Just a recap of the most recent progress and positive news concerning Iraq to start the new thread:
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Iraqi Lawmakers Approve U.S. Troop Pact After Concessions, Sunni Bloc Backs Measure To Keep Forces In Country 3 More Years
BAGHDAD, Nov. 27, 2008
(CBS/AP) The Iraqi parliament approved Thursday a security pact with the United States that allows American troops to stay in the country for three more years.
The Iraqi government's Shiite bloc reached an agreement earlier in the day with a group of mostly Sunni lawmakers to secure the measure's passage.
In exchange for their vote, the Sunnis won a major concession from the pact's staunch supporters; a national referendum will be held on the agreement.
Salim Abdullah, the spokesman for the largest Sunni bloc in parliament, earlier confirmed that a deal was reached and that his 44-seat bloc, the Iraqi Accordance Front, would support the security pact in Thursday's vote.
He said the agreement met the demand by his bloc and smaller groups that a referendum on the pact be held by July 30. That means the deal could be approved by Parliament, but torpedoed by a "no" vote in the referendum.
Shiite lawmakers Khalid al-Attiyah, Sami al-Askari and Ali al-Adeeb told the Associate Press that the deal did not include two other key Sunni demands: the repeal of a law designed to weed out former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party, and the dissolution of a special court that tried the dictator and top officials of his regime. Saddam was sentenced to death and executed in 2006.
The security pact meets an Iraqi goal of a clear timetable for the departure of American forces and has been described by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as a path toward full sovereignty for Iraq.
CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reported from Baghdad Thursday that most military analysts say the Iraqis are not quite ready to take over security duties yet, but there is broad recognition that the national forces have made huge strides in the last year.
One small but symbolic piece of evidence of that improvement came Thursday as U.S. troops at Falcon Base, south of Baghdad, enjoyed a Thanksgiving feast - alongside their Iraqi counterparts.
Palmer reports that mistrust between American and Iraqi troops is genuinely starting to melt away as they work more closely together.
With the Status of Forces agreement specifying that, essentially, U.S. troops will be confined to their bases in Iraq as of June 2009, those Iraqi counterparts are now mere months away from taking the lead.
Now that parliament has approved the pact, it must be ratified by the Presidential Council, whose three members each have veto power.
The U.N. mandate governing the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq expires Dec. 31, and the pact will provide legal cover for the troops to remain.
Under the deal, U.S. forces will withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 30 and the entire country by Jan. 1, 2012. Iraq will also have strict oversight over U.S. forces. The U.N. mandate that currently governs American troops gives them freer rein, leading to Iraqi complaints that they are an occupying force intent on preserving U.S. interests in the Middle East.
Earlier, al-Maliki's ruling coalition appeared to be assured of a slim majority in the legislature of about 140 seats. But he sought a bigger win that transcends religious and sectarian divisions and reinforces the legitimacy of the pact. He achieved that wide margin with the Sunni bloc's votes.
The wide margin met the demands of the country's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who had indicated that the deal would be acceptable only if passed by a comfortable majority. The cleric is revered by Iraq's majority Shiites, and he could have sunk the deal if he had publicly spoken against it.
David Frum: Eight facts that burnish Bush's record
Posted: November 29, 2008
by Kelly McParland
Some counterbalance:
1) Even as you read this, Indian commandos are waging a deadly urban battle against Islamic terrorists. Those soldiers have almost certainly trained with U.S. Rangers or Marines — part of an intensifying U.S.-India security partnership that has been one of the most signal foreign policy successes of the Bush years. Otto von Bismark is supposed to have said that the most important geopolitical fact of the 20th century would be that the United States and Great Britain spoke the same language. Bush’s strategic entente with India may well prove the most important geopolitical fact of the 21st.
2) Last week, the Iraqi parliament approved a status-of-forces agreement authorizing the continuing presence of U.S. troops inside Iraq. The Iraq war is ending in political reconciliation within Iraq -- and with hope of an ongoing alliance between Iraq and the United States. Since the 1960s, Iraq has been the most destabilizing state in the Arab world, ruled by a succession of radical anti-western regimes. Bush leaves office with Iraq ready at last to become a more normal country, at peace with itself and its neighbours.
3) Bush’s hopes for a more democratic Middle East have not been realized. But here’s what has been accomplished throughout the region: Libya has ended its nuclear program, paid damages for the Lockerbie bombing and reoriented its regime to the West. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have toughened their banking rules, ending their old double game on terrorist financing. Hamas fundraising operations in North America have been rolled up: Just this past week, a Texas court convicted the officials of the Holy Land Foundation, Hamas’ main U.S. front group, of providing material support to terrorism. The second Palestinian intifada has been crushed, confronting the Palestinian leadership with the hard truth that their aspirations cannot be attained by violence.
4) No new international terrorist attack inside the United States since 9/11. No Islamic terrorist attacks on a European ally since 2005.
5) Plan Colombia worked, and the Colombian insurgency has been weakened if not broken. Mexico has completed its second multiparty presidential election. The United States has resisted Hugo Chavez’s attempts to make himself a Castro-style martyr, putting the Chavez regime on the way to collapse due to its own economic incompetence.
6) Economic conservatives like me may not like it much, but for many millions of senior citizens, George Bush’s most important legacy is a national prescription-drug program that relieves those over 65 of the fear that they cannot afford the medications they need.
7) Bush encouraged the nuclear-power industry. There have been 17 new nuclear licence applications since 2007 — opening the way to the first new reactors since the 1970s. U.S. oil consumption has dropped almost 10% since 2005. In September, 2008, the most recent month for which figures are available, the United States consumed a little under 534 million barrels of oil — the lowest amount used in any month since September, 1996.
8) After 9/11, Bush passionately championed America’s vast majority of law-abiding Muslims — and perhaps due to his leadership, the much-feared wave of hate crimes never occurred. According to surveys by Zogby International, only 6% of U.S. Muslims experienced any form of verbal abuse in the two months immediately following 9/11. In all the United States, there were 84 incidents of anti-Islamic violence or intimidation in 2007. (To put that in context, there were 1,039 incidents that year of anti-gay violence or intimidation.) George Bush was the first president to confer cabinet rank on a Muslim American, when he chose Zalmay Khalilzad as ambassador to the United Nations in 2007.
Does this legacy qualify George Bush for Mount Rushmore? Probably not. But it does promise the 43rd president a gentler treatment from history than he has received from his contemporaries.
David Frum
National Post
Iraq's parliament discusses oil and gas law
2008-11-28
Deputy Abdul Hadi al-Hassani, a member of the Commission on oil and gas in the Iraqi Council of Representatives that the council received the final version of the oil law and began its discussion.
Hassani said he was set up five committees to coordinate between the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq, officials and parliamentarians in Baghdad to find solutions to outstanding issues.
He added that the atmosphere is ripe now to pass the law, especially after the cancellation of some contracts by the Government of the Territory and to approve the export of all Almtschrjp quantities of oil from Iraq's northern fields through pipes connected to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
He said passing the bill would not only regulate the relationship between the Governments of the region and the Center but also to Iraq's relations with the outside world and international companies.
Iraq to ask for canceling Chapter VII, Decree 17 after deal signing – Dabbagh
November 16, 2008
BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq: Iraq will ask the UN Security Council to cancel Chapter VII, which governs the presence of Multi-National Force (MNF) troops in Iraq, and Decree 17 of former U.S. civil administrator Paul Bremer as soon as the security pact is signed, a spokesman for the Iraqi government said on Sunday.
“As far as the protection of Iraq’s funds is concerned, there is a clear item that provides for continued U.S. protection of Iraq’s proceeds from oil exports and having them deposited in a development fund,” Ali al-Dabbagh said in a press conference today.
Iraq is still under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, imposed on it after Iraqi troops invaded neighboring Kuwait in 1991. According to the Chapter, large sums of Iraq’s accounts in world banks were frozen with the aim of paying damages for persons harmed by the invasion of Kuwait.
Bremer’s Decree 17, issued on June 17, 2003, determines the legal framework for the U.S. forces and as well as their foreign missions, staff and contractors.
Earlier on Sunday, Dabbagh said that the Iraqi cabinet approved the status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) with a majority of 27 votes to one.
“The agreement will be referred to the Iraqi parliament today for voting,” Ali al-Dabbagh said in a press conference today.
The Iraqi and U.S. sides have been negotiating a long-term security deal, known as SOFA, during the past months. The pact should determine the legal framework for the U.S. presence in Iraq after the end of this year, when the international mandate granted by the UN Security Council to the U.S. army to intervene in Iraq is due to expire.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, in a meeting on Saturday with Vice Presidents Adel Abdelmahdi and Tareq al-Hashemi, had discussed the security deal and the proposals offered by both sides over it.
Maliki hails SOFA endorsement as "historic"; backs revision of constitution
11/27/2008
(with MIL-IRAQ-PACT) BAGHDAD, Nov 27 (KUNA) -- Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki has hailed Thursday as "historic day" as the parliament voted for the Status Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the United States.
"This is a historic day as we have achieved one of the main targets by endorsing the SOFA which provides for withdrawal of Multi-National Forces and restoration of our sovereignty," Al-Maliki said in an address to the nation.
"I congratulate all Iraqi people on this great national achievement," reaffirming support for the amendment of the Iraqi constitution. "I state my full support to the revision process being conducted by the parliament's five committees," he said.
He was apparently referring to the document on political reform approved by the parliament in synchronization with the vote on SOFA.
"I call for expansion of representation in the committees so that it could include all participants in the political process," the prime minister said.
He voiced understanding of the viewpoints of the MPs who opposed the long-awaited pact, saying they have "national motives no doubt." Al-Maliki appreciated the position of the Virtue Party which opposed the SOFA but stated willingness to work with the government while implementing the pact.
"We have to brace for the SOFA timely and proper implementation in order ensure our full sovereignty."
"The sound implementation of the pact is a prerequisite for helping Iraq get rid of the sanctions imposed under Chapter VII of the UN Charter and retrieve the frozen overseas funds," he added.
Shell’s Iraq gas pact cleared, floating liquefaction eyed
Shell's Iraq gas master plan has received provisional clearance from the Iraqi government, opening up the chance for Shell to invest $3 to $4 billion to gather 500-600 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) of associated natural gas in Iraq currently going to waste.
(www.noozz.com)
Bush praises approval of Iraq-U.S. security pact
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CAMP DAVID, Md. – President Bush on Thursday applauded Iraq's parliamentary vote approving an agreement allowing U.S. troops to remain for three more years, saying it "affirms the growth" of democracy there.
"Two years ago, this day seemed unlikely," Bush said in a statement from his Maryland mountaintop retreat. "But the success of the surge and the courage of the Iraqi people set the conditions for these two agreements to be negotiated and approved by the Iraqi parliament."
Bush, who was spending Thanksgiving Day with his family at Camp David, also praised a separate accord that he said "sets the foundation" for a long-standing relationship between Washington and Baghdad.
The vote in favor of the pact was backed by the ruling coalition's Shiite and Kurdish blocs as well as the largest Sunni Arab bloc, which had demanded concessions for supporting the deal.
"The improved conditions on the ground and the parliamentary approval of these two agreements serve as a testament to the Iraqi, coalition and American men and women, both military and civilian, who paved the way for this day," Bush said.
The president on Thursday telephoned 11 members of U.S. armed forces stationed around the world to wish them a happy Thanksgiving and to say that he admires them.
"I'm very proud of your service to our country. Thanks for stepping up and honoring your country. Thank you for your courage," he said, according to a statement by press secretary Dana Perino.
Bush said he was "proud to be your commander in chief" and he thanked the troops "for being out there and securing our country's future."
Citing a threat to U.S. security from Saddam Hussein, Bush ordered U.S. troops to invade Iraq and topple the Iraqi leader in early 2003. Saddam subsequently was tried there and convicted in connection with the killings of Shiite Muslims. He was executed in December 2006.
More than 4,200 Americans have died in the war, now in its sixth year, although violence and acts of terrorism have ebbed significantly in recent months.
"Today's vote affirms the growth of Iraq's democracy and increasing ability to secure itself," Bush said in Thursday's statement. "We look forward to a swift approval by Iraq's Presidency Council."
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appeared to have won the comfortable majority that he sought in order to give the agreement additional legitimacy.
Under the agreement, U.S. forces will withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 30 and the entire country by Jan. 1, 2012. Iraq will have strict oversight over U.S. forces.
The security pact meets an Iraqi goal of a clear timetable for the departure of American forces and has been described by al-Maliki as a path toward full sovereignty.
The vote had been delayed by one day because of sectarian-based disputes and power struggles among the political factions, which have hampered reconciliation efforts after years of war.
(www.news.yahoo.com)
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Despite the lull in violence in Iraq, Christians continue to leave the country in large numbers. Aid groups report "an influx" of Iraqi Christians who "have been pouring into Lebanon."
The trend started a few months ago when the Christians were being targeted in the north of Iraq by extremist groups. But the violence seems to have stopped after the government sent in thousands of troops to protect the minority community.
It is true that those who left their country are finding a safe haven in Lebanon, where the majority of Arab Christians outside Egypt live, but this is a great loss for Iraq.
Iraq cannot be rebuilt as long as the Christians don't feel safe in their homes. They are not a marginal community. They are a genuine part of the mosaic that has made Iraq a multicultural centre of learning and development in the Arab world for centuries.
The Iraqi government must make the return of the Christians to their country a priority.
(www.iraqupdates.com)
The South Korean Company Will Not Raise Its Oil Investment in Kurdistan Without Baghdad's Approval
30 November 2008
South Korean Energy Company announced on Thursday, that it will not raise its investment in the region of Kurdistan without the approval of the central government that was quoted as saying by the Guardian newspaper.
The newspaper quoted to the Director of the Chemical Sources in South Korea, Yoo Jong-joon, on Thursday, saying that "(Al TAQA) the South Korean energy will not participate in the signed agreement by the Kurdistan region government on 25th, September 2008, and will not enter into any agreement in Iraq without an approval of the central Government of Iraqi federalism."
The newspaper, quoting to sources in the Korean energy company, a member of the group to develop Pazian oil field in the Kurdistan region, it "will not attend to a group of the oil-for-infrastructure that the value of 2.1 billion dollars signed by the Korean oil company (KNOC) with Kurdistan government" , Adding the company (KNOC) is responsible of Korean efforts to find assets abroad, through the completion of a contract worth 2.1 billion dollars to develop 8 oil-production areas in Kurdistan, and in return presented projects of infrastructure development in the region.
The Korean governmental Oil Company is seeking to form a group to explore new areas of oil which expected to contain a quantity of reserves 2 billion barrels.
In November 2007 the issue of a Korean Energy, the largest refining company in South Korea, and the production sharing agreement with the Kurdistan government in the field of Pazian, found a disagreement in the central government in Baghdad, which refused the province of Kurdistan to sign exclusively investment contracts with foreign companies.
(www.iraqupdates.com)
Lowest US casualties for the war in Iraq.. EVER
Mon Dec 1, 2008
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The U.S. military death toll fell to its lowest level since the war began in 2003, data showed.
Just six U.S. service members were killed in hostile action in November, the lowest monthly toll of the war according to statistics from website www.icasualties.org, which collates official data.
Seven U.S. troops were killed in hostile action in October, while 29 were killed in November last year.
Violence has fallen sharply in Iraq over the past year, but insurgents have shown themselves still capable of conducting large-scale attacks.
Iraqi government figures showed 296 civilians died violent deaths in November, up from 238 in October, which had been the lowest tally since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
US deaths in Afghanistan drop dramatically - only ONE in November 2008
Dec 1, 2008
By JASON STRAZIUSO
Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Only one American serviceman died in Afghanistan in November, a dramatic drop from earlier months that the U.S. military attributed to a campaign targeting insurgent leaders, an improvement in Afghan security forces and the onset of winter.
The only American military death recorded last month came when a suicide bomber rammed his car into a military convoy Nov. 13 as it was passing through a crowded market in eastern Afghanistan. The blast killed Sgt. Jonnie L. Stiles, 38, who was serving with the Louisiana Army National Guard.
U.S. spokeswoman Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green said a U.S. military campaign to target insurgent leaders and bomb-making cells as well as Pakistani military operations across the border have helped lower levels of violence.
Also, insurgents in Afghanistan, particularly in mountainous areas, typically scale back their operations during the winter months, and that may have contributed to the declining trend, U.S. military spokesman Col. Jerry O'Hara said.
"That's some of it," he said. "But really we attribute it more toward our improvement in our tactics and techniques and procedures, along with the increased capability of the Afghan security forces."
O'Hara said the number of attacks in the Kabul region was 50 percent lower in January to October this year than during the same 10-month period in 2007. "And again, we attribute that to not only the Afghan security forces, but you have to give credit to the Afghan people for their personal involvement in the form of tips and their reports to Afghan security forces," he said.
Eleven U.S. troops died in Afghanistan in November 2007, meaning the year-on-year drop is also significant.
O'Hara said the military mourns every death and that the number of casualties is not a measure of effectiveness for the military.
Taliban Leader Wearing Burqa Killed
November 29, 2008
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan - Gunbattles and airstrikes by NATO and Afghan troops killed 53 militants in Afghanistan, including a wanted Taliban commander who tried to hide from Soldiers under a woman's burqa, officials said Saturday.
The U.S. forces targeting the commander surrounded a house Friday in Ghazni province and ordered everyone inside to leave, a military statement said.
Six women and 12 children left the building, but while Soldiers were questioning the women they discovered one was actually a man dressed in a burqa, the traditional all-encompassing dress that most Afghan women wear. The man, later identified as the targeted commander Haji Yakub, tried to attack the Soldiers and was killed, the military said.
Yakub allegedly directed roadside bomb and suicide attacks against Afghanistan's government and coalition forces in Ghazni, according to the statement. Three other militants were killed in the operation, it said.
Meanwhile, Afghan and coalition forces killed 33 militants when their patrol came under attack in southern Helmand province Friday, a military statement said. The troops responded to the attack with gunfire and air support, it said.
In Kandahar province, meanwhile, a three-day NATO-Afghan operation in Zhari district killed 12 militants, said police Chief Matiullah Khan. No police were killed in the operation, which finished on Friday, he said.
Police in western Farah province said they killed four insurgents setting up a makeshift base in a village, apparently aiming to launch strikes on Farah city.
Residents of Raj, about two miles (three kilometers) north of Farah city, tipped off officials that a convoy of enemy fighters had arrived in the village, provincial police chief Gen. Abdul Ghafar Watandar said.
Afghan army and police attacked the nine-vehicle convoy, killing four insurgents and wounding another three as other insurgents fled, Watandar said. An Afghan police officer was also killed in the gunbattle, he said.
Afghanistan has seen a spike in violence over the last two years as more international troops pour into the country to battle a growing militant insurgency. Some 65,000 international forces now operate in Afghanistan.
More than 5,800 people have died in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Afghan and Western officials.
(www.military.com)
if anyone is trying to acquire isx stock you will not be able to untill january.here is the email i received. Dear Sir,With the upcoming Eid Holiday and end of the 2008 financial year all new orders will be submitted and executed at the start of January 2009 trading session the new financial year.
David sinned with Bathesheba, and as a result, the prophet told him that the child which they had conceived would die. King David fasted and prayed to God hoping that perhaps the child would live, because God is merciful... until they came and told him that the child had died. I feel like him today, and I must speak out for the lives I feel are at stake, even if the Lord will not be entreated in the end and will judge as He has shown me. Yet - in case He will be merciful, I will speak, even if men consider me foolish for doing so and do not understand. These lives, like the precious life of David and Bathsheba's firstborn son.. are precious enough to try. Maybe, God will be merciful..
Sara.
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My View - How and Why Concerning the Worst Case Scenerio Against the United States.
Why I see it as coming, if not inevitable..
Judgement does not happen in a vaccum. It happens according to the righteous Judgement of the Highest of all courts - the Court of God. Accordingly, there has to be an "opening" for evil to come upon those who receive of His Judgement, usually by the violations of the laws of God as well as the laws of man. We can look at the mass graveyards of Saddam or listen to the reports of sadism, rape and torture perpetrated under his regime - by Saddam and those in authority there - to see some of the reasons God moved as He did to remove Saddam from power and also to require of him his soul. Additionally, we know from the book of Job that the enemy of men's souls was unable to bring about evil upon Job or his household without the express permission of God. There must either be permission (for a higher purpose) or an opening for Judgement to come upon any individual or nation.
In the case of the vision I was given where I saw multiple coordinated nuclear attacks upon US soil, I have long puzzled how come the US was allowed to be attacked. I can see a scenerio unfolding now which answers this question - another piece of the puzzle falling into place as we draw closer to the actual timeframe which I witnessed in real time before I was brought back in time to this current of time.
Let me explain my view. The US Constitution was framed as the Supreme Law of the United States of America. That is why ALL the authorities in government swear allegiance to it. In that document, it allows for the execution of any person who is a traitor to the Constitution, including those who hold seats of authority in the government who have sworn (before God) to defend and uphold the Constitution. It is this provision which I believe will allow (spiritually) the opening for terrorist attack on US soil. The thing is whether GOD judges the matter as a violation of the laws the authorities have sworn to Him to uphold and which warrants His intervention/judgement. I believe this qualifies for that degree of Judgement. Here is how..
The entire time President Bush has been in office (since 911 when the threat was revealed), the US has been safe from terrorist attack. This was more than just good strategy militarily (though that was given to him, too). It was because he is a law-abiding man and took seriously his vows to uphold the Constitution and protect the United States. He will never be impeached... there is no basis to do so in law and God will not allow it, because he did abide by the Constitution and his vows before God. It is a blessing and affords a degree of Divine protection when the President lives by his vows and upholds the Constitution of the United States as the Supreme Law of the Land - this may be about to change.
The Constitutional challenge concerning Barack Hussein Obama is a fundamental one. It deals with either following the Supreme Law of the Land (the Constitution) or violating it in the provision that a foreign usurper not be allowed to sit as the President of the United States. If this provision of the Supreme Law of the Land is abridged, the penalty given in that document is death to the traitors.. but who would be held guilty of violating its provisions, and who could actually carry out that sentence?
I argue that the Supreme Court of the United States would be held accountable for breaking their sacred oath of office, and found wanting by God (Daniel 5: 25 - "Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin") for allowing the violation of this provision of the Constitution against their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution. I argue that the electoral college (consisting of those from both houses of Congress) would also be held guilty of violating the Constitutional provisions (by God) if they vote for a person who is not qualified according to the document they have sworn to defend and uphold - the Constitution. And lastly, the person perpetrating the fraud upon the Office of the President, Barack Hussein Obama, would also be held guilty in the highest court of all and the protections afforded the land under these governmental officers would be removed (spiritually).
I see this as the likely reason why, when I saw the vision, there were allowed multiple nuclear attacks upon Washington - where each of these seats of governmental authority reside. The bombs are intended to take out each of these violators of the law, and is allowed to do so by the pronouncement of sentence against them for violating the Constitution they have sworn to uphold, both in fact and in its spirit. (What happened to the government given the decree of Daniel 5: 25 - "Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin" - which roughly translated means that the government was weighed in the balances (by God) and found wanting?? It was destroyed.) By approving to the Whitehouse a man who is not qualified according to Constitutional law and by taking the office by fraud, each of these governmental bodies are giving the ground necessary for the enemy of their souls to take their very lives in a firey and coordinated nuclear holocaust and to bring great catastrophe upon the nation.
Once the ground is given (and they are found worthy of death by their own violation of their sacred oaths before God, sworn on the Bible itself) the terrorists will be given the ability to work toward what I saw happen in the vision. Perhaps BHO's appointments will have such sympathy for the terrorists that they will unwittingly (or deliberately) allow the facilitating of the terrorist goals. Certainly, Obama's unwillingness to confront a nuclear-arming Iran militarily (let's sit down and do unconditional talks and diplomacy instead, he has said) is enough ground given to allow this holocaust to happen eventually - as it allows the Iranians to develop nuclear weapons and arm their US based cels - something which would never have happened under a McCain Administration. However it happens, once the ground is given, the terrorists can then move into position to bring about what I saw happen. Ahmadinejad has claimed on numerous occasions that we will one day soon see a world without the United States of America in it. That is his stated view and goal. Although such terrorism as happened recently in India shows that terrorists plan and work in coordination for multiple attacks, a mere bombing of a few luxury hotels would not achieve the stated goal of Iran of obliterating the United States of America. The multi-nuclear attack I saw.. would.
The plans the terrorists have are not to hit one tiny bit of America and awaken the giant to their presence, as was rumored through the Thanksgiving holiday. They saw what happened post 9-11 and they don't want a repeat of the galvanizing of US opinion against them for such a minor gain. Their goal is a total crippling and destruction of the government of the United States of America. With the proper spiritual openings poised now to happen.. it is achievable. Once the ground is given spiritually, they will find the way to arm their cels with nukes (the article posted before says within two years they will have sixty of them - about how many I saw being detonated in coordination in the vision of the US I was given - and we now have confirmation they now have the ability to make one nuke with the current materials they have, see reposts of this information below).
What the terrorists term "blessing" from their god is nothing more than an opening given to Satan. That opening is given in the violation of the vows of office which are about to occur. This is the worst case scenerio.. and can happen if the Supreme Court will not take its duty seriously and the houses of Congress (electors) act to vote without doing their duty. One wishes, however, that they would take this very, very seriously now.. and not allow the opening to happen which will take down the governmental bodies currently sitting. But perhaps the degree of corruption there necessitates their removal for a new nation to be birthed upon the rubble which will be left in the aftermath. What is left will be galvanized into a united whole...
I only pray that China is not coordinating with the terrorists to invade once the US is crippled - perhaps by offering "assistance" by bringing in its troops onto US soil to give humanitarian "help." For America to survive, it would take military brilliance and coordination, and I only hope such persons are being held in reserve and have run this scenerio from fortified bunkers underground which will not be affected by a nuclear attack, as this scenerio appears to me to be very likely the one which may come to pass within the next Presidential term in the case of a dismissal of the lawsuit or ignoring (on technical grounds) its grave Constitutional import.
I hope what I saw is not the INEVITABLE future.. and can be averted by a strict adherence to the Constitutional duties incumbent upon those who hold these seats of authority. But if they will not do the duty they have sworn to uphold before God and man, no matter the cost to them politically - I believe that God will weigh them in the balances and find them wanting... and 60 million unfortunate Americans will die with them. (As for saying why should those 60 million also suffer - remember what happened to Job's children who were under his authority - they didn't have much say in their own deaths, either. It was a question of who was in the seat of authority over them - not their own lives.)
It is said, "With great power.. comes great responsibility."
Iran said to have enough nuclear fuel for one weapon
By William J. Broad and David E. Sanger
Nov 20, 2008
Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb, according to nuclear experts analyzing the latest report from global atomic inspectors.
The figures detailing Iran's progress were contained in a routine update on Wednesday from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been conducting inspections of the country's main nuclear plant at Natanz. The report concluded that as of early this month, Iran had made 630 kilograms, or about 1,390 pounds, of low-enriched uranium.
"They clearly have enough material for a bomb," said Richard Garwin, a top nuclear physicist who helped invent the hydrogen bomb and has advised Washington for decades. "They know how to do the enrichment. Whether they know how to design a bomb, well, that's another matter."
American intelligence agencies have said Iran could make a bomb between 2009 and 2015. Siegfried Hecker of Stanford University and a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory said the growing size of the Iranian stockpile "underscored that they are marching down the path to developing the nuclear weapons option."
In the report to its board, the atomic agency said Iran's main enrichment plant was now feeding uranium into about 3,800 centrifuges — machines that spin incredibly fast to enrich the element into nuclear fuel. That count is the same as in the agency's last quarterly report, in September. Iran began installing the centrifuges in early 2007. But the new report's total of 630 kilograms — an increase of about 150 — shows that Iran has been making progress in accumulating material to make nuclear fuel.
That uranium has been enriched to the low levels needed to fuel a nuclear reactor. To further purify it to the highly enriched state needed to fuel a nuclear warhead, Iran would have to reconfigure its centrifuges and do a couple months of additional processing, nuclear experts said.
"They have a weapon's worth," Thomas Cochran, a senior scientist in the nuclear program of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group in Washington that tracks atomic arsenals, said in an interview.
He said the amount was suitable for a relatively advanced implosion-type weapon like the one dropped on Nagasaki. Its core, he added, would be about the size of a grapefruit. He said a cruder design would require about twice as much weapon-grade fuel.
In its report, the IAEA, which is based in Vienna, said Iran was working hard to roughly double its number of operating centrifuges.
A senior European diplomat close to the agency said Iran might have 6,000 centrifuges enriching uranium by the end of the year. The report also said Iran had said it intended to start installing another group of 3,000 centrifuges early next year.
The atomic energy agency said Iran was continuing to evade questions about its suspected work on nuclear warheads. In a separate report released Wednesday, the agency said, as expected, that it had found ambiguous traces of uranium at a suspected Syrian reactor site bombed by Israel last year.
"While it cannot be excluded that the building in question was intended for non-nuclear use," the report said, the building's features "along with the connectivity of the site to adequate pumping capacity of cooling water, are similar to what may be found in connection with a reactor site."
(CNN) -- Iran has 5,000 "running centrifuges" in its main nuclear site at Natanz, according to Iranian news reports quoting a top official.
The United States and other Western nations have been pressing Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, believing Tehran wants to develop nuclear weapons. Iran insists it wants to use the technology to produce electricity.
Reza Aqazadeh, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran made the remarks while speaking to reporters on the sidelines of his tour of the Exclusive Exhibition on Nuclear Industry Achievements in Tehran.
"Suspension of nuclear enrichment is meaningless and it is not found in our vocabulary," Aqazadeh told reporters, according to Iranian news agencies.
Spinning centrifuges are used to separate atoms in uranium ore to produce uranium concentrated enough for use in a nuclear power plant or a nuclear weapon's fission chain reaction.
In April, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised to install 6,000 more centrifuges over the coming year. In August, Iran's deputy foreign minister said the nation had about 4,000.
David Albright -- president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington group dedicated to informing the public about science policy issues -- said the figure is credible and that "Iran is marching onward in developing its nuclear weapons capability."
Iran: Tehran could make 60 nuclear bombs in two years, says US expert
Milan, 10 Oct. (AKI) - Iran may have the capacity to produce up to 60 nuclear bombs within two years, a leading US non -proliferation expert has told Adnkronos International.
Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Washington-based Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC), was taking part in a summit , "Preventing nuclear proliferation in the Middle East", organised by Italy's Institute for the Study of Foreign Policy (ISPI) and the Italian Foreign Ministry in Milan.
In an interview with AKI, Sokolski raised the alarm about Iran's intentions, claiming that it would have sufficient plutonium after the opening of the Bushehr plant to construct from 30 to 60 bombs.
The nuclear facility at Bushehr is being built under an agreement between the Russian and Iranian governments for 800 million dollars and is expected to begin production in early 2009.
Sokolski said Iran was putting in place the necessary technology and knowledge to recover the new plant's waste using a chemical process that does not need complex installation or specific structures.
"Plutonium that could be used to make atomic bombs," he told AKI. "The fuel for Bushehr will be supplied by the Russians who also said they would dispose of the waste products from it."
But he said few people know that this waste will remain in Iran for two years before being taken away.
"In this time frame the Iranians, with an excuse to analyse the waste, can transfer it to a chemical factory and extract the plutonium," he said.
He said in the first 18 months the plant would use between 22 to 25 tonnes of fuel, from which 300 kilogrammes of plutonium could be recovered from the waste to make from 30 to 60 bombs.
Henry Sokolski heads the nonprofit organisation founded in 1994 to promote a better understanding of strategic weapons proliferation issues among policy-makers, scholars and the media.
He also serves as an adjunct professor at the Institute of World Politics in Washington and is a member of the Congressional Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, to which he was appointed in May 2008.
Wanted: Suicide bombers to attack U.S. Iranian group recruits young 'martyrs' to fight 'global arrogance'
Posted: November 05, 2008
By Chelsea Schilling
A terrorist group is distributing flyers in Iran calling for young volunteers to join the Lebanese Hezbollah to carry out suicide operations against the "Global Arrogance" – also known as the United States.
The leaflets promise young recruits that they will join "fighters in the worldwide front against the Global Arrogance," the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI, reported. The term is used by some Iranian officials in reference to the U.S.
On Nov. 1, Tabnak, an Iranian news website identified with Expediency Discernment Council Secretary and former Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Mohsen Rezai, announced a group has been actively recruiting members in Tehran...
In July 2005, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad openly endorsed suicide missions, asking, "Is there an art more beautiful, more divine, and more eternal than the art of martyrdom?"
The latest suicide recruitment campaign comes just before Iran's annual celebration of its "National Day Against Global Arrogance" on Nov. 4. Among other events, it marks the 29th anniversary of the day militant Islamists stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took more than 90 people hostage for 444 days, most of whom were American. Every year, many Iranians celebrate near the site they have decorated with anti-American slogans and dubbed the "Den of Spies."
Simultaneous to actual coordinated nuclear attacks.. a crippling blow?
===
Wake up to Iran's Dark Dream to Disable U.S.
James Carafano, PhD, Clifford D. May
October 22, 2008
Which world leader is on record musing about "a world without America" — a goal he calls "attainable"? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Until recently, it was possible to believe that whatever Ahmadinejad's intentions, Iran was a long way from acquiring the capabilities it needs to achieve its goals. But a blue-ribbon commission has reported to Congress on what appears to be an Iranian drive to obtain the means to carry out an EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) attack.
An EMP attack is produced by launching a ballistic missile with a nuclear weapon attached — and detonating it high above the Earth. This produces a massive pulse of ionized particles that could damage or even wipe out many electrical and information systems. Such an attack would disrupt telecommunications, banking and finance, fuel and energy, food and water supplies, emergency and government services and much more, threatening millions of lives.
We've seen a blacked-out Southeast Texas in the wake of Hurricane Ike. We've seen New Orleans after Katrina. Now imagine that scenario over most of the continental United States. There would be a "world without America" — at least as we know it.
No one disputes that Iran is developing a robust long-range missile force. Few question that Ahmadinejad's regime is working on nuclear weapons development. Less well known is that Iran has conducted missile tests from sea-based platforms, detonating warheads at the high-point of the missile trajectory, rather than the aim point over the target. These facts have now been documented in official government reports.
Connect the dots, and you find the picture of a workable research program for developing a covert means to deliver an EMP attack against the United States.
A short-range ballistic missile could be carried on one of the thousands of commercial freighters sailing under "flags of convenience" that sail around U.S. waters every day. Without ever piquing the interest of the Navy, the Coast Guard, or the Customs and Border Protection, that ship could sail within range and deliver its payload over American territory. Even a modest warhead placed at the right spot over the East Coast could take down 75 percent of the electrical grid.
The genius of such a covert attack is that it doesn't come with an obvious "return address." The ship might be registered in Liberia. The crew might be Lebanese. The ship might disappear into the night — or be scuttled quietly.
Another advantage for a would-be attacker is the bang that can be achieved for the buck. An EMP attack would allow an enemy to wreak an enormous amount of destruction for a modest investment. It would mean no electricity, no food on the shelves, no phone, no fuel deliveries. Life would look more like the barter system of the 19th century, not to mention the millions that would die from traffic accidents, fires, failed hospital equipment, disease and the other chaos that would result from such an attack.
A lot can be done to deal with this terrible threat. For starters, we need to build comprehensive missile defenses that can shoot missiles down fired anywhere shortly after they lift off. We also need to develop national plans to mitigate vulnerabilities to an EMP attack and recover quickly from a strike if one does occur. (Remember Obama's pledge to CUT BACK on military spending? AND Nukes? - Sara.)
America, however, also needs to dust-off its nuclear deterrent. Of all the nations that could pull off an EMP attack or hand that capacity to a transnational terrorist group, Iran is the only country that has directly threatened to destroy the United States. While much America's infrastructure is vulnerable to EMP, the nuclear strike force is not. We need to inform Iran that if an EMP attack were unleashed on America, Iran could well be held responsible and suffer massive nuclear retaliation. (Like that will happen under an Obama Presidency - NOT! - Sara.)
Perhaps deterrence won't work. Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis argues that to a devout believer in Ayatollah Khomeini's apocalyptic ideology, mutually assured destruction may be "more an inducement than a deterrent." Still, it's worth making it clear that a steep price will be paid for such an attack. (Would there be any price to pay under a weak Obama Presidency? Maybe another round of stiff "diplomatic talks"?? Sara.)
In the end, President Reagan was right: Massive retaliation is not a morally supportable option when there are real alternatives. Comprehensive missile defenses, vigorous counter-proliferation programs, and making U.S. infrastructure more resilient are really the best ways to protect and defend the nation. The next president needs to make these a priority.
Indeed, demonstrating that America takes the threat seriously is perhaps the best message we could send to Ahmadinejad and those he represents.
Panel foresees unconventional terror threat
By Eric Schmitt Published: December 1, 2008
WASHINGTON: An independent commission has concluded that terrorists will most likely carry out an attack with biological, nuclear or other unconventional weapons somewhere in the world in the next five years unless the United States and its allies act urgently to prevent that.
In a report to be released this week, the congressionally mandated panel found that with countries like Iran and North Korea pursuing nuclear weapons programs, and with the risk of poorly secured biological pathogens growing, unconventional threats are fast outpacing the defenses arrayed to confront them.
"America's margin of safety is shrinking, not growing," the bipartisan panel concluded.
Prepared before the deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai last week - which U.S. officials say were most likely carried out by Pakistani militant groups based in Kashmir - the report also singled out Pakistan as a top security priority for the coming Obama administration.
"Were one to map terrorism and weapons of mass destruction today, all roads would intersect in Pakistan," the report states, citing the country's terrorist haven along the border with Afghanistan and its tense relations with its nuclear rival, India.
"Pakistan is an ally, but there is a grave danger it could also be an unwitting source of a terrorist attack on the United States - possibly with weapons of mass destruction," the report said.
The report is the result of a six-month study by the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, which Congress created last spring in keeping with one of the recommendations of the Sept. 11 Commission.
The nine-member panel received classified briefings, conducted several site visits, including meetings in Russia, and interviewed more than 250 government and independent experts in several countries.
The New York Times obtained a copy of the report's 18-page executive summary. Details from draft chapters of the report on the threat of bioterrorism were published Sunday by The Washington Post.
The panel's 13 recommendations focus on fighting the threat of bioterrorism, including improved bioforensic capabilities, and strengthening international organizations, like the International Atomic Energy Agency, to address the nuclear threat. It also calls for a comprehensive approach for dealing with Pakistan.
Over all, the findings and recommendations seek to serve as a road map for the Obama administration.
"Unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013," the report states in the opening sentence of the executive summary.
The commission urges the Obama administration to work to halt the Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons programs, backing up any diplomatic initiatives with "the credible threat of direct action" - code for military action, a commission official said.
Two weeks ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran had produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb.
The commission also criticized the administration and Congress for not organizing themselves more effectively to combat the threat of unconventional weapons. The report recommended a single White House-level office or individual responsible for directing the nation's policy to prevent the spread of unconventional weapons and their possible use by terrorists.
