from the start as naive pacifists or even accused of evading humanitarian responsibility and thus playing into the hands of the Islamists. But today it is finally clear: the alleged humanitarian operation only plunged the country further into misery and strengthened the Islamists. As in Iraq, as in Libya, as in Mali. It is time to finally bury the doctrine of the so-called “responsibility to protect”, which was coined at the time of the beginning of the Afghan war, and to brand it as what it was from the beginning: a neocolonial project.

Instead of military interventions, one could, for example, begin to drain the terror sponsor Saudi Arabia financially and stop all arms exports there. It would also be worthwhile to advance the project of a Conference for Security and Cooperation in the Middle East, which—based on the model of the détente policy of the OSCE in Cold War Europe—could be working on a new civil security architecture for the region.

The Afghanistan debacle should also be an occasion to question the enormous expansion of Western military budgets in recent years, which was justified not least of all by deployments abroad. German military spending went up from € 40 billion to € 52 billion from 2015 to 2020, an increase of a whopping 30 percent. The US military budget is at $ 778 billion, about twelve times of what Russia spends for its army. This money is urgently needed for tasks that really move the world forward, especially for countering the climate urgency and for a socio-ecological transition. The US military not only has a gloomy balance sheet in terms of peace policy, but is also THE largest greenhouse gas emitter on Earth. It is time for a slimming cure.

commondreams.org

Will US occupation troops really leave Iraq? That’s the question that Washington is so far unable to answer. The White House says the official date of the long goodbye is this month, August 2021.

Donald Trump announced a pullout of US troops while still in office but his deadline was simply ignored by the new Biden administration which has also been under mounting pressure to end the two-decade US occupation of Mesopotamia. Left wing Democrats wanted a full end to the war the US has waged since 2003. Right-wing Republicans, blissfully unaware of Mideast realities, urged more troops be sent to Iraq.

After losing some 4,431 troops and 8,000 mercenaries (aka ‘contractors’) and 1,145 troops from allied nations dragooned into the Iraq conflict, and 31,994 wounded – many with serious head wounds from roadside bombs – Washington switched gears in Iraq and adopted the old British Imperial system of colonial rule.

The Britain Empire created Iraq in the 1920’s from the wreckage of the dying Ottoman Empire to secure possession of Mesopotamia’s abundant oil. At the time, the mighty Royal Navy was converting from coal to oil. Iraq became Britain’s vast fuel depot.

A new figurehead king from the Hashemite tribes was put into power by London, backed by a local constabulary, British garrison troops and, most effectively, the Royal Air Force.

In the 1920’s, Winston Churchill approved RAF fighters to bomb restive Arab and Kurdish tribes with mustard gas and poisonous Yperite. The British eventually crushed domestic resistance in Iraq while shamelessly denouncing fascist Italy for also using poison gas against Libyan nationalist rebels.

The RAF bombed and staffed rebellious Iraqis right up to the late 1940’s. British air power played a key role in crushing the nationalist uprising in Iraq by Rashid Ali, who was smeared a pro-fascist by Britain’s imperial press.

The US eventually adopted the low-cost British colonial system for ruling Iraq. US warplanes were stationed at up to six former Iraqi airbases, becoming the principal enforcer of the occupation. US troops were thinned out. By 2020, this job was done so skillfully that the US presence in Iraq became almost invisible.

Iraq was occupied by western forces but it looked like an independent nation with a US-installed president and executive branch. Kurdish areas in the north became virtual US-run mini-states. The demented ISIS movement was totally stamped out by US airpower and Iranian militias. As a thank you, the Iranian military supremo in Iraq, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, was ordered murdered by President Trump after being lured to Iraq for supposed peace talks.

Iraq was one of the most advanced states in the Arab world and a US ally – before 1991. Today, it lies in ruins, smashed to pieces by US airpower, civil wars, and sectarian conflict.

President George W. Bush was convinced by militarists, notably Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, after intense pressure from pro-Israel groups in the US and their media accomplices, to invade Iraq. The Washington hawks planned to use US-occupied Iraq as a central base for dominating the entire Mideast and grabbing its oil.

The golden victory in Iraq promised by the neocons turned to ashes, leaving Washington stuck deep in an ungovernable ruined nation that had even to import oil. At one point, the off-the-rails neocons in Washington even claimed Iraq had a fleet of ships in the Atlantic Ocean carrying ‘killer’ drones that were about to attack sleeping America.

Iraq was so battered and demolished after three decades of bombing and wars that it was worth almost nothing. Faced by the threat of more guerilla warfare, the new older, wiser US administration of Joe Biden announced it would pull all remaining US combat troops from Iraq, but leaving 2,500 behind for ‘training’ and embassy security (the heavily fortified US Baghdad Embassy is one of the biggest in the world). Osama bin Laden called the US embassies in Baghdad and Kabul, ‘modern crusader castles.’

‘Training’ is a bad joke. Iraq has been at almost constant war since 1980. Iraqis need loyalty, pride and patriotism to be effective fighters. Who needs training from the armed forces that got whipped in Vietnam and now Afghanistan? Iraq needs a real national government rather than a bunch of corrupt stooges and foreign agents in Baghdad. President Saddam Hussein predicted that the US would face the ‘mother of all battles’ in Iraq. He was right.

ericmargolis.com