Like the Sept. 11 Commission, this panel called for overhauling the jurisdiction of the congressional committee that reviews the proliferation of unconventional weapons. "Congressional oversight is dysfunctional," the report concluded.
"Pakistan is an ally, but there is a grave danger it could also be an unwitting source of a terrorist attack on the United States - possibly with weapons of mass destruction," the report said.
While what I was shown is obviously a terrorist attack.. Iran is the one giving the vision of the destruction (of Israel and the US) and it is Iran which is working toward the obtaining of nuclear weapons for their vision (they have one and can have up to SIXTY in two years, see articles above). However, Iran can work with their other terrorist allies to bring it about. Who knows who is the actual perpetrator.. there are many varieties of terrorists.. all who sympathize with this Iranian articulated vision. And not too many seem ready to sit down and talk unconditionally and solve their gripes with the newly formed office of the President-elect. I wonder if his followers still think the terrorists will if OB attains to the actual office.
If the Constitution is not taken seriously as concerns the eligibility of the president, is it likely to be taken seriously in other matters?
===
Last chance for Constitution?
Joseph Farah
Posted: December 01, 2008
Most Americans don't realize it yet, but this Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court will review whether Barack Obama is indeed constitutionally eligible to become the next president.
The justices will hold a conference on the question and consider the case for formal review.
The case is brought by Leo C. Donofrio against Nina Wells, the New Jersey secretary of state, and questions whether Obama is a "natural-born citizen" as required by Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution.
If four of the nine justices vote to hear the case in full, oral argument may be scheduled.
It would seem a simple matter to resolve.
Barack Obama could have put this issue to rest long ago by producing a complete birth certificate from Hawaii. Instead, he has chosen to stonewall the matter, citing a website post of what can only be characterized as a partial representation of a birth certificate – one that has been criticized as a forgery.
Whether the birth certificate posted on various websites is genuine or not is almost beside the point as to his eligibility. Since Hawaii was known to register foreign births in the 1960s, the portion of the certificate released by the Obama campaign proves nothing, since it does not reveal such details as the hospital in which he was allegedly born.
Meanwhile, some of Obama's own Kenyan relatives claim to have been present at his birth in Mombasa.
This controversy, which some have dismissed as frivolous, is as serious as the literal meaning of the Constitution itself.
As I have stated before, I have little doubt a thorough investigation will prove Obama is qualified to serve the office of the presidency as a "natural-born citizen." I don't believe his campaign would ever have been successful with the specter of legal ineligibility hanging over his head.
Nevertheless, I think it is imperative to be faithful to the Constitution and to offer the American people full disclosure on such a fundamentally important matter.
Clearly, Obama doesn't think so.
But what about our U.S. Supreme Court?
Do the justices have the courage to face up to this question?
I believe they will be much more likely to do so – to take this matter seriously – if they see real demonstrations of public interest. I know of no better way for you to show that interest than to sign WND's petition.
A petition was launched just over a week ago and now boasts more than 130,000 names.
All those signing it are receiving updates on controversy. The names will be delivered to the U.S. Supreme Court in time for its review Friday. This week will represent your last chance to impact that review.
The day this petition campaign was launched, a judge in Hawaii dismissed one challenge to produce the birth certificate stating he did not believe there was sufficient public interest demonstrated. Let's be sure the same is not the case with the Supreme Court review.
I hope you will join me in this fight for truth, justice and the American way by signing the petition. Help me spread the word. Let's turn up the heat. Send this column and the petition far and wide. Share it with your neighbors. Honor the Constitution. Save this country's most vital institutions and its honor. Seek the truth. Demand accountability.
Time is running out.
The Electoral College is due to convene Dec. 15 – in less than a month.
Barack Obama is to be sworn in as the next president Jan. 20 – less than two months from now.
Do you believe the American people have a right to know for certain their next president is constitutionally eligible for the job?
Without a chance to inspect that birth certificate for themselves, do you think we can ever be certain?
If the Constitution is not taken seriously as concerns the eligibility of the president, is it likely to be taken seriously in other matters?
If you don't take responsibility and initiative on this issue, I am convinced no one else will.
Take your stand for accountability, truth, the rule of law and the Constitution.
The fact is, American coalition forces have reduced al-Qaida from 12,000 to 1,200 in Iraq, cornered them in Mosul and are successfully gaining the upper hand on their remaining strongholds. That is why Gen. James Conway, the head of the Marine Corps and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, summarized, "Iraq is now a rear-guard action on the part of al Qaeda." In fact, he says that security is so good around the country that for the first time it "smells like victory," adding that next year as many as 20,000 Marines currently deployed will return home.
===
The most overlooked news story of 2008 - IRAQ
by Chuck Norris
December 01, 2008
Have you noticed lately that mainstream media are giving less attention to the war in Iraq, especially concerning our troops progress?
CNSNews recently reported that, "There were only two front page New York Times stories that mentioned "Iraq" in the headline in October 2008 – there were 11 in October 2006 and 17 in October 2004. … The Washington Post ran four front-page stories that had headlines using the word "Iraq" in October 2008 – in October 2006 there were 17 stories, and 27 stories in October 2004." (Was it coincidental timing that, when George Bush was up for re-election in 2004, there were record numbers of [negative] war stories?)
One can partially point the finger at the economy or election coverage as reasons for the reduction of Iraq war articles. But I believe those issues were used more as justifications for the liberal media's intentional neglect to report U.S. Middle East military progress. Who doesn't recognize that we live in a time in which there's little if no publishing space for positive military stories about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars?
Case in point: In July the London Times ran a column that commended American and Iraqi forces in making significant progress in Mosul and reaching the "final purge" of al-Qaida in Iraq. Investor's Business Daily echoed the same sentiment and story, but sharply criticized American mainstream media for completely overlooking that military success and coverage. The media indictment become so widespread on the Internet that it left the global audience wondering if such an oversight wasn't also an urban legend. Truth Or Fiction, an urban legend debunking website like Snopes, affirmed this glaring media Mosul omission by saying, "At the time of our investigation, U.S. media reports of this were hard to find but we did manage to find a report of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's announcement on the Fox News site. For the most part, it appears the mainstream media missed this one."
Of course no mainstream media is going to admit to news oversight. So what's the truth about progress in Mosul and al-Qaida eradication in Iraq? Did American media intentionally fail to report victorious progress in Mosul? Or was there actually none to report? Is English reporting overly optimistic about the war? Is the London Times guilty of conveying hyperbole in tabloid style?
When I did my own research, I discovered the London Times was correct in its assessment of American media bias toward progress in war. In fact, I had to go outside of mainstream media sources to acquire any information about any progress in Mosul, which was much greater and more controlled than the chaotic battlefield being conveyed by most American media. Here's what senior U.S. military officers in Mosul have testified to.
Mosul is pivotal to Iraq's success, not only because it is the third largest city in the country with more than two million people, but because it is in relative proximity to the borders of Iran, Turkey and Syria. For centuries is has served as a transit depot for smugglers, trade, contraband and insurgents. That is why Lt. Col. Robert Molinari, executive officer of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Mosul, recently reported, "Al-Qaida looks to Mosul as a gateway to Iraq. … It is not as such the last stand of al-Qaida. It's a last stand to maintain their lines of communication, thus their viability to conduct operations in Iraq."
During the surge in 2007 and early 2008 the U.S. forces intensified efforts in Mosul by pushing out into small neighborhood bases – a strategy that proved successful in routing insurgents in other large cities in the country. In particular, the 3rd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment was appointed to root out this last stronghold of al-Qaida operatives.
In February 2008, Col. Michael A. Bills, commander of 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, predicted that U.S. and Iraqi troops would be in full control of the city by the end of July.
By March 2008, Brig. Gen. Tony Thomas, No. 2 in charge of coalition forces in northern Iraq was already reporting, "So again, we can go anywhere we want to in Mosul, some areas, and we're now forcing the enemy, boxing them in, if you will, into areas, that they otherwise had free play in the city. So we've seized the initiative, and we're slowly but surely eliminating their toehold in the city."
By mid-June of 2008 this city of two million people had 14 Iraqi army battalions, 10,000 Iraqi police and 4,000 coalition force soldiers. And they were utilizing the "sons of Iraq" (paid volunteers by the U.S.) to better control neighborhoods. And it was working.
Despite July 2008 seeing increases in insurgent activity, Lt. Col. Molinari reported that it was really "nothing out of the norm." Brig. Gen. Abdullah Abdul, a senior Iraqi commander, added, "We've limited their movements with check-points. They are doing small attacks and trying big ones, but they're mostly not succeeding." American and Iraqi forces were clearly getting the upper hand, demonstrated then through the record dip in the number of U.S. casualties to their lowest numbers since the start of the war – 11 deaths in the entire country.
There has also been decline in overall attacks in Mosul and Ninewa, from 50 a day at the start of the year to the present amount of 10 a day – like in 2006. Open street fighting is a rarity. That is why, despite recent uprisings, Maj. Ra'ad Jalal, an Iraqi officer, said, "The security situation in Mosul is improving. It's safe here now, I'd be happy to come here even without all of this protection."
Unfortunately, instead of reporting any of this progress being made in Mosul, mainstream American media chose to completely ignore it, favoring the repeated jabs by Democrat presidential nominees and congressmen about the unfounded grounds of the war.
Compare the preceding positive Mosul news with the news recently highlighted by mainstream printed media. Lead statements say it all: "…thousands of Christians fled this northern Iraqi city in terror," "Iraq: bombs kill more than 30 in Baghdad, Mosul", "Car bomb explodes in Mosul, killing 2," "Battle for Iraq's 3rd city hangs in the balance" and "2 Americans Killed in Attack on Their Patrol in Iraq." CNN cited Mosul as "still a hotbed of insurgent activity." And the Associated Press says that Mosul is "now Iraq's deadliest city."
No one, least of all me, is implying all is well in Mosul. The city continues to endure 75 percent unemployment rates, due largely to the lack of Iraqi restructuring funds being released to the region of Nineveh, of which Mosul is the capital. Economic hardships have prompted some to turn to insurgency to support their families. Moreover, the American commander in northern Iraq, Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling, reported in October at the Pentagon, "There is still a desire by al-Qaida and other extremist groups to hold on to key areas. We have seen that most of all in Mosul." Still, Maj. Gen. Hertling recently took a three-mile walk through western Mosul – such a trot through such volatile neighborhoods by a division commander would have been unheard of even a few months ago.
I've been sadly amazed (and gravely amused) how often progress in war is played out not on the battlefield but in the back rooms of news broadcasting studios. It reminds me of when I was in Iraq in September of 2007, toured 17 bases, sat in Intel briefings and listened to many officers across the country detail progress since I had been there the year before. It was clear to me even back then that the surge was working, but at the time no one was talking about the successes in war (except John McCain). From Fallujah, I reported to WorldNetDaily the positive news that "the surge is working." When that feedback hit the press, I was immediately mocked by other media outlets for saying so. Even Jay Leno on his Tonight Show said, "Chuck Norris is over in Iraq visiting the troops. Today, Chuck said the troop surge is working. Keep in mind, this is the same guy that said the whole Total Gym thing works, too. So, I don't know." Of course, such jokes would fall flat now, because everyone knows the surge has worked.
On the eve of another Pearl Harbor anniversary (Dec. 7), and in a Christmas season when the sacrifice of our troops is accentuated by their absence from loved ones, it's fitting to honor not overlook those who fight for freedom. Encourage others this week to do the same. Find ways to commemorate their courage and commitment. Admonish others to watch positive and honorable tributes to our service men and women, like those on the Military Channel and those created by Director Mike Slee of Zaragoza Pictures, a documentary filmmaker whose mission is also to capture the progress of our troops – including those in Mosul.
The fact is, American coalition forces have reduced al-Qaida from 12,000 to 1,200 in Iraq, cornered them in Mosul and are successfully gaining the upper hand on their remaining strongholds. That is why Gen. James Conway, the head of the Marine Corps and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, summarized, "Iraq is now a rear-guard action on the part of al Qaeda." In fact, he says that security is so good around the country that for the first time it "smells like victory," adding that next year as many as 20,000 Marines currently deployed will return home.
It will happen just in time for President-elect Obama to withdraw our troops – and he is likely to get the credit as the commander in chief who not only brought our troops home but brought victory in Iraq. Now there's a 2009 news story that America's mainstream media will be guaranteed to run over and over.
(For the month of December, Chuck is giving away a free chapter from his New York Times' best seller, "Black Belt Patriotism." To obtain yours, go to ChuckNorrisNewBook.com)
I know Iraq never made a blip on the radar screen of the American voter after the economy came to the front of the news.. but if Obama forces an evacuation as he often has said he would.. the Iraqis will go through hell... thanks to the lack of care of the Iraqi people by the average American voter.. and Acorn and other groups who "got out the vote" for those with park bench addresses and joined the others who coveted Obama's promised handouts and a hopenchange desire for peace which does not exist.
QUOTE:
Iraqis who think the job should only require a few more years are still pessimistic about what they think is likely to happen when the negotiated Status of Forces Agreement goes into effect and American troops withdraw from Iraqi cities in 2009.“We’ve seen hell,” an Iraqi intelligence source said when I met him in his house. “And that hell, if the American forces evacuate, will repeat.If Obama forces an evacuation from Iraq soon,everything will turn against him in this land.”
Many American soldiers agree. “Everyone says things will implode after we leave.. When we leave and transition all of what we do now to the Iraqi security forces, will there be a spike in activity? Absolutely. One hundred percent.”
And that’s the optimist view.
====
What’s Next in Iraq
Michael J. Totten
12.01.2008
BAGHDAD – For the past two weeks I’ve been embedded with the United States Army in Baghdad, and I find myself unable to figure out what to make of this place. Baghdad, despite the remarkable success of the surge, is as mind-bogglingly run-down and dysfunctional as ever, even compared with other Arabic countries. Iraq is a dark place. At times it feels like a doomed country that has only been temporarily spared the reckoning that is coming. Other times it is possible to look past the grimness and see progress beyond the mere slackening off of violence and war. Is Iraq truly on the mend, or has a total breakdown been merely postponed? Opinions here among Americans and Iraqis are mixed, but nearly everyone seems to agree about one thing at least: terrorists and insurgents will respond with a surge of their own in the wake of the upcoming withdrawal of American forces.
Sergeant Nick Franklin took me to meet an Iraqi woman named Malath who works with the local Sons of Iraq security organization in the Adhamiyah district of Baghdad. When I asked her if she thought her area was ready to stand on its own without American help, she bluntly answered “Of course not.” She doesn’t think Iraq needs another year or two or even three. She thinks it will need decades. “We won’t be ready until young people replace the older generation in the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police. They need to replace the old Baath Party members who are still inside.”
Her view is the darkest. But Iraqis who think the job should only require a few more years are still pessimistic about what they think is likely to happen when the negotiated Status of Forces Agreement goes into effect and American troops withdraw from Iraqi cities in 2009. “We’ve seen hell,” an Iraqi intelligence source said when I met him in his house. “And that hell, if the American forces evacuate, will repeat. If Obama forces an evacuation from Iraq soon, everything will turn against him in this land.”
Many American soldiers agree. “Everyone says things will implode after we leave,” Lieutenant Eric Kuylman told me. “They’ll blame it on politics and religion, but it’s not going to be any of that. It’s going to be about straight power. It’s going to be guys trying to one-up each other. It’s going to be key people in cities just like this who will want to seize the power gaps. It’s going to break down along tribal lines and these militias that we’ve put in place. When we pull out, there will be power vacuums. There will be pockets of people that we’ve put in power. I mean, everybody already has shaky alliances as it is. So what you’re going to see is the straight seizing of power. People are going to try to put their own tags on it, but it’s just about the seizure of power. It’s not going to be Sunni or Shia, nothing like it. It’s just going to be men who want control.”
Not everyone holds such a bleak view, however. And pessimists have been losing the argument in Iraq ever since General David Petraeus radically transformed the American counterinsurgency strategy. But once American soldiers withdraw from urban areas, the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police will be on their own whether they’re ready or not.
I spoke to Captain AJ Boyes at Combat Outpost Ford on the outskirts of Sadr City. His company did more of the fighting in Sadr City back in the spring than any other, but he stresses that the Iraqi Army took and holds 75 percent of Sadr City all by itself. He isn’t nearly as gloomy about the future in this country as some of the others I spoke to. Though he considers himself a realist, he sounded to me like an optimist.
“If we take a snapshot of Iraqi politics, security, and governance right now in 2008,” he said, “and come back two generations from now and compare them side-by-side, I think we’ll see a huge difference. And will it be for better or for worse? I think it will be almost entirely better.”
I suspect he is probably right. Fifty years is a long time. By then the insurgency period of Iraq’s history will be as distant as King Faisal’s era is now. But what about the short and medium term? Everyone who makes policy decisions in Iraq should be far more concerned with what the country might look like in one year than in fifty.
“Will it get worse in one year?” I said to Captain Boyes. “That’s the big question.”
“Well, yes,” he said. “It will. Any time something new happens in a counterinsurgency, when there are new security forces, there is an immediate spike in violence because the insurgents are testing the ability of the new element. When we leave and transition all of what we do now to the Iraqi security forces, will there be a spike in activity? Absolutely. One hundred percent.”
And that’s the optimist view.
He thinks Iraq will be okay, even so. The Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police are still shaky institutions at best, but they are much more competent than they were a few years ago. The Iraqi Army proved itself earlier this year, against nearly all expectations, when it took back areas under the control of Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia in Basra and Sadr City with only a limited amount of help from Americans.
It’s possible, of course, that everybody is wrong. Iraq has made fools of almost everyone who has tried to predict its future. There are too many unstable and unpredictable variables. But we should still brace ourselves for disconcerting news in 2009.
“There will be a spike in violence,” Captain Boyes said. “The insurgents are going to want to test the new Iraqi security forces. How will the Iraqis operate completely independently? It should be up to the media to portray that as an expected thing.”
Maybe a few historic landmarks are worth noting..
as the market digests the end of an economy based on the free market and moves to a political based economy...
taking with them a lot of financial capital (700 BILLION, below).
Stocks fall steeply as gloomy global data piles up Dow has 4th biggest point drop on record, bond yields slide to record lows
By Nick Godt, MarketWatch
Dec. 1, 2008
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- U.S. stocks stumbled on Monday, with the Dow industrials sliding nearly 680 points, as economic reports from around the world compounded anxiety about a global recession.
With energy and financial stocks pacing the slide, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 679 points, or 7.7%, to end at 8,149.
"There are still concerns about how deep, how long and widespread this global recession will be," said Sam Stovall, senior investment strategist at Standard & Poor's. "As we head into the [November] employment report on Friday, it's not looking good."
Stocks fell further after a report showed the manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy slumped at the fastest pace in 27 years in November.
Energy stocks are weighing on the broad market, even as the Dow Jones Industrial Average retreats nearly 4%. Crude prices are also falling back after OPEC failed to approve any further production cuts. Steve Gelsi reports. (Dec. 1)
The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 80 points, or 9%, to end at 816. By sectors, financials fell the hardest, sliding nearly 17%, followed by energy issues, off 13%, and materials, down 10%.
Yields on 10-year Treasury bonds which are used to benchmark mortgage rates, slumped to 2.706%, their lowest on record.
Among Dow stocks linked to a dimming outlook for global growth, shares of aluminum giant Alcoa Inc. slumped 13%, equipment-maker Caterpillar fell 10%, and global conglomerate General Electric was down 9%.
Among energy components on the Dow, shares of Chevron fell 8% and Exxon Mobil lost 7%. Crude oil futures plunged 9% to close below $50 a barrel, amid economic concerns and as OPEC chose to postpone further production cuts.
After nearly regaining half of its value last week, Citigroup plunged 22%. A Citi fund is buying a Spanish highway-operating firm for more than $10 billion. Bank of America fell more than 20%, and J. P. Morgan Chase lost 17%, amid broad weakness in the banking sector.
Post-rally
Monday's weakness came after five consecutive sessions of gains.
"In a still bearish mindset, investors are not only digesting their Thanksgiving meals, but also recent gains in the market," S&P's Stovall said.
"The economic data is not looking good," he said. "But since it's already out there in print, who doesn't know it already? Still, this market remains more successful at stringing negative days than it has positive days."
General Motors erased early gains to fall 12%. Ahead of a presentation to Congress on how automakers would use a government loan, GM is trying to get debt holders to swap their debt securities for equity, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
Outside the Dow, Ford Motor Co. slumped 5% after saying it is considering the sale of its Volvo brand.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite slumped 137 points, or 9%, to 1,398.
Conflicting reports surrounding a possible deal for Yahoo Inc. Britain's Sunday Times reported that Microsoft was offering $20 billion for Yahoo's search business, but the All Things Digital blog quoted sources as saying the purported deal was "total fiction."
Yahoo shares slumped more than 6%.
Some strategists also cited concerns that investors in hedge funds are pulling out more of their money before the end of the year, forcing funds to liquidate assets and pressuring the overall market.
According to Marc Pado, market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald, estimates of so-called hedge fund redemptions call for up to $700 billion that could be withdrawn for the end of 2008.
"This has been, in my opinion, the main impetus for the heavy bouts of selling," Pado said in a note. "As we turn the calendar to December, we are likely seeing some of that sell-side pressure."
Already hit by the weak economic data, bond yields plunged further after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged that while the U.S. economy is "under considerable stress", the central bank can buy Treasury notes and bonds or agency bonds in a bid to drive yields lower and "spur aggregate demand."
In global equity action, the Nikkei 225 dropped 1.3% in Tokyo, and the FTSE 100 fell more than 5 % in London.
As for the gentleman Laura was so enamored with who would solve all the financial problems, Mr. Paulson.. I don't think he can change the outlook from an economy moving from a free market base to a politically based market and all that means, no matter what tinkering he does. Only removal of the socialist agenda and a reinstituting and confirming of a free market would bring back the confidence the market needs. The only way that would happen is if the electors did their homework and the Supreme Court released records showing Obama is unqualified for office.. and he never became the President. Apart from Obama not making it into the Oval Office, the market direction will continue with this steep correction from a free market to a political one, and negativity toward the man holding the bag - Paulson.
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Just 12% Give Paulson Good or Excellent Marks for Job Performance
Monday, December 01, 2008
Only 12% of U.S. voters say Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has done a good or excellent job handling the country’s credit crisis and the bailout programs aimed at helping the economy.
Forty–two percent (42%) rate Paulson’s performance as poor, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Eight percent (8%) are undecided.
Even though Paulson was appointed by President Bush, Republicans are more critical of the Treasury secretary than Democrats and unaffiliated voters. Twelve percent (12%) of GOP voters say Paulson has done a good or excellent job, and 14% of Democrats and 11% of unaffiliateds agree.
But 46% of Republicans say Paulson’s job performance has been poor, compared to 39% of Democrats and 41% of unaffiliated voters.
Investors and non-investors are in general agreement on Paulson’s performance. African-American voters view Paulson’s handling of the economy more favorably than whites.
The Rasmussen Consumer and Investor indexes, both of which measure confidence in the economy, climbed modestly today but still hover around record lows.
In a survey in mid-November, just 26% of U.S. adults were at least somewhat confident that U.S. policymakers know what they are doing when it comes to addressing the nation’s current economic problems.
Just prior to those findings, Paulson had reversed course on what the $700-billion economic rescue plan approved by Congress in early October should be spent on. Paulson sold the plan to Congress and the public as a way to buy up bad assets from banks to free up credit. Several weeks later he said that wasn’t working and that the government should use the money instead to buy partial stakes in troubled banks and to directly fund loans and additional credit for consumers.
Results released earlier today find that 50% of voters think the recent wave of bank failures was triggered by laws that weren’t strict enough as opposed to bankers breaking the law.
President-elect Obama has chosen Timothy Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to be his secretary of the Treasury, but right now 53% of voters don’t know enough about him to have an opinion about him one way or the other.
DAMAC wins big Baghdad contract, other UAE firms in running for Al-Rashid deal
DAMAC Properties, the Dubai based construction giant, has won an investment license for a massive construction project in Baghdad, according to the city mayor Sabir al-Isawi, who also said that a number of UAE firms are bidding on another large project in the Iraqi capital.
(www.noozz.com)
Baghdad (NINA)- A source from the political bureau of the Iraqi Islamic Party said that the religious authority Ali al-Sistani has backed the Party's demand of presenting the recently approved security pact to a public referendum.
(www.ninanews.com)
KRG insists on concluding oil contracts, says Kurdistan Premier 02/12/2008 18:58:00
Erbil (NINA)- Kurdistan Region's Premier Nechirvan Barzani has asserted that Kurdistan regional government "insists on concluding oil contracts with foreign companies and on exporting a daily rate of 100,000 barrels of crude oil.
(www.ninanews.com)
Iraq: A new chapter in relations
PUKmedia 02-12-2008 19:19:43
By: Farid Asasard*
Translation: Barzan Wahab
Source: Kurdistani Nwe Daily
Ratifying the US forces withdrawal law, the strategic framework and the political reform document in one day, demonstrates that Iraq has stepped into a new stage in promoting both external and internal relations.
The crisis that all sides have successfully prevailed over drew the most attention towards two key issues. The first one is the effective role that the Iraqi parliament and all its blocs played, even with the strict stances, in both taking the right and appropriate decision, also starting a new chapter in the relations. The crisis has proven that the Iraqi parliament is one of the most three effective parliaments in the Middle East, if not the best.
Passing laws and decisions in a given parliament with difficulty, is always a demonstration of consistency of the political process, since a parliament that its decisions pass in a most easily way, seems to be an inept parliament.
The second point is the astonishing ability of the Sunnis in their political maneuver in which they related passing both agreements with imposing a referendum on Kurds and Shiites to secure implementing the context of the reform document. Thus if the reforms would not be done in the upcoming eight months or there were clumsiness in their implementation, they could hamper the two agreements in the referendum.
According to what the factions have agreed on, the reforms that mostly proposed by the Sunnis are expected to establish a solid foundation for a real partnership in power and a balance in key institutions. As a result, it is expected that the armed forces and governmental institutions work on more patriotic and professional basis away from political parties.
If all these things achieved, Iraq would swiftly step up into more political stability and the Kurdistan region would be politically left behind, because until now the region has not established its armed and security forces on professional basis away from political parties. There are no effective parliament and powerful judiciary; moreover for four years there is no constitution.
It is apparent that in the coming stage and after implementing the reforms which the Sunnis will be the most beneficial, it is expected for the Sunnis to play a more effective and key role. The expansion of Sunnis role and the role of the Shiites following the powers that the premier will gain due to the implementation of the forces withdrawal law could lead to a setback in the Kurdish role in the political process.
Anyhow, the return of Sunnis gave stability to the political process; all the balances would change and this return would have important results.
(www.pukmedia.com)
US set to hand over Green Zone to Iraq
By Basil Adas, Correspondent
Published: December 02, 2008, 00:41
Baghdad: Many Iraqis cannot wait until the Green Zone in Baghdad is turned over to Iraqi forces, as a part of the implementation of the newly adopted security agreement between the US and Iraq.
"My apartment is located in an area near the Republican Palace, since 2003 it has taken me hours to reach my home because of difficult treatment by US guards," Ahlam Aziz, an official at the Ministry of Science told Gulf News.
According to the security agreement reached between the two parties, Iraq will assume full responsibility over the Green Zone early in the new year.
"Although I worked for the Iraqi government, my entry into the Green Zone was subject to approval by US forces which infringes on the sovereignty of my country. I have had many fights with US security officers, so when they leave I will be happy," Rashid Haidar said.
The Green Zone expands over 10 square kilometres and houses hundreds of tanks, armoured vehicles and combat helicopters.
Also, many senior Iraqi officials reside within the Green Zone, including the house of Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki and international media offices.
"I cant wait to have access to streets around the Presidential Palace because I haven't seen these streets for five years," Motazz Abdul Khalek, a homeowner in the Al Zewia area opposite the Green Zone told said. According to some Iraqi official sources, there is a government plan to renovate the area of the ministerial offices.
(www.gulfnews.com)
Maliki: SC part of Iraqi security system 03/12/2008 15:55:00
Baghdad (NINA)– Premier Nouri al-Maliki stressed that tribal supportive councils are part of the Iraqi security system which is still fragile because of existence of “sleeping terrorists cells and outlaws who have malicious intentions towards Iraq.”
(www.ninanews.com)
It is my hope a deep division between Iraq and Iran develops from the this article.
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Iran should compensate Iraq for interfering, says MP 03/12/2008 14:34:00
Baghdad (NINA) –MP Abdul Kareem al-Samarrayi of the Iraqi Accord Front has expressed his astonishment at the Iranian $600-billion compensations claims for the harm Iran had suffered during its war with Iraq in the 1980s.
(www.ninanews.com)
… WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Robert Gates signaled a willingness to forge ahead with two key priorities for the incoming Obama administration: accelerating the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and shutting down the Guantanamo Bay detention center.
As the only Republican Cabinet member asked to stay on by President-elect Barack Obama, Gates told reporters Tuesday that military commanders are looking at ways to more quickly pull troops out of Iraq in light of the 16-month timetable that was a centerpiece of the Democrat's campaign.
He also said it will be a high priority to work with the new Congress on legislation that will enable the U.S. to close the detention center at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, where about 250 terrorism suspects are still being held.
In a blunt and occasionally personal briefing, Gates acknowledged his unique position in the new Democratic administration — a job he said he did not want or seek but felt he could not turn down.
"I guess I would say that I was engaged in my own form of strategic deterrence," said Gates, who for the past two years has talked only of his desire to return home to Washington state. "It was my hope that if I made enough noise about how much I did not want to stay here and how much I wanted to go back to the Northwest that I wouldn't have to worry about the question ever being asked."
But Obama asked, and Gates said there was no way he could say no. And while there has been much speculation that his tenure might be somewhat short, in an effort to ease the transition during wartime, Gates said his agreement to stay on at the Pentagon is "open-ended" and that there is no timeline for his departure.
"I have no intention of being a caretaker secretary," Gates said.
Gates, who oversaw the buildup of forces in Iraq in 2006-2007, made it clear that he is comfortable and even impressed with Obama's commitment to the military and said he is "less concerned" about the 16-month Iraq withdrawal timetable. Although he has repeatedly insisted that any drawdown in Iraq must be based on security conditions there, Gates noted that Obama has said he will listen to his commanders and pull forces out responsibly.
"I was impressed by his reaching out to Adm. Mullen to come sit down and talk with him," said Gates, referring to Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "And he has made clear that he wants to have a regular dialogue with the chairman and the chiefs and the commanders."
The situation in Iraq has changed, he said, pointing to the new security agreement with the Iraqis that calls for U.S. troops to be out of the cities by next June 30 and out of the country by Jan. 1, 2012.
"Commanders are already looking at what the implications of that are in terms of the potential for accelerating the drawdown and in terms of how we meet our obligations to the Iraqis," Gates said. "Nobody wants to put at risk the gains that have been achieved with so much sacrifice on the part of our soldiers and the Iraqis at this point."
Gates also provided a glimpse into his recruitment to join the Obama administration, saying he and the president-elect met when the Democrat came to Washington after the election to meet with President Bush.
In a clandestine move, reminiscent of Gates' former job as director of the CIA, the two men met at the fire station at Reagan National Airport. "They pulled the trucks out so that our cars could go in," he quipped.
Gates also cleared up confusion about his political affiliation.
During his tenure at the CIA, he said, he thought he should be apolitical so he did not register with a political party. But, he added, "I consider myself a Republican."
Still, did it feel a bit strange to be standing alongside Obama and his intended secretary of state, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton?
"It really didn't," said Gates. "You know, the president-elect will be the eighth president I've worked for. And all I can say is I look forward to it.
On Guantanamo, Gates said it will take a joint effort with Congress to shut it down. He did not provide details of any suggested legislation but said it would prohibit detainees from seeking asylum in the U.S. if they are released from the detention facility.
In other comments, Gates said that while he is staying on, he still expects that the bulk of the political appointees at the Pentagon to leave as is traditional during a change of administration. One of those, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, said Tuesday that he will be leaving.
(www.news.yahoo.com)
Journalist jailed in Iraq over homosexuality story
SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq – International media watchdog groups called Wednesday for the release of a freelance journalist jailed in northern Iraq for violating a public decency law by writing a story about homosexuality.
Adel Hussein was sentenced Nov. 24 to six months in jail by a court in Irbil, capital of the Kurdish-ruled region of northern Iraq, according to the Committee To Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders.
Hussein also was ordered to pay a fine of about $106, the organizations said. He is being held at Mahata prison in Irbil, about 220 miles north of Baghdad.
"We are astonished to learn that a press case has been tried under the criminal code. What was the point of adopting — and then liberalizing — a press code in the Kurdistan region if people who contribute to the news media are still be tried under more repressive laws," Reporters Without Borders said in a statement.
The case centers on an April 2007 article Hussein wrote for the independent weekly Hawlati that detailed the physical effects of homosexual sex, the organizations said.
The sentence handed down by the Kurdish court was based on an outdated 1969 Iraqi penal code, said Luqman Malazadah, Hussein's lawyer. Malazadah told CPJ he has appealed the court decision.
A new law that took effect in October does not recognize a violation of "public custom," also known as public decency, as an offense, CPJ said.
Under the new law, a representative of the region's Journalist Syndicate must attend a journalist's trial, but Fatih told CPJ no representative attended Hussein's trial.
Irbil's public prosecutor also has filed a lawsuit against Hussein, the magazine's former chief editor Adnan Osman, and the publisher, Tareq Fateh, according to Reporters Without Borders
(www.news.yahoo.com)
Iraq’s Oil Future: Finding the Right Framework - Part 1
03 December 2008 ( Iraq Updates )
an Iraq Updates exclusive - Dr. Carol Nahlke's report on Iraq's oil industry and its challenges
By Dr. Carole Nahlke
Executive Summary
Iraq is a country in transition. The legacy from long years of suppression and conflict has left what could have been one of the world’s richest nations in widespread poverty. Today Iraq endures debilitated infrastructure and conflicting tensions as to how swiftly its world class hydrocarbon wealth should be developed and its revenues distributed.
Many questions are being raised.
At what pace does Iraq want to develop its oil resources? What is Iraq’s production ambition and what are the possible scenarios for the next decade? What level of investment is required to achieve the various goals that have been enumerated? How can the priorities for the petroleum sector be managed alongside the competing demands internationally for resources, human and financial for the reconstruction and development of the wider economy? How much can and should the State accomplish on its own and what are the consequences and possible alternatives? What role can the Iraq national Oil Company (INOC) play in achieving this?
In particular, can new forms of partnership between the state oil company (INOC) and investors from outside be designed and what role will or should the International Oil Companies (IOCs) play in such a partnership? If this is the way forward, how should the IOCs adjust their procedures and policies so as to maximise the value to Iraq from their involvement? How can IOCs’ involvement ensure that the Iraqi Government’s control and sovereignty are respected and sustained free from external influences? What are the realities of different fiscal arrangements? Which arrangement suits Iraq the most? What model should Iraq adopt in developing the best regulatory and fiscal framework for the necessary expansion of its oil production which hopefully lies ahead? Is there a model from the Middle East or should Iraq look further a field to ones in the OECD such as those developed to suit North Sea conditions? Should Iraq follow the Saudis or the Kuwaitis or any other of a dozen different regimes now in operation around the world?
The broad and over-arching answer embracing these many detailed questions is that Iraq should follow the Iraqi model. It should build a robust framework uniquely suited to Iraqi conditions, needs and aspirations. The more detailed questions and answers should start from there. Policy makers in the Iraqi oil sector should certainly look closely at the experience of other countries and learn from both their successes and their failures. It is a misguided planner who ignores the lessons of oil development which the world has to tell, especially at a time of vast uncertainty and unprecedented change in oil markets.
But every country is special. Every country must carry the whole-hearted support of its people for the handling of its precious resources, and for Iraq, the prizes for successful progress are without parallel in its history. Despite past tragedies there is every reason to hope that Iraq can now move to the forefront again not just as a major oil producer but as a leading force and influence both in the region and on the world stage.
With that background firmly in mind, the purpose of this study is to assist in providing Iraqi policy makers with an objective assessment of the various fiscal and regulatory frameworks that they could adopt or adapt for the development of their oil and gas sector. The study provides a menu that the Iraqi policy planners may find useful and can consult, while elucidating the reality behind the misguided myths that only serve to create obstacles towards building a strong economy for a proud nation. It is grounded in a sound and detailed analysis of the fiscal and regulatory frameworks from which Iraq can choose. The study does not attempt to impose one single course of actions; different options, opportunities and conditions are considered. It does not take sides; it simply considers the contractual framework that will serve best the Iraqis interests.
Many instructive examples around the world have been examined to show how both transition and developed economies have successfully and swiftly used their oil and gas wealth to improve dramatically the standard of living for their people. Equally there are examples of less successful evolution of petroleum potential.
The study’s headline conclusion is that if Iraq wants to efficiently and sustainably enhance production, deploy the latest technology, access much needed capital, then outside support will be essential. The strains on internal investment resources will be too great if the ‘go-it-alone’ strategy is adopted. On the other hand, exclusive reliance on IOCs is neither an acceptable nor a practical arrangement. The most persuasive contractual formulation is likely to be a hybrid solution involving both Iraq NOC and the IOCs. This is the route which round the world has proved to be the most commonly adopted strategy; and which all experience suggests can meet the required goals and satisfy political expediency.
The development of a successful hydrocarbon sector in Iraq, as in any other oil and gas producing nations, should be built upon three essential pillars. These are: a well resourced technically competent NOC, disciplined IOCs’ operations within the umbrella of a long term NOC/IOC relationship, and a framework of good governance which delivers a competitive fiscal regime and fit for purpose regulatory code. If one of these pillars is missing, the foundation of the sector will be weakened.
One of the most critical choices that the Government has to make is in respect of the fiscal arrangements. A very wide spectrum of relationships exists between host governments in oil producing countries and IOCs. At the extremes, one finds either 100% private ownership of the hydrocarbon resource or absolutely no involvement of private companies. However, the majority of oil producing countries have developed arrangements which lie in between these two poles, with a strong role for the domestic NOC hand in hand with incentives for IOCs — each with its own fiscal terms and arrangements. Attracting IOC investment is about accelerating the pace; IOC investment is a means to an end. It creates space for State resources to be diverted to other priorities as well as providing access to early revenues.
Iraq offers a range of opportunities, from producing large fields, to fields awaiting developments to new exploration. There is no one fiscal structure that could or should be designed to cover all such investment opportunities. The suggested approach is therefore to move towards a hybrid model, which is carefully designed to Iraq’s conditions and Iraq’s best interests.
The essence of these new arrangements is that the Iraqi Government must always be in control of the key strategic decisions that set the objectives for the evolution of the hydrocarbon sector this is understandable and is the norm in most hydrocarbon provinces. Company operations take place within a tightly defined regulatory framework which devolves operational flexibility to investors. Iraq will need to draw on the skills and energies of the Iraqi State authorities and on the best and most advanced resources from the private sector, both domestic and international. Government sovereignty can and must be fully secured. External IOC investment in no way diminishes or sacrifices State control. Effective regulation is THE key to effective state control of the oil resource. Iraqis have the capability to put in place a regulatory and fiscal regime that provides Industry with a competitive framework but leaves Iraqi with the vast majority of the economic rent.
It merits repetition that it is for Iraqi people and through them their elected representatives to shape all the decisions with respect to development of their petroleum resources.
Despite the clearly changing patterns of energy consumption round the globe, and the growing evidence that we are now in an era of major transition to a new global energy mix, oil and its many refined products will remain at the centre of economic progress and industrial advance for the foreseeable future. This is therefore Iraq’s opportunity. Wise judgements and carefully crafted policy must ensure that this opportunity is not missed.
Section 1:
INTRODUCTION
The history, geography and socio-politics of each nation create unique conditions, needs and patterns of development. In the Iraqi case the needs are those of a nation which is relatively young, emerging from a destructive conflict, which is located at the epicentre of Middle East rivalries and conflicts but which possesses oil and mineral resources on a world-beating scale.
The requirement is therefore to accelerate full economic recovery and social advance swiftly and to do so by mobilising both internal AND external resources, both public and private, governmental and entrepreneurial, to the full. The Iraqi people deserve nothing less.
The catalyst is the expansion of oil exploration, development and production. The process interacts with social and political development. The faster the revenues from oil can be grown, the more rapidly can the benefits in terms of living standards, public services and social stability be secured, in turn creating the conditions for further oil investment and expansion as well as broader diversification of the economy.
This Study seeks to examine the most favourable ways in which this can be achieved, providing always that Iraq and its people retain effective control over the development of their resources. It aims to demonstrate that it makes perfect strategic sense for the Iraqi authorities to create the option to call on both domestic and international resources in full measure to move along this path and to seek the appropriate balance between the two. The goal is the restoration of the wellbeing, security and cohesion of all the people of Iraq by the swiftest sustainable route.
The ingredients for overall advance lie in both re-building national capabilities at all levels and in calling on international capital, technology and expertise to combine with national endeavours. To exclude vigorous international involvement in the name of narrow nationalism is to deny directly the rights of the Iraqi people and to delay and frustrate their legitimate hopes for improvement. Those who oppose international investment may well have genuine motives but these sentiments are based on fear, inadequate information and a deeply flawed analysis.
Resource nationalism, although appealing — especially when presented as resource patriotism — is far from equating with the best interests of the Iraqi people. Iraq’s unhappy past offers a uniquely clear example of the costs and dangers of domestic monopolization of the oil industry, and the obvious benefits of a balanced partnership (which may well require novel qualities) with international enterprise and complimentary inward investment.
The myth that all such outside involvement is part of an attempted grab of Iraqi national resources is superficially appealing in populist terms and persuasive. But close examination suggests that it is perhaps little more than a cover for an underlying ideology that served the 20th century very poorly and which elevates the political classes at the direct expense of ordinary people.
While many major international companies have much to learn about creating the most sensitive and respectful partnerships with their host nations and host institutions, it is only along such a route that an early and sustained improvement in Iraqi welfare and political health lies.
Translated into the oil sector this means finding the appropriate balance between national overall control of oil resources and the necessary incentives to international companies to invest and contribute to industrial expansion and restoration of the economy. The more successfully (and swiftly) this formula can be found and established, the greater the opportunities for Iraq to deploy its own sorely limited resources and technical abilities on social and infrastructure priorities. Such a policy enables the International Oil Companies (IOCs) to deploy their skills, technology and resources, within an Iraqi established regulatory framework and consistent with the nations objectives, to assist the growth of Iraqi oil production.
The essential and strategic task is to move away from the adversarial perceptions of antagonism between National Oil Companies (NOCs) and IOCs which conventional analysis all too often presents, and to forge a new and more modern partnership and create conditions which are constructed to secure and sustain mutual advantage. This new partnership must respect the values of transparent and balanced terms of engagement such as those promoted by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and by the United Nations.
The world has changed from the days when remote Governments and lofty corporations could impose their plans and solutions on a compliant population. The people of Iraq, like any other society, today want their full say in the future arrangements of their country, and especially in the best ways for using its great resources for the public benefit. This demands something far more subtle and sophisticated than a diet of populist notions about clinging on to ‘our oil’ and keeping the foreigner at bay.
The Iraqi Opportunity
It is widely acknowledged that Iraq has one of the world’s largest reserves of petroleum. However existing production levels of circa 2–2.5 million barrels a day (bbl/d) are falling considerably short of the levels that Iraq could comfortably sustain. Near term revenue needs are an obvious priority to rebuild the economy and improve the prosperity and standard of living of the long suffering Iraqi people, who now have one of the lowest standards of living in the world. Considerably higher production levels are desirable to provide the necessary financial resources to achieve this.
But are they achievable? This is the question facing the Iraqi people: how best to maximise the economic potential of the hydrocarbon resource for the nation? How can the priorities for the petroleum sector be managed alongside the competing demands internationally for resources, human and financial for the reconstruction and development of the wider economy?
Part of this assessment must include an objective evaluation not just of the net contribution that could be made by foreign investment in the oil and gas sector but also of the best and most supportive way in which this should be engineered. This would free up State resources for other pressing priorities. The issue of the nature and form of foreign investment in the oil sector is solely a decision for the Iraqi people but it is important that such critical decisions are made on an informed and objective basis free from political dogma and from the pre-conceived, and often irrational, ideas of the past, which deprived Iraq of billions of dollars.
Dissenting voices are still urging Iraq to return to this barren route from the past, and there has been no lack of emotive language about the prospect of Iraq’s oil being ‘stolen’ by foreign predators. A clear and objective analysis must rise above such views and look at real benefits rather than false fears.
The division of the value from petroleum extraction between the state and investors has long been controversial and the current high oil price is reenergising this debate around the world. Of course the Iraqi people are proud and resourceful and they could choose to reject such a course. However, it is argued in this study that such an approach would most likely lead to a sub-optimal and slower growth in petroleum production and deny the state the near-term revenues it desperately needs. Given the world class scale of the Iraq resource potential it is inevitable and appropriate that close and meticulous interest is taken is such critical policy questions.
The purpose of this study is to assist in providing Iraqi policy makers with an objective assessment of the merits of investment by the IOCs and potential contractual frameworks that could be created. Although the conditions in Iraq are new and unique, requiring creative and innovative approaches, there are many instructive examples around the world of how both transition and developed economies have successfully and swiftly encouraged IOC investment to improve dramatically the standard of living for the host nation. Equally there are examples where IOC investment has been actively discouraged leading to a less successful evolution of petroleum potential. Examples of both will be explored in this study.
There must be no question of this being an all or nothing policy choice. The most likely and desirable course would be for a range of contractual formulations to be constructed to match the nature of the petroleum development priorities of the Iraqi Government. Contract structures for the redevelopment of existing fields are likely to be different to those for new fields or exploration. While the unit extraction costs of Iraq petroleum are likely to be low, given the large scale of the resource base and availability of large field sizes, it is important that the best technologies and leading edge reservoir management techniques are applied. The challenge of maximising recovery applies to all reservoirs, whether perceived as ‘easy or difficult’ in all fields in all countries. Iraq is no different. It is also envisaged that this study, in elucidating the role of IOC investment in accelerating the development of petroleum resources, could have wider application beyond Iraq. Policy makers in other developing nations facing similar choices in formulating the role of IOC investment should find this study of use in shaping such critical decisions.
Content of This Study: The Sequence, the Analysis, the Argumentation and the Recommendations
The Content of the Study which follows falls into ten further sections, including a Conclusion section and a summary of the Key Messages which emerge.
Section 2 reviews the current situation in Iraq and explores the colossal potential ahead for the country and how its vision for a better future can best be realised.
Section 3 dissects the various options and models from which Iraq can choose in moving forward towards its goals.
Section 4 presents a strategic structure which might be followed by Iraq’s authorities and policy- makers, based on the concept of three pillars required to build a successful oil and gas sector.
Section 5 defines the way in which a new partnership could operate between national and international interests to enable the successful fulfilment of Iraq’s ambitions.
Section 6 lays out how the contribution of IOCs to these aims can be maximised and how their role must be tailored to Iraq’s needs.
Section 7 analyses the methods by which effective Iraqi control can be maintained over the development process and the steps by the Iraqi administration and its agencies which could lead to the most fruitful progress of the new partnership.
Section 8 sets out exactly how the process can yield the essential early flows of cash resources into the Iraqi system, before expanded production gets under way — in line with the imperative for Iraq to accelerate the overall recovery process.
Section 9 provides a detailed examination of the various contractual options, drawn from governments round the world, from which Iraq can now chose in order to manage its oil and gas sector. It sets out the main principles that should be used when evaluating and implementing the most suitable fiscal package in Iraq’s situation.
Section 10 draws the whole analysis and the implied lessons together and presents the recommendations and guidance — reinforced with facts and examples at each stage — which Iraq should find most useful as it approaches the moment of key decision about its future — a moment which could also prove to be of profound significance in shaping world oil production and markets in the coming period.
(Editor's note: please see tomorrow's Iraq Updates for next segment of Dr. Nahlke's Report)
(www.iraqupdates.com)
Two political analysts said that the constitutional clauses are the main reason behind the disagreement between the federal government and the government of the Kurdistan region, while another one described what is going on now between the two sides as “indirect negotiations on the Iraqi style.”
“The main reason for the accusations between federal and Kurdish governments is that each side understands the situation according to a certain vision and reading of the constitution,” Saad al-Hadithi told Aswat al-Iraq, noting that the reason is the constitution itself because the way it was written is so vague.
“Disagreement will continue for a long time because the contradicting understanding of the authorities given to the region and the federal government,” he noted.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) on Monday said that the duty of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is to create national unity and promote tolerance, adding that the establishment of support councils will bring instability and divisions in Kurdish society.
The statement was made in response to statements made by Maliki during a Baghdad-based press conference on November 20 in which he allegedly criticized the regional government’s stance on many issues.
Media adviser to Premier Nouri al-Maliki on Monday said that the Iraqi federal government will respond to the points mentioned by the release issued by Kurdistan’s regional cabinet through an official release that will be issued by al-Maliki.
“The release that will be issued by the premier will represent an official response,” Yaseen Majeed told Aswat al-Iraq.
Meanwhile, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said there us a disagreement between the presidency and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki about forming support councils, noting that the issue was sent to the constitutional court which will decide the legality of forming these councils.
For his part, Ribien Rasoul, a Kurdish political analyst, said there are problems between al-Maliki’s government and the Kurdish one regarding the authorities of the federal government.
“Media arguments will not solve the issue,” he underlined.
Political research and analyst Muhanad al-Ushieqar said “what is going on between the two governments is a sort of negotiations in the Iraqi way not mutual accusations.”
“Al-Maliki should defend the Iraqi government because it has its private interests and Kurds should defend their rights and the rights of the people who make them rule,” he added.
the relation between Baghdad and Kurdistan region witnesses disagreements over forming the support councils in the disputed areas, oil contracts with the foreign companies as well as solving the disputed areas problem.
(www.iraqupdates.com)
It started out just like any other patrol in a war-ravaged Afghan province.
Hardened by months of combat, sneak attacks and roadside ambushes, the Marines were ready for a fight. Rolling through the hardscrabble village of Shewan in Afghanistan's Farah province on August 8, the leathernecks of the Twentynine Palms, Calif.-based 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment knew enemy eyes were upon them.
It was a village they'd had on their radar for months. Taliban insurgents and their al Qaeda helpers were constantly harassing the Marines charged with holding back the anti-coalition flood in their 37,000 square mile operational area -- and insurgents were using Shewan as an occasional base for attacks.
They knew the rows of mud compounds held bad guys. But on the tail end of the 10-mile patrol, they never could have expected the hornets nest they were destined to stir up.
"I was prepared for contact but I wasn't expecting any," a Marine unit leader told Military.com. "It turned out later that there was a big meeting of enemy leaders in the town that we had interrupted, and we inadvertently trapped them inside of their compound."
It all started with a rocket propelled grenade shot at around 1:00 pm, and it ended nearly eight hours later with more than 50 enemy killed and only one injured Marine. For months, 2/7 had absorbed ambush after ambush from their hit-and-run opponents, suffering one of the highest casualty rates of any Marine unit deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan.
The unit would be a symbol of the festering conflict in Afghanistan, where few NATO allies are willing to pitch in when the fight turns nasty and the full-force of American might distracted by the high-profile conflict in Iraq.
But on August 8, in what would be known as "the battle of Shewan," it was payback time.
In an exclusive email exchange with Military.com, the platoon commander who led the Marines on that ill-fated patrol described the pitched battle in vivid detail. His Marines preferred that their story be recounted anonymously, so Marine officials declined several requests to name the specific platoon and company involved in the hours-long battle.
What the story shows is a typically aggressive response to an enemy that for once decided to emerge from the shadows. And it also serves as an illuminating look at how, no matter the adversity and casualty count, U.S. forces continue to fight with the will and determination to win, no matter the odds.
"We didn't win the fight because of our superior firepower. We were severely outnumbered, and outgunned," the platoon commander told Military.com. "From that first counter ambush assault we gained the momentum and maintained it until the enemy finally fled from the battlefield eight hours later."
Ambush Unleashed
Less than two hours into the patrol one of the Marine Humvees took fire from an enemy RPG team about 150 yards away. The grenade sailed harmlessly by, but the platoon sergeant swung his rifle, fired and killed the shooter while another Marine dropped a second man, the platoon commander said. The unit continued to receive sporadic small arms fire for the next hour, but pressed on with their patrol.
Then all hell broke loose.
About 10 insurgents ambushed the Marines' vehicles from an irrigation ditch and more fired on the patrol from a nearby trench line. Though a group of Marines tried to push through the enemy position, they were rebuffed by heavy fire and another Humvee was rocked by a volley of RPG rounds.
As the Humvee burned with its vehicle commander still inside, the Marines pounded the insurgent positions with M249 fire while AK bullets ricocheted off their vehicles. The platoon commander rushed to the downed vehicle to pull the stricken Marine to safety.
"All of a sudden we took an intense amount of machine gun fire from the tree line and at this point numerous machine guns opened up on my vehicle and the dismounted crew trapped in the kill zone," the platoon commander wrote. "This began 20 minutes of intense fighting as the platoon battled to recover the Marines from the kill zone."
All this was too much for one of the platoon's designated marksmen, who crawled to the top of a berm -- exposing himself to enemy fire -- and began to plink off the insurgent gunners firing at the burning Humvee.
"The enemy fired over 40 RPGs from the tree line but were unable to effectively engage the Marines trapped in the kill zone because of the high amount of accurate fire being directed at them," the platoon commander said. "The enemy was reinforcing the tree line and replacing fighters as quickly as we were killing them."
So the designated marksman kept his cool and continued to fire.
"The designated marksman merely adjusted [his sights] and sighted in on targets as they revealed their positions by engaging him," the platoon commander added. "He rapidly acquired and prosecuted these targets again and again, firing his rifle with exceptional accuracy ... until all of the Marines were recovered from the kill zone."
In all, the designated marksmen fired 20 shots, racking up 20 dead fighters.
Finally the Marines were able to roll in an MRAP vehicle to recover the wounded Marines, and the platoon pulled back out of the enemy's range to "redistribute ammunition and [come] up with a quick game plan," the platoon commander said.
Went back for more
The fighters never expected the Marines to return and were surprised to see leathernecks swarming through their trenches and targeting two strongholds with close air support.
"We took another 60 or so RPGs, some rockets and mortars ... but as we attempted to assault we started taking more fire from another compound," the platoon commander wrote. "The enemy had established a defense with mutually supporting positions."
Unable to continue the assault because of the intensity of fire, and with enemy trucks pulling into the compounds and disgorging insurgent fighters, two Marines crawled through a hail of machine gun fire to get more precise coordinates for an aerial bombing run. From only 75 meters away -- well within "danger close" restrictions -- the two Marines called in air strikes until the enemy eventually withdrew from the area.
In all, what started as an ambush by 30 insurgent fighters swelled to a full-fledged assault by an estimated 250 enemy militants. The 30 or so Marines of 2/7's platoon killed more than 50 insurgents in the eight-hour battle, the Corps says.
"It turned out later that there was a big meeting of enemy leaders in the town that we had interrupted and we inadvertently trapped them inside of their compound," the platoon commander wrote. "They must have thought that if they ambushed us we would cut and run. This was not the case."
(www.military.com)
It appears the next important item for Iraq is release from Article VII and the protection of their foreign assets especially those being held in U.S. Banks.There is a laundry list of items the GoI and CBI must address in building this nation.
To begin with, two years after the initial draft there is still not Hydro Carbon Law enacted. Iraqi/Kurdish differences continue to be a major stumblingblock to its passage. Not only does the important HCL languishes development of its own oil sector continues to be neglected. Until these items are addressed any hope of them monetizing their oil is out of the question.
Lets turn our attention to the Dinar. We all believe it is undervalued or else we would not be invested in them. More important than whether it is revalued, reverted, restored, free floated, or lopped is its convertibility. It is imperative the Dinar be included in the foreign assets held by nations outside of Iraq. The only means by which the "real rate" can be assigned is to allow the dinar to free float backed by oil reserves, cash reserves and gold. The Dinar at this point can be revalued at the "real rate".
Iraq continues to struggle with providing basic services to its citizens. Reconstruction is still continuing an undervalued Dinar allows more reconstruction to occur. The other issue that must be addressed is de-dollarization. Until the economy is fully de-dollarized the Iraqi Dinar while favored will continue to be at a disadvantage delaying its convertibility into other currencies.
I for one am coming to the conclusion that any significant change in the exchange rate will not be forthcoming this year. Earlier in 2008 I remember hearing speculation the Dinar's exchange rate would reach 1000/1 by years end. I am not confident that this will happen. I am also not so confident that a significant change in the exchange rate will necessarily occur in 2009. Of course I hope I am wrong.
The political scene is likely to remain unstable, as conflicts between and within Iraq's various communities persist and fluctuate. However, the Economist Intelligence Unit does not expect violence to return to the highs of 2006 and early 2007.
The attempt by the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to boost his authority on the back of a revived Iraqi army will lead to increased friction with the Kurdish parties, exacerbated by growing Kurdish impatience over Kirkuk.
The government will seek to reassure the US administration that Iraq is capable of filling the security gaps and withstanding any possible Iranian infiltration during the drawdown of US forces.
Despite the lack of a federal hydrocarbons law, the government will persist with efforts to award long-term oilfield development contracts to international companies.
The fiscal account is likely to fall into deficit from 2009, as oil prices decline and expenditure continues to grow rapidly.
We expect real GDP growth to ease but remain strong, at around 6.5%, in 2009-10, as oil production continues to increase--albeit slowly--private-sector activity revives and investment (including foreign) grows.
We have revised Iraq's current-account outlook in line with the lowering of our oil price forecasts. The current account is now expected to move from a surplus of nearly US$20bn in 2008 into a deficit of US$7.2bn in 2010.
DOMESTIC POLITICS: We expect the political situation in Iraq to remain highly unstable, although the recent security gains should mean that the level of violence remains below the peak it reached in 2006 and early 2007. The Iraqi army is likely to continue to take on a greater combat role, allowing US forces not only to switch to a peacekeeping function, but also to begin to reduce their numbers substantially from early 2009. Mr Maliki will seek to use the revived Iraqi army to both spread and enforce his authority, a process that will dovetail into a wider political strategy aimed at boosting his "nationalist" credentials. However, we expect this tactic to lead to increased friction between the central government and the Kurdish parties, which will only be exacerbated by growing Kurdish impatience at the failure to resolve the status of the northern city of Kirkuk and several other "disputed" areas. Meanwhile, sectarian violence will ebb and flow, although much will depend on the future integration of the Sunni-dominated Awakening Councils (many of which include former insurgents) into the state apparatus.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: Iraq's foreign policy will continue to be dominated by its efforts both to avoid becoming entangled in the stand-off between Iran and the US and to seek to carve out a more independent role for itself. However, the government will have to proceed carefully to avoid antagonising either country. Most notably, it will seek to prove to the US administration that Iraq is capable of filling the security gaps and withstanding any possible Iranian infiltration during the drawdown of US forces, while reassuring Iran that the rejuvenated Iraqi army poses no threat to it. Iraq will also attempt to improve its ties with its wary Arab neighbours, partly out of a desire to reach a debt relief deal with those states, as it has now done with the UAE. Iraq can also use its oil wealth to strengthen relations with its less oil-rich Arab neighbours, as it has already done with Jordan (through the resumption of discounted oil exports). However, unless the government distances itself from Iran--an unlikely prospect, given the closeness of many leading Iraqi Shia, and Kurdish, politicians to the Islamic Republic--Iraq's Arab neighbours will remain wary of its intentions.
POLICY TRENDS: Economic policymaking will be constrained by the weakness of central government control. As a result, the government's primary aim will be to improve project implementation, in part by encouraging greater local participation and cutting bureaucratic constraints. However, progress will be slow and piecemeal, curtailed by vested interests and rampant corruption. Despite the failure to pass a federal hydrocarbons law, a raft of development contracts with foreign oil firms are likely to be signed in the coming years, in some cases reviving deals agreed before 2003--as was evident in September, when the China National Petroleum Corporation was awarded a 20-year service contract. In contrast, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has a separate oil law, under which it has controversially signed a number of exploration and production-sharing agreements.
INTERNATIONAL ASSUMPTIONS: As the US economy moves into recession, and the slowdown spreads to the EU and beyond, world economic growth (at purchasing power parity rates) is forecast to slow from an estimated 4.9% in 2007 and 3.8% in 2008, to an average of just 3% in 2009-10. As a result of this softening in global demand, and of the recovery in the dollar, we now envisage that oil prices will decline sharply from their earlier highs, to an average of US$75/barrel in 2008 and US$82/b in 2009.
ECONOMIC GROWTH: Economic growth is expected to remain healthy in 2009-10, although it will remain uneven. A recovery is expected in some of Iraq's more ethnically and religiously homogenous southern and western provinces, leading to increased investment, including from Iraq's neighbours, and greater wholesale and retail activity. Moreover, the robust economic growth already witnessed in the more stable KRG-administered provinces is likely to persist. However, Baghdad and other mixed areas in central and eastern Iraq will continue to experience economic stagnation. In addition, import growth will increase markedly, as Iraq relies heavily on imports for both consumer goods and capital inputs, although export growth will be supported by incremental oil production increases in the southern fields. Overall, we expect real GDP growth to slow, but remain strong, over the outlook period, falling to an annual average of 6.5%.
INFLATION: Consumer price growth is likely to remain relatively low over the outlook period, as the Central Bank of Iraq persists with its dinar appreciation strategy and supply shortages of basic items ease in the wake of the improved security situation. With international non-oil commodity prices also expected to fall sharply in 2009, we forecast that inflation will remain low, at 5.4%, although it is expected to pick up slightly in 2010, to 7%, as domestic demand pressures increase and global foodstuffs prices rise. However, doubts will continue to surround the veracity of the Central Bank's consumer price figures, as less stable parts of the country, as well as the KRG-administered provinces, are not covered by the data.
EXCHANGE RATES: We expect the Central Bank to oversee further strengthening of the dinar over the early part of the outlook period, as it seeks to lock in the recent decline in inflation. However, in early 2009 the Central Bank is likely to revert to the policy it pursued between 2004 and late 2006, when it maintained a fixed rate against the dollar. This move will be assisted by the expected recovery of the US currency in 2009, which should help to dampen import costs. As a result, we forecast that the dinar will strengthen in 2009 from an estimated average of ID1,202:US$1 in 2008 to around ID1,178:US$1, before levelling off somewhat at ID1,167:US$1 in 2010.
EXTERNAL SECTOR: Iraq's current-account outlook has worsened substantially in the wake of a sharp downward revision to our oil price projections. We now expect that export earnings will fall by over 20% in 2009, as international oil prices decline sharply in response to the severe global economic downturn, before recovering slightly in 2010. The import bill is likely to rise throughout the outlook period, although a sharp fall in global non-oil commodity prices is forecast to cause the rate of growth to slow to an annual average of around 18%, compared with an estimated increase of over 45% in 2008. As a result, the trade surplus will narrow sharply, from an estimated US$29bn (34% of GDP) in 2008 to US$9bn and US$4bn in 2009 and 2010 respectively. With services debits also set to rise, in tandem with increased import spending, the non-merchandise deficit is also likely to widen, causing the current account to deteriorate rapidly, moving from an estimated surplus of nearly US$20bn (23% of GDP) in 2008 into a deficit of US$1.3bn and US$7.2bn in 2009 and 2010 respectively. http://www.zawya.com/printstory.cfm?storyid=EIU20081021210000561&l=132100081014
Important to note about the real, planned policies BHO would institute for Iraq.. and the US.
QUOTE:
I rather doubt that a man with his self image is likely to be content to leave the White House eight years from now having been a mere steward of Republican capitalism and military policy. I suspect he wants to play for the history books and do something dramatic with America. I suspect, as he says, he intends to be the change - and not merely of the "can't we all just get along?" variety. In fact, I suspect he doesn't want to get along with his philosophical opposition - he wants to politically overwhelm us.
The fact that he has selected a senior team of credible, centrist financial men and women does not mean he is committed to free markets. As a cautious, shrewd man, he understands that he must steady the markets and the economy before he can start on his more ambitious, re-distributive policies...
Remember during the campaign, when Mr. Obama was on his way to Iraq, he was quite dismissive of the role of the top generals. Once again, he used the phrase "His job, as president" was to make the policy, and their job was merely to carry out his orders...
==
BLANKLEY: Brace for the change you do not believe in President-elect Obama is no centrist
Tony Blankley
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
From the Huffington Post and the Daily Kos to National Review and the Washington Times - and all the mainstream media in between commentators are puzzling over who the dickens President-elect Barack Obama really is. On the progressive left, they are beginning to fear he may not be for "redistributive justice." On the Wall Street Journal free market right they are seeing, in his economic team, the possibility that he is really as safe to capitalism as a banker. Karl Rove has concluded that "Mr. Obama's economic team was reassuring. He's generally surrounded himself with intelligent, mainstream advisers."
Those impassioned by the anti-war slogan no blood for oil are getting nervous. According to Politico, Jodie Evans, a Code Pink co-founder who with her husband helped raise a lot of money for Mr. Obama during the primary and general election, recalled her interaction with Mr. Obama: "It has gotten to the point where he sees me coming and before I am close he just keeps repeating, 'Jodie, I PROMISE, I will end the war, I promise I will end the war.' "
The mainstream media, still warmed by the success of their work electing Mr. Obama, comfortably headline an article on the topic in the National Journal:The President-Elect's Appointments Reflect his confidence in his own idiosyncratic blueprint and his ability to hold together an eclectic administration." It is a pity the conversation about what Mr. Obama might actually do as president didn't begin in the media until after the election. But, not to worry. As Emma Goldman, the 1900s anarchist Marxist is reputed to have said: "In America, elections are the opium of the people." Well, we have had our fix, no matter how uninformed we were during the injection.
There is something degrading about serious, prominent political people of the left or right (to say nothing of the broader public) being forced to play policy hide and seek with the president-elect of the United States. And there is something presumptive about a president elect who is very satisfied to keep the public guessing about what he stands for and what he plans to do. It is redolent of the most cynical of 19th century European politics. But if he wants us to play the guessing game, I'll play.
I suspect that free market advocates need to be careful not to jump to early conclusions about Obama. The fact that he has selected a senior team of credible, centrist financial men and women does not mean he is committed to free markets. As a cautious, shrewd man, he understands that he must steady the markets and the economy before he can start on his more ambitious, re-distributive policies. As he himself said last week: Don't worry about the centrist, experienced Clinton appointees he is selecting: It is his job, as president, to be the change.
Unlike some of his supporters, I take Mr. Obama at his word. In my reading of history, men with his level of intentionally displayed self-confidence should be believed when they have earlier asserted grand - even grandiose - goals. Whether they are actually that self-confident, or actually tormented by secret self doubt, either mentality often leads to efforts at grand and "heroic" public policies once in office.
And, as long as the president-elect will not now publicly declare himself, these foolish psychological games are necessary. So, I rather doubt that a man with his self image is likely to be content to leave the White House eight years from now having been a mere steward of Republican capitalism and military policy. I suspect he wants to play for the history books and do something dramatic with America. I suspect, as he says, he intends to be the change - and not merely of the "can't we all just get along?" variety. In fact, I suspect he doesn't want to get along with his philosophical opposition - he wants to politically overwhelm us.
On the foreign policy front likewise, solid appointments may not lead to solid policies. Remember during the campaign, when Mr. Obama was on his way to Iraq, he was quite dismissive of the role of the top generals. Once again, he used the phrase "His job, as president" was to make the policy, and their job was merely to carry out his orders. That was a very unrealistic view of the relationship between civilian and military leadership - even by the example of such towering civilian leaders as FDR, Churchill or Lincoln.
Here is my suggestion to those who disagreed with what, during and before the campaign, Mr. Obama seemed to be saying about economics, diplomacy, culture and foreign policy: Do not take too much comfort from his appointees. Brace for the change you do not believe in.
Obama too Important to Respond to US Supreme Court
Posted in: Sher Zieve
By Sher Zieve
Dec 3, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama’s refusal to produce an original and viable birth certificate indicating that he truly and indisputably is a natural born US citizen—as is required by the US Constitution—is continuing to take unusual tacks and turns. In fact, as it is appearing more and more that Barack Obama is not qualified for the US presidency, his and his minions’ machinations may just take the country off course entirely. Now, not only is Mr. Obama refusing to provide proof that he is even eligible to be the President of the United States but, he has decided to thumb his nose at members of our highest court in the land.
With regards to Donofrio v Wells—one of a growing number of lawsuits filed nationwide that question the eligibility of Barack Obama to be POTUS—the full US Supreme Court has agreed to conference on the suit 5 December 2008. Obama and the DNC (also named in the suit) were advised by the high court to respond to Donofrio v Wells by 1 December. To date, neither Mr. Obama nor the DNC have responded. With this lack of response, the president-elect has now flatly stated that he is above—if not beyond and outside of—the law and reports and is responsible only to himself. This is what—not who—was elected to the presidency of the United States.
The primary qualification for any US President is articulated in the US Constitution’s Article II and reads: “No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.” Obama’s paternal grandmother still maintains that her grandson—Barack Hussein Obama (AKA Barry Sotero)—was born in Kenya and that she attended his birth. Obama’s half-brother and half-sister have confirmed the grandmother’s statement. Kenyan officials have worked tirelessly in their attempts to cover up Mr. Obama’s true birthplace and even held Obama-critic Jerome Corsi, PhD in custody (jail) for visiting that country and working to elicit the truth. Still, Obama was allowed and apparently continues to be allowed to refuse to produce a number of documents, including the one which would qualify or disqualify him to hold the office of President of the United States—his true and official birth certificate.
Note: The copy of the Hawaiian document (now sealed away from US citizens by the Governor of Hawaii) that appeared for a time on Obama’s website was not a certified birth certificate. Instead, it was a “certificate of live birth” stating that Obama was born alive. Even that document’s authenticity has been debunked by multiple sources. Obama’s rise to fame—with no vetting from the media or the Democrat Party—is nothing less than phenomenal. It causes any thinking person—apparently not too many of those left—to wonder what forces are behind him.
In an outstanding column from Joan Swirsky, “Obama the Trojan Horse”, she cites legal Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr. as stating “America is facing potentially the gravest constitutional crisis in her history” and “If Obama fails to prove his citizenship but the voters, the Electors, or the Members of the House purport to "elect" him. He will be nothing but a usurper, because the Constitution defines him as such. And he can never become anything else, because a usurper cannot gain legitimacy if even all of the country aid, abets, accedes to, or acquiesces in his usurpation.”
This may be the toughest test that our US Constitution has ever faced. If the qualifications for POTUS are suspended for Obama, the entire document will be null and void—as will, inevitably, our country. And now, Mr. Obama has essentially told the United States Supreme Court to “go pound sand”—or worse. If allowed to assume the presidency and he is NOT a natural born US citizen he will be emboldened to no longer respect—let alone follow—any law that he doesn’t like. And his National Civilian Police Force (AKA “The American Gestapo”) will—along with other democracy-busting programs—be quickly put into place. With all of these insanities being fomented by Democrats—including the worldwide economic crisis—I have to wonder how many actually realize how much jeopardy we and the country are in. The fact is that this current pending Constitutional crisis places all of us in the gravest of positions.
TRUTH: OBAMA'S BIRTH CERTIFICATE & THE SUPREME COURT
Posted in: J. Grant Swank, Jr.
By J. Grant Swank, Jr.
Dec 3, 2008
Friday, December 5 is when the Supreme Court will meet “in conference” regarding whether or not Barack Obama’s birth certificate shows him to be a natural-born citizen of the United States.
There are many who believe that he is not that.
If the Supreme Court sides with fact, then truth will prevail. If not, then the Supreme Court will become an accomplice to devilment maximum, the latter no stranger to America’s grassroots.
If Obama is found to be other than a natural-born citizen, then all that he has done thus far is null and void. All that he appoints for the future becomes null and void.
Further, he will be exposed as the imposter that he is.
He has claimed to be “Christian." Obama is no Christian according to the biblical definition for he represents ethics which are directly opposed to the New Testament ethic. One example is his support for killing womb babies. Another is his support for sodomy.
In addition, he is a member of the theologically liberal United Church of Christ (Congregational) which stands for most anti-biblical positions, thus persecuting conservative clergy and laypersons throughout its denomination.
Truth will win.
God has not given up on America. God will see to it that eventually in the divine calendar truth will win. God has done it before; He will do it again.
Never forget the founding fathers’ and mothers’ prayers for their newfound country. Those intercessions are still before the eternal throne to this moment. They are powerful intercessions. They activate divine justice upon this nation.
In addition, the country is laden with the righteous remnant—that is, those who adhere solely to the Bible as divine revelation. These individual souls come regularly to the divine throne on behalf of this Republic. God honors those sincere petitions.
With the prayers of our founding fathers and mothers as well as the genuine concerns of the present-tense righteous remnant, truth will out regarding the mask Muslim Barack Obama.
He is a charlatan of prime example. He is a fraudulent young enthusiast who knows how to create mob hysteria for his empty promises. He is one of the most dangerous personages in power today..
But God is not mocked. He is sidelined by religious hypocrites or secularists out to obliterate America’s Christian heritage.
But God will stand alongside the minority as He has always done so. The Bible states that there are many on the broad road to destruction, but few on the straight and narrow that leads to eternal life. God walks with those on the narrow road, though they be few.
Consequently, there is no reason to fear what the Supreme Court concludes. If they side with truth, then God will have prevailed in that decision. If they side with the lie, then God will in His time bring divine judgment upon the Supreme Court as well as reveal the truth in another venue.
One way or another, God will have his day. He will out the truth. The righteous remnant know this and therefore continue hope for their nation “under God.”
Thank you so much for your comments regarding the Constitutional crisis at hand. Your commentaries om the subject are coherent and truly reflective of scripture.
After more than 35 years of studying the Old Testament, I have never, in my lifetime, of studying realized so much paralleling of the choices to be made and the consequences of executing the choices.
Yes, I know that God can intervene and turn the tide of ungodliness in this country, BUT short of that, I see the end of the church age at hand.
Anything and everything is possible with God. In my opinion, end time prophecy seems more in reach than ever.
Iraq signs agreement to settle its debts with Saudi Arabia (15 billion dollars), Saudi Arabia demanding payment of debts amounting to 40 billion dollars with interes
04/12/2008 Thursday 06 - is the argument -1429 e
Jabr, speaking of Iraq's debt to Saudi Arabia and said he is 15 billion dollars, Saudi Arabia says it is owed by Iraq of 40 billion dollars. و ة Jabor said that Saudi Arabia seeks the benefits of Iraqi debt Revealed Finance Minister Bayan Jabr Iraq is rid of most of its debt and the remainder "of Iraq's debt but four states and some private sector companies ... First, Poland debt worth 2.5 billion dollars
." وأضmeasures to settle the debt with Poland ... بقر و." Remained only a political decision (Polish) to settle the matter and we hope that soon, for the settlement agreement. "
و. Jabr, speaking of Iraq's debt to Saudi Arabia and said he is 15 billion dollars, Saudi Arabia says it is owed by Iraq of 40 billion dollars. وقJabor said that Saudi Arabia seeks the benefits of the debt Iraq despite the continued presence of a paragraph in the three conventions signed between the two countries during the Iran-Iraq war states are not subject to any benefits of debt relief and said, "So that we reject any benefits contrary to the Convention.". A reparation for negotiations by Iraq with Kuwait and the UN Security Council to persuade them to reduce the rate of five percent is being deducted from the sale of Iraqi oil in payment of compensation owed to Kuwait. وتق1990. The United Nations under Security Council resolution to deduct a specific percentage of the value of sales of Iraqi oil pay in compensation for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.." "We started negotiations with Kuwait to reduce the ratio to one percent and we hope that the Security Council respond positively to the requests for Iraq because it affects the Iraqi people and especially with the current low oil prices." وأض "There are some countries of the Security Council has sent positive signals in this regard .. and Kuwaitis are ready to respond to these demands
ة. Said Finance Minister Bayan Jabr on Wednesday that the global financial crisis and the decline in oil prices will not affect next year's state budget, but the continuing crisis will have significant repercussions on Iraq in 2010 and 2011 did not reach the ways to increase financial returns.
." Jabor said in an interview with Reuters that the reduction of world oil prices to below fifty dollars a barrel "will not affect the budget for Iraq in 2009 because of a surplus of the current fiscal year, an estimated five and ten billion dollars surplus will be used to cover the deficit for next year and cover the drop in oil prices. "pressure of the global financial crisis and oil prices fell for a year but "I say explicitly that we will face a severe crisis in 2010 if the crisis continued." وأشا. The Iraqi minister pointed out that the best solution to address the crisis is to increase the rates of export of Iraqi oil in Iraq currently exports about 1.7 million barrels of oil a day.." "I think that element basis for facing this crisis is to increase the export of Iraqi oil .. I call on the Ministry of Oil to start thinking seriously to increase oil exports in 2009 to 2.5 million barrels a day." وطالب2010." And demanded redress open to the investment world oil companies to start investing in the oil sector in Iraq and said "This is the best solution to address the crisis and without Snqa in a prohibited Emasineks negatively on everything in the budget in 2010.". He said Iraq is considering other alternatives to increase the funds available with the continuing decline in world oil prices, including the establishment of Iraq early next year put a new bid to introduce a fourth company to work in the communications sector for the third generation of mobile phones.." Iraq had last year signed a one-year contract with three mobile phone companies for work in Iraq which happened at about four billion dollars, the minister said, "We expect to get 1.5 billion dollars worth of leave-fourth the total will be 5.5 billion dollars, money will be used for next year's budget. "." He added that the total participants in the mobile phone companies in Iraq reached 15 million common "We believe that the presence of a fourth company will contribute to solving the problem of communication and mobile phone in Iraq."ة." Jabr said that among the alternatives being examined by Iraq to increase revenue for next year approved tax law, customs duties and lease a number of state-owned factories to the private sector for 15 years, a move the Iraqi minister said: "It precedes the stage of privatization."." He denied the existence of any trend to privatize the Iraqi banking system and said "we have no idea now in the privatization of the banking sector in Iraq .. We have the idea of rehabilitation, a process that precedes the process of privatization and lease of a number of government institutions to Iraqi and foreign companies for 15 years." http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ar&u=http://www.marsadiraq.com/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dmarsadiraq.com%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26hs%3DYcV
Thanks, Carole. I care. It is our future. My thoughts..
America - whether she likes it or not - is an example to all. Up until now, America has been a land which is subject to law - the Supreme Law of the Land - the Constitution. Any usurpation of law was quickly dealt with and the world noted that the "cop" of the world was governed by law and enforced it. You don't cross an uncorrupt cop. But now, if America chooses to IGNORE the law and so become a "shady" cop and even a lawbreaker, this changes the balance of power in the world.
And the world is looking. Already, since this usurpation has occurred, there has been a heyday - since the American example says to the world that America no longer cares about nor adheres to.. is no longer subject to the law. Running amuck with this, America has allowed those who are totally unqualified to begin to exert themselves and take power wrongfully. We see it in Hillary Clinton being appointed to Secretary of State with NO QUALIFICATIONS for the job whatsoever. We see it in the Canadian opposition being emboldened, for the first time in that country's history, to try and usurp the minority conservative government by an ad hoc coalition of opposition parties (that is really what the people voted for?)
The consequences of violating the law are manifold - both foreign and domestic- and America has opened to the world a Pandora's Box by allowing in a man whose qualifications are suspect because they are very likely unlawful (unconstitutional - since he refuses to prove he is qualified according to the law, natural born). Why should the rest of the world be subject to law when the "cop" of the world no longer is? If the American people can usurp authority, why can't we? If they can appoint to the office of President a man wholly unqualified to take that office by law, why can't we also appoint to office others who are similarly totally unqualified? Why can't we use political force to impose our will on the people, as the Americans are doing? Who will stop us? If the "cop" won't submit to law and has become corrupt, why should we submit to law or the will of the people through that law (the Constitution - the contract between the people and the government)?
Obviously, this ought never to be so.
The sentiment now gaining in the world is the reasoning that if the American people are this ignorant.. if they are this far from the truth or caring about that which underpins their true freedom under the law.. if they will allow power to be taken by sheer force without regard for law.. well then, the other powers in the world may by force take power with no consequences, also. Now the time is ripe to perpetrate usurpation upon the world, as America's example demonstrates. The people of the West are sufficiently stupid, ill-informed and docile to perpetrate any corrupt fraud upon them.
America's actions have consequences, and not just for America alone. The world is looking and copies her lead and example. May the checks and balances to power placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution be applied to check this misuse and usurpation of power.. or the future for the world is dim indeed... a world without any "cop" but everyone acting instead according to their own selfish interest. What lies ahead? Turf wars. It is as though America has elected to become a part of Africa.. including its political unrest and corrupt structure. Is that what Americans really wanted by electing a Kenyan to the power of the POTUS? (If he isn't a Kenyan, prove it by producing his original sealed birth certificate.)
===
NYT Lies About Hillary’s Qualifications
by Steve Gilbert
December 3rd, 2008
Alas, in the age of Obama it is futile to even think about anyone being unqualified for any job.
But even for the New York Times this article (below) is a laughable screed. Mrs. Clinton has exactly no qualifications for the position of Secretary Of State.
In fact, she herself tacitly admitted as much when she was forced to make up a foreign policy background that even her former aides and assistants reported were a tissue of lies.
Everyone knows that her appointment by Obama is just the worst kind of political pay-off in the time dis-honored tradition of Democrat Party.
It had nothing to do with whether she can do the job or would be a benefit to our country.
But remember this article the next time you are tempted to think that the New York Times has any regard whatsoever for the truth.
In a less dangerous world this would be a real knee-slapper from New York Times:
QUOTE:
An Uncommon Résumé in an Unusual Time
By HELENE COOPER
December 3, 2008
WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks no foreign languages, but has visited 90 countries. She has never negotiated an agreement between two warring sides, but a speech she delivered in Beijing in 1995 is still quoted by women’s rights advocates around the world.
As President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton carries a résumé that is in many ways thinner than her predecessors. She does not bring the decades of academic and policy expertise that Condoleezza Rice brought to the job, nor does she have Colin L. Powell’s military know-how, or even Warren Christopher’s past experience as a deputy secretary of state.
Nor does she have James A. Baker III’s chummy relationship with her boss. Or the street credibility of a Madeleine K. Albright or Henry A. Kissinger, whose very birthplaces — Prague and Bavaria — gave them an aura of worldliness that added sheen to their diplomatic credentials.
And yet, Mrs. Clinton’s selection has electrified a diplomatic world where officials can now anticipate the prospect of sitting across a conference table from a former American first lady and presidential candidate, with all of the drama that is attached to the Clinton story.
“When she arrives in a capital city, that city will be riveted,” said George Friedman, chief executive of Stratfor, a geopolitical risk analysis company. “The one thing she will have is the undivided attention of any foreign leader she is in a room with.”
Beyond mere star power, Mrs. Clinton’s backers say that her unorthodox background masks diplomatic skills that many of her predecessors in the job did not have. And they dismiss the notion that her inability to order a meal in French means she cannot cajole the European Union to send more troops into Afghanistan.
“Look, there are lots of fabulously successful career foreign service officers out there, but first and foremost a secretary of state has to be a person who understands the complexity of the world,” said Liz Schrayer, director of the Center for U.S. Global Engagement. “In today’s world, the old school of criteria for the job of secretary of state doesn’t make the same sense to me as it might have a decade ago.”
Mrs. Clinton does not, at the moment, have the kind of close working relationship with Mr. Obama that two of the most highly regarded American secretaries of state, Dean Acheson and George Marshall, had with President Harry S. Truman. But neither Acheson nor Marshall began his tenure as Truman’s close friend. “They developed close professional relationships with Truman,” said Richard C. Holbrooke, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations, “but they were not his drinking buddies, or part of that poker-playing crowd that sat around at the Sequoia.”
Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Holbrooke said, “understands global issues, women’s rights and public diplomacy, and has watched her husband make war-peace decisions.”
That last bit — the idea that Mrs. Clinton received firsthand foreign policy experience via osmosis in her eight years as first lady, was a bone of contention in the Democratic primaries, when Mr. Obama’s own foreign policy advisers pooh-poohed Mrs. Clinton’s experience. In his news conference on Monday, Mr. Obama shrugged off his own words as bygone.
With the campaign behind them, advisers to Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton now say the Obama camp exaggerated Mrs. Clinton’s lack of foreign policy experience. Mrs. Clinton traveled to 82 countries as first lady, and before heading overseas would often buttonhole White House national security employees. She did not sit in on National Security Council meetings, but she did speak regularly with foreign diplomats and experts, her aides said.
She pushed to attend a United Nations conference on women in Beijing in 1995, when many Washington critics, within and outside the Clinton administration, argued that her attendance would send the wrong signal, offering China a reward of sorts for improper behavior in the detention of human rights activists. (President Bill Clinton did not visit China until 1998.)
At the conference, Mrs. Clinton said: “If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.” More than a decade later, women’s rights advocates still refer to those words.
Mrs. Clinton has an extensive network of foreign contacts from her time on the Senate Armed Services Committee, through which she traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan three times, and through her husband. In the Senate, she sometimes used the foreign contacts she developed while at the White House, including picking up the phone to ask Tony Blair, then the British prime minister, to put in a plug at the White House for a defense contract that would benefit New York.
The biggest question mark on Mrs. Clinton’s résumé may be whether she can actually negotiate a peace deal — a requirement for any good secretary of state. Mrs. Clinton has not had to lock warring foreign leaders in a room and bully them into submission, or shuttle between world capitals to prod officials to sign a piece of paper.
Mrs. Clinton has praised Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the former NATO commander, and Mr. Holbrooke, an envoy to the Balkans in the Clinton administration, for their conduct of diplomacy, in which both men socialized and drank with Serbia’s wartime leader, Slobodan Milosevic, to gauge his strengths. “You don’t learn something from him by pointing at him across the ocean,” she told The New York Times in an interview this year.
Philippe Reines, Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman, said she had worked as a senator to persuade Manhattan entrepreneurs to invest in economic development in upstate New York, and even worked to get Manhattan restaurateurs to use farm products from upstate.
==end quote===
This article was posted by Steve Gilbert on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008.
Comments:
1) proreason
"in the age of Obama it is futile to even think about anyone being unqualified for any job”
yep.
It’s not about experience and knowledge. It’s about ideology and payoff.
The country is paying the price as we speak. And it won’t get better without a major shock. If a 52% drop in the SP500, unemployment shooting up, and retirements ruined doesn’t shock the system into sanity, then it will take something even worse. And it will happen. If not now, then soon. At the end of the day, a price for stupidity will be enacted.
2) GuppyNblue
Hillary is a professional politician and has never been anything else. Even when in school (where she could have been learning something) she was a political activist. Her and kind only use an office to further their careers and portfolios. I just heard Obama named Bill Richardson as commerce secretary - same story there. When he knew he wouldn’t go further in the primaries he gave Obama his endorsement for a second best option.
This has been a problem in the past but today it’s the only way to do business in Washington. They don’t serve the office or the nation but use both to serve themselves. What we get out of this are the worst possible leaders because they never had any character to bring to the office anyway. Lying is second nature to them and media like the Slimes won’t call them on it. “Mr. Obama shrugged off his own words as bygone.” WTF! In other words - oh I was campaigning and we all know it’s acceptable then.
I’ll bet my first 100 Ameros that when Hillary is meeting with hostile foreign leaders, her priorities will be what she can gain and how she can get away with it.
Iraqi council gives final approval to pact with US
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA and SAMEER N. YACOUB
35 mins ago Dec 4 2008
BAGHDAD – Iraq's presidential council on Thursday approved a security pact that sets out a three-year timeframe for U.S. troops to leave, a spokesman said, the final step for the agreement to replace a U.N. mandate that expires Dec. 31.
Iraq's parliament signed off on the deal last week following months of tough talks between U.S. and Iraqi negotiators that at times seemed on the point of collapse. The entire process has been fraught with hardscrabble dealmaking between ethnic and sectarian groups.
In Washington, the White House welcomed Thursday's decision.
White House press secretary Dana Perino said the Iraqi presidential council's approval Thursday sets a path for American troops to come home and called the agreement a "remarkable achievement for both of our countries."
Under the deal, which goes into effect Jan. 1, U.S. forces will withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 30 and the entire country by Jan. 1, 2012. But the agreement includes the caveat that it should go before voters in a referendum by the end of July — when the deal will already be in effect.
That was a concession to Sunni demands and means the agreement could be rejected next year if, for example, anti-U.S. anger builds and demands for an immediate withdrawal grow. By that time, however, American troops will likely have left urban areas and will be a less intrusive presence.
President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, and his two deputies Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni Arab, and Adel Abdul-Mahdi, a Shiite, signed the accord at their headquarters in Baghdad, council spokesman Nasser al-Ani told The Associated Press.
The U.S. military has warned that the security gains of the past year remain fragile.
On another forum I read where Chase has set the date of December 15, 2008 as the day they stop selling or buying dinars. What does this mean?
I believe the GoI and the CBI are beginning to enact a stricter monetary policy that focuses on the collection of all outstanding monetary units and stem the outflow of currency from the country. As a result, the supply of Dinars on the open market place will not be quite as prevalent. This means eventually that ebay, dealers, and banks in the UK will also have less and less Dinars to sell.
Both the GoI and CBI appears to be now doing what we all hoped they would do(no, not and RV)and that is a sound monetary policy that reaches far beyond the current managed rate and focuses on supply.
I believe the two entities (GoI and CBI) believe that the Dinar is undervalued and they look to increase the purchasing popwer of the Iraqi people. A tightening of the money supply combined with the lifting of the Article VII (addresses the convertibility issue)and the passage of the HCL which will lead to the monetization of its oil may be the recipie used to acheive the "real rate" of dinar.
I am quite encouraged, although I am not a financial adviser or a dealer I suggest procuring more Dinar while they are available at a reasonable rate.
The currency of Iraq is the Dinar (IQD - sometimes referred to as the New Iraqi Dinar). The Iraqi authorities confirm that in practice there are no restrictions on current and capital transactions involving currency exchange as long as underlying transactions are supported by valid documentation. However, it is unclear whether currency convertibility is entirely free from exchange restrictions. The National Investment Law contains provisions that, once implemented, would allow investors to bank and transfer capital inside or outside of Iraq.
Iraq’s Oil Future: Finding the Right Framework - Part 2
04 December 2008 ( Iraq Updates )
an Iraq Updates exclusive - Dr. Carol Nahlke's report on Iraq's oil industry and its challenges
By Dr. Carole Nahlke
Section 2:
IRAQ — YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW
Why did the past fail?
Is the long night for Iraq ending?
How large is the potential?
After having lost decades of opportunity Iraq today could be on the threshold of the greatest period of prosperity for generations. Improvements in the security situation are being consolidated and the challenge remains to establish the right framework for a major expansion of the country’s substantial oil and gas resources.
Growing Reserve Estimates
According to the Oil and Gas Journal, Iraq has the world’s third largest proven petroleum reserves with 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.
However, these estimates are dated and almost certainly conservative. They have not been revised since 2001 and are largely based on 2-D seismic data from nearly three decades ago. In May 2008, the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, Braham Saleh, reported revised assessments indicating that his country has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, with as much as 350 billion barrels. This figure exceeds that of Saudi Arabia’s estimated 264 billion barrels of oil.
Whatever the estimates, it is clear the potential for reserve additions and sustained production growth is exceptional. Large areas of the country remain relatively under-explored and broad regions, particularly in Western Iraq, remain undrilled. Geologists and consultants have estimated that relatively unexplored territory in the western and southern deserts may contain an estimated additional 45 to 100 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Similarly, although Iraq’s proven natural gas reserves are estimated to 112 trillion cubic feet, the country’s potential could be much higher.
Dismal Production Levels
In 2007, Iraq’s upstream crude oil production averaged 2.1 million barrels per day (bbl/d), down from around 2.6 million bbl/d of production at the start of the decade. Iraq has struggled to maintain its pre-war production capacity of 2.8 to 3.0 million bbl/d, due to the deteriorating security situation, lack of investment, smuggling and escalating acts of sabotage and increasing level of insurgency attacks on export facilities and pipelines. For instance, average production at Kirkuk and the northern fields of around 200,000 bbl/d is only a fraction of the pre-war peak of around 680,000 bbl/d, due to reservoir damage from gas and water injection as well as shut-in export routes.
Natural gas production has steadily declined over the past decade-and-a-half, reportedly due to an associated fall in oil production and deterioration of gas processing facilities. In 2005, dry natural gas production was approximately 87 billion cubic feet (Bcf ); down from 215 Bcf in 1989. Approximately 60 percent of associated natural gas production is flared due to a lack of sufficient infrastructure to utilize it for consumption and export. In today’s world of high prices and concerns in respect of supply security it is deeply disappointing that such vast quantities of gas are wasted. It must be a priority for Iraqi policy makers to end this waste and develop options to commercialise these valuable gas resources while exporting the additional oil currently used for power generation.
Today Iraq’s economy, like that of all oil producer countries, is benefiting from higher oil prices. It is estimated that the Government of Iraq earned $41 billion in oil revenue during 2007. Clearly, much larger sums would accrue if production could be increased, and of course the whole economy will gain tremendous benefits if revenues are fairly distributed. The oil sector provides about 95% of Iraq’s foreign exchange earnings.
The Potential — Immense but is it in Reach?
The Iraqi Government has announced, with some voices of dissent (see below), a goal of 6 million bbl/d of sustainable production by the end of the decade though 4–5 million looks more realistic, while unofficial figures even suggest that a level of 6 to 8 million bbl/d is in reach by 2020. But the Iraqi Government stated that between $25 and $75 billion in investment is needed to get Iraq’s sector producing at 6 million bbl/d. And although the security situation has improved considerable political obstacles remain to be overcome.
The opportunities offered by Iraq’s oil and gas potential are immense and world class. They can be catalogued as:
The existing producing fields, which, according to the Government of Iraq, include around 9 fields that are considered “super giants” (over 5 billion barrels reserves) as well as 22 known “giant” fields (over 1 billion barrels).
Discovered fields that need to be developed.
Yet-to-find fields that need to be explored. The Western Desert region remains largely under-investigated.
Large capital investment is necessary not only to open up the enormous potential but to sustain production from existing fields, to both meet domestic consumption and increase exports. Just a fraction of Iraq’s known fields are in development. Raising oil production remains critical to providing Iraq with the resources needed for its reconstruction and economic recovery.
After more than a decade of sanctions and two Gulf Wars, Iraq’s oil infrastructure needs extensive modernization and investment. Iraq’s petroleum sector faces technical challenges in procuring, transporting and storing crude and refined products, as well as problems of managing price controls and imports, fighting smuggling and corruption, improving budget delivery, and managing sustainability of operations.
Long-term Iraq reconstruction costs could reach $100-billion or higher, of which it is estimated that more than a third will go to the oil, gas and electricity sectors. The World Bank estimates that at least $1 billion in additional revenues needs to be committed annually to the oil industry just to sustain current production.
There is also a need to rehabilitate the gas infrastructure of the country and to develop the utilisation of gas for domestic power generation. In the longer term, Iraq will also need to promote the viability of LNG and Gas-to-Liquids technologies, and to market these products, in order to realise full value from its significant resource base. Future gas development will be linked closely with expansion of its oil production capacity as more than 70% of Iraq’s gas is associated with the giant oil fields. Longer term Iraqi gas could be exported to Europe via the proposed Nabucco gas pipeline linking the Middle East to European markets.
Iraq Oil Law
The Americans have been anxious to influence Iraq’s future oil framework and its legal dimension, and it is alleged that much of the drafting has been under American supervision. If so, this is evidence of a maladroit American approach and accounts, at least in part, for the continuing political controversy, suspicion and delay surrounding the drafting of the new law.
A further major challenge to Iraq’s development of the oil sector is that resources are not evenly divided across sectarian-demographic lines. Most of the oil fields are in the Shia-dominated south, while the best prospects for future drilling are in the Kurdish north, with few resources in control of the Sunni minority. Control over rights to reserves is a source of controversy between the ethnic Kurds and other groups in the area. Currently, the Ministry of Oil has central control over oil and gas production and development in all but the Kurdish territory through its two operating entities, the North and South Oil Companies. The Kurds seem to be operating independently, with more than 15 PSC’s already signed despite the opposition in Baghdad.
Despite the numerous difficulties and obstacles, a legal framework for investment in the hydrocarbon sector remains a main policy objective. That framework should enable effective cooperation between federal and regional authorities.
The Iraq oil law, also referred to as Iraq's Hydrocarbon Law was first presented to the upper house of Parliament for review on February 27, 2007. It is still waiting enactment. The draft law focuses on upstream development and lays out the conditions for investment and international participation in the sector. The law also details a governance model which includes the proposed re-establishment of the umbrella operations company in the same form as the former the Iraq National Oil Company (INOC). This would go alongside a central regulatory body, a Federal Oil and Gas Council, to review contracts.
The draft enacting bill allocates oil revenues between Iraq's 18 provinces based on their population levels.
Nouri Al Maliki, Iraq Prime Minister, describes it as “gift to all the Iraqi people... this law has been based on our national interest. It will encourage the bringing together of all component parts of the Iraqi people”. The US has maintained that agreement on the fair distribution of Iraq’s resources is necessary for national reconciliation.
The original draft law laid out a proposed plan for domestic control of oil and gas fields and a framework for revenue sharing among governorates. But following discussions between cabinet members, parliament and other groups in July 2007, the proposal changed and the new draft will be considered at a later date by the yet-to-be established regulatory body.
Perhaps inevitably, the whole enactment process is being held up by political disputes in parliament. The Kurds are in fact opposing widening central control over planning, upstream development and revenue distribution The Kurds and the Shia have been at odds over whether regional governments should have the right to sign contracts with oil companies. Kurdish officials have been unwilling to give Baghdad veto power over the development of the industry within their territory. But officials in Baghdad insist that only the central government should direct oil industry development across the country. Mr. Shahristani’s decision to bypass the oil law reflects his government’s irritation with the Kurdish regional government, which has passed its own oil law and has been signing exploration contracts with small and medium-sized oil companies. Mr. Shahristani has warned that these contracts are illegal and that companies involved in the contracts could be blacklisted.
Numerous practical realities face the Iraqi oil industry today. They create a tantalising contrast with the possibilities for Iraqi oil which ought now to be coming into reach. In the words of Shell’s CEO Jeroen van der Veer: “You need basically ... green lights before you can work...first of all you have to know the rules of the game.” If this and the security requirement were met, then companies like Shell and its many peers could create a “win-win situation” in Iraq, "but it needs those two conditions.”
Enlarging the Vision
There are doubts in some minds about the wisdom of raising Iraqi oil production beyond the pre conflict levels. It is apparent that in certain quarters within the Iraqi administration the view exists that the expansion of oil production should be tightly limited. It is argued that there should be a ceiling on output of 3 million bbl/d.
The contention is that the oil is best left in the ground for the future benefit of the Iraqi people, that the Government take from 2.5 to 3 million bbl/d is as large as is required and that foreign investment in the oil industry, to raise output to 5 or 6 million bbl/d is therefore unnecessary and, in the opinion of some, undesirable.
The argument has echoes of the policies favoured by the main OPEC producers in the nineteen seventies and eighties, when it was contended that the oil resource should be depleted at a very restrained rate to ensure future reserves. The same idea, characterised as a depletion policy, had a brief airing in the UK when the North Sea was first being opened up.
But the conditions now are entirely different, as is the situation of Iraq. Not only is it the highest priority in both political and security terms that Iraq generates the largest and most rapid revenue flows, for the widest possible distribution to a deeply impoverished populations and for the early restoration of a debilitated infrastructure. But, also, it is highly questionable whether retaining oil in the ground beyond the demands of a balanced reserves policy, is the best investment for Iraq’s future.
Crude oil prices have been very high since mid 2007, buoyed up significantly by fast growing Asian demand and geopolitical concerns. There is no certainty that they will remain at mid 2008 levels either in the short or the medium term.
In the short term, there could be a significant price correction. As, after the usual brief period of inelastic consumer response, the effects of the doubling of the crude price in less than twelve months sink in and both consumer reaction and lower economic growth weaken the demand pull. Evidence of this can already be found in unsold cargoes of the heavier crudes, while Chinese economic expansion will be curbed by inflation fears and the removal of subsidies on refined products such as gasoline. The same pattern is occurring in the hitherto subsidised sectors of other economies in the Middle East.
In the medium term the oil-consuming world is now driven by a new determination, not present back in the nineteen eighties, to meet global warming challenges by curbing fossil fuel demand in all forms, but especially demand for oil by the transport sector, the largest oil consumer.
Extensive measures are already being taken in both Europe and the United States to ‘dethrone’ oil and reduce imported mineral oil dependence. The significant world-wide switch to biofuels is a clear example (although this is having undesirable side effects in terms of food prices which may lead to some slowing down in the trend).
All this points to a future in which, while the price collapse of the 1980s may not be repeated, there will be a distinct moderation in world oil demand, while supply sources, developed during the high price period, come on stream.
It is these considerations which have led several major oil-producing countries to put their revenues in Petroleum Funds, or so-called sovereign funds, as the best and safest investment, rather than leaving oil resources undeveloped and unexploited. Some of these funds have been long established, such as in Norway and Kuwait. Others have been opened up more recently. Iraq should certainly be following the same prudent path. It should be emphasised that building up a Petroleum Fund need be in no way to the exclusion of sensible and expanding near-term expenditure on Iraq’s recovery needs, nor on some element of careful depletion policy. A production level of 4 or 5 million bbl/d would cater for all three requirements.
But to constrain production for motives inspired by narrow nationalism, at the present stage in the evolution of world energy patterns would seem to be both short-sighted and directly against the interests of the Iraqi people.
On all counts the best investment for Iraq must surely be in, first, accelerating by all possible means the flow of funds into economic revival and the restoration of Iraq as an advancing nation with high technical skills and a strong and united social infrastructure, and, second, in building up sound investments in a less oil-dominated future.
If Iraq seeks models of the best pattern for the deployment of oil resources it needs look no further than its Arab neighbours, such as Kuwait or the UAE. All of these nations are now committing large resources to alternative energy development and to less oil-dependent economies and lifestyles.
Iraq, too, should be allowed to share in this developing vision of a better, more stable and more sustainable life pattern throughout the Arab world. It has the resources to follow such a path. It now needs the policies not to hold it back, in the name of outdated and inwardlooking ideologies of the past, but to make this happen and to bring Iraq back, fully and proudly, into the community of nations.
(Editor's note: please see tomorrow's Iraq Updates for next segment of Dr. Nahlke's Report)
(www.iraqupdates.com)
Kirkuk residents welcome SOFA passing, say step toward sovereignty
November 29, 2008 - 03:27:04
KIRKUK / Aswat al-Iraq: Local residents in the city of Kirkuk welcomed the Iraqi Parliament’s passing of the long-term security pact between Iraq and the United States, considering it as a “step in the direction of restoring the country’s full sovereignty”.
“The incumbent fledgling government would need to sign security and economic agreements with the U.S. administration in order to improve the deteriorating conditions in Iraq, a country groaning under deprivation for more than 35 years,” Hussein Ahmed al-Juburi, a teacher in Kirkuk city, told Aswat al-Iraq.
The Iraqi parliament on Thursday had approved with a majority of 149 votes to 35 the security pact between Baghdad and Washington, also known as the status of forces agreement (SOFA).
The 35 votes that rejected the agreement were those of the Sadrist bloc, or members of parliament loyal to Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, plus six others who considered SOFA as undermining the sovereignty of Iraq.
Passing SOFA, which legalize the presence of foreign troops in Iraq and determine their pullout by the year 2011, has been triggering hubbub in the Iraqi political circles for months.
Halou Zankana, a journalist, believed that the Iraqi government has to deal adeptly with the new situation and to be prepared for shouldering its constitutional and legal tasks.
“The agreement is about saying when the U.S. forces would pack up and leave Iraq, which is a great thing for it should mean an end to the U.S. occupation of the country is brought,” he said.
Another Kirkuk resident, Khaled Abdullah, an employee in a cement plant in the oil-rich city, told Aswat al-Iraq that one of the most distinguished things about SOFA is that its items, particularly the ones about Iraq’s exit from Chapter VII of the UN Charter and a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq, are clear.
Chapter VII has to do with the sanctions imposed by all means, including the use of military force against, against a country that disturbs world peace.
The chapter became applicable on Iraq after the second Gulf war, in which it occupied the neighboring tiny oil state of Kuwait.
A media celebrity, Bahaa Kirkuki, said the endorsement of the agreement was a step in the direction of the democracy-building process and interaction among groups in the parliament for unified opinions in the future.
“The opponents of this deal can watch the mechanism for implementing its items in the future to get to know about the real intentions of the U.S. forces,” Kirkuki said.
Political analyst Adnan Tawfiq said in order for Iraq to get out of this ill condition, it has to sign partnership deals like SOFA with major powers like the United States and Britain.
“The Iraqi parliament’s approval on the agreement is a case of democracy we have been denied throughout the past years,” said Tawfiq.
Some figures in Kirkuk, however, had a very different view of the deal.
Hussein Mahmoud of Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr’s office in Kirkuk told Aswat al-Iraq that the Sadrists reject SOFA altogether on the grounds that it only serves the U.S. interests, not the Iraqi people’s.
“The adoption of this agreement is shame to all Iraqis,” Mahmoud stressed.
The Sadrists, who keep 29 out of a total 275 seats in the Iraqi parliament, are outspokenly criticizing the security pact, which, they said, would “consolidate the U.S. occupation of Iraq”.
After the agreement was passed on Thursday, an influential Sadr has given instructions to raise black banners, close his offices all over the country for three days and hold funerary processions in “mourning” over the deal endorsement.
Abad Ali Kuweid, an employee in the North Oil Company, said he was totally against the agreement.
“SOFA is illegitimate, undermines Iraq’s sovereignty and has no mention of U.S. troop withdrawals from the country. I am really amazed Parliament has passed it,” he said.
(www.en.aswataliraq.info)
UPDATE 1-Japan Nippon Oil in talks on $5-10 bln Iraq refinery
Japan's Nippon Oil Exploration is in talks with the Iraqi government on the construction of an oil refinery worth $5-10 billion and investment in oil exploration for the same amount, a company official said on Friday.
(www.noozz.com)
New orders for US troops in Iraq after landmark pact
PUKmedia 05-12-2008 15:26:23
The top US military commander in Iraq on Friday issued new orders to troops after the Iraqi government approved a landmark military pact that will give it increased control over their operations.
The wide-ranging accord -- which will require all US troops to leave the country by the end of 2011 -- won final approval from Iraq's presidential council on Thursday after nearly a year of intense negotiations.
"US forces will continue to be authorised to engage in combat operations," General Raymond Odierno, the commander of US forces in Iraq, wrote in a letter to the troops.
"However, under the terms of the new agreement, we will coordinate and execute those operations with the approval of the (Iraqi government), and we will conduct all operations by, with, and through the Iraqi security forces."
The pact -- which will take effect when the troops' UN mandate expires at the end of the month -- will grant Iraq veto power over virtually all US operations.
"We will continue to focus on combating Al-Qaeda and other extremist groups, but we must do so with respect for the Iraqi constitution and laws," Odierno wrote.
"But there will not be any reduction in our fundamental ability to protect ourselves and the force," he added.
The roughly 150,000 US troops stationed in 400 bases across Iraq will be required to withdraw from all Iraqi towns and cities by the end of June 2009.
But the agreement allows for a faster drawdown and US President-elect Barack Obama vowed during the presidential campaign to withdraw virtually all US troops from Iraq within 16 months.
Iraq may also seek to amend the agreement after a popular referendum on the deal is held next summer. The pact can be amended by mutual consent and unilaterally terminated by either side with one year's notice.
(www.pukmedia.com)
ONE of the many suits before the Supreme Court has been dismissed. However, quote, "At least one other appeal over Obama's citizenship remains at the court. Philip J. Berg of Lafayette Hill, Pa., argues that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii as Obama says... is there a legal question to be resolved? The court will answer the latter question this week."
MORE ON BARACK OBAMA: Donofrio Case: Court won't review Obama's eligibility to serve
By Tim Jones
Tribune correspondent chicagotribune.com
December 8, 2008
UPDATE: The Supreme Court has turned down an emergency appeal from a New Jersey man who says President-elect Barack Obama is ineligible to be president because he was a British subject at birth.
The court did not comment on its order Monday rejecting the call by Leo Donofrio of East Brunswick, N.J., to intervene in the presidential election. Donofrio says that since Obama had dual nationality at birth -- his mother was American and his Kenyan father at the time was a British subject -- he cannot possibly be a "natural born citizen," one of the requirements the Constitution lists for eligibility to be president.
Donofrio also contends that two other candidates, Republican John McCain and Socialist Workers candidate Roger Calero, also are not natural-born citizens and thus ineligible to be president.
At least one other appeal over Obama's citizenship remains at the court. Philip J. Berg of Lafayette Hill, Pa., argues that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii as Obama says and the Hawaii secretary of state has confirmed. Berg says Obama also may be a citizen of Indonesia, where he lived as a boy. Federal courts in Pennsylvania have dismissed Berg's lawsuit.
------------------------
This is a story that won't go away.
Five weeks after the State of Hawaii vouched for the authenticity of President-elect Barack Obama's birth certificate, the controversy over allegations that Obama is not eligible to take office next month has reached the Supreme Court, which is expected to announce Monday whether it will consider the matter.
The fight is unusual because it thrives outside the so-called mainstream media, far beyond the oak-paneled offices of $700-an-hour lawyers and a world away from the 535 individuals whose surnames are preceded by Representative or Senator.
This is a different army at work, in an environment increasingly influenced by the Internet.
"It's only being mentioned by a relative few, by the real die-hard, anti-Obama crowd," said Michael Harrison, editor and publisher of Talkers magazine, the trade bible of the talk-radio industry. "On mainstream talk radio, it's not a big deal right now. I think it's run its course."
"But," Harrison added, "we live in a time that, because of the Internet, all points of view can live forever."
Just as there is a split on the legitimacy of the legal claims, there is also a split within the media on the merits of the story. Is it the last gasp of opposition from opponents of Obama who have a found community of like-minded believers on the Internet, or is there a legal question to be resolved? The court will answer the latter question this week.
The campaign challenging the legitimacy of Obama's 1961 birth certificate or the legality of his taking office is chronicled by WorldNetDaily, a popular, politically right-leaning site that was the 26th most-visited news and media Web site during November, according to Hitwise, which monitors Net traffic.
"If this [Obama taking office] happens, the question of eligibility for the highest office in the land will no longer even be a matter for concern," wrote Joseph Farah, founder and editor of WorldNetDaily.
"Precedent will have been established. Arnold Schwarzenegger will suddenly be eligible to run for the office in 2012," Farah wrote, referring to the Austrian-born California governor and film star.
An Obama spokesman declined to comment for this story.
The lawyers who, in at least six states including New Jersey and Connecticut, have argued Obama is not a natural-born citizen and cannot be president include one who supported Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, one who has thundered for decades against the legality of the federal government collecting income tax, and one who argues that Sen. John McCain, by virtue of his birth 72 years ago in the Panama Canal Zone, would be banned from moving into the Oval Office, had he won last month's election.
Leo Donofrio is a New Jersey lawyer who tried to get Obama and McCain stricken from the New Jersey ballot in November. Donofrio's case was presented Friday to justices of the Supreme Court. Another case challenging Obama's eligibility, this one from Pennsylvania, has not yet been presented to the full court for its consideration.
"My question is on a pure constitutional ground," said Donofrio. "[Obama] is a citizen of the United States. I just don't believe he's a natural-born citizen."
This is the thrust of the attack, picked up by people such as Bob Schulz, an upstate New York engineer who bought two full-page ads in the Tribune this month that called Obama "a usurper" who "would be entitled to no allegiance, obedience or support from the People."
Schulz has challenged the federal government on issues including the Iraq War, the Patriot Act and the income tax. "I have a long history of petitioning the government for redress of grievances for violations of the constitution and the law," said Schulz, who said he and his wife live on Social Security checks. Schulz said the ads cost "tens of thousands of dollars" and were paid for with more than 500 private donations from individuals who support the effort. He said there were "no financial angels" behind it.
If the Supreme Court decides not to consider the case, Donofrio said there "won't be any beating on the drums saying there wasn't any justice."
But that will not be the end of the matter, Farah vowed.
"It'll plague Obama throughout his presidency. It'll be a nagging issue and a sore on his administration, much like Monica Lewinsky was on [ President Bill] Clinton," Farah said. "It's not going to go away and it will drive a wedge in an already divided public."
That may underscore a landscape change in the media, where the Internet is playing a bigger role in setting the agenda. In 2004, the so-called swift boat campaign against Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, began on the Internet. In fact, the co-author of "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry," Jerome Corsi, also wrote "Obama Nation," a book critical of Obama, published earlier this year.
Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Duke University, said the Internet's role in forming public opinion is gaining strength. WorldNetDaily, for instance, has one of the faster-growing audiences on the Internet, up 62 percent in the past year, according to Hitwise.
Nyhan co-wrote a study this year that said journalists' attempts to correct misinformation is unlikely to sway public perceptions because many people want to believe the misperception.
"People often have a strong bias for believing the evidence they want to believe and disbelieving what they don't believe," Nyhan said. "There is less of a sense that we all have a common set of facts we can agree on. There's a polarization, and we can't even agree on the basic factual assumptions to have a debate."
A factual assumption might be that the public should be allowed to see the original birth certificate of Barry O to dispel these arguments, rather than going by a very biased viewpoint of one governmental official from the state of Hawaii.
When it says, "Five weeks after the State of Hawaii vouched for the authenticity of President-elect Barack Obama's birth certificate, the controversy over allegations that Obama is not eligible to take office next month has reached the Supreme Court, which is expected to announce Monday whether it will consider the matter."
Note here that the state of Hawaii has very carefully said the certificate is authentic. They have not said he was born in Hawaii or is natural born as a result of that certificate. It is one thing to say it exists and is authentic.. quite another to say what it contains and proves. That is to be determined by the court.
Is it wrong for the public to ask what the truth is and wish to see the evidence ourselves and judge the matter ourselves? WHY won't they release it? Why the secrecy? Would you hide your birth certificate and have officials "vouch for its authenticity" if you were running for President - saying "Yes, he/she has a legal birth certificate on record, I saw it." ?? Someone saying this of you would not be the same as saying it says on the birth certificate that you were born in the USA.
Why hide it? Why won't Obama release it and dispel the rumors? How much do you trust the word of that official.. who has seen it but not said specifically that she vouches for his being born in the USA.. but just that it is an "authentic" certificate? Remember someone could in those days be born abroad, and come back and register the birth afterward. That too would be an authentic certificate, showing he was born in Kenya and registered in Hawaii.. authentically.
What is it Queen Elizabeth said? Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. If the Supreme Court will remain shady and not take up the question, justice will never be seen to be done here and the question will always hang over Obama and his legitimacy.. with a belief he is a foreign usurper, and not legally entitled to be President.
Security Council to release Iraq from UN chapter that recognizes its tutelage
PUKmedia
06-12-2008
Washington has informed Baghdad of a tentative approval by the UN Security Council (UNSC) to release Iraq from the Chapter VII of the UN Charter that recognizes its tutelage, Iraq's state-run al-Sabah newspaper reported Saturday.
Visiting U.S. envoy to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad informed top Iraqi officials the approval of most UNSC members, an Iraqi parliament member who declined to be named was quoted as saying.
The tentative approval came after Iraq recently signed a security pact and an agreement on strategic framework cooperation with the U.S.
Khalilzad confirmed that he will exert his efforts through discussions with his counterparts in the United Nations to get the approval of all the permanent members in the UNSC which comprises China, France, Russia, Britain and the United States, according to the report.
Chapter VII of the UN Charter empowers the UNSC members to maintain peace. It allows the council to "determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression," and to take military and nonmilitary action to "restore international peace and security."
Iraqi Presidency Council, which comprises President Jalal Talabani and his two deputies, ratified Thursday the security deal with the United States, which was endorsed by the Iraqi parliament on Nov. 27.
Under the agreement, the American troops will pull out of Iraqi cities and towns by July 2009 and leave Iraq by the end of 2011.
I read this post today and thought it worthwhile sharing for those interested.
I title it:
An interesting note on the Donofrio case
OK… just for those who don’t know.
The suit which was is not going to be given an emergency hearing…
Under the origional law, there are two ways to get citizenship.
Being born in a country, or by your Father being a citizen of a country.
The guy who put in the Natural Born clause, who was later a Supreme Court Justice, was very concerned about split loyalties. At the time, you were supposed to be loyal to your country just because you were a citizen of that country, and in fact, could be held liable by its laws.
So, Natural Born Citizen, in his opinion, would be someone born on US soil, of a US Citizen Father, thus meeting BOTH criteria for citizenship, ie, no other country could claim you. Remember, it wasn’t until recently you could even be a dual citizen in the US.
This case was about whether or not a someone who does not meet that origional standard, was a Natural Born citizen.
In 1790 Congress passed a law that said that anyone born here was just that, a Natural Born Citizen… but in 1795 that was repealed, and replaced with someone born here is a CITIZEN. Clearly they thought about this subject, and decided that the 1790 standard was not good enough for the Presidency…. so they changed it…
This lawsuit actualy went after McCain, Obama, and another candidate (can’t remember the dang name), saying all three were suspect under the origional definition of Natural Born.
McCain was born in a Hosptital in Panama, not in a Military Hospital, not in the Canal Zone… thus was potentialy not eligable.
Obama had a British Citizen Father, and thus was under the Authority of BRITAIN for citizenship… and thus a dual citizen at birth….
The other guy was born in Guatamala…
Suit was whether the Sec State of his home state, who is required to ensure they are qualified, did her job.
It was origionally dismissed, because he didn’t get his complaint in on time (under the state law). So he appealed asking for an emergency stay and relief… its that emergency stay and relief that was denied, NOT THE MERITS OF HIS ASSERTION.
- posted by Romeo13 on December 8, 2008 at 11:30 AM
I believe the two entities (GoI and CBI) believe that the Dinar is undervalued and they look to increase the purchasing popwer of the Iraqi people. A tightening of the money supply combined with the lifting of the Article VII (addresses the convertibility issue)and the passage of the HCL which will lead to the monetization of its oil may be the recipe used to acheive the "real rate" of dinar. Thoughts anyone?
===
I agree that things are looking very good for the future of the Dinar.
Though things are not doing as well for the rest of the economic situation..
Including a possible Treasury Bill bubble:
===
Investor fear drives US Treasury yields to near zero
Dec 7 2008
The panic in global financial markets has sparked an unprecedented rush into safe US Treasury securities, driving yields on short-term government notes down to almost zero.
Due to stampeding demand for safe short-term investments, the US Treasury's four-week and three-month bills on Friday yielded an effective rate of 0.01 percent -- down sharply from 1.515 percent and 1.785 percent, respectively, in early September.
Other Treasuries are also showing record low yields. The 10-year bond yield fell as low as 2.505 percent and the 30-year bond yield slid to 3.005 percent at one point on Friday. The six-month bond yielded a mere 0.20 percent.
The low yields reflect a surge in demand for these instruments, seen as the safest in the world during times of turmoil.
"Investors seem to be content to sell stocks and park into the bonds for now," said Greg Michalowski of the financial website FXDD.
Analysts say the fear factor has pushed up demand for Treasuries, since investors are virtually certain the US government will not default.
Other factors include worries about deflation and the overall trend in interest rates, with the Federal Reserve having cut its base lending rate to a historic low of 1.0 percent, and further reductions possible.
A big question for the market is whether the Treasury market has become a bubble that will burst.
Although the low rates allow Washington to borrow money cheaply, Eisenbeis said such a scenario could be perilous for the economy and the dollar.
"When you have this huge flood of liquidity into the marketplace, that can't last forever," he said.
A bursting of this bubble could mean a rush out of Treasuries, forcing the government to pay higher rates on an unprecedented amount of debt.
"We would have huge increases in our costs and people wouldn't want to hold Treasury obligations anymore because of the capital losses," Eisenbeis said.
"You could have a huge switch in interest rates very quickly."
Mike Larson, an analyst at Weiss Research, says the long-term bond market could be "the biggest bubble of all," worse than the dot-com and real estate bubbles.
"Treasury bonds almost never move this far, this fast. And interest rates, which move in the opposite direction of bond prices, almost never fall this far, this fast," Larson said.
Larson said the yield on the 10-year Treasury bond plunged from a mid-October high of 4.08 percent to nearly 2.5 percent this week, "yielding lows not seen since the mid-1950s."
"There are lots of reasons to believe this Treasury rally is unsustainable, and that a day of reckoning is fast approaching," he said.
Sal Guatieri, economist at BMO Capital Markets, acknowledged that "investors are throwing money at Uncle Sam with the same conviction that they bought houses and dot-com stocks in their heydays."
But he argued that if inflation is quashed and investors retain confidence in the US government, the dangers have not yet hit a boiling point.
"While Treasuries may be overpriced, they probably are not yet in a bubble," he said.
Eligibility dispute, Part 2, scheduled by Supremes Court rejects claim challenging candidacy, schedules another for Friday conference
Posted: December 08, 2008
By Bob Unruh
Not even the U.S. Supreme Court can kill the dispute that has developed over Sen. Barack Obama's eligibility to occupy the Oval Office based on questions raised over his birthplace and citizenship and his steadfast refusal to provide documentation on the issue.
The high court denied a request to listen to arguments in a case, Donofrio v. Wells, from New Jersey that addressed the issues. But literally within minutes, the court's website confirmed that another conference is scheduled for Friday on another case raising the same worries.
The case of Leo C. Donofrio v. New Jersey Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells claimed Obama does not meet the Constitution's Article 2, Section 1 "natural-born citizen" requirement for president because of his dual citizenship at birth.
The new case, Cort Wrotnowski v. Susan Bysiewicz, Connecticut secretary of state, also makes a dual citizenship argument. It had been rejected by Justice Ruth Ginsburg Nov. 26 but then was resubmitted to Justice Antonin Scalia. There was no word of its fate for about 10 days, then today the court's website confirmed it has been distributed for Friday's conference, a meeting at which the justices consider whether to take cases.
Donofrio, whose case was rejected today, said he's hopeful Wrotnowski's complaint will find a more receptive panel.
"It includes a more solid brief and a less treacherous lower court procedural history," Donofrio writes on his Natural Born Citizen blog. "I must stress that [Wrotnowski] does not have the same procedural hang up that mine does."
The website explained an appeals judge in New Jersey had incorrectly characterized Donofrio's original complaint as a "motion for leave to appeal" rather than a "direct appeal."
"If Cort's application is also denied then the fat lady can sing," the website stated. "Until then, the same exact issue is before SCOTUS as was in my case. Cort's application before SCOTUS incorporates all of the arguments and law in mine, but we improved on the arguments in Cort's quite a bit as we had more time to prepare it."
Besides the plaintiffs for these two and about a dozen other legal actions that challenge Obama's eligibility in courts around the country, there are tens of thousands of people who are alarmed by the unanswered questions about Obama.
More than 60,000 letters were generated by WND readers specifically asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review Obama's eligibility.
The campaign included 6,682 packages of nine letters each delivered to the court on the case about Obama's eligibility under the "a natural born citizen" requirement.
"If we didn't do everything possible to let the Supreme Court justices know what a concern this is to millions of Americans, I would feel like I was letting down the Constitution and the men who framed it – not to mention every citizen of the United States living now and in the future," Joseph Farah, WND's founder and editor, said of the campaign. "This constitutional eligibility test has become a key issue with me because if the plain language of the Constitution is no longer taken seriously by our nation's controlling legal authorities, we have become an outlaw nation – no longer under the rule of law but under the rule of men."
A petition drive Farah launched also has collected more than 175,000 signatures – so far – from people who want to know the truth.
The biggest question is why Obama, if a Hawaii birth certificate exists as his campaign has stated, hasn't simply ordered it made available to settle the rumors.
The governor's office in Hawaii said there is a valid certificate but rejected requests for access and left ambiguous its origin: Does the certificate on file with the Department of Health indicate a Hawaii birth or was it generated after the Obama family registered a Kenyan birth in Hawaii?
Among the plaintiffs in the California case is presidential candidate Alan Keyes.
"I'm not the first, not the last, just among a growing number of people across the country who've become distressed about the lack of disclosure,"
Donofrio had alleged that Obama's dual citizenship disqualifies him. Obama's campaign said the British citizenship expired, leaving him with "natural-born" U.S. citizenship.
Obama's Fight the Smears website confirms Donofrio is correct about the Democrat's dual citizenship at birth.
Also, the "certification of live birth" posted by the Obama campaign cannot be viewed as authoritative, critics allege.
"Hawaii Revised Statute 338-178 allows registration of birth in Hawaii for a child that was born outside of Hawaii to parents who, for a year preceding the child’s birth, claimed Hawaii as their place of residence," according to reports. "The only way to know where Senator Obama was actually born is to view Senator Obama's original birth certificate from 1961 that shows the name of the hospital and the name and signature of the doctor that delivered him."
Critics also raise the circumstances of Obama's time during his youth in Indonesia, where he was listed as having Indonesian citizenship. Indonesia does not allow dual citizenship, raising the possibility of Obama's mother having given up his U.S. citizenship.
Any subsequent U.S. citizenship then, the case claims, would be "naturalized," not "natural-born."
A very pithy, worthwhile youtube of Obama's Cabinet minister saying Obama is an IMMIGRANT (and so, not a natural born citizen as required by Constitutional law):
===
Obama's own Cabinet member: He's 'an immigrant'
Posted: December 09, 2008
Don't believe Barack Obama's grandmother? Don't believe the ambassador to Kenya? How about Barack Obama's own Cabinet member?
That's right – former presidential candidate and Obama's choice for secretary of commerce, Gov. Bill Richardson, slipped up. In an effort to reach out to the Hispanic community, he admitted what Barack Obama has been trying to hide all these months: "Barack Obama is an immigrant." See it for yourself:
You don't need a translator to understand what Richardson admitted: Barack Obama is NOT a natural born citizen. That means we have a guy who's planning to take over the White House who is in direct violation of the Constitution. And his own Cabinet member says so. That's pretty big news, one would think. But the media has refused to cover it with anything more than a blurb laced with a "this is ridiculous" tone. It is ridiculous – ridiculous that the Constitution means so little that we can't even ensure that it's being followed. It's ridiculous that the story of the century is being ignored by those whose job it is to report it.
But now there's something even more ridiculous: Not only will Fox not report the news regarding Obama's citizenship, now we can't even buy an ad on Fox to allow others to hear about the constitutional crisis we're facing.
CNN is still considering it. Here's the ad text and, as they requested, the information to back up each line: QUOTE:
Heard the rumors about Barack Obama's citizenship?
These are the facts:
The Constitution requires the president to be a natural born citizen.
Text of Article II, Section 1.
Obama's grandmother said she there when Barack was born in Kenya.
Obama refuses to release his original birth certificate.
Obama's birth certificate sealed ... – Article by Dr. Jerome Corsi, Oct. 26
Instead of a birth certificate, Obama's campaign posted a certification given to those born abroad.
The alleged "Certification of Live Birth"
A document on Hawaii's official website stating "Certificate of Live Birth" is better than the "Certification" for native Hawaiians to obtain certain benefits
Sixteen lawsuits in 12 states and two cases before the Supreme Court now challenge Obama's citizenship.
Tulsa Today article listing many of the individuals and organizations who are challenging Obama's eligibility
Fact: Our Constitution still matters. www.obamaforgery.com
===end quote==
Help us get this ad on television: Go to www.f2a.org and every dollar of your donation will go to airtime from now until Dec. 15 (when the Electoral College voters cast their ballots).
Then let Fox know what you think about the censorship of this ad: 212-301-3000. You can also call CNN and encourage them to take the ad and cover the critical citizenship story: 404-827-1500.
You can see the television ad and two more full-page ads that are running this week in the weekly edition of the Washington Times and Human Events at: www.ObamaForgery.com.
Yes, the Supreme Court said no to the New Jersey citizenship case. But they still have the Pennsylvania and Connecticut cases before them. And there are more than a dozen others that are making their way up to the Supreme Court. I, for one, will not stop asking the critical questions until we have the answers the Constitution demands.
And with all those legal challenges, Grandma, the Kenyan ambassador and now Obama's own Cabinet member all saying that Obama is not qualified to serve as president, rest assured, this issue is not going to go away time soon.
Where's the proof Barack Obama was born in the U.S. or that he fulfills the "natural-born American" clause in the Constitution? If you still want to see it, sign WND's petition demanding the release of his birth certificate.
Iraq’s Oil Future: Finding the Right Framework - Part 3
05 December 2008 ( Iraq Updates )
an Iraq Updates exclusive - Dr. Carol Nahlke's report on Iraq's oil industry and its challenges
By Dr. Carole Nahlke
Section 3:
THE CHOICES FACING IRAQ
Choosing the best policy path
Why Iraq is at a critical point?
What is the best way forward?
Iraq is painfully emerging from the most destructive period in its history. Despite being endowed by the circumstances of history with some of the most extensive hydrocarbon resources on earth, it has been driven through periods of political repression and the darkest forms of nationalism. Recent events have deepened the misfortune, characterised by a stream of violence and insecurity, culminating in large scale destruction and conflict.
Yet the very depths to which Iraq has descended provides a dramatic and almost unique opportunity to recover and prosper — unique because its massive oil and gas resources, having been mismanaged for decades, now offer an escape route from the past such as few other countries have ever had presented to them. Everything in Iraq’s future now depends on making the right policy choices in the handling and development of these resources. Iraq is not hampered by any substantive licensing legacy and can to a large extent start afresh with a blank sheet of paper. This should facilitate the construction of a simpler and better targeted regulatory and fiscal framework.
Iraq’s way forward must be, and can only be, tailored to Iraq’s situation and needs. But three broad categories of policy options lie immediately ahead:
First, Iraq can attempt to go it alone in developing its oil resources, much as it tried in the past. Under this model, the Government of the producing country concerned formulates and finances an adequate investment program themselves and executes it through an NOC. This approach can certainly work after a fashion and Saudi Arabia is one of the very few countries to have adopted it — although only after many years of reliance on outside oil companies (the original Aramco). To succeed, as Saudi- Arabia found, the need is for an NOC that is fully capable of taking the operations role in upstream asset development. And of course the Saudis were not starting from Iraq’s low point, or developing their oil industry from almost nothing.
Second, the host nation can encourage the IOCs to take the lead. In this model the Government creates the appropriate regulatory and fiscal conditions for IOCs to make the necessary investments in their upstream sectors. This enables the State to avoid allocating much capital themselves and without developing substantial or adequate internal technical and operating capabilities such as through the creation of an active well resourced NOC. Qatar is a good example of a country that has adopted this approach. The skills required at political and policy level in making this approach attractive and balanced should not be underestimated, but the core investment and operations are undertaken by international firms, both major IOCs and associated service providers, with an appropriate return-sharing arrangement. Most OECD countries follow this model.
The third way is to adopt hybrid solutions based on NOC-IOCs’ partnerships. This in effect is a combination of the other two options, where an active NOC combines forces with material and significant foreign capital and technical expertise to meet the investment needs of the country. Most oil and gas producing countries, outside the OECD, have adopted this approach (Egypt, Indonesia, etc.) and some inside the OECD (e.g. Norway). This is the broad approach which permits a variety of interfaces between the national and the international partners and allows for experiment and innovation.
Figure 3.1, found on page 13, indicates that nearly all the major oil and gas producing provinces in the world encourage investment by IOCs. (Only the countries in red are not open for IOCs — so far, as this is under review in Kuwait and Mexico).
Although there is no universally winning approach among these three policy options, the question is ‘what suits Iraq the most, today?’ What is the right template with which Iraq should now best proceed?
To address this central issue we need to identify and analyse some of the unique features of the Iraqi situation at this point in its history and its recovery from chaos. The following summary points need to be considered:
Iraq is a country in painful and precarious transition, recovering from repression and war, and very heavily dependent on investment in the oil sector.
Improvements in security and improvements in economic situation will be mutually reinforcing.
Iraqis are resourceful people; they can do things on their own, but given the current status, it will take decades, especially in the light of rising exploration and development costs, and the serious shortage of equipment and people round the world.
Iraq needs to swiftly rebuild its financial resources and deliver a sustained flow of investment in order to tackle the long list of economic and social needs. The flow of revenues, if properly handled, will in turn help develop the economy, reduce unemployment and improve security.
Iraq needs to secure the benefits from a substantial increase in hydrocarbons production. For the last 30 years, the world’s richest country in hydrocarbon resources has failed to produce more than 3 million barrels a day and the Iraqis today are among the poorest in the world. This means not only that Iraq has suffered due to decades of mismanagement and underinvestment, but that it is also missing out on the opportunity to share in the flow of sharply increased revenues that other oil producing nations are enjoying with the high oil prices of recent years.
In Iraq, there are different sets of opportunities: existing discovered fields which cover both producing fields — including five world class fields — and fields which are still awaiting development, in addition to yet-to-find fields. It is often argued that because the risk — both technically and in terms of requirements of risk-capital — is very low there is no particular or urgent need for IOCs support or involvement at this stage. However, even in the case of established fields, Iraq needs to revive and sustain production and boost efficiency to best practice standards. A heavily damaged infrastructure, suffering from many years of neglect, war destruction and sabotage, and with limited capital injected, is massively in need of attention in order to modernise and update all existing facilities.
In a depletion business, sustained investment is essential to avoid rapid decline. Governments, NOCs as well as IOCs all face the challenge of formulating and implementing viable investment programs to replace, or more than replace, produced reserves. It takes larger amounts of capital outlays every year to just keep production constant.
Looking at the models above it seems plain that Iraq is not going to succeed by the go-it-alone route unless it is content with a lamentable lack of ambition. Not only has this model failed Iraq drastically in the past but once the challenge moves on from existing fields to the detailed exploration and development of large new fields the expertise and resources required are not available domestically. If the target is an increase in production to 6 million bbl/d in the next 10 years, along with the generation of substantial cash flows at the earliest possible stage — even before any new production comes on stream — then the international dimension is unavoidable.
As noted in Section 2, the apparently appealing arguments both of resource nationalism and danger of foreign exploitation of Iraq’s resources are to be heard in some Iraqi circles pointing another way — towards a deliberate capping of Iraqi oil production at 3 million bbl/d or less, with the clear exclusion of foreign investment and IOCs participation, except for limited and narrowly drawn service agreements.
Even if this was politically desirable — and it is questionable as to whether this is anything more than an elitist view of sectional interests anxious to preserve their own position — our analysis will show that it may not be feasible. Even to maintain production at the pre conflict peak level of 2.5 million bbl/d will require heavy new investment and outside technical support. To lift output in line with obvious Iraqi interests will necessitate a substantial investment (in both technology, people and capital) from IOCs in collaboration with the INOC.
The second route, going to the opposite pole of reliance entirely on outside IOCs involvement can work, and has worked particularly in the OECD. But in today’s Iraq, and in today’s political climate it has to be recognised that it is not a practicable arrangement. Far too many delicate and dangerous political compromises colour the Iraqi situation and the concept of IOCs dominance, even with the most sophisticated systems of national regulation l is simply unacceptable to most Iraqis. Deliberate incitement of nationalist sentiments both by populist domestic politicians and by outside ideological propaganda has made this route even less realistic, even though in the medium term it might bring the Iraqi people most benefits.
Realistically, we are therefore looking at hybrid solutions for Iraq as the only types of arrangement that can meet the required goals and satisfy political expediency. It is a pattern of this kind, refined and carefully tailored to modern Iraqi conditions that will work for Iraq. Hybrid solutions of one kind or another have already worked successfully in many other countries, based on varying patterns of partnership between NOC and IOCs. Iraq now has the opportunity to develop its own model on this basis.
In the sections which follow, this study seeks to look at all aspects which assist in determining the best hybrid pattern most suitable to Iraq and most realistically achievable. But some general and preliminary observations are called for.
The IOC-Host Government/NOC interaction does not have to be reduced to a zero-sum game, where what one side wins the other loses. These two entities have different objective functions, different capabilities, different assets and different appetites and tolerance for risk. They are generally complementary, not competitive. In principle, each side possesses what the other side seeks: Governments hold the below ground resources sought by IOCs and IOCs control most of the above ground drivers of the global energy business that governments need.
One possible area where direct cooperation between IOCs and governments can produce benefits for both is early consultation regarding the shaping of a country’s hydrocarbon laws. Is this feasible in the Iraqi case? A country’s hydrocarbon law should serve the country not only through providing the legal framework for organising and regulating the sector, but also through managing and directing the behaviour of NOCs and IOCs in the best interests of the country. How is this to be done, given the delicate political context and the invariable reluctance in all countries, not just Iraq, to see private sector interests involved in law-making and fiscal policy setting processes?
The pattern has to be an evolving one. The Iraqi Government, while it struggles to establish a new legal, fiscal and general policy framework for its oil industry, has already proposed short (one year) contracts to a number of major IOCs which are innovative in being more than mere service agreements. It is possible to see these contracts as part of a exploratory enabling process which will gradually open out into a new pattern of cooperation.
The ultimate objective of the Government in all initial consultations with IOCs must be to understand more clearly and precisely what needs to be done to extract the most benefit from the IOCs presence in its upstream sector. This is where the innovative thinking is most urgently needed.
Another nexus of cooperation between IOCs and governments would target directly the challenges of high cost technology needs, especially in the increasingly demanding area of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) investments in mature regions. NOCs and IOCs could create joint venture companies specifically dedicated to EOR investments in mature oil sectors.
The next section gathers together these considerations, assessments and requirements and seeks to develop a coherent, relevant and practicable strategy for Iraq over the next few years.
(www.iraqupdates.com)
Iraq’s Oil Future: Finding the Right Framework - Part 4
08 December 2008 ( Iraq Updates )
an Iraq Updates exclusive - Dr. Carol Nahlke's report on Iraq's oil industry and its challenges
By Dr. Carole Nahlke
Section 4:
THE IRAQI CHALLENGE: THE THREE PILLAR APPROACH
Where now for the State oil company?
Time for a new partnership?
Sound Governance — how to create the right conditions?
A useful framework for characterising the essential ingredients necessary to create a world class petroleum sector for Iraq is to categorise the range of needs and policies into three distinct pillars.
The three pillars can be categorised as:
The creation of a world class NOC capability
Partnership and Collaboration — A New IOC Relationship
The Governance, Political and Legal
Contexts: Establishing the right conditions Fulfilment of goals in relation to each of these ‘pillars’ demands an intensive and rigidly focussed agenda of policy development and reform for all three major parties and stakeholders — the national oil company, the international corporations and their ancillaries, and the Iraqi Government and its agencies.
Developing the NOC Role
Iraq’s immediate priority must be to develop and strengthen further its own national oil company (INOC), both as an instrument of national and political involvement in oil expansion and as a professional interlocutor to manage the relationship with IOCs and other investors. In the Iraq context, this is both a political and a technical imperative. Ultimately policy makers will need to develop appropriate institutions with clearly defined relationships which separate for example, the aspirations of the NOC, regulation of the Industry and fiscal administration. In other words, there should be a comprehensible separation of power and clearly defined roles between the NOC, the regulator (Ministry of Petroleum) and the tax collector (Ministry of Finance).
However, it has to be recognised that NOCs, especially in poorer countries seeking to grow and expand their oil industries, tend to operate with both priorities and constraints which are not shared by private sector corporations.
Inevitably NOCs tend to have close and interlocking relationships with their national governments, and the INOC may be no exception to this pattern. They are expected to fulfil important social and economic functions that compete for capital budgets that might otherwise be spent on more commercial activities designed to build reserve replacement and production activities.
In many instances there is a risk that they become states within a state,generating unhelpful political rivalries — a situation which the new Iraqi Government is no doubt determined to avoid. As large suppliers of state revenues NOCs have a special role in state budgets; usually they are among the most attractive employers in the country; typically they exert influence on a wide range of energy services (e.g. electric power supply) in addition to hydrocarbons.
Because of their close ties to the national government, in many cases their objectives might include wealth re-distribution, jobs creation, general economic development, economic and energy security, and vertical integration. NOCs may be involved in redistributing the oil wealth of the nation to the society in general. This redistribution can be accomplished through fuel subsidies, employment policies, and social welfare programs among others. While subsidized fuel prices reduce energy prices to the general population, enhance industrial and transportation resources, and protect the domestic economy from the damaging effects of volatile world petroleum prices, the downside is that they are very expensive in terms of lost potential revenues for the national oil company. The artificially low product prices encourage demand growth, inefficient use of fuels, and even arbitrage-based smuggling schemes.
The expanded use of fuels domestically leads to reduced exports and tightens supply in world markets, leading to higher prices in the oil-importing countries. Examples of subsidy programs with these effects include those observed in Iran, Nigeria, and Indonesia among others.
Indeed in the new context of ultra-high crude oil price, it is the governments of oil producing countries in particular that are facing the difficult task of unwinding their fuel subsidies and permitting oil and oil product prices domestically to rise gradually to international market levels.
These objectives may well be desirable from the point of view of the nation’s government, and possibly politically necessary. But they cannot equate to the maximization of enterprise value, the stated objective of the private international oil companies, nor will they generate the same incentives or competitive motivations. Nor are the younger NOCs, such as the INOC in an Iraq emerging from conflict, likely to have a marketing culture embedded in their institutional structures, whether upstream or downstream. In some instances the national oil company may also be required to supply subsidized fuels to industries targeted in their nation’s development plans.
Although all NOCs respond to their national governments to one degree or another, the amount of influence varies widely. The national oil companies of more developed nations, Statoilhydro in Norway, and Petronas in Malaysia, for example, tend to follow a more commercially oriented strategy than the Nigerian National Petroleum Co. and Petroleos de Venezuela. This is particularly the case where the state oil company has been partially privatised with a significant shareholder base. For the NOCs which remain wholly state owned there is a risk that government objectives largely supplant commercial objectives, and the companies are under pressure to maximize the flow of funds to the national treasuries.
Many of these companies have been found to be less efficient than their partially or fully privatised rivals. They may have a preference to exploit oil reserves for short-term gain. Some also have limited access to international capital markets because of poor business practices and a lack of transparency in their business deals. High oil prices since late 2003 have masked the effect of some of these characteristics in the flow of oil revenues.
A further issue facing INOC, as it has faced other NOCs round the world, is whether the aim is to follow longer-established state oil companies in moving onto the international scene, and becoming, in effect global players. Norway’s Statoilhydro is the most striking example of this trend, but others, such as Gazprom, Petronas, and Petrobras, have made similar moves. These are early days for Iraq to send its state oil company into the international environment. But if and when Iraqi oil production begins to place it at the top of the world league, as is possible, the need for INOC to develop a world role, with both upstream and downstream reach, will grow, necessitating a distinct shift in its character from being a purely domestic institution governed by internal, and to some extent non-commercial objectives. Internationalisation is a very productive vehicle for the acquisition of global best practice, be it in technology or commercial expertise, across the Industry.
A final but central question for all NOCs, and again for INOC, concerns the best route to meeting its very large-scale capital needs. Can any NOC tap global capital markets in the ways long familiar to IOCs?
The International Energy Agency (2006) has estimated that over the period 2001 to 2030, the world will need to invest $20 trillion in energy infrastructure to meet the needs of projected demand. The oil sector is expected to account for over $4 trillion (2005 money) in the period 2005–30 alone. To accomplish this level of investment, it is likely that the industry will need to draw on many sources of financial capital. Since 2004, the IOCs have had record-setting profit performances. This financial strength allows them substantial latitude in accessing financial resources. Because their own cash reserves have risen, internal financing is now the norm. Because of their strong balance sheet and income statements, it is likely that they can access world capital markets for financing on relatively favourable terms if required.
For the most part, NOCs are in a weaker position with respect to the capital markets, though a sustained high oil price may change this. Perceptions of relative inefficiency in turning oil into revenues makes them less likely to receive favourable terms from international capital markets. Their obligations to the national treasury to finance domestic welfare programs, as described above, along with the below market price sale of their products at home, make it less likely that they will have access to enough retained internal earnings to finance optimal levels of exploration and development of oil resources. To the extent that such companies experience a shortage of financial capital, it could result in higher prices and the potential for physical shortages in the future.
If NOCs do gain wide-spread access to the world financial markets, this might not only spur upstream capital investment but might also provide benefits to the companies and their interface with the global market. Compliance with international accounting standards, more business transparency, as well as certain basic standards of corporate responsibility might result from the NOC’s exposure to international financial markets.
The above constitutes an assessment of both the strengths and weaknesses which today’s NOCs exhibit, and the manner in which they are reflected in the unique situation of Iraq. They amount to a complex pattern of activities which may give NOCs considerable influence internally but which also involve a distraction from the core tasks of producing, and selling oil and oil products.
It is therefore to the outside and international scene that successful NOCs must turn if they are to bring the most and the swiftest benefit to their home governments and peoples. To the extent that IOCs still remain today as the dominant commercial entities on the international energy landscape (although increasingly challenged) this can only mean working to establish new kinds of partnership with international oil, suitable for today’s and tomorrow’s fast-changing circumstances.
At a practical level one of the most effective ways for NOCs to learn from and emulate the IOC model of efficiency is to participate with them in all future projects in Iraq. It is therefore recommended that INOC takes a minimum equity position in all contracts/licenses awarded to IOC consortia. As a core participant in each Joint Venture established in Iraq it will be able to swiftly learn from the business models deployed by IOCs. Having NOC direct involvement will also benefit the IOC in securing improved alignment with the ambitions of the State and result in a better informed Ministry of Oil with direct access to field and project specific information via the NOC. Funding of the NOCs development expenditure can be a condition of any agreement with IOC consortia.
Partnership and Collaboration — A New IOC Relationship
The IOCs must now be ready to face and adapt to new conditions in contributing most effectively to Iraq’s interests and economic development. And in a highly competitive and politically sensitive environment they must be ready to demonstrate that they have a unique contribution for which there is no substitute. They should better articulate that mere service agreements will not necessarily deliver the long term support and input which IOCs can uniquely provide, but that PSCs, suitably tailored, certainly can, if skilfully structured. It is difficult to be too prescriptive and there will need to be intimate and constructive cooperation by IOCs with the Iraqi authorities in working out the details of the most appropriate fiscal regime needed to match terms to opportunities.
A hybrid contractual solution may work best, with the fiscal framework for existing fields being based on technical or risk service but green field opportunities being more suitable for PSCs. It is investment capital on a large scale and top international technical expertise which will be required to secure rapid oil expansion. The dangerous myth that because NOCs can draw on national revenues there is no need for IOCs to bring in capital resources must be exposed. No line of argument could be more calculated to deprive the Iraqi people of the benefits of oil expansion and to shut off Iraqi operations from international opportunities.
In short, it is perfectly possible, drawing from, although not necessarily copying, the experience of other oil producing nations, to combine good incentives to IOCs with the maximising of benefit to the Iraqi people. Indeed, this is the only path to a rapid expansion of revenues and returns, and to dogmatically oppose such constructs is to attack at the roots the interests and aspirations of the Iraqi people.
Care is needed to avoid over-stating IOCs proclaimed advantages. The essential mindset is to see the IOC role not as an alternative to NOC development but as part of a complementary partnership, bringing crucial assets (human, financial, technological) to the overall national effort and meeting needs which coincide directly with state requirements and aspirations. At all times the activities of the IOCs will be regulated and monitored, where appropriate, to ensure their decisions are in accord with the high level strategic objectives of the nation.
Placed in this perspective it becomes clear that IOCs can ‘bring to the party’ a value-enhancing list of contributing benefits. These include downstream assets and technology capabilities, particularly in LNG, enhanced oil recovery techniques, market, trading and infrastructure linkages built up over years and difficult to replicate. As projects link across geographies, value chains and markets, the global scale and asset base of IOCs provide a competitive advantage. Whilst the natural focus of the debate in Iraq is oil we should not omit from consideration the potential from gas. As noted earlier vast quantities of gas are simply wasted through unnecessary flaring whilst the potential of undeveloped gas resources is overlooked. There is an equivalent priority for Iraq to shape a gas ‘master plan’ which both conserves existing gas resources, by reducing flaring and develops options for the commercialisation of gas discoveries. The IOCs with there undoubted expertise in gas marketing, infrastructure development, LNG and gas fired power generation have much to offer in developing this almost neglected resource.
A crucial consideration in evaluating the IOC contribution lies in the time-scale. IOCs are mostly long established and can provide accelerated results. While it may be true that today’s NOCs, including INOC, can gradually and eventually acquire much of the IOCs’ skill set this will take time. And time is what Iraq does not have. Whether from the viewpoints of internal welfare and nation re-building, of political stability or of security the imperative is for rapid recovery, both to end the violence and to maximize revenues by taking advantage of the very high oil price. Tangible signs of higher prosperity are needed if the security situation is to improve.
It is also a matter of record that most of the major global oil challenges are being met by the world’s IOCs. In the Caspian region, fields such as Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli in Azerbaijan and Tengiz in Kazakstan, are being developed with the oil being brought to markets in huge transcontinental pipelines. In the deepwater of the continental margins of West Africa, Gulf of Mexico and Sakhalin, fields are being discovered and developed through fantastic feats of IOCs-directed engineering.
Whilst Iraqi oil is considered ‘easy oil’ many may question whether such capability is required. The response must be that all oil fields whether perceived ‘easy’ or not face the eternal challenge of maximising production and arresting decline. All oil fields can benefit from best practice reservoir management, the latest technology, extending field life and improving the economics of marginal projects. If the recovery factor is 50% then management set a target of 60%, if that is achieved then the target moves to 70% and so on.
IOCs need to think even more clearly and with more intense focus about local-content issues (energy security, trade and supply chain development, long-term development of skills (a good example is the BP training centre in Baku), broad- based job creation and industrial development. The essence of a new kind of partnership must be that IOCs and NOCs work together in developing their joint capabilities, rather than viewing each other as uneasy rivals. Wherever IOCs have adopted a model that meets the long-term strategic goals of NOCs and the nations they serve, they have been the most successful in winning business and securing a license to operate.
IOCs can offer further benefits drawing on their deep experience, crafting and managing integrated energy projects on a global scale. Projects like the already mentioned Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli development and BTC pipeline, or the technology drive to oil field recoveries of 60–80%, as in the great fields of Alaska, the North Sea and Siberia, bring home the point that oil industry development means bringing together infrastructure skills and organisation on a scale which reaches by definition beyond one-country boundaries. In addition, the increasing preoccupation with energy security may create a world where IOCs and NOCs collaborate to reduce the perceived risk around security of supply.
In working for new patterns of partnership and collaboration IOCs need to distinguish themselves from service providers that many people see as a replacement for IOCs. Increasingly new competitors are arriving and challenging IOC dominance. The newcomers, so-called ‘Independents with attitude’, are already on the scene in Asia, offering perhaps shorter term horizon and more willingness to take price and security risks than the IOCs. And of course already on the scene are the major Service Companies who are increasingly sophisticated, although not traditionally investors and risk takers.
NOCs can share risk with a service provider, so IOCs will need to go wider and offer a balance of expertise that covers project management, technology, and integrated market solutions. It is this combination of qualities and benefits — upstream and downstream — which can secure the IOCs position attractive partners for many NOCs. The downstream aspect is especially relevant in developing a balanced Iraqi economy and a balanced oil industry within it. The unfortunate example of Iran should be noted in that it has the highest imports of petroleum products because the Iranians failed to develop their downstream sector. This is precisely the future which Iraq must avoid. The geographic flexibility and sophistication of IOCs can also appeal to NOCs. But IOCs should be willing to bring all their assets and capabilities to the deal.
Underlying the modern case for IOC/NOC partnership are two key elements — human resources and capital resources. NOCs can grow and match the highest standards of established oil industry players, but to do so they need, above all, the best possible technical experience and engineering skills and capital resources on a major scale, as described above. They need these assets quickly — in the case of battered Iraq very quickly indeed. This is where the IOCs can deliver today, but to do so they need to widen and rethink their relationships and prepare to meet innovative and agile competition from new directions. That is the IOC challenge which in the Iraq case, as in others, they will only meet successfully if they move hand in hand with the state oil company and the interests of the Iraqi people.
The Governance, Political and Legal Contexts: The Need for Transparency and Establishing the Right Conditions
The third essential and strategic pillar of a well managed petroleum sector is transparency of administration and good governance in practice. This should not be seen as a threat to the effective and efficient working of either IOC or Government and can still be achieved without compromising commercial confidentiality for either party. With good governance the exploitation of Iraq’s resources can generate large revenues to foster growth and reduce poverty.
However when governance is weak, it may result in poverty, corruption, and conflict. The risk of corruption is always present both in the developed and undeveloped world and policy makers need to be vigilant and take appropriate measures to root out corruption wherever it is found.
Transparency of Government policy and actions should embrace the full range of petroleum activities. In the context of petroleum taxation it would be beneficial if the Iraqi Government were to publish annually the tax revenues it receives from the oil and gas sector.
The best vehicle to achieve this is to work with IOCs and international agencies through the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) which has already established a track record in developing transparency disclosure templates, collecting data from IOCs under confidential cover and aggregating such data in a disciplined and consistent manner. The EITI aims to strengthen governance by improving transparency and accountability in the extractive sector. The EITI sets a global standard for companies to publish what they pay and for governments to disclose what they receive. The EITI supports improved governance in resourcerich countries through the verification and full publication of company payments and government revenues from oil, gas and mining. The EITI has a robust yet flexible methodology that ensures a global standard is maintained throughout the different implementing countries. The EITI Board and the international Secretariat are the guardians of that methodology. Implementation itself, however, is the responsibility of individual countries. The EITI, in a nutshell, is a globally developed standard that promotes revenue transparency at the local level.
Publication of taxes received in a country such as Iraq is critical given the potential scale of such payments the high level of interest from the general public and above all the need to demonstrate and dispel the deeply engrained suspicion that corruption is assumed to exist. Such a new approach to Governance and transparency would be seen as part of the new beginning for Iraq and a tangible break from the past. The fact that the Iraqi administration has already committed to EITI is a very important signal of intent that can be built upon. The IOCs will welcome a process such as EITI as it assists them in demonstrating that they are creating wealth for the Iraqi people. Of course how the monies received from IOCs is spent is equally important as the proper accounting of what is collected and transparency is important for these Government activities but this falls outside the scope of this study.
The sound establishment of this kind of environment should be viewed not in sequence but in combination with successful NOC/ IOC partnership.
Thus in the Iraq case the ambiguity of the Kurdish legal position must be rapidly and firmly resolved (to the benefit of both parties), the laws and regulations governing oil industry policy clarified and the drive to root out corruption (and the extensive diversion of oil revenues) intensified.
More generally, a broad tableau of welcome and openness towards foreign investment must be presented by the Baghdad Government authorities to the wider world. This applies not just to the oil industry, although IOC investment can signal the way but to international business generally. It must also be a two-way process. As new fields are opened up, and Iraqi oil production rises, it is not fanciful to envisage an Iraqi sovereign fund seeking investment outlets in Europe and America, as well as in rising Asia.
A clear policy option facing Iraq is to offer a competitive fiscal and regulatory framework to international companies to encourage swift and sustained deployment of their resources and expertise. At the same time policy makers should create a competitive dynamic between them such that the Iraq nation is able to secure the most advantaged long term commercial bargain.
Later sections set out in detail the possible terms of engagement for IOCs which might best suit the Iraqi situation. But whatever the favoured pattern a degree of clarity, predictability and stability is the essential characteristic required on Iraq’s petroleum taxation system. Of course the immediate necessity is for the security situation to allow more confident involvement, both domestically and from outside, in oil industry growth. But security is itself a function of prosperity and resource availability. The faster that returns from the oil industry can be generated (e.g. from upfront payments from IOCs), the better the chances of improved security, in turn allowing for still more investment and expansion.
Once this virtuous circle is entered, and once the three pillars described above are visibly in place, the path will be open to full Iraqi recovery, betterment and advance on a momentous scale. The narrow and discredited nationalist doctrines and ideologies of the 20th Century must not be allowed to deny the long-suffering people of Iraq their legitimate and rightful goals in the 21st century.
(www.iraqupdates.com)
Aberdeen oil firm 'close to deal over move into Iraq'
Shares in Ramco, the Aberdeen oil exploration company, leapt by more than a quarter yesterday after the company indicated one of its businesses was close to securing terms for a launch into Iraq, writes Hamish Rutherford.
(www.noozz.com)
Parliament might extend legislative term due to budget’s discussions, says MP 08/12/2008 13:22:00
Baghdad (NINA) –MP Mufeed al-Jazayiri, of the Iraqi Communist Party, has expected extension of the current legislative term due to the discussions over 2009's federal budget. “Detailed discussions will start after the Eid Adha holiday.
(www.ninanews.com)
Othman call Gov. to initiate contacts to relieve Iraq of UNSC mandate 08/12/2008 13:07:00
Baghdad (NINA) –The Kurdistani Alliance’s legislator Mahmoud Othman has called the government to work harder and contact the permanent members of the UN Security Council in order to relieve Iraq from the mandate of the UN Charter’s seventh chapter.
(www.ninanews.com)
Getting a Handle on the OBAMA Birth Certificate “Conspiracy”
By Douglas J. Hagmann, Director
7 December 2008: Based on extensive research and review of nearly 1,100 pages of court documents filed within the last 60 days, the Northeast Intelligence Network has identified 19 lawsuits filed in various venues across the U.S. by a variety of Americans against Barack Hussein OBAMA, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Secretaries of State of several states, and other related parties.
The common issue of each lawsuit confronts the eligibility of Barack Hussein OBAMA to become America’s 44th President on January 20, 2009. Of the 19 lawsuits researched, thirteen-(13) remain active or somewhat active, meaning that the courts in the various venues in which they have been filed are considering the merits of the individual cases. At least six others have been dismissed or can otherwise be described as “dead-on-arrival” due to a number of different and wide ranging issues. Of the 13 remaining cases, however, three-(3) stand out from the rest based on the nature of their claims, each providing somewhat different perspectives relating to one core issue:
the constitutional eligibility of Barack Hussein OBAMA to take office as President of the United States based on his citizenship status.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that this article is being published on December 7th, 2008, the 67th anniversary of the attack on America by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on this day in 1941. Barack Hussein OBAMA contends that he was born in Hawaii, a claim that despite countless erroneous media reports and reckless, poorly researched postings on numerous Internet Blogs to the contrary, has yet to be proven by Barack Hussein OBAMA or anyone else named as co-defendants.
Of the three aforementioned lawsuits, two raise questions about his actual location of birth (Berg, Keyes), while the third (Donofrio) focuses on his citizenship status. (While this might admittedly be an oversimplification, I believe it is a sufficient characterization for the purpose of this article).
Instead, Barack Hussein OBAMA, in conjunction with the co-defendants, has reportedly spent between $800,000 to close to $1,000,000 (one million dollars), using at least three different law firms to fight these civil actions. Now, consider that each and every one of the lawsuits filed against him could be immediately dismissed by the mere production of a single piece of paper that is available to him for the paltry sum of $12.50 at a recorder’s office in Hawaii. Keep in mind that at this point, OBAMA would likely not even have to make the document public, but provide it to the applicable judge or official for verification purposes to make this controversial maelstrom disappear.
As an investigator and a rational American citizen, I have to ask myself why Barack Hussein OBAMA has chosen not to dispose of this very simple matter in the most logical and expeditious manner possible. Not only would that satisfy these pesky plaintiffs who happen to respect the rule of law as laid out in the Constitution of the United States, but it would also go a long way to brand them and their supporters as deluded conspiracy theorists who have way too much time on their hands.
Following that same line of logic, I then have to ask myself why this matter of such constitutional importance has not received the coverage by the corporate media that it deserves. More ink has been used, and more airtime has been provided to the civil and criminal legal issues of the likes of O.J. Simpson than the possible constitutional ramifications of the eligibility questions of the new leader of the free world. I would argue that questions surrounding the eligibility of a professional football, basketball or baseball player, NASCAR race driver, or Olympic athlete would garner more media attention and outrage of otherwise rational Americans than this matter, which has far more important ramifications for this country as well as the entire planet.
Equally troubling is the failure of those who have been labeled or otherwise accepted as the public ambassadors of American conservatives holding much coveted and very valuable platforms, opportunities and audiences to address this issue with the intellectual honesty it deserves. In this instance, I am specifically referring to the vocal gatekeepers of American conservatism such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly whose combined audience and consequential influence is staggering to the imagination.
The same applies to conservative political pundits such as Michelle Malkin, Michael Medved and David Horowitz, the latter who, in an article published today, described Alan Keyes, one of the plaintiffs of the lawsuits, “an unhinged demagogue on the political fringe” for his role in wanting to insure that we are adhering to the rule of law outlined in the U.S. Constitution. This, by the way, is a key tactic employed by those who cannot fight the argument with facts; they attack the messenger.
By simply ignoring the legitimate questions raised by these lawsuits, however, it efficiently and effectively serves to brand anyone wanting answers as a card-carrying member of the lunatic, malcontented fringe of society.
Perhaps most disturbing of all is what I have found while researching this issue, something that requires much more time and space than can be allotted here. There appears to be an unprecedented level of collusion between numerous political power brokers on both sides of the political divide, elected and appointed officials on both the federal and state levels, as well as members of the corporate media. It is interesting if not alarming to take a few steps back in an effort to gain a wider perspective, and finding unusual alliances and political “bed partners” among various members this group.
To provide a bit of insight into what I am referencing, consider and conduct research yourself into some events that have taken place within the past several years – events that have effectively changed or otherwise had a direct impact on the social and geopolitical landscape of America and its power structure. A few examples include such things as NAFTA, the SPP treaty, border and immigration issues, the Patriot Act, the Global Poverty Act of 2007, the management of the oil “crisis,” the most recent economic crisis and the remedies enacted, and the recent G-20 economic summit, where President Bush essentially provided economic oversight of U.S. economic institutions to the European Union.
There is indeed something very wrong taking place, having sinister implications and global overtones. Sound too conspiratorial? Well, as long I will undoubtedly be branded a “conspiracy loon” for raising the issue of constitutional eligibility of the messianic Barack Hussein Obama, I might as well go all of the way.
Meanwhile, the constitutional “elephant in the room” is still there. And if I had to make a guess on how long the elephant would be staying, well, let’s just say this: I’d be planning on moving the furniture out and the food, water and the tons of newspapers that will be needed in.
Thank you for posting these articles regarding Barry's citizenship. I read today that Philip Berg presses on; he has filed a petition with the court to halt the actions of the electors on December 15, 2008.
If the our Constitution is as important as we say it is I do not see any justification for the Supreme Court not intervening to uphold the document our country is founded upon. The consequences for not doing so is detrimental to our way of life.
I know we all hope the Supreme Court will be impartial and judge according to the law - the Supreme Law of the Land - the Constitution. However, those sitting on the court are also human and subject to political viewpoints, favors owed, fears concerning what may happen to the nation if they "upset" things by doing the right thing Constitutionally, perhaps even bribery, coersion or corruption.. we just don't know all the influences and pressures they are under. However, my prayer to God has been for them to hear and then judge according to the Constitution and the Will of God - not their will, not even the will of the people of America (which is an argument - what about all those who voted for BHO?), but only according to the Truth, Fact, the Constitution and God's Will. Accordingly, I have taken it to the Lord in prayer asking that the right thing be done. He has not said it will be.. and I am only assured that if they commit a sin of ommission by not hearing this, that God will require of them their lives for it. They would be judged as those which break wedlock for the breaking of their vows to UPHOLD the Constitution and then not doing so. To break a solemn vow you make before God is a very serious thing which God takes very, very seriously.
Eze 16:38 And I will judge you, as women that break wedlock and shed blood are judged; and I will give you blood in fury and jealousy.
About that part in the end of that Scripture.. I will give you blood in fury and jealousy... I fear if they will not take up the question, the only remaining option will be for God to allow bloodshed. If the Court remains unaware that publicly repudiating their vows to uphold the Constitution when all the people of America are watching makes them lawbreakers and that those who take up arms against them will have the blessing of God upon them.. then they will learn. But I still hope they will hear, of course. God didn't say they would not hear.. just what He will do if they don't.
I found this very interesting, as this conclusion of an article I read (full article at url) also concerns what this will mean for the nation (and this gentleman is not holding his breath that the Supreme Court will give this the proper weight or hearing).
Quote:
Hold on to Your Hat!
Just in case you needed final proof that America has lost its lust for freedom and the rule of constitutional law, all doubts should be eliminated here.
It’s public knowledge that Barack Hussein Obama is the least qualified individual ever to seek national office. It’s well known that his name is Arab-Muslim, not African, American or Christian.
His many ill-advised associations, thick throughout his entire adult life, are well documented.
His original birth certificate, his college records at Occidental, Columbia and Harvard, all remain under lock and key. Don’t ask, don’t tell!
Over $200 million of his record $700 million campaign haul, came from unknown donors from unknown sources overseas, some of them likely enemies of the United States.
And as of today, the Supreme Court of the United States sees no need to weigh in on any of these well documented matters.
Can you imagine what is coming next? I can, and like our nations founders, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” - Thomas Jefferson
The Constitution either means exactly what it says, or it means absolutely nothing at all. As of today, it means nothing at all...
Guess what follows? I have only one final question for my fellow Americans...
If Article II – Section I no longer applies, what parts of the Constitution do? Just Amendment XVI?
He will give America bloodshed such as she has never before seen..
THAT is what will follow.
Let's hope they do right and avoid the coming bloodshed.
But I am not quite holding my breath..
Because as he documented here, there are so very many, many violations.. what is one more to such lawless persons?
Remember, we are in this financial mess because of a lack of law (oversight) on fiscal matters.. and now we see legal matters are allowed to be the same.
They scoff at the need for law (fiscally, legally), but God brought me to the Bible and its Geneologies and asked me why He wrote them.. He is VERY interested in the paternity of people, isn't He? He also had me read Psalm 87, about exactly WHERE people are born (citizenship) and how He does take note of citizenship. He very much CARES about this issue of paternity and citizenship and He does judge it. And it is HE whom we must please above all. If we don't.. well, I think we are about to have a very, very instructive lesson about the need to please God first and not ourselves.
God takes His time in bringing about Judgement.. but it never waits forever. He is longsuffering, but Just, Holy and Righteous.. and eventually His mercy gives way to Judgement. I think we are about to see that time. Just think, however, how horrible it would be if the world really were without a Captain of the ship to right the wrongs.. to see and judge and repay mankind for evil. If evolution were true, wickedness would remain upaid in the earth. But it is not so.. and soon God will show it and right the ship. He moves and mankind does His will, He can even use the wrath of man to praise Him.
Psa 76:7 You, even You, are to be feared: and who may stand in Your sight when once You are angry?
Psa 76:8 You did cause judgment to be heard from heaven; the earth feared, and was still,
Psa 76:9 When God arose to judgment, to save all the meek of the earth. Selah.
Psa 76:10 Surely the wrath of man shall praise You: the remainder of wrath You shall restrain.
Psa 76:11 Vow, and pay to the LORD your God: let all that be round about Him bring presents to Him that ought to be feared.
Psa 76:12 He shall cut off the spirit of princes: he is terrible to the kings of the earth.
It is God who is about to move in response to the outcome of this lawsuit.. and when He arises to judge, He does not spare princes (Congress) or Kings (President) or judges (the Supreme Court). I will wait upon Him to see what He will do, for He may be said to move slowly due to His mercy, but when His Judgement comes.. it is swift. Don't forget, He allowed 911 on US soil - America is not immune to tragedy. And always before me is the vision I was given, which took out the princes (Congress), king (President) and judges (the Supreme Court) in one instant of time. If that is the inevitable future, then this is the prelude and reasoning behind God allowing such horror and war.
I believe this is happening in order to show the American people He is JUST to judge and allow such evil on US soil - America cannot say "why?" - she will know what has been done to deserve His wrath and judgement upon her. The timing I leave in God's hands... but this is so serious an issue with so many lives in the balance.. those who are careless concerning it, God is angry concerning them, as with these careless women in Isaiah 32:9-20. The end of it is peace (see the Isaiah 32 Scripture just given), but for now, there may be war, bloodshed and unprecedented upheaval.. shortly.
That is my viewpoint.. from a very serious, reverent and sober faith.
Iraq's oil law to be enacted by 2009
Wed, 10 Dec 2008
Iraq expects its hydrocarbons law to be approved by the second quarter of 2009, a senior government figure in Baghdad said.
The news comes as the fourth draft of the Iraqi oil legislation is currently being prepared.
Former Iraqi oil minister, Thamir Ghadhban told MEED that the current draft needs final agreement but has been accepted by the Iraqi Council of Ministers.
"That is significant in that it shows it is moving ahead," says Ghadhban who is also the current adviser to the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. "I expect the hydrocarbons law to be in place by spring 2009."
International oil firms have earlier expressed anxiety that the first oil exploration round, which is currently being held by the Iraqi Oil Ministry, could face difficulties without new legislation.
Iraq wants to raise its oil production to 4.5 million barrels a day by 2012, from about 2.5 million b/d today.
SEMANTICS..
What the invasion of Iraq should have been SAID to be based upon..
With no regrets because it was the right thing to do:
Balkenende argued that the Netherlands gave political support to the invasion of Iraq because Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein refused to comply with United Nation resolutions. The government's decision was therefore not based directly on the WMD intelligence...
===
Dutch PM refuses to regret support for Iraq war
www.chinaview.cn
2008-12-10
THE HAGUE, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has refused to regret his government's political support for the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad reported Wednesday.
Last week, U.S. President George W. Bush admitted that "the intelligence failure" about Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was "the biggest regret" of his presidency.
Balkenende was challenged to make a similar statement in parliament by Dutch Socialist Party leader Agnes Kant on Tuesday, the report said.
But Balkenende would go no further than to state: "I have noted what Bush said."
Balkenende argued that the Netherlands gave political support to the invasion of Iraq because Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein refused to comply with United Nation resolutions.
The government's decision was therefore not based directly on the WMD intelligence, he added.
In the past few years, Balkenende has repeatedly ruled out the possibility of investigating the circumstances surrounding the Dutch decision to support the Iraq war, though such inquiries have been conducted in other countries.
Note:Semantics is commonly used to refer to a trivial point or distinction that revolves around mere words rather than significant issues: “To argue whether the medication killed the patient or contributed to her death is to argue over semantics.”
What COULD be prevented if the Constitution were followed:
===
What the Obama Cult Factor Portends
David Limbaugh
The cult mystique of Barack Obama continues while his fawning supporters blindly accept every move he makes, proving their support for him in the general election was not based as much on policy as personality. This could play right into Obama's hands if, as I believe, he does have major change on his mind.
From a policy standpoint, Obama's campaign was fueled — initially, at least — by his unequivocal stance against the Iraq war. He was the only credible candidate (excluding such buffoons as Dennis Kucinich) who maintained from the outset that he opposed the war.
Apart from his charisma and superior organizational operation, especially in the caucus states, his opposition to the war might have been the single most important factor contributing to his defeat of Hillary Clinton. Clinton, thinking she was the inevitable nominee, presumably believed she could sporadically assume the role of hawk with impunity looking to the general election. By the time Hillary was done posturing back and forth on the war, no one could be sure what her position really was, other than that she would say what she needed to say, consistency be damned, to best preserve her presidential viability.
Obama shrewdly capitalized on Hillary's ambivalence, parlaying his opposition to the war to his maximum advantage. Given the nation's Bush fatigue — no matter how unjustified from a broad historical perspective — and Bush's very low approval ratings, it only made sense for Democratic presidential aspirants to make themselves the anti-Bush.
Because the Iraq war was perceived as Bush's greatest sin and almost all other sins flowed from Iraq or were somehow conflated with it — Abu Ghraib, rendition, waterboarding, "unilateralism," NSA surveillance, Halliburton, Gitmo, etc. — Obama was uniquely positioned to be the anti-Bush.
Obama seized on all this specifically — condemning the entire laundry list of "sins" and expressly promising to reverse the whole lot of them, beginning with Iraq. As an added bonus, he was also the anti-Bush in terms of personality. He was smooth, articulate, calm (the anti-cowboy) and possessed the trappings of intellectualism and elitism.
Obama also assured us that he would put an end to the alleged inequities of Bush's tax policy, which was falsely billed as skewed toward the wealthy and against the sainted "middle class." And, like most Democrats of the modern era, Obama pretended he could pull off the magic trick of balancing the budget while punitively taxing the producers and increasing spending on every imaginable item on the Democratic welfare wish list.
Liberals complained when conservatives invoked Obama's alliances with unsavory characters and demanded we focus on policy. But when we tried to pin Obama down on how he could balance the budget while stifling growth and increasing spending exponentially or how he could avoid the disastrous consequences of a precipitous withdrawal of our troops from Iraq, we got nothing but media-enabled stonewalling.
Although Obama certainly articulated policies that were contrary to the status quo under President Bush, many of his supporters didn't care or weren't the slightest bit informed about the specifics of his policies. They were just swept up in his personality cult and nebulous promises of hope and change.
So it should be no surprise that Obama's series of head-spinning reversals so far have been met not with outrage from his supporters (fringe leftists excepted), but with glib rationalizations.
His newfound vacillation about Gitmo and NSA surveillance, his flip-flop on withdrawing from Iraq in 16 months, and his announced Cabinet appointments — particularly Gates and Clinton — are not being criticized as betrayals, but lauded as evidence that he is open-minded, adaptable, wise and, of course, presidential.
He's facing nary a shred of accountability for his anticipatory breaches of campaign promises. His flock is just happy that he will be implementing these policies — not President Bush.
All of this says so many things about our electorate and the coming climate for the Obama presidency, but I'll just leave you with two quick ones. First, it shows that most of the hatred for Bush was not based on his policies, but on the eight-year hate-filled propaganda campaign against him.
It also shows that there's no telling what Obama might be able to get away with in office, especially now that he has the cover of a few "moderate" appointments.
There's a method to Obama's madness of continuing Bush's policies that are designed to bring the war to a peaceful and honorable conclusion, even if Obama is revealing his campaign deceit in the process. This will help create the climate for him to usher in his radical domestic agenda, from a new New Deal — on steroids — to nationalized health care to the Fairness Doctrine.
Conservatives and moderates better snap out of their complacency, and the grass roots better gear up for war, or this whirlwind will come and go before we know what hit us.
After all, he is really proud of his Muslim heritage:
===
Obama Will Now Use His Middle Name!
From those tireless defenders of the faith at the Associated Press:
Obama wants to ‘reboot America’s image’
By JENNIFER LOVEN AP White House Correspondent
12/10/2008
WASHINGTON—President-elect Barack Obama says he will try to “reboot America’s image” among the world’s Muslims and will follow tradition by using his entire name—Barack Hussein Obama—in his swearing-in ceremony.
(The MSM alleges that - Sara) The U.S. image globally has taken a deep hit during President George W. Bush’s two terms in office, primarily because of opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, harsh interrogation of prisoners, the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and mistreatment of inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Obama promised during his campaign that one of his top priorities would be to work to repair America’s reputation worldwide, and that one element of that effort would be a speech delivered in a Muslim capital.
He pledged anew to give such a speech, though he declined to say whether it would happen during his first year in office.
“It’s something I intend to follow through on,” Obama said in an interview published Wednesday in the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. “We’ve got a unique opportunity to reboot America’s image around the world and also in the Muslim world in particular. So we need to take advantage of that.”
Obama said his message would be twofold: that his administration will be unyielding in stamping out terrorist extremism but also “unrelenting in our desire to create a relationship of mutual respect and partnership with countries.”
“I think the world is ready for that message,” he said in the interview, conducted Tuesday.
During the campaign, Obama repeatedly faced questions about whether he is a Muslim, particularly in whisper campaigns that noted his middle name, that his father is Kenyan, and that he lived for a time as a child in Indonesia. (Note the admission his father was Kenyan, making Obama a dual citizen, the very thing before the US Supreme Court which SHOULD disqualify him for the Presidency, and the note he lived as a child in Indonesia, which does not allow dual citizenship or enrollment in their schools except by Indonesian citizens, again, showing a loss of American citizenship and disqualifying him for the Presidency Constitutionally. - Sara.)
Asked if he would drop his middle name during his inauguration on Jan. 20, the president-elect said he would not.
“The tradition is that they use all three names and I will follow the tradition, not trying to make a statement on way or another,” he said.
==end quote==
Lest we forget, this is not quite the tune the Obama camp played during the campaign.
Indeed, as we noted back in February, via the Islamophobes at the Chicago Tribune:
QUOTE:
Michelle Obama: name Hussein is ‘the fear bomb’
by Mark Silva
Michelle Obama, who often has decried “the fear bomb” that opponents have used against her husband for his middle name — Barack Hussein Obama — said in Canton, Ohio, today that it is happening again and shows why it’s so important that he wins election as president.
“They threw in the obvious, ultimate fear bomb,” Obama said today of her husband’s 2004 Senate race. “We’re even hearing [that] now. … ‘When all else fails, be afraid of his name, and what that could stand for, because it’s different.’”
The senator’s wife said that rivals use innuendo to play on fears. “Just as they’re saying it now,” she said.
==end quote==
But suddenly now Mr. Obama’s middle name is no longer a “fear bomb.” Now it’s the cats pajamas, and it will burnish our country’s image throughout the world.
This from a man who refused to wear a US flag pin.
But speaking of clothing, maybe the President Select will also re-don the outfit for his glorious ascension.
This article was posted by Steve Gilbert on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008.
If the SCOTUS does not hear the Constitutional argument, I argued today that Judgement is coming.
But as I argued here before, a terrorist strike won't happen while President Bush is in the Whitehouse.
I posted one article which said that this was the intelligence view.. previously (MI6, I believe).
I think it is a mentality of all the rogues - both individual terrorists, organizations and states.
Did you see this article?
It says Iran is planning to go to war with Israel..
AFTER President Bush leaves office:
===
Israeli intelligence: Iran will wait for Bush exit
July 23, 2008
TEL AVIV — The Israeli intelligence community has reported its conclusion that Iran has decided to maintain restraint until the departure of U.S. President George Bush and that its allies hope for the election of Sen. Barack Obama.
The intelligence community has assessed that Iran and Syria would continue preparations for war with Israel and the United States but would seek to maintain regional calm until the new administration takes office in January 2009.
"They are unlikely to begin a war with Israel while President Bush is still in office," Israeli military intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin said.
In a briefing to the Israeli Cabinet on July 20, Yadlin said Iran and Syria could use their proxies, particularly Hamas and Hizbullah, to attack the Jewish state. But the military intelligence commander said the two Middle East states remain concerned that Bush might order a massive strike before he leaves office.
The Israeli intelligence assessment has determined that Damascus and Teheran believe that Bush's successor would either reject or suspend any U.S. plan to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons infrastructure. The assessment said Iran and its Middle East allies were rooting for the victory of Sen. Barack Obama.
Yadlin said Iran and Syria have not completed their rearmament effort. He said both countries were acquiring advanced Russian platforms and weapons and would need until at least 2009 to absorb them into their militaries.
Over the last year, Iran and Syria have been deploying a range of Russian air defense systems. Officials said they included the S-300 for Iran, the TOR-M1 and the Pantsyr-S1E.
And much more recently..
Are they arming to DEFEND.. or attack?
===
Report: Iran rocket arsenal tripled in 2008
By JPOST.COM STAFF
Dec 8, 2008 20:08 | Updated Dec 9, 2008 15:23
In a sign that Iran is taking military measures to ward off the threat of an attack on its nuclear facilities, the country has tripled the number of long-range rockets in its arsenal, Channel 10 reported on Monday.
According to the report, Iran possessed 30 Shihab-3 missiles at the beginning of 2008. Currently, the country claims to have over 100 over long-range missiles capable of hitting Israel.
While the ability of the Islamic Republic to strike any point in Israel has long been known, this latest build-up potentially points to an Iranian intent to launch a protracted counter-strike against those who seek to destroy its nuclear program.
The Jerusalem Post could not confirm the report.
Last summer, Iran held a massive missile exercise during which it claimed to have launched an improved version of the Shihab-3, known to have a range of 1,300 kilometers. The Iranian Fars News Agency Web site reported that the Shihab-3 had recently been equipped with an advanced guidance system that significantly improves the missile's accuracy and can correct its flight plan in midair.
Remember this article from earlier this year which says of the Al-Qaida "they are seeking an attack more spectacular than 9/11" - and that it is nuclear and designed to kill millions of Americans, quote, "Al-Qaida spokesman Suleyman Abu Ghayth declared that it is Al-Qaida's right to kill four million Americans.."
===
Al-Qaida nuclear attack in planning stages
Lalit K Jha
Saturday, April 5, 2008 (New York)
Al-Qaida's nuclear attack against the US is in planning stages, top American intelligence officials have said.
Deposing before a Congressional Committee on Homeland Security early this week, these US intelligence officials told US lawmakers that the threat of nuclear attack by the Taliban was growing and there is need to enhance its security measures.
Charles Allen, Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis and Chief Intelligence Officer at the Department of Homeland Security; and Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, the director of Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence for the Department of Energy testified before this key Congressional committee on nuclear terrorism on April 2.
''There's been a long-term effort by Al-Qaida, to develop an improvised nuclear device,'' Allen said. ''I have no doubt that Al-Qaida would like to obtain nuclear capability. I think the evidence in their statements that they've made over many years publicly indicate this,'' he argued in his testimony.
Giving details of the Al-Qaida preparation, based on years on intelligence inputs, Mowatt-Larssen said: ''An Al-Qaida nuclear attack would be in the planning stages at the same time as several other plots, and only Al-Qaida's most senior leadership will know which plot will be approved.''
In keeping with Al-Qaida's normal management structures such as the role of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad in the 9/11 attacks, Mowatt-Larssen said there is probably a single individual in charge, overseeing the effort to obtain materials and expertise.
The intelligence officials commented that some nuclear experts / scientists may have joined Al-Qaida years ago, long before the world began paying adequate attention to the proliferation of the kinds of technologies that could yield a terrorist nuclear weapon.
Referring to the planning of the 9/11 attack, Mowatt-Larssen said it was operationally very straightforward. ''It had a very small footprint, was highly compartmented. Al-Qaida's nuclear effort would be just as compartmented and probably would not require the involvement of more than a small number of operatives who carried out 9/11,'' he said.
Mowatt-Larssen then went out to divulge his information about a prototypical Al-Qaida nuclear attack plot. This would have, he said, approval and oversight from Al-Qaida's most senior leadership, with possible assistance from other groups and a planner responsible for organizing the material, expertise and fabrication of a device; operational support facilitator, responsible for arranging travel, money, documents, food and other necessities for the cell; assets in the United States or within range of other Western targets to case locations for an attack and to help move the attack team into place; and finally, the attack team itself.
This hearing was followed by another classified session wherein other details about the possible nuclear attack by the Al-Qaida terrorist network were possibly explained to the US lawmakers in details.
''Beyond the basics I have outlined here, we do not know what a terrorist plot might look like. There is, however, a chokepoint in a terrorist effort to develop a nuclear capability. It is impossible to build a nuclear weapon without fissile material,'' he said.
The officials said that the task for the intelligence community is not easy. ''We must find something that is tactical in size but strategic in impact. We must find a plot with its networks that cut across traditional lines of counter proliferation and counterterrorism. We must stop something from happening that we have never seen happen before,'' he said.
Mowatt-Larssen said the US successes against Taliban in Afghanistan have yielded volumes of information that completely changed its view of Al-Qaida's nuclear program. ''We learned that Al-Qaida wants a weapon to use, not a weapon to sustain and build a stockpile, as most states would,'' he said.
''The nuclear threats that surfaced in June 2002 and continued through the fall of 2003 demonstrated that Al-Qaida's desire for a nuclear capability may have survived their removal from their Afghanistan safe haven,'' he said.
Observing that the Al-Qaida's nuclear intent remains clear, he said it obtained a fatwa in May 2003 that approved the use of weapons of mass destruction. Al-Qaida spokesman Suleyman Abu Ghayth declared that it is Al-Qaida's right to kill four million Americans in retaliation for Muslim deaths that Al-Qaida blames on the United States.
''Osama bin Laden said in 1998 that it was an Islamic duty to acquire weapons of mass destruction. In 2006, bin Laden reiterated his statement that Al-Qaida will return to the United States.
He said Al-Qaida has a track record of returning to finish a job they started. They failed at the World Trade Center in 1993. They came back in 2001. They canceled plans for chemical attacks in the US in 2003. ''We do not yet know when and where they intend to strike us next, but our past experience strongly suggests they are seeking an attack more spectacular than 9/11,'' he said.
''To delve a little into how they may be thinking about the nuclear option, at any given moment, Al-Qaida probably has attack plans in development. Nine-eleven was planned when the USS Cole was attacked in Yemen and when our embassies in Dar es Salaam and Tanzania were attacked in Africa,'' he said.
Blackmailing tactics of Al-Qaida
In his testimony Dr. Matthew Bunn, a senior research associate for the Project on Managing the Atom at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's School of Government said there is greater chance than ever that the Al-Qaida would get the material and manage to make it into a bomb.
''I think then the next question is if they got the material, and they managed to make it into a bomb, could they somehow deliver it to Washington, or New York, or another major city somewhere around the world. I think, in my view, the answer is yes,'' he said.
Bunn said in case a bomb goes off there would be blackmailing tactics from these terrorists' organizations. ''One has to recall that the moment after a nuclear bomb goes off, someone -- either the perpetrator or another terrorist group -- is going to call up and say, ''I've got five more, and they're already hidden in U.S. cities, and I'm going to start setting them off unless you do X, Y and Z.'' And one bomb having just gone off, they will have substantial credibility,'' he argued.
''The prospect for panic, uncontrolled mass evacuation of our cities, economic chaos and disruption is, I think, very great."
Deposing before the Congressional committee, Gary Ackerman, research director for the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland said at present the efforts of non-state actors seeking to acquire and use nuclear weapons are growing in size and scope.
''Jihadists have, since the mid 1990s, made at least 10 statements advocating the possession or use of nuclear weapons, and there have been at least a dozen reports of jihadists' attempts to acquire nuclear weapons, fissile material or technical knowledge,'' he said.
''As an initial indicator of this trend, a recent analysis of online jihadist documents that deal explicitly with nuclear weapons has revealed that while their knowledge is still below par, there have been significant advances in the understanding of nuclear issues within the general jihadi community in only a few short years,'' Ackerman said.
"It is impossible to build a nuclear weapon without fissile material"... AND ''We learned that Al-Qaida wants a weapon to use.."
think IRAN.
Does the West really think that Iran goes nuclear it won't give its "fissile material" to the Al-Qaida militants who say they "want a weapon to use"?
Tracing it back to Iran may be a bit difficult.. but so long as Iran's goals are carried out by these operatives, what does that matter to them? The goal is accomplished when they hand the fissile material to the Al-Qaida agents who are now (or being) moved into place in the US, according to this document. (And I don't even want to think how soon this could happen if they have obtained the fissile material and are NOT waiting on Iran's generation of the material.)
Also, do remember my previous post which says the terrorists are grooming people who cannot be spotted using racial profiling in the article called, "Al-Qaeda grooming 'western-looking' militants: CIA" - they are grooming people they say, "look western and could enter the United States undetected to conduct terrorist attacks."
Let's connect the dots here, people.. these people will not stop their plans just because there there is a dove headed toward the Whitehouse, not a hawk. It will just give them more cover to do what they have intended to do, as such a person would be much more accomodating and give them the leeway they need in the name of "peace" and "understanding."
Remember and do not let the MSM lull us into forgetting that, "Abu Ghayth declared that it is Al-Qaida's right to kill four million Americans... Osama bin Laden said in 1998 that it was an Islamic duty to acquire weapons of mass destruction. In 2006, bin Laden reiterated his statement that Al-Qaida will return to the United States. He said Al-Qaida has a track record of returning to finish a job they started." and there have been significant advances in the understanding of nuclear issues within the general jihadi community in only a few short years."
AND:
In his testimony Dr. Matthew Bunn, a senior research associate for the Project on Managing the Atom at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's School of Government said there is greater chance than ever that the Al-Qaida would get the material and manage to make it into a bomb. ''I think then the next question is if they got the material, and they managed to make it into a bomb, could they somehow deliver it to Washington, or New York, or another major city somewhere around the world. I think, in my view, the answer is yes,'' he said.
From what I saw.. it will be a lot more than just ONE bomb, and far greater casualties than four million Americans (more like sixty).
As America's leaders move themselves out from under the protecting hand of God by violating their sacred oaths of office.. first by Obama perpetrating this fraud on the American public in violation of the Constitution, then by the US Supreme Court ignoring it.. and finally by the Congress (electoral college) not taking up their sacred duties and being sure of Obama's qualifications before they vote for him.. well, it all moves inevitably toward what appears to me as a predestined end.
Let's hope I am wrong.. I know I do.
I wish I were.. truly I do.
And lastly.. this article from Nov 2008, last month..
saying that AQ wants to outdo the 9/11 attacks.. and, quote: the terrorist network has already begun consolidating its networks in preparation for the attack:
(Remember the last article I posted says it is NUCLEAR?)
For those who are unconcerned by the things I have had to say..
I do hope you are still laughing at my musings here.. hey?
As I said.. I suspect the terrorists will WAIT until Bush leaves office.
The AQ have seen what he is capable of.. and they know Bush has nothing to lose.
He won't even have to deal with the aftermath.
So if he became inclined.. with an outraged populace..
They fear for what he may do..
Attack Iran.. bomb Mecca?
Better to wait for Obama.. for maximum damage under this inexperienced whelp,
With no fear of retaliation, of course.
===
AQ wants to outdo 9/11 in new attack on US
November 10, 2008
by Ed Morrissey
An Arab newspaper in London has reported that al-Qaeda intends on launching an attack on the US that would “outdo by far” the 9/11 attacks. Al-Quds al-Arabi also reported that their Yemeni contact within AQ, a “former senior operative”, says the terrorist network has already begun consolidating its networks in preparation for the attack:
Quote:
OSAMA bin Laden is planning an attack against the United States that will “outdo by far” September 11, an Arab newspaper in London has reported.
And according to a former senior Yemeni al-Qaeda operative, the terrorist organisation has entered a “positive phase”, reinforcing specific training camps around the world that will lead the next “wave of action” against the West.
The warning, on the front page of an Arabic newspaper published in London, Al-Quds Al-Arabi - and widely reported in the major Italian papers - quotes a person described as being “very close to al-Qaeda” in Yemen.
The paper is edited by Abdel al-Bari Atwan, who is said to be the last journalist to interview Osama bin Laden in 1996. According to the report, bin Laden is himself closely following preparations for an attack against the US and aims to “change the face of world politics and economics”. The operative is quoted as saying that “this will be shown by the fact that we now control a major part of the south of Somalia”.
The reference to Somalia is interesting in light of the article I referred to which called for recruiting people within the US, coupled with this:
Quote:
US MUSLIMS DISAPPEAR. WHY? WHERE?
Posted in: J. Grant Swank, Jr.
By J. Grant Swank, Jr.
Monday, December 08, 2008
Why have dozens of young Somali men disappeared from the Minneapolis-St. Paul region?
They were here in the United States. Now they are no longer in their neighborhoods. United States Intelligence is concerned, checking out the possibility that they have joined jihadist regimes bent on destroying the Republic.
Jihadist trainees are active presently in Somalia in order to see through Islam World Rule. It could be that these young persons once in America have united with these trainees with the purpose of returning to the United States for underground purposes.
Community individuals are also assisting the United States Intelligence networks in attempting to locate these missing Muslims, also to decipher why it is that they have left America and where in fact they are now located.
“The missing young men have been the focus of some attention since late October, when Shirwa Ahmed, a naturalized U.S. citizen, died in a suicide bombing in northern Somalia. Ahmed was a 1999 graduate of Minneapolis's Roosevelt High School” per Fox-News’ Daveed Gartenstein-Ross.
Many Americans believe that there are sleeper cells throughout North America. These are composed of anti-democracy Muslims intent on destroying the continent’s culture.
These youth are committed to the Koran’s Allah who stipulates that non-Muslims are infidels and thereby must be slain. Only Muslims must remain on the planet.
It is believed that mosques harbor jihadist teachers. One woman attended a mosque to learn more about Islam. She arrived one hour ahead of the scheduled public lecture.
She sat in the back of the room. The Muslim male at the front of the gathering was teaching jihadist tactics to his male listeners. The American woman understood his language though he assumed that she did not.
She heard anti-American lectures, the teacher all the while concluding that only his Muslim male students were deciphering his detail.
When the anti-American lecture was completed, she was then greeted cordially by those who had no idea that she had just been privy to the Muslim underground bent on overthrowing North America’s governments.
It is deplorable that the democracies of the world are not more aggressive in stopping Muslim infiltration. Instead, in some areas these Muslims are welcomed warmly as if they are democracy-friendly.
Read CATHOLIC SCHOOLS PROVIDE MUSLIM PRAYER ROOMS, WASHING FACILITIES
One cannot be certain that any Muslim conclave is democracy-friendly. Recall the Islamic terrorist doctors in British hospitals who plotted to kill non-Muslims. In other words, the very intelligent, educated Muslims may align themselves with Islam World Rule. It is not just the Muslim gun-carrying males and suicide bomber females who scheme the undoing of non-Muslim societies.
Pentagon approves Iraq sales worth up to $6 billion
Wednesday December 10, 7:52 pm ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Defense Department on Wednesday said it had approved the sale to Iraq of weapons valued at up to $6 billion, including 400 Stryker wheeled vehicles, military radios, training aircraft, 20 coastal patrol boats and 140 M1A1 Abrams tanks.
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The Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which oversees major foreign arms sales, said it had notified Congress this week about eight separate arms sales agreements with the Iraqi government.
Lawmakers now have 30 days to block the sales, although such action is rare since such large agreements are usually vetted well ahead of time.
The largest of the agreements, valued at up to $2.16 billion, is for 140 M1A1 Abrams tanks, 8 M88A2 tank recovery vehicles, 64 armored Humvees, shelter carriers and other military vehicles.
The prime contractors for the vehicle sales would be General Dynamics Corp (NYSE:GD - News), Honeywell International (NYSE:HON - News), and General Motors Corp (NYSE:GM - News).
The Iraqi government also requested the sale of 400 M1126 Stryker infantry carrier vehicles and associated equipment valued at up to $1.11 billion, the agency said. General Dynamics is the main contractor for that deal as well.
Another big-ticket arms sale involves 20 30-35-meter coastal patrol boats and 3 55-60 meter offshore support vessels, a deal valued at up to $1.01 billion, if all options are exercised, the Pentagon agency said.
It said no principal contractor had been identified yet for the patrol boats and support vessels, but the acquisition would be subject to U.S. defense sourcing requirements.
Iraq also asked to buy 26 Bell Armed 407 Helicopters with engines built by Rolls-Royce (LSE:RR.L - News). DSCA said the principal contractors also had not been identified. The helicopters are built by Bell Helicopter, a unit of Textron Inc (NYSE:TXT - News).
The arms sales also include up to $148 million in rifles, carbines and grenade launchers; and up to $210 million in 20 T-6A Texan training aircraft built by privately held Hawker Beechcraft, but including other equipment built by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp (NYSE:UTX - News) and a unit of L-3 Communications Holdings Inc (NYSE:LLL - News).
Iraq had also requested the sale of 36 AT-6B Texan II aircraft and associated equipment, a deal valued at up to $520 million. Hawker Beechcraft, Pratt & Whitney and L-3 would be the prime contractors for that deal as well.
The Pentagon also said it had approved the 64 deployable rapid assembly shelters and a wide array of military radio equipment under an agreement valued at up to $485 million, and for which the primary contractors would be ITT Corp (NYSE:ITT - News) and Harris Corp (NYSE:HRS - News).
(www.biz.yahoo.com)
Iraq is a country which economically-speaking has been built more or less completely from scratch. Yes, it is the cradle of civilisation and lay at the crossroads of one of the greatest and most ancient trading routes in the world, the Silk Route, but it has had a difficult few years. Endless wars and political infighting did the once great trading nation no favours.
It has taken the most unmerciful battering from all kinds of heavily-armed men with ill intentions, but somehow it keeps coming back and that says a lot for Iraq’s character. The country retains both its dignity, despite the horrendous conditions it has had to endure and at the same time, its reputation as a centre of education and culture.
Iraqi’s come across as being a very proud, but quietly proud people who are deeply aware of their long and fascinating history and at the same time they seem to have a strong sense of destiny. They seem to believe that, despite guns and bombs and mass murder that things will get better.
You have to admire the fact that they seem to be hell-bent on overcoming any odds. Iraq and Baghdad in particular, has been virtually destroyed by war many times, but it keeps coming back. In 2003 and 2004, ordinary Iraqis gave up good jobs abroad to come back, and to come back against considerable odds, and tried over and over again, to build a better country. Many paid for their dedication and economic patriotism with their lives.
Take a look at a map of Iraq. It lies slap-bang between Iran, Turkey, Syria and Saudi Arabia. It is hard to miss. Even flying around it is environmentally unsound. You have to go through it to get to the rest of the world, east or west. It is the original crossroads of civilisation and traders have always known that.
Colonel Tim Collins of 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment was not the first person to realise the enormously influential place Iraq has when he said on the eve of war in 2003, “Iraq is steeped in history. It is the site of the Garden of Eden, of the Great Flood and the birthplace of Abraham. Tread lightly there. You will see things that no man could pay to see and you will have to go a long way to find a more decent, generous and upright people than the Iraqis.”
Five years later and after much bloodshed, Iraq is now making a brave attempt to reintegrate itself with the rest of the world’s economy and to be fair; it is not doing a bad job. Yes, bombs are still going off and bullets are still flying around, but at the time of writing, it seems to have turned the corner. The banks are well capitalised and while there isn’t much lending going on, the population appears to have more confidence in the financial system than one would imagine, especially given the security situation.
The efforts of people like Central Bank Governor Dr Sinan Al Shibibi are commendable. People like him and many others beside, have managed, despite mass murder, to bring inflation down, maintain a stable currency, unlike for instance, Zimbabwe and still bring in investors. It is arguable who has the tougher job, the Governor of the Central bank of Iraq or the Governor of the Central Bank of Zimbabwe.
My money would be on Dr Shibibi, principally because he has managed to bring inflation down from well over 60 per cent to less than 15 per cent and in fact it is approaching single figures. He has done all this while operating in probably one of the most dangerous cities in the world.
Zimbabwe, while not exactly Disneyland, does not have double figure body counts every month (current Cholera epidemic allowing), does not have car bombs going off with monotonous regularity and does not have to deal with intra regional political tensions. Fair enough, Zimbabwe has to deal with inflation that is running at around 200 or 300 million per cent. The country is also under embargo and has plenty of internal problems, but to be frank, still less misery, even allowing for a cholera epidemic, than Iraq.
I also find it quite fascinating that there are bankers and other financial services executives out there who would give up good jobs in far safer countries and go (in their case) home to Iraq to do the same job there, but with significantly more risk and probably for much less money.
As a journalist, it is my job to cover the story wherever I find it and if that means going to Iraq, then I will. I have no problem going, even allowing for the kinds of risks that everyone associates with Iraq because I believe that I am doing the readers of CPI Financial a disservice if I don’t.
I do believe that some stories are worth taking risks for and I am quite clear in my mind that there is more to the Middle East than just the GCC. There are three very large and potentially very wealthy countries in the Middle East, namely Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. They have much in common, but also many differences and they need to be covered comprehensively. They have to be compared and contrasted our readers must be given the kind of information they can base important decisions upon.
Ok, so Iraq is not quite Dubai, but there is no reason why it shouldn’t be, eventually. Look at Lebanon. People never seem to write it off, despite periodic outbursts of violence. Investors are always keeping an eye on the economic situation there and Iraq is no different. It is not some hopeless African basket case economy.
Victor Chu the Chairman of First Eastern Investment Bank, speaking at DIFC Week in Dubai summed it up fairly well. “The quickest revival of the economy can be achieved by reconnecting the Silk Route.”
If Iraq’s example is anything to go by, then an economy can be turned around, even in the middle of conflict. That takes a fantastic amount of vision and even more importantly, courage. The biggest achievers in any high risk environment usually change things by risking their own career to get it done. They always put their reputation and personal safety on the line. Such acts are rare.
(www.cpifinancial.net)
Iraq’s Oil Future: Finding the Right Framework - Part 5
09 December 2008
an Iraq Updates exclusive - Dr. Carol Nahlke's report on Iraq's oil industry and its challenges
By Dr. Carole Nahlke
Section 5:
WHAT CAN IOCs OFFER?
Iraq’s future — how do the IOCs fit in?
Can the IOCs deliver?
Many commentators today are challenging the traditional IOC business model and question whether it has a future in a world of sustained high oil prices. Does the world need IOCs? Why can’t the NOCs simply bypass the IOC and undertake the project activity themselves in tandem with support from the supply chain for technology and capability? Is this an alternative prescription for Iraq, particularly as Iraq is blessed with abundant oil reserves, high quality reservoirs and low extraction costs?
Whilst these questions are frequently posed, they are over-simplistic and underestimate the mutual benefits that can flow from NOC/ IOC partnership.
At the outset, we need to have a balanced understanding of the IOC potential offering. IOCs have been the traditional partner of choice for most resource holders, undertaking large, complex and groundbreaking oil and gas projects. Essentially, the IOCs advantages and contribution lie in their accumulation of experience, their undoubted technical expertise, innovation, transparency, commercial discipline, and their capacity for mobilising capital resources to deliver swift project execution. To list these qualities is not to imply that NOCs may not also be able to match some of them, but there can be no doubt that when it comes to the mobilisation of capital on a global scale the IOCs retain a distinct advantage.
Beyond that, IOCs provide an undisputed ability to integrate all aspects of successful oil and gas developments including financial strength, leading edge technologies, market experience and development and critically proven project execution skills.
The IOCs still rank among the largest oil and gas producers worldwide, and these Western majors also have also achieved a dramatically higher return on capital than national oil companies of similar size and operations. They still control massive capital inflows that could be invested in future production. Out of some $220 billion in CAPEX spent in the global E&P sector in 2006, $80 billion was spent by the top five IOCs (BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips Company, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell).
Bringing together experienced people, proprietary technology and operational excellence IOCs are able to work collaboratively with NOCs to deliver shared success. IOCs assist with the development of a local supply chain, over time this will deliver higher local content and create globally competitive industries. Beyond the central capital raising function, it can be argued that technology and knowledge transfer are the most critical parts of the IOC offering.
Technology has long been the answer to the Industry’s most difficult challenges, enabling obstacles to be overcome across the Industry activity spectrum from finding, producing and delivering products to existing and new markets.
Technologies are equally important for new fields and existing ones, the deployment of enhanced oil recovery techniques such as gas injection, water-flooding, and multilateral drilling have extended the productive life of hundreds of fields across the globe. All oil and gas fields can benefit from the best technology. Even for the most prolific reservoirs there is always the challenge of maximising recovery, extending field life and extracting petroleum at the lowest sustainable cost. This is just as important in Iraq as it is for the North Sea or the Arctic. For oil fields in Iraq the prize is commensurately larger from the application of the latest technology, a 1% increase in recovery factor for a 20 billion oil in place reservoir is 200 million barrels.
Project management is an area where IOCs often claim to offer leadership. IOCs operate projects with relentless focus on cost efficiency and unparalleled effectiveness in hydrocarbons recovery: they can do what others can do but they do it in a superior way! The international majors produce their fields at maximum production. IOCs can only do business where it is wanted and needed to support production growth and reserves replacement. They do that through sustaining existing reservoirs to ever higher levels of recovery, whilst maintaining a sensible and controlled cost base, the development of difficult, marginal and unconventional reservoirs and the exploration of the higher risk and higher cost fields.
The IOC offering is compelling and there is a global proven track record going back many decades, new chapters are added to the book each year. The list of successes range from the development of the North Sea and Alaska in the 1970’s, the steady march into deeper and deeper water in areas such as the Gulf of Mexico and Brazil, the transformation of the Former Soviet Union economies such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan with world scale developments and the globalisation of gas through the rapid evolution of LNG technologies. The scale of resources, human, financial and physical that needs to be deployed to bring developments to fruition is considerable and exposes IOCs to significant risks both below and above ground.
Section 6:
MAXIMISING THE CONTRIBUTION OF IOCs
IOCs — their key priorities
Access to reserves — Is this the key to survival?
Long-term investment: the search for stability
To bring the full benefits to bear from the involvement of the major IOCs in Iraq’s upstream oil development the right investment climate has to prevail. The basic elements required can be itemised in three broad categories — all of equal importance:
Strategic considerations
Access, transparency and stability
Commercial considerations
Fundamental commercial pre-requisites create the necessary minimum conditions to facilitate upstream investment. But they are by no means sufficient. Other non-commercial factors come into play. These include firstly strategic considerations and secondly access to reserves, transparency and stability. These three considerations together constitute the essential ingredients for investors in assessing the competitiveness of an oil and gas province and therefore attractiveness of major resource commitment.
Strategic Considerations
Companies scrutinize projects in sophisticated ways that go well beyond the criteria of commercial viability and profitability.
The project that an IOC plans to undertake has to fit with its current and planned portfolio of projects and be consistent with its strategic ambitions. It also has to fit with the company’s overall corporate strategy, in terms of type of activity and regional growth.
Companies increasingly look at a project from the perspective of providing follow on opportunities for continued profitable investments in the future. A single project, with little or no potential for repeat investment opportunities surrounding it, is not as attractive as one that can help a company over time build a position of critical mass in a particular oil province. In this regard Technical service agreements (see Section 9) offer little of long term appeal as they tend to be of limited duration and offer a poor financial return for the resource commitment potentially required.
Access, Transparency and Stability:
Ease of access and operations are also fundamental requirements. The resource base must be accessible. This means that it is desirable for the country to have a policy of allowing foreign investment in its hydrocarbon sector.
The central features of such a policy must be a simple regulatory framework and commitment in the host nation to the rule of law and to the administration of commercial law in ways that IOCs can understand and that offer sufficient protection to their shareholders.
Fiscal and contract stability: oil and gas projects are long term projects; they have inherent levels of risk present at every stage — from exploration to abandonment. Unstable fiscal regimes negatively affect the confidence of investors in government policy and increase political risk. If the variation of taxes over project life can be minimized — that is if the tax regime is stable — there is one less variable to worry the investor. A major risk factor is either reduced or eliminated. If fiscal stability cannot be constitutionally guaranteed then investors have to live with the fiscal risk. This is acceptable provided that the fiscal risk is compensated for by a lower level of Government take.
Clarity and transparency require that an IOC should be clear about which players within the host country it needs to interact with. Is it the State, the owner of the resources of the country, the shareholder of the NOC and the main authority issuing the laws that govern the hydrocarbon sector? Is it the Oil Ministry, the body assigned to formulate hydrocarbon sector policy and to state the national priorities in developing the national resources? Is it the NOC, the entity that operates and manages the hydrocarbon assets of the state, and serves as the main operating link with IOCs? Or is it the Finance Ministry, the body entrusted with managing the revenues generated from the sector?
A minimum level of cohesiveness among the various players is required. When these different government bodies are at odds on a policy affecting foreign investment, they can delay investments by several years. Delays can cause considerable erosion in financial returns, something about which both IOCs and governments are very sensitive.
If IOCs are to be encouraged it is in the best interests of the State to encourage competition between them. Opportunities in Iraq should therefore be made available to an extensive list of companies, subject to qualification criteria, both large and small. It is undesirable to leave the future of Iraq’s resource development concentrated in too few hands. The more players in a basin will stimulate a competitive environment leading to more investment, swiftly technology deployment, higher production and more revenues for the State.
Commercial Considerations
Commercial considerations include:
The resource base (Basin prospectivity — the chance of finding oil or gas — and volumetric potential — how large are the discoveries). The quality of the reservoirs and the oil.
Technical challenges, is new leading edge technology required?
Cost structure (overall finding, development and operating costs per billion of oil equivalent).
Access to infrastructure and markets. Can the product be easily exported?
Fiscal terms that provide an acceptable and sufficient level of profitability for IOCs. IOCs need a minimum rate of return and fiscal terms that are profit related, i.e. vary with profitability rather than revenues. IOCs are owned by shareholders and they need to maximise shareholders’ wealth. Also, in their efforts to increase production, they must maintain an adequate unit profit margin at an acceptable level of risk. Iraqi policy makers will need to ensure that the fiscal regime is competitive with regimes elsewhere in the globe. IOCs investment capital will naturally flow to the most attractive opportunities in their global portfolios. The fiscal regime should also be kept as simple as possible to minimise distortions, deliver predictability and facilitate ease of compliance.
Risk: although one can argue that the exploration risk is low in Iraq, the political risk is very high, not only because of the military legacy but also because of internal conflict between the Kurdish area and Baghdad. Perceptions of political risk will improve once there is a track record of stability and sound governance.
Freedom of assignment, the ability to buy and sell their potential assets to third parties.
Most Governments traditionally put considerable effort into encouraging investment in the upstream sector and maximising the contribution of IOCs. Some measures require fundamental re-thinking vis-à-vis the sector’s geological potential and the competitiveness of existing fiscal terms in relation to that potential. Other measures are procedural and bureaucratic; they make a major difference to IOCs but come at no monetary cost to governments. This is best illustrated with the concept of booking reserves explained below.
‘Booking Reserves’:
The Importance of the Barrel
One of the most important performance statistics for any oil company is the daily production volumes presented in its reports to shareholders that it has produced in prior years and the remaining reserves that it expects to produce in the future. The production trend is taken as a critical indicator by analysts and shareholders as to whether the company is growing, static or declining. This can have a significant impact on the stock price and underlying worth of the company.
An appreciation of this production reporting dynamic will help explain some IOCs behaviour and contractual preferences. The ability of IOCs to book barrels can and should be separated from the more fundamental issue of the division of underlying economic rent and in this context is of little relevance to the host Government.
IOCs take great care to ensure that they are able to ‘book’ as many barrels as possible. The term ‘book’ means that the company in question has rights to take delivery of and sell the production in question to third parties and as a consequence is able to report these barrels as part of its aggregate reported production. Once reserves are booked they fall onto the balance sheet of an oil company as an increase in the asset base or replacement of produced assets. This is attractive for investors and can consequently increase shareholders’ value, and the converse is true for companies who fail to replace reserves, something most upstream oil and gas management see as a significant driver at a strategic level when making investment decisions.
In simple terms, ‘booking reserves’ can refer to companies owning rights to the barrels. This perhaps explains why the concept is controversial (some State’s consider that they own the barrels and not investors). But in reality, it does not necessarily mean the same thing as either "title transfer of hydrocarbons" or "control". Furthermore, having the right to own the barrel is not that important in economic terms, the key issue is how the underlying value from the barrel is shared between the State and investor. If the level of taxation on a barrel is say 80% then the State receives the bulk of the value and it does not matter who technically owns or sells the barrel provided regulations are in place to ensure the barrels are sold at market value.
Besides, reported production is an accounting metric that is perhaps over simplistic as no two barrels are alike in terms of their underlying value; extraction costs vary widely as do the levels of taxation.
In large part the financial markets obsession with reported barrels is a problem of the IOCs own making. Financial analysts have been encouraged in their evaluation of the success or failure of company strategies and performance attach great importance to the overall reported production outcomes and forward projections. Production data is a simple and unequivocal metric which is easy to interpret, unlike the increasing complex financial reporting frameworks. Similarly the CEO’s of the leading IOCs also attach great significance to reported company production data and the aggregate reserves position as a proxy for the successful deployment and evaluation of corporate strategies. To a large extent this is a simple measure of whether the company in question has the ability to sustainably grow production. In particular is the IOC in question replacing all its annual production with new discoveries and field extensions?
There are no clear rules on the booking of proved reserves under different contract types and, given the wide variability in the specific details found in contracts, it is dangerous to generalise too much. But it is accepted that under concessionary Tax and Royalty regimes or PSCs, reserves may be booked. It is also clear that under a pure service agreement, they cannot be booked.
Concessionary regimes enable most of the production to be reported. For concessionary tax and royalty fiscal regimes the investor can typically report production and reserves for fields directly in proportion to his equity interest. Assuming a typical field has production of 20 million barrels per year and year end remaining reserves of 200 million barrels. Then if his equity stake is 25% he can book 50 million bbls of reserves and 5 million barrels of annual production entitlement. If a Royalty is applicable the above figures are often reduced by the percentage Royalty rate.
For Production Sharing Contracts, the outcomes in terms of booked reserves and production are different and depend on the oil price, cost structure, division of Profit oil and the oil price. The "booking" of reserves under PSC’s (which is actually the "booking" of the oil to which the company will be entitled under cost-recovery and profit-oil sharing terms) has led to the anomaly that “booked reserves" automatically go down when oil prices go up, as the company's right to recover "cost oil" diminishes in volume terms. Higher prices translate into fewer barrels being required to remunerate cost oil as the barrels are worth more. Furthermore reduced cost oil means more Profit Oil available for distribution between the IOC and Government. The division of Profit oil may be fixed or might vary with production or field profitability. If the latter, then higher oil prices will engender higher economic returns. This in turn will induce a greater division of Profit Oil in favour of the Government. All these factors make it difficult to investors to predict their precise production entitlement particularly in an environment of rapidly changing prices.
Under risk service contracts it is rare for any production to be reported as company production.
The above discussion partly explains why IOCs typically do not favour risk service contracts as generally it is very difficult to book any barrels under these frameworks. IOCs therefore have a very clear preference for Tax and Royalty regimes or PSCs where the reporting implications and dynamics are more clearly understood and valued by investors. So faced with contractual frameworks that provide identical economic outcomes for both investor and host Government, the investor will tend to prefer the framework which maximises the ability to report and book barrels.
Whilst the drivers from IOCs are to an extent presentational, the concerns of the host country are political and often emotional. Control is a simple concept, you either have it or you don’t, whereas taxation and the division of value and concepts of return on investment are less easily understood. Unfortunately the debate is rarely well informed with ownership being taken as a proxy for control and value. As explained throughout the report ownership and division of value are entirely separate issues, the IOCs could own all the reserves but it is of little importance compared to the critical issue of who collects the value from the barrels. Control can be devolved and policed through regulation, as is the case through the OECD, whilst value is controlled through the all important fiscal system. The PSC is a useful compromise between these competing agendas as it ensures the investor is only given sufficient barrels to remunerate his costs and provides an appropriate return. All the remaining barrels remain the ownership of the State. Under a Tax and Royalty system all the barrels remain in the ownership of the investor.
The issue of reserve ownership and control is analysed in detail in the following Section.
(www.iraqupdates.com)
Iraq’s Oil Future: Finding the Right Framework - Part 6
10 December 2008 ( Iraq Updates )
an Iraq Updates exclusive -
Dr. Carol Nahlke's report on Iraq's oil industry and its challenges
By Dr. Carole Nahlke
Section 7:
GOVERNMENT CONTROL AND REGULATION
How important is ownership?
Lessons and models: learning from different approaches
Oil sector control: time for new techniques?
The decision to invite IOC investors into Iraq is seen by Iraqis as profoundly political, controversial and one of the most difficult decisions to be made by the new fragile democracy. For some observers IOC investment and involvement in the upstream sector would be equivalent to the Iraqis surrendering control of the most valuable asset in Iraq.
Understandably for many Iraqis it is difficult to separate fact from emotion on such a sensitive issue but the reality is very different. According to some Iraqis, what the West sees as ‘resource nationalism’, the Iraqis see as ‘resource patriotism’.
It is a fact that in all petroleum provinces the oil industry is very intensely regulated and ‘control’ is tightly defined. Many would characterise traditional ‘tax and royalty’ concessionary regime as liberal and conferring freedom of control on the Industry. But a close inspection of the typical regulatory environment leads to the opposite conclusion.
The North Sea, both the UK and the Norwegian Continental Shelves, can be used as an example to illustrate that even when the ownership of the oil and gas production is granted to the private oil companies, the Government maintains full control. In fact, not even a single well can be drilled in the British and Norwegian waters without Government consent and approval of the development plans and other critical operational decisions.
It is sometimes believed that the more a government allows private oil companies to operate and run its oil and gas sector, the more it cedes control and loses sovereignty. It is also believed that the government renounces its sovereignty under PSC as IOCs are entitled to a proportion of the oil produced, while it maximises its control under a Risk Service Agreement. That is why it is hardly surprising that this type of agreement is mostly in use in countries where the nationalist sentiment concerning hydrocarbons is the strongest. In theory contractual regimes enable governments to exercise more control over both petroleum operations and the ownership of production. In practice, this is less so.
Government control does not depend on the type of regime that is adopted. As the pioneers of privatisation in the UK discovered in the 1980s and 90s, moving from the old pattern of nationalized state ownership to privatised industries by no means led to weaker control. Conversely, full public ownership could mean loss of political control, poor accountability and the progressive transfer of direction and influence to unelected boards with their own powerful constituencies.
The clear lesson of that era, both for petroleum extraction in the North Sea and for other previously nationalized concerns, was that privatisation, and concessions granted to private enterprise firms, could be combined with the appropriate fiscal and regulatory systems to provide more and not less control and accountability than state ownership had ever afforded. The UK has had a successful oil and gas industry, for more than 30 years, knowing that the industry is fully privatised — the British National Oil Company (BNOC) existed up until 1982 when it was successfully privatised.
The US Gulf of Mexico is also run by IOCs, with hundreds of wells being drilled, state of the art technology being used and higher risks being taken to drill in harsh environment and deep water. Norway has one of the toughest fiscal terms among countries that adopt concessionary regimes. The country also has a powerful state oil company — StatoilHydro— a petroleum fund worth more than $331bn and a healthy private industry. In none of these examples, where concessionary regimes are applied, had the government lost control. In contrast, governments were in a strong position to successfully exploit the competitive instinct of the oil companies, and benefit from the deployment of IOC’s resources to build successful oil and gas industries within a relatively short span of time.
In the North Sea, the investor requires explicit Government consent for a wide range of critical decisions and is required to comply with an ever lengthening list of regulatory requirements in respect of day to day oil field management and more recently environmental protection. Examples of where Government consent is required or actions are necessary to comply with regulations include:
Development of any oil and gas field
Development plan including reservoir management
Development of pipeline infrastructure and processing terminals
Sale or assignment of interests to third parties
Closure of production from any oil and gas field
Decommissioning oil and gas fields
Compulsory relinquishment of acreage after specified periods
Approval of exploration well locations and well testing requirements
Obligations to drill commitment exploration wells
Commitment to develop discoveries within specified time limits or relinquish
Field flaring levels, flare consent procedures
Stewardship— scrutiny of mid or late life investment levels
Health and Safety Environment (HSE) standards, inspections
Environmental regulations, produced water, use of chemicals, drill cuttings etc
Metering standards
Emissions trading
The list is not exhaustive but provides a flavour of the rigorous control that the industry is subjected to in all the countries it in which it has a major upstream presence. The industry would expect that a similar level of regulation would be introduced in Iraq to enable the Iraq ministry and NOC to oversee effectively the operations of international investors.
This is all a question of balance. It is not in doubt that Government needs to exercise control over the critical strategic investment decisions such as the exploration for and development of new oil and gas deposits, nor that in the Iraqi case the Government, as it gathers strength, will wish to do so. However it is also important that it does not interfere in the day to running of the oil and gas fields or in the procurement strategy. This is because the State’s tasks and skills differ from those required in day-to-day business operations. The 20th century demonstrated in country after country round the world how the State could improve performance and delivery by concentrating on genuinely public services whilst leaving business operations as far as possible to the enterprise sector, where necessary within the appropriate regulatory framework. There is no reason to suppose that Iraq’s administration will find itself in any different position from that experienced by other governments.
While the validity of this approach, combining the vigour of competition and enterprise with the discipline of Government approval and control, is now recognised round the world the question is raised as to whether the fledgling Iraqi administration, as it struggles to reconcile the factions and establish greater security, will have the capacity to operate in this new kind of controlling role. It may well possess the skills, but will it have the political backing and resources to implement the necessary policies and regulatory regime?
The answer must surely be positive, despite the uniquely challenging circumstances and the recent history of Iraq. The task is one of politics and persuasion. Prejudices, often fed from outside, have to be overcome and full confidence established by the Iraqi authorities in their own undoubted abilities to administer a modern and balanced oil programme.
The undoubted conclusion has to be that the pattern of ownership is not vital — though there is advantage in encouraging many players and promoting competition between them. It is the evolving nature of the partnership between the host state and private enterprise which determines success or failure. Each country must work out its own destiny in sensible and practical ways which respects its own national sovereignty and yet calls on the best qualities and expertise which the international oil industry can provide. This is what the North Sea experience confirms beyond question.
Let the final word come from another major oil and gas producing nation that started hesitantly on the road to hydrocarbons development but has turned its resource endowment into an unparalleled and world-class success. Norway is now recognised as the most prosperous country in the world giving its citizens an unparalleled standard of living as well as creating a sustainable legacy for future generations. How did they achieve that — here is an extract from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate ‘Fact Book’:
“Right from the start, national administration and control over the petroleum activities on the Norwegian continental Shelf have been fundamental requirements.The challenge for Norway in developing its petroleum activities was to establish a system of managing the petroleum resource that would contribute to maximising the values for the Norwegian people and the Norwegian society... The cooperation and competition between the various companies on the Norwegian Continental Shelf have been crucial, as the companies have all possessed different technical, organisational and commercial expertise. This policy has contributed to ensuring that Norway today has its own oil companies and a competitive supplier industry, and that the nation is secured substantial revenues from the sector... Norwegian and international oil companies are responsible for the actual conduct of petroleum activities on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. Competition between oil companies yields the best result when it comes to maximising the value of the petroleum resources. At the same time, it is important that the authorities can understand and evaluate the decisions made by the companies. Therefore, Norway has established a system whereby oil companies carry out the technical work required to recover the resources, but their activities also require approval by the authorities. The approval of the authorities is required in all stages of the petroleum activities, in connection with exploration drilling, plans for development and operation and decommissioning plans for fields. In this system, the oil companies create the necessary solutions to recover the resources, while the Norwegian authorities ensure that these solutions concur with the goal of maximising the values of the Norwegian society as a whole.”
This is one model — a very successful model. The choice for Iraq is whether they wish to follow it.
Section 8:
THE PROSPECT FOR EARLY CASH: THE ROLE OF LICENSE AUCTIONS
How much could Iraq earn up front?
Making the best of the competitive instincts of IOCs
One of the many choices facing the Iraqi administration is the extent to which it desires early up front revenues from the oil and gas sector, in advance of new or incremental production and whether it should implement licensing policies that engender such outcomes. One such policy opportunity is to award licenses, either for exploration and or development, to IOC consortia on the basis of up front signature bonuses. The host Government establishes an open competitive process, with pre qualification, with the highest cash bidder securing the license. This is a popular vehicle in many counties and has the potential to raise many billions of dollars in upfront cash. With current high oil prices and strong industry cash flows, the sums that can be earned by host Governments from such policies are considerable. This is further augmented by the intensified competition between IOCs and NOCs for quality access opportunities. Those in Iraq could be seen by prospective bidders as of a world class, unique, scarce with a high expectation of premium bids to secure successful outcomes.
License allocation by competitive bidding has long been a preferred policy in the United States which has raised some $66 billion in money of the day (mod) from competitive license bidding from the Outer Continental shelf (OCS) in the period 1954–2006. This is equivalent to a staggering $178 billion in 2006 money. These sums are all the more remarkable given the long lead time between the award of offshore acreage and first production and the higher underlying cost structure, particularly in deep water. Furthermore many of these licenses will be unproductive if exploration success is not forthcoming. More recently this licensing approach has also been very successful in countries such as Angola, which in 2005 was offered over $1 billion in a signature bonus for a single block, again in an offshore environment More recently sums in the $ billions have been paid for acreage in the Arctic.
In an onshore low cost environment such as Iraq comparable or much higher sums should be achievable. The size of the bid of course corresponds to the underlying economics including the impact of the fiscal regime; the tougher the fiscal terms the lower potential signature bonus and vice versa. In evaluating the potential signature bonus the IOCs will determine the potential Net Present Value of the potential developments and offer a proportion of that value as the signature bonus, the perceived level of competition will also impact the magnitude of the bonus offered. The advantage to the State is that once the bonus is paid it becomes a sunk cost and will have no further impact on the project economics.
If Iraq policy makers wish to attract IOC investment they face a clear choice in this respect. Either:
Offer a fixed set of fiscal terms and award licenses on the basis of the highest winning bid, or
Award licenses on the basis of the fiscal terms bid by prospective investors, the bidder offering the highest Government take will secure the license.
The latter approach will in all probability result in tougher fiscal terms with higher Government take. However it will be many years before the State will see any incremental revenue benefit, compared to the former, as the impact of the tough fiscal terms will be not be apparent until many years of production have elapsed. There is also the risk that the fiscal terms bid by the IOCs are set so onerous that the prospective developments are uneconomic. In this scenario the fiscal terms may have to be renegotiated, particularly if prices fall and discoveries are smaller than anticipated. With the former approach, this is much less likely, the State can establish appropriate and competitive fiscal terms with the prospect that most developments will be commercial. Also the upfront bids, once paid, will have no further impact on the development economics as the costs become sunk. For Iraq this is not an all or nothing option, the Iraqis could for example use this licensing vehicle selectively for a limited number of licenses where competition is perceived as the most intense or perhaps as an early experiment to test what levels of interest and bids could be realised. The approach does not need to be limited to exploration and could be deployed for example for the development of existing undeveloped discoveries. A bonus could be paid on signing of a license with subsequent bonuses paid at first production and when production levels pass pre defined thresholds.
Signature bonuses have become increasingly common in transition economies for the award of licenses. The Kashagan license in Kazakhstan secured an upfront $175 million bonus paid in 1997.
It should be recognised that there are limits and some disadvantages to this approach. For example it is important that commitments are extracted from prospective investors to undertake work programmes in form of seismic acquisition, exploration and appraisal wells in defined time periods. Funds spent on signature bonuses are funds that might have been spent on a work programme. Despite these caveats Iraqi policy makers should give serious consideration to this licensing option. There is perhaps no better time to tap into the competitive pressures of IOCs and NOCs when the Industry is so preoccupied with securing resource access and when they are cash rich from the current record oil prices.
(www.iraqupdates.com)
Iraq’s Oil Future: Finding the Right Framework - Part 7
11 December 2008 ( m&c )
an Iraq Updates exclusive -
Dr. Carol Nahlke's report on Iraq's oil industry and its challenges
By Dr. Carole Nahlke
Section 9:
THE FISCAL CONTEXT
What choices for petroleum fiscal regimes?
How to design a competitive fiscal regime?
What is the best formula for Iraq?
Dangers and challenges
What is double taxation and how can it be avoided?
Petroleum Fiscal Regimes
The oil producing nations have a spectrum of frameworks to chose from for their oil and gas sectors; from complete state ownership at one extreme (such is the case in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Mexico) to total private enterprise operations at the other (like in the USA and the UK). Between the two extremes of pure state and pure private development a combination of the two often occurs. Most oil producing countries fall within that spectrum, the norm being a pattern of involvement by the IOCs, but in cooperation with the host country’s NOC and within a clear framework of national control.
In the spread of varying relationships between governments and the oil industry, one can identify two basic and broad categories of agreements have that developed over the years — the concessionary systems and contractual agreements. The concessionary system originated with the very beginning of the petroleum industry (mid 1800), while the contractual system emerged a century later (mid-1950). Some argue that in concessionary regimes, oil companies are in a much stronger position compared with the contractual systems, where the government exercises a stronger control over the exploitation and production of the natural resource. But the reality which has emerged behind these different approaches is one of ideology and political fashion.
Concessionary Royalty & Tax Regimes
A concession is “an agreement between a government and a company that grants the company the exclusive right to explore for, develop, produce, transport and market the petroleum resource at its own risk and expense within a fixed area for a specific amount of time1.” In most oil producing countries using concessionary regime, the hydrocarbon reserves remain the property of the state until produced. Oil companies take title to produced oil at the wellhead and then pay the appropriate royalties and taxes. The company is entitled to ownership of the production and can freely dispose of it, subject to the obligation to supply to local market, if applicable2.
Concessionary regimes are well established and widely accepted. The customary framework of taxing oil companies in a concessionary regime involves a combination of Royalty, income tax and special petroleum tax. That is why concessionary regimes are commonly known as ‘Royalty/Tax Systems’.
Gross Royalty
Royalty can be a per-unit tax, which is a uniform fixed charge levied on a specified level of volume of production or an ad-valorem tax, which is a fixed charge levied on the value of the output (gross revenues). Royalty rates are generally set in a range from 10% to 20% but most are nearer 12% (1/8th) of production.
Royalty holds attractions for governments as they are relatively simple to administer, and provides an early revenue stream as soon as production starts. But as the tax is not profit related, it may deter marginal projects that are profitable on a pre-tax basis from proceeding. The regressive nature of Royalty — the lower the project profitability, the higher the effective tax rate — may cause operating income to become negative even when gross revenues exceed extraction costs and consequently can lead to a premature abandonment of the field. This is more likely to be a problem in a high cost basins and less of an issue on onshore low cost environments such as Iraq.
In an attempt to reduce some of these distortions, some countries have introduced a profit element in Royalties by having them depend on the level of production (like China) or in some cases oil price. This is known as a sliding scale Royalty. In this case, the Royalty rate will be low when production or oil price is low and vice versa, thereby decreasing the possibility of negative cash flows when production or oil prices are low.
Royalty is normally allowable as a deduction against other taxes such as production and income taxes.
Corporation or Income Tax
Income Tax systems usually consist of a basic, single rate structure, plus provisions for deduction of all costs items from the tax base, supplementary levies and tax incentives. The overall level of corporate income tax rates varies considerably from country to country. In many OECD countries the level is typically between 25% and 35%.
Most countries provide an incentive for exploration and development by allowing exploration costs to be recovered immediately and allowing accelerated recovery of development costs (tax depreciation), for example, over five years or less. Accelerated cost recovery brings forward payback for the investor and reduces his cumulative cash exposure. In addition to cost deductions, in most cases interest expenses and losses carried forward and/or back are commonly allowed in the computation of the tax liability. All forms of income tax allow relief for capital expenditure, but extra reliefs are sometimes given to provide incentives to develop high cost ‘marginal’ projects and are called uplift allowances on capital expenditure.
The income tax regime for oil and gas companies is generally the same regime that applies to all corporate activities for all industries in the country in question. Though the rate may be higher and the range of qualifying cost deductions may differ, the tax is levied at a corporate rather than oil field level, as such it is generally known as Corporation Tax or tax on corporate net income. Since income tax is a profit-based tax, it is also assumed to be neutral in its impact on different projects.
Double Taxation
It is important that the design of the fiscal regime takes into account the potential exposure to Double Taxation faced by prospective investors.
Double taxation occurs when a taxpaying entity resident on one country generates income in another country resulting in the same profit being taxed more than once in more than one country. In other words, it arises in the context of how income earned in a host country (for example Iraq) is treated for tax in the home country of the investor (the home country is where the investors corporate head offices are located).
Depending upon the nature of, and the interaction between, the fiscal regimes in the host country and the home country, which can adopt different definitions of taxable income or profits, investors may be liable to additional tax in the home country.
These sums can be very material, sufficient in extreme circumstances to render prospective investments uneconomic. Typically investors and tax officials from the host country work together to design the fiscal regime to minimise this exposure, whilst ensuring no diminution in tax take for the host country.
The wider implications of Double Taxation issues are discussed in more detail in Appendix 2.
Special Petroleum Tax
Many oil-producing countries following a concessionary regime also impose a special petroleum tax in order to capture a larger share of economic rent from oil production. The special tax is usually imposed as a supplement to the general corporate income tax but it is levied on a project or field basis rather than on aggregate company income. The tax is normally based on cash flow but is imposed only when cumulative cash flow is positive. Negative cash flows are carried forward and deducted from positive cash flows in later periods. The negative net cash flows may be uplifted by a minimum rate of return requirement and added to the next year's net cash flow. The uplift is often characterised as a proxy for financing costs. The accumulation process is continued until a positive net cash flow is generated. No tax is payable until the firm has recovered its costs inclusive of a threshold rate of return which is compounded from year to year. Tax kicks in only when positive cash flows emerge, the project investment is recovered and a threshold return on the investment is made. If costs rise or oil prices fall, taxable profits change in sympathy, as does the special petroleum tax burden.
Additional Payments and Measures
Other payments can also be made to the government in oil producing countries where concessionary regimes apply. These include Bonuses, which are lump sum payments made to the government. They can be Signature or lease Bonus, payable upon signing the agreement with the government or award of a lease, Discovery Bonus, payable when a commercial discovery is made, or Production Bonus, payable at an agreed amount upon the achievement of a stated level of daily production. Signature bonuses have a material impact on overall government take and life cycle economic returns to the investor. They are a one-off payment on signing a contract. They capture the resource value regardless of the success of exploration and production activities. Since the investment is made up front, once paid, they have no further impact on the future economic decisions and point forward returns to the investor. The sums can be very large (in Angola the bonus reached $1 billion per block of 4,100 Km2); they comprise a material proportion of overall government take, particularly if the acreage is unproductive. The discovery bonus is also a one-off fee. It is required after commercial discovery is declared and after the NOC has approved the IOCs development plan. Production bonuses, however, can be recurring. They are due when production reaches a certain level. They are normally on a sliding scale of production, therefore if daily production reaches a certain level the government takes a fixed sum, which increases if daily production reaches higher levels. Depending on the tax regime, bonuses may be deductible for income tax purposes.
Some countries ring-fence their oil and gas activities whilst others ring-fence individual projects. Ring fencing imposes a limitation on deductions for tax purposes across different activities or projects undertaken by the same taxpayer. In other words, all costs associated with a given licence or field must be deducted from revenues generated within that field — not from other licences or fields. These rules matter for two main reasons. Firstly, the absence of ring fencing can postpone government tax receipts because a company that undertakes a series of projects is able to deduct Exploration and Development costs from each new project against the income of projects that are already generating taxable income. Secondly, as an oil and gas area matures, the absence of ring fencing may discriminate against new entrants that have no income against which to deduct Exploration or Development expenditures.
Contractual Regimes
Under the typical contractual based systems, the oil company is appointed by the government as a contractor on a certain area. The title to the hydrocarbons remain with the state, hence all production belongs to the government, while the IOC executes petroleum operations in accordance with the terms of the contract and operates at its own risk and expense under the control of the government. The IOC also provides all the financing and technology required for the operation.
The two parties agree that the contractor will meet the Exploration and Development costs in return for a share of production or a cash fee for this service, if production is successful. If the company receives a share of production (after the deduction of government share), the system is known as a Production Sharing Contract (PSC) — also known as Production Sharing Agreement (PSC)3 — which is a binding commercial contract between an investor — the IOC — and a state. A PSC defines the conditions for the exploration and development of natural resources from a specific area over a designated period of time. Under a PSC, the oil company takes title to its share of petroleum extracted. This is important to the companies as it permits them to book reserves and report the production contribution as part of its global financial reporting to shareholders.
If the IOC is paid a fee (often subject to taxes) for conducting production operations, the system is known as a Service Contract, also called Risk- Service Agreement. The latter is called so because in a Service Contract, the host government (or its national oil company) hires the services of an international oil company and in the case of commercial production out of the contractual area, the oil company is paid in cash for its services without taking title to any petroleum extracted. Some early service contracts were signed by Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) in the 1950s. While some service contracts are disguised PSCs, especially with regard to ownership of the resource, the main differences between the two contract forms are the remuneration of the contractor and the control over operations.
In contractual regimes, the oil company bears all the costs and risks of Exploration and Development. It has no right to be paid in the event that discovery and development do not occur. However, if there is a discovery the company is allowed to recover the costs it has incurred, and this is known as Cost Recovery or Cost Oil. The investors typically receive the majority of early revenue from the project, known as cost oil, as compensation for the cost of exploration and development.
Cost Recovery is similar in outcome to cost deductions under the concessionary systems. It includes mainly unrecovered costs carried over from previous years, Operating Expenditures, Capital Expenditures, Abandonment Costs and some investment incentives. Financing cost or interest expense is generally not a recoverable cost. Normally, a pre-determined percentage of production is allocated on a yearly basis for cost recovery. However, in general there is a limit for cost recovery that on average ranges from 30–60 per cent of Gross Revenue, in other words, for any given period the maximum level of costs recovered is 60 per cent of Revenue, although contracts with unlimited cost recovery are also in existence (see Indonesia, Bahrain and Algeria for instance).
Many PSCs specify annual cost oil allowances either on a sliding scale or state that this variable is biddable or negotiable up to a certain maximum value. Full cost recovery occasionally comes with a time limit attached to it. The share of production set aside for cost oil will decline after, say, five years. In this sense it works similar to a tax holiday. Unrecovered costs in any year can be carried forward with interest to subsequent years. Also, some contracts allow these costs to be uplifted by an interest factor to compensate for the delay in cost recovery. Investment credits or uplift may also be provided to allow the contractor to recover an additional percentage of Capital Costs through cost recovery. The more generous the cost recovery limit is the longer it takes for the government to realise its take. There is usually a ring fence on petroleum activities, hence all costs associated with a particular block or licence must be recovered from revenues generated within that block.
Royalties can also feature in PSC regimes but many will argue that the same economic impact can be secured by adjusting Cost Oil limits which also ensure an early flow of revenues to the State. Royalty is paid to the government before the remaining production is split. Nevertheless, an alternative to Royalty is to have a limit on ‘Cost Oil’, to ensure that there is ‘Profit Oil’ as soon as production commences. Such a limit on cost recovery has a similar economic impact to a Royalty, with the government receiving revenue — its share of Profit Oil— as soon as production commences.
The principle of Cost Recovery applies to both a Production Sharing Contract and in Risk-Service Agreement. However, the basis of the contractor’s remuneration after it has recovered its cost differs in type.
In a PSC, the remaining oil after the oil company recovered the costs of the project (Cost Oil) is termed "Profit Oil" or “Production Split” and is divided between the host government and the company according to a pre-determined percentage negotiated in the contract. The split can be a fixed profit-oil split, linked to production rates or a progressive split linked to project profitability, i.e. to Rate of return — ROR — or R-factors. Under the ROR systems, the effective government take increases as the project ROR increases. The government is guaranteed early revenues due to the operation of the cost oil ceiling which ensures there is always a minimum quantity of Profit Oil to be shared between the investor and the State in each year. The elements determining the R-Factor vary from one country to the other, but normally both revenue and cost are included in the equation. As such, the R-Factor can be broadly defined as the ratio of cumulative net earnings to cumulative total expenditures. The R-Factor is calculated in each accounting period and once a threshold is reached, a new tax rate will apply in the next accounting period. The objective of the ROR and R-Factor is to link the sharing between the Government and the contractor to profitability. Profit oil is usually, but not always taxed.
In some countries, the government has the option to purchase a certain portion of the contractor's share of production at a price lower than the market price. This is called Domestic Market Obligation (DMO). There can also be an additional government take in form of Bonus Payments, whether Signature Bonus or Production Bonus. Most PSCs allow for bonuses to be tax deductible but they are not allowable for cost recovery.
Royalties, cost oil, profit oil and production bonuses can either be levied as fixed shares of production or on the basis of sliding scales. The latter method is becoming standard procedure. The two most common ways of calculating payments using sliding scales are based on either average daily production or R-factors.
Over time PSCs have changed substantially and today they take many different forms. One cannot refer to, say, a typical Asian or a typical Eastern European contract. Terms vary between one country and the other. But in its most basic form a PSC has four main properties. The IOC pays a royalty on gross production to the government, if applicable. After the royalty is deducted, the IOC is entitled to a pre-determined share of production for cost recovery. The remainder of the production, so called profit oil, is then shared between government and IOC at a pre-specified share. The contractor then has to pay income tax on its share of profit oil.
In the case of Service contracts, the contractor carries out development work on behalf of the host country for a fee. The government allows the contractor to recover the costs associated with development of the hydrocarbon resources. Additionally, the government pays the contractor a fee which is agreed upfront. All production belongs to the government. Since the contractor does not receive a share of production, terms such as production sharing and Profit Oil are not appropriate even though the arithmetic will often carve out a share of revenue in the same fashion that a PSC shares production. The fixed fee remuneration — Service Fee — of the contractor can be subject to tax. It is analogue to taxable income in a concessionary system and Profit Oil in a PSC. The remuneration fee under a service contract is usually determined using project performance indicators linked to actual production rates and based on pre agreed capital budgets. Service contracts are also known as risk service contracts or risk contracts. The term risk is added because the oil company puts up all the capital and risks being exposed to cost overruns for which typically it is unable to recover.
It should be noted that in exceptional circumstances the remuneration can itself be in the form of oil, and this is indeed the arrangement that has been provisionally agreed in the case of four recent one —year service contracts made between the Baghdad Ministry of Oil and four major IOCs — Total, Shell BP and ExonMobil.
Over time PSC’s have changed substantially and today they take many different forms. Service Contracts have also taken many forms. TAC and Buyback are two variations.
i. Technical Assistance Contracts (TAC) or Technical Service Agreements (TSA)
These contracts are often referred to as rehabilitation, redevelopment or enhanced oil recovery projects. They are associated with existing fields of production and sometimes, but to a lesser extent abandoned fields. The contractor takes over operations including equipment and personnel if applicable. The assistance that includes capital provided by the contractor is principally based on special technical know-how. These arrangements are suitable for small companies as they provide low risk situations with opportunities for a company to leverage technical expertise, and they are usually applied to marginal fields.
This kind of arrangement is more characteristic of countries where the state has substantial capital but seeks only expertise. These arrangements can be quite similar to those found in the oil service industry, where the contractor is paid a fee for performing a service, such as drilling, development or medium-risk exploration services. Hence they are suitable for serviceproviders. Furthermore, despite the reduced risks, cost and timing estimates as well as fiscal terms are critical. Many countries try to tighten the fiscal terms on enhanced oil recovery projects because of the reduced risk. However, these projects require careful screening as enhanced oil recovery can be very limited and costly in marginal, depleted fields. If fiscal terms are out of balance, no amount of technical expertise can salvage a project.
Generally these contracts are not favoured by IOCs and their track record is one of very limited success. The short term nature of these contracts and lack of access to project risks/ upside materially diminishes the appetite of IOCs to invest and deploy scarce resources to such ventures. An IOC is unlikely to deploy leading edge technology or assign significant numbers of experts to project where there is no long term leverage to project performance. Perhaps a good example is Kuwait where over a number of years the authorities have been unable to make there mind up as to whether to permit IOC access to major projects. IOCs have over a period of years patiently participated in a number of tightly defined small scale technical assistance programmes with the expectation that this would lead to a substantive long term role. The anticipated IOC participation has not been forthcoming and the Kuwait petroleum sector is now suffering from lack of investment and access to leading edge technology much to the frustration of all parties involved.
A particular concern for Iraq is that a significant proportion of the young skilled work force has left the country in recent years for safer employment overseas. Additionally the average age of employees in the Iraq NOC is over 50 and this demographic bulge will need careful management. Clearly skilled Iraqi’s need to be encouraged back to Iraq but meanwhile the IOCs must be encouraged to make up for shortfall and assist in training a new generation of skilled Iraqi technicians across the full spectrum of petroleum operations. This is best achieved in the framework of a long term contractual relationship.
ii. Buyback
Under the Buyback agreement, the arrangements with foreign companies “shall in no way entitle the companies to any claims on the crude oil4”. The scope of work to be carried out by the oil company is set in a development plan, which normally forms the basis of the technical bids for the project. The period of time from the effective date of the contract until final commissioning is referred to as the ‘development phase’, which ends when all development operations have been completed by the contractor in accordance with the buyback contract and all wells and facilities described in the development plan have been installed, commissioned, started up, tested and handed over to the national oil company. During development operations the contractor acts as the field operator under the control and direction of a joint management committee comprising a number of representatives from the contractor and the national oil company. During this period, the contractor funds all capital and non-capital expenditures and all operating costs incurred in the performance of development operations. After the successful completion of the development operations, operatorship of the field is transferred back to the national oil company for production operations, at the Handover date.
A buyback may offer the IOC an exploration contract which will not necessarily be converted into a development contract even if commercial discovery is declared. The agreements have a relatively short duration of between five and seven years. Capital cost ceilings can only be exceeded for new additional work approved by NOC. The extra expenditure is then added to the initial capital costs and repaid under the amortisation period of the contract. The IOC receives its project expenditure plus a fee. The latter is some percentage of total capital costs excluding bank charges and operating costs. Another important feature of the buyback agreements is the treatment of price risk. If the oil price drops significantly resulting in a low level of revenue that is not sufficient to cover the IOCs monthly entitlement, NOC may reduce its share of net revenue. But it will not allow its share to fall below a certain 'critical' level. If this sacrifice is still not enough to meet the IOCs requirement the amortisation period will be extended.
Sharing the Wealth — The Hard Choices
Petroleum taxation is a subject of endless complexity. It involves balancing the two competing rather than complementary objectives of the two principal players in the upstream sector of petroleum industry: the Government, the natural owner of the hydrocarbon resource, and the international oil companies. Governments normally seek to generate high levels of take from oil related activity while oil companies want to ensure an appropriate, predictable and sufficient level of profitability in their operations.
Since taxation removes a considerable slice of the producers’ profits, oil companies prefer fiscal systems that result in a competitive overall tax level thereby allowing attractive post-tax returns and high sustainable levels of investment. Governments of oil producing countries face important challenges when designing a tax system that meets the two fundamental objectives; namely to ensure a fair share of revenues for themselves whilst simultaneously providing sufficient incentives to encourage investment. The need for balance between taxpayer and tax-levying authority is unavoidable but hard to achieve in practice, especially since the concept of fairness, like beauty, is subjective. It has different meanings to different people.
As such, it is not surprising that the public debate is inclined to jump rapidly to conclusions, based on ‘emotional judgement’ rather than sound economic analysis. The analysis of petroleum fiscal regimes round the world leads to the following guiding principles:
It is All in the Design
There can be favourable and unfavourable contractual arrangements, good and bad PSCs, good and bad concessionary systems. But what does good or bad mean and on what are the measurement criteria based? Judgment has to be deeply informed by both experience and by foresight. Fiscal regimes are rarely static. What might be considered an attractive regime when acreage is licensed can turn against the investors when developments come on stream, oil prices rise or government policy changes and vice versa. Ultimately this assessment can only be made at the end of the basin when one can more precisely determine whether economic recovery has been maximised, whether the State and investors have secured a fair share. Of course policy makers can’t wait that long and tend to rush to judgement too quickly. The best guide in terms of stewardship is to ensure that the regime remains competitive — this will deliver maximum investment at the same time as an appropriate share for the nation.
Between 1994 and 1995, Russia signed several PSCs in order to stimulate foreign investment in geographically isolated and technologically complex hydrocarbon projects and boost its oil and gas production. The Russian PSCs of the 1990s are sometimes used to illustrate the defects of some PSCs. Indeed, the Russian PSC’s had several weaknesses. That said, this doesn’t mean that all PSCs are poorly constructed; it simply means that the PSC’s that were signed in Russia were with the benefit of hindsight unbalanced in the light of the cost overruns and high prices that emerged. Their terms were judged by the authorities to have favoured one party, the IOCs, over the Government. The Russian PSC’s were signed during a period of very low oil prices. In fact, the 1990s witnessed the lowest levels of oil price, reaching $10/bbl back in 1998. Unusually the Sakhalin PSC contained no State participation directly or indirectly with the result that the State was entirely reliant on taxes to secure any benefit from the project. The key mechanism to deliver tax revenue was from the Profit Oil which is formulaically linked to project Rate of return. Again unusually the project cost oil was 100% ensuring that the state would secure little or no revenues until project payback was secured. The project delays and rapid escalation in development costs that transpired meant that cost oil increased at the expense of profit oil and the rate of return declined to the extent that the Profit oil would never escape from the lowest tranche of State take. In effect the state found that it was taking a disproportionate burden of the project delays and cost overruns. This ultimately lead the State to intervene and recast the PSC terms to ensure a better balance of reward between investors and the State and most significantly the State became a direct equity participator in the project. Had the State been an equity participator from the outset then arguably the tensions around the project may not have occurred. Additionally the designers of the fiscal regime should have structured the terms to ensure a minimum flow of revenues to the State from the outset.
Another important point related to the design of the fiscal regime is that although some regimes may have similar apparent structures and tax rates, their impacts on oil projects’ and companies’ profitability and Government take can be quite different. One cannot make judgements about the effectiveness or strengths of a fiscal regime, simply by looking at the tax rate. Several factors, such as fiscal reliefs and the process of calculating the tax base — or simply the way the fiscal model has been designed — can lead to significant differences among fiscal packages, while different structures and regimes can produce the same results in terms of revenue and tax ‘take’. The only way to compare a fiscal regime in overall terms is to derive the project Government take defined as the Net Present Value of total Government revenues as a proportion of pre-tax revenues. Government revenues in this context include all taxes, royalties, profit oil and bonuses paid to the Government.
Consider the UK, Australia and Norway, which have all adopted concessionary regimes.
The first impression that one gets when looking at their fiscal terms is that a certain harmonisation exists between the three regimes. None of the selected regimes now apply Royalty — this was prevalent at the start of the basin but was progressively abolished to create a profit related regime. In each case a royalty was imposed when the oil province in question first opened up for production. But in each case, also, the royalty element was progressively abolished and replaced by a profit related regime.
In all three regimes the income tax rate is around 30 per cent. (However, in the UK, with the additional 20 per cent Supplementary charge imposed in April 2002, the UK now has the highest income tax rate at 50 per cent). This income tax is the general tax that applies to all companies operating in the three countries respectively. In Australia and Norway a special resource tax also applies at a rate that varies between 40 and 50 per cent. The three countries provide tax incentives and extra expenditure reliefs. Hence taxes are typically paid only when Net Cash Flow begins to turn positive.
Nevertheless, the economic outcomes in terms of Government take differ markedly because of different elements such as the treatment of expenditures, abandonment costs and the interaction of various taxes. For instance, in the UK, no project pays any tax until payback is reached; this is a uniquely favourable arrangement. In Australia Abandonment costs are not deductible expenses. In Norway, the Special Tax is not deductible from the Income Tax base.
Additionally, while it might be expected that the toughest fiscal terms from a company standpoint are likely to be found under contractual regimes and less onerous terms are expected under concessionary regimes, the reality can be quite different. Very strict fiscal terms can be found under concessionary regimes, such as Norway where Government take is 78%. Economically speaking, the type of contract and the entitlement to ownership are rather of legal and political significance. It is difficult to reach a general conclusion about the level of government take simply by considering the fiscal regime.
Figure 9.2 shows the spectrum of government take (in percentage) in major oil producing countries. It can be clearly seen that some countries with concessionary regimes can have high take while others with PSC’s can have a relatively low take. Additionally, the countries that adopt risk service agreements tend to be the ones which have failed to attract foreign investment. The result is that the production that flows from these contractual arrangements is very small compared to production volumes that flow from PSC’s and concessionary regimes.
It can of course be the case that initial service-type agreements with the IOCs are treated as a precursor to more substantial contracts later on in the stage of a nation’s oil industry development. The decision already noted above by the Iraqi Government to let out four new no-bid service-type agreements to ExxonMobil, to Total, to Shell and to BP, is an example of this approach, which may or may not lead to more substantial arrangements when the new Petroleum Law is fully operational.
Finally, it would be inadequate to describe a regime with low tax rates and low government take (in percentage) as weak and a regime with high tax rates and high government take (in percentage) as strong. Much depends on the objectives of government policy. A country may have low tax take for a number of reasons, namely, high costs, small volumes, high geological risk, basin maturity, the need to attract more investment to compensate for perceptions of high fiscal risk and the belief in a low tax environment for business in general.
Some Angolan PSC are often described as ‘onerous’ — the onerous components including relatively low and fixed cost oil as well as high income tax plus high signature bonuses to secure the initial concession. However, these elements are somewhat balanced by the absence of royalties and an IRR-factor based sliding scale for profit oil (the higher the secured rate of return the higher the Government share of Profit oil). Also the income tax may be paid by Sonangol on behalf of the IOCs. Most importantly, Angola promises large discoveries offshore. Evaluations such as 'tough' or 'lenient' are relatively meaningless if one does not discuss profitability at the same time. In the UK, the remaining reserves to be exploited are smaller and more technically challenging than those developed in the past. A high level of government take is not prudent in cases of high-risk exploration and high-cost development, or for those provinces with remaining modest petroleum potential, as is the case in the UK Continental Shelf as the cost of producing oil can overwhelm any price incentive.
Shaping the Revenue Flow
Since the state is the basic owner of all a nation’s natural resources it should receive a fair and equitable payment for all concessions, licences to exploit or any other ‘rights’ transferred to operating entities. Whether these entities are themselves state-owned bodies, or part stateowned companies, or companies entirely within the private sector.
Petroleum taxation has traditionally generated substantial revenues for governments. In the UK, more than $464bn in taxes (2006 money terms) has flowed to the Treasury between 1968 and 2006, thereby contributing to healthcare, education and various other services funded by government. In Norway, the industry paid $485bn in taxes (2006 money), contributing to a remarkable legacy — a petroleum fund worth more than $331bn. Much bigger sums have flowed into the coffers of major Middle East oil producer governments, as well as into Russian state revenues.
Altogether, Sakhalin 1 project is expected to yield $52.2 billion for the Russian government by the time the PSC expires in 2054. In the USA, where all operations are run and controlled by private oil companies, the Fed continues to earn substantial sums from lease sales. Angola secured over $1 billion in a signature bonus for a single block back in 2005, before any production started. But, in countries where IOCs have no or limited role to play — the latter being under service contracts — the financial — and other — benefits accruing to the governments are constrained. Payments of signature bonuses for instance are not applicable, as companies are unlikely to bid upfront large sums for what they believe are unattractive terms. As such, if it is early revenues Governments are seeking to sustain their economies without overstretching government’s budget, then service contracts may not be the best answer.
In countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia, the NOCs have access to abundant resources domestically and are mainly focused on the self-sufficient development of those national resources. These NOCs exploit their resource base both as a means of supporting the national economy and as a tool to sustain their country’s national importance as a major oil supplier. However, the list of less successful NOCs is much longer. NOCs normally have to meet costly non-commercial obligations that can hinder the NOCs ability to raise external capital and to compete at international standards. NOCs for instance can favour excessive employment and/or be forced to sell their petroleum products to domestic consumers at subsidized prices. With the recent sharp increases in world crude prices the question of subsidies has received considerable political attention, leading, in some case to government-authorised rises in retail oil products, notably gasoline. The Chinese authorities’ decision to allow gasoline prices to rise by 40 percent is a striking example of this new approach.
These outcomes interfere with the national firms’ ability to produce at a technically efficient level, to maximize the overall value that could be obtained from their oil resources. In consequence there is under-investment in reserves. The resulting effect will be stagnation in capacity growth and an inability to maintain or grow the countries’ oil production capacity. Subsequent stagnation in oil and gas development is normally a disadvantage for oil producing nation, as it will clearly involves missing the opportunity of selling the additional oil and gas it could have produced had it sustained its production growth.
Pemex, Mexico's state oil monopoly, is one of the world's largest oil companies. However, the company is facing serious financial pressure, a mounting debt, reaching a staggering $42.5 billion (as of 2008). The company is the Mexican government's cash cow; it pays out over 60% of its revenue in royalties and taxes, and those funds pay for a third of the federal government's budget. If oil prices drop or there are no major new discoveries of crude, that could spell big trouble for Pemex — and Mexico's finances. This is a serious problem today as the company’s proven reserves are dwindling, and drilling activity is declining. This is in stark contrast to the US side of the Gulf of Mexico where the sustained growth in production and development activity continues. Since 1992, oil companies have drilled more than 2,100 wells at depths greater than 1,000 feet in the U.S. gulf. Over a similar period Pemex has only drilled a handful of wells in the deepwater GoM. With the federal government draining its coffers, Pemex doesn't have enough money to invest in serious exploration. This led the Mexican Government to declare that the Mexican NOC must work with IOCs to boost sagging production, gain access to better equipment and tap deep-water oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico. However all that is on offer to the IOCs at this stage are risk sharing contracts and it is unlikely that these arrangements will prove attractive to investors. Particularly when in the adjacent Gulf of Mexico basin under US jurisdiction traditional concession terms are available which offer a more commercial proposition.
Fiscal Stability
Fiscal stability is a highly desirable, although not always achieved, attribute of petroleum fiscal regimes. Oil and gas projects are long term projects; they have inherent levels of risk present at every stage — from exploration to abandonment. Unstable fiscal regimes negatively affect the confidence of investors in government policy; if a tax system changes frequently and in an unpredictable manner, it may seriously affect future development projects as it increases political risk and reduces the value placed by investors on future income streams. If the variation of taxes over project life can be minimized — that is if the tax regime is stable — there is one less variable to worry the investor. One risk factor is either reduced or eliminated. If fiscal stability cannot be constitutionally guaranteed, as is the case in most OECD countries, then investors have to live with the fiscal risk. However this is acceptable provided that the fiscal risk is compensated for by a lower level of Government take. This has been the experience in the UK, a very unstable regime with frequent changes but over time a competitive tax rate.
It could be argued that because fiscal terms are fixed upon signature of the contract between the government and contractor, contractual systems offer a more stable environment than the concessionary systems. This particularly applies to PSCs as risk service contracts tend to be of much shorter duration.
However, many concessionary regimes round the world have been relatively stable. But while stability of the tax regime is often advocated, in reality it cannot be fully achieved. Circumstances are constantly changing. A certain degree of flexibility has to be allowed in any tax system if it is to respond to differing conditions and to evolve as a result of major changes in the external environment. This is not restricted to concessionary regimes. Although PSC’s are based on long term contracts, governments are in full control of changing the terms of the contract. Typical examples are the Russian PSC in Sakhalin and the Kazakh PSC in Kashagan. Governments seeking stable revenue flows will adjust tax regimes to suit their needs.
Emphasis on stability is sometimes considered as favouring private investors at the expense of locking governments into fixed terms. This is not necessarily the case. Stability of the fiscal regime is not only important for investors; it is equally important to governments. A tax system that has some level of predictability and reliability enables governments to know how much revenue will be collected and when. Stable government revenue clearly assists with reliable expenditure forecasting and budgeting. Additionally, if governments are unable to deliver fiscal stability for political and constitutional reasons then the additional fiscal risk created will be required to be remunerated via a higher return to investors. Thus unstable fiscal regimes will in the long run be required to offer to investors a lower level of government take than if more stability was on offer.
Administrative Burden
In theory, tax regimes should be simple to understand and inexpensive to administer. Tax should be levied on a well-defined tax base that is simple and easy to collect lowering the compliance burden for both tax payer and collector. Transparency is equally important; the more transparent the means by which the government obtains revenues, the better informed the investors and the less the scope for manipulation and administrative discretion — behaviour which is bound to increase industry’s perception of risk.
In reality, tax regimes are rarely simple. But some countries unnecessarily complicate their fiscal regimes, leading to extra administrative burden and costs. Furthermore, the assessment of the economic outcomes of a complex regime is likely to be burdensome, potentially confusing and leading to misplaced judgments and conclusions. All fiscal regimes can be susceptible to this danger. But in general concessionary regimes are less costly to administer than other regimes, given the need for less auditing and oversight. Besides, the government does not need oil marketing department/personnel unless it takes a share of the petroleum itself.The role of the government is to set the legal framework under which the oil companies will operate, and to collect fiscal revenues. That said, this does not necessarily mean that all concessionary regimes are simple. Compared to the UK and Australian regimes, the Norwegian petroleum fiscal regime is significantly simpler. Again, it all depends on the way the regime is designed.
Risk Issues
Oil exploration and development projects are characterised by large capital investments, long lead times and high risk. Risk is present at all stages of the project’s life cycle, including the exploration, development and production stages. Risks can be political, exploratory (chance of failure), technical (reserves and cost estimation), economic (oil and gas prices), or commercial (fiscal risk). Geology is not the only determinant of risk. Geologic concepts are uncertain with respect to structure and reservoir characteristics. Several million dollars may be spent on a venture that turns out to be unsuccessful because no commercial quantities of oil have been discovered. But there are also other uncertainties affecting economic evaluations. These relate to costs, probability of finding and producing economically viable reservoirs, and oil price. During the exploration period, IOCs face the following uncertainties in the exploration period: no discovery; discovery is not commercial; or cost increase. The latter can be due to several factors. Previously unknown characteristics of the deposit may require the use of more expensive technologies. The same reason can lead to the necessity for an extension of the initial exploration period. This has knock-on effects. The longer it takes to explore the field the later production starts and the lower the returns to the investor and the State.
Under a PSC, the contract is signed (and signatory bonuses can be paid) before the IOC has had the opportunity to explore the oilfield on offer. Only when oil is produced can the IOC recover its exploration expenditures. Meanwhile, financial circumstances might change and make borrowing more costly. That is why the IOC has a strong incentive to accelerate the exploration and development phase to secure an early return on up front capital. The state, on the other hand, has no direct financial risk during the exploration phase but it has to monitor that the IOC complies with the work obligations specified in the contract (number of wells to be drilled, depth, technology etc).
Since the IOC bears the entire exploration risk it will try to ensure that the contract terms allow for sufficient rewards in the development phase of the project. If the contract never enters into its production stage, the IOC has no way of recovering its exploration costs. On the other hand, if commerciality is declared and production begins, the IOC will want to recover its costs as early as possible.
During the production stage, apart from the obvious reservoir risk IOCs face two additional uncertainties: cost increase, and price decrease. Contrary to the exploration uncertainties, risks in the development period are normally shared by the IOC and its host government or NOC. What differs is the extent to which these uncertainties affect the partners. In the case of cost risk, if NOC refrains from taking up its participation option, a cost increase is largely but not entirely borne by the IOC. Say the cost recovery limit is 50 percent. A rise in costs then means that the IOC needs more time to recoup its expenditure. The longer it requires the maximum cost oil the longer both the IOC and the government have to wait before they can realise their take. The government's risk depends largely on its participation. If costs change significantly this will affect the amount of cost oil and/or the length of time during which the IOC requires the maximum cost-oil allowance. This in turn has an impact on the volume of production available for profit oil and thus on the government's profit oil.
Price risk refers to sudden significant changes in oil price. A low-price environment may result in the non-exploration of some oilfields, and the non-profitability of existing operations. The level of price risk depends on the extent to which the contract is flexible to accommodate price changes. The government's main concern is that the contracted IOC applies best-practice methods during both stages in order to maximise total production. They can ensure this by monitoring the operation and by taking up their participation option. The IOC, in order to minimise their risk exposure, will want to recover their costs as early as possible. They also prefer contracts to display a degree of flexibility, possibly in the form of contract elements being linked to rates of return. But the IOCs also fear that the government as the sovereign may impose adverse tax changes or price controls. PSCs were originally devised to protect weak states from the IOCs. Today, however, PSCs are generally considered as protecting IOCs from the political risks associated with upstream investment in unstable and developing countries. By establishing the terms and conditions of exploration and development for the life of the project, PSCs are designed to protect foreign companies from risks such as arbitrary tax legislation, expropriation and unpredictable regulation. The most common PSC response to sovereign risk is international arbitration.
However, PSCs are not necessarily stable since one or even both signatories may want to renegotiate at some point in time. The inherent instability of contracts may result in some projects not being developed although they are economically attractive in general. The uncertainties over risk and reward-sharing prevent one or both parties from going ahead with the venture.
Contracts/Licenses Duration
Oil and gas projects are by nature long-term, with much of the investment and costs being incurred upfront. The exploration and appraisal stages, in particular, can last many years. There is also a significant time lag, often of many years, from the initial discovery of oil or gas reserves to the time of first production. Exploration and development activities have often taken ten years or more and even then it may take another twenty or thirty years to produce all recoverable reserves.
Service Agreements are short-term, normally lasting for nine years or less, compared with up to 20 to 30 years under a PSC and perhaps 50 in a concessionary regime. As such, under a PSC arrangement, the contractor receives profit throughout the life of the contract, which is normally the life of the field, whereas under a Risk Service Agreement the contractor cost recovery and profit remuneration end at the Handover date. Furthermore, in the Service Contract, the contractor may have little incentive to reduce the long-term costs, since the field is likely to be under the control of the government.
This is a major limitation of the Service Contract, because a long-term partnership with a contractor may result in better overall field performance and much more value for the state than in the short-term approach. Under a Service contract, the IOC’s interest is bound to be short-term. IOCs are bound to lack incentives to use new or proprietary technology or deploy their best people as the fixed fee and the short duration of the contract offer little upside or reward for superior performance. They tend to maximize output extraction in the first few years of the operation in order to recoup their investments within a scheduled time, without attention to an optimum recovery schedule over the reservoir's lifespan. However in a situation where the contractors’ involvement in a given project was, say, 15 or 20 years, they might be willing to use new and more expensive technology for longer-term gains. For many IOCs these sort of contract formulations are ‘loss leaders’ in the hope that the initial contract will facilitate a constructive relationship with the host country that will lead to a follow on long term contract based on a PSC.
If Iraq or any other country wants to see whether the Buyback contract works, they can compare the situation in Iran over the last ten years. Iran’s buyback contracts can be used to illustrate the problems above. Iran has been suffering from declining production — often failing to meet its OPEC quota. The country also suffers from low rate of recovery from existing fields and little wildcat exploration, and it desperately needs new technology, expertise, and capital. With a shortterm investment requirement of US$ 15 billion and a total of US$ 70 billion for the next 10–15 years, Iran will need all the help it can get. Without sufficient investments by IOCs, Iran will not be able to improve its production capacity. Also, without sufficient capital input, Iran will also not be able to invest in the improvement of its domestic energy sector, which will remain a drain on its export capacity.
Johnston, 1998, p.296
A broader type of concession, such as found in the United States, goes further and assigns rights of ownership to the actual reserves in the ground to the discoverer of those reserves
In some countries, like Libya, PSCs are also called Exploration and Development Production Sharing Agreements or EPSCs
Barrows, 2000, p.105
(www.iraqupdates.com)
Iraq expects its hydrocarbons law to be approved by the second quarter of 2009, a senior government figure in Baghdad said.
The news comes as the fourth draft of the Iraqi oil legislation is currently being prepared.
Former Iraqi oil minister, Thamir Ghadhban told MEED that the current draft needs final agreement but has been accepted by the Iraqi Council of Ministers.
“That is significant in that it shows it is moving ahead,” says Ghadhban who is also the current adviser to the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. “I expect the hydrocarbons law to be in place by spring 2009.”
International oil firms have earlier expressed anxiety that the first oil exploration round, which is currently being held by the Iraqi Oil Ministry, could face difficulties without new legislation.
Iraq wants to raise its oil production to 4.5 million barrels a day by 2012, from about 2.5 million b/d today.
(www.iraqupdates.com)
The following has already been posted on the IIF by arh777; since it has not made its way here yet I thought you might like to read it. (Hyper Link not Provided)
__________________________________________________________
Interview with Shabs in Banker Middle East-Advanced copy
Being the Governor of the Central Bank of Iraq is quite possibly the single most
challenging job for a Central Banker anywhere in the world. To reduce inflation and
keep a currency stable, while operating in one of the most violent wars in modern
times, is a phenomenal feat of economic, and possibly psychological, prowess.
In an exclusive interview in Baghdad, Dr Sinan Al-Shibibi told Mike Gallagher
what it takes to turn a ruined economy around, while living with the daily death
and destruction which nearly brought Iraq to its knees
What would you say were the
early successes?
Creating a functioning system
for the foreign currency auction
was one notable success, as was
managing to restructure the
obligations of the Ministry of
Finance towards the Central
Bank. The reserve requirement
is now prudently regulated. We
managed to not only develop
monetary policy, but also
managed to begin executing
it and enforcing it. We
also had to explain to the
government what the
Central Bank was
and what it did.
Now we have a
Central Bank which is respected for
doing what it is supposed to do, such
as maintaining price stability. In five
years, the Central Bank of Iraq has gone
from being the arm of a totalitarian
regime (under Saddam Hussein) to one
that is respected by all the major global
financial institutions.
Sorting out the debt reduction
with the IMF and managing to reduce
it by 80 per cent was another major
achievement and we should have
reduced the final tranche by the end
of 2008. This was something which
we negotiated in, I think, November
2004, and in which Adil Abdul Mahdi,
the Vice-President of Iraq, was a key
figure. Thanks to his leadership, we
managed to get a debt reduction of 80
per cent and I think it is the biggest
debt reduction of its kind for a middle
income developing country.
Inflation has been a problem
throughout the Middle East in the past
few years. What has the Central Bank
of Iraq been doing in this respect?
Core inflation is currently 13.6 per cent
and it has stayed within a steady band
for quite some time, particularly over the
past three months. Inflation has definitely
been a challenge over the past year.
The issue here is that we are more or
less basing our monetary policy on our
ability and achievements in combating
inflation. Through a programme with
various intra governmental organisations,
we managed to reduce headline inflation
from 64.8 per cent to a headline rate of
seven per cent. We actually had minus
figures for a while.
Was monetary policy the tool you
used to check inflation?
I wouldn’t say it is exclusively monetary
policy that has brought inflation down;
it is a combination of measures. A lot of
economists do not believe that monetary
policy in this particular situation made
a big difference, and instead preferred
to look at developments in the real
economy. Nevertheless, I believe
monetary policy was quite effective.
I and a lot of my colleagues who
worked in Iraq in the 1960s used to believe
that inflation was a natural outcome of
development. It is not unusual to have
inflation during the development process
and people even now think the same. What
they do not understand is that inflation
destroys any development achievement.
There has been a lot of speculation
that the Iraqi dinar might be revalued
at some point as the economy becomes
stronger as a result of increased
oil revenue. Is there going to be a
revaluation of dinar in the near future?
I always refrain from making any
comments on the subject of revaluation.
I refrain because everybody will always
believe a Central Banker over anyone
else on this matter, so I am not going to
say anything.
This is a seriously terrible mistake.. with devastating consequences.
Obama would acknowlege Iran as a nuclear power and pledge the US to a nuclear war once Iran gets their nuclear weapons in place and does a first strike on Israel. What an incredible mess. Quite obviously, Iran can build up their nukes and use them to nuke the US simultaneously, knowing they can draw the US into a war in Israel while devastating the US homeland. Good military strategy - for Iran. I feel like romper room or sesame street is preparing to run the nation. If this is the kind of decision making policy he will make concerning foreign affairs.. you can imagine the future does indeed hold the nuclear nightmare I witnessed.
Sara.
===
Report: Obama to Offer Israel 'Nuclear Umbrella' Against Iran
FOXNews.com
Thursday, December 11, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama will offer Israel a strategic pact designed to (respond to - Sara) fend off any nuclear attack on the Jewish state by Iran, an Israeli newspaper reported on Thursday.
Haaretz, quoting an unnamed source, said the Obama administration would pledge under the proposed "nuclear umbrella" to respond to any Iranian strike on Israel with a "devastating U.S. nuclear response."
Granting Israel a nuclear guarantee would essentially suggest the U.S. is willing to come to terms with a nuclear Iran, the paper reported.
According to the paper's source, Obama's nuclear guarantee would be backed by a new and improved Israeli anti-ballistic missile system. The Bush administration took the first step by deploying an early-warning radar system, which enhances the ability to detect Iranian ballistic missiles.
No immediate comment from Israeli officials or the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv was offered.
Iran denies its nuclear program has military designs. But tough anti-Israel rhetoric from Tehran has spread fears that the Israelis, who are believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, could attack their arch-foe pre-emptively.
The source, according to Haaretz, noted that the discussion of the possibility of a nuclear Iran undermines efforts to prevent Tehran from acquiring such arms.
A senior Bush administration source reportedly said the nuclear umbrella was ridiculous and lacked credibility.
"Who will convince the citizen in Kansas that the U.S. needs to get mixed up in a nuclear war because Haifa was bombed? And what is the point of an American response, after Israel's cities are destroyed in an Iranian nuclear strike?," he said.
U.S. helps bar claims against Iraq
Published: Dec. 11, 2008 at 9:38 AM
BAGHDAD, Dec. 11 (UPI) -- The United States has joined an effort to block claims against Iraq, which Iraqi officials argue could shut down the fledgling democracy.
U.S. President George Bush has signaled U.S. backing of extending legal measures enacted by the U.N. Security Council five years ago to protect Iraq's coffers and has indicated support for Iraq's request to renew the protections for another year, The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) reported Thursday.
"With oil revenues generating more than 95 percent of the government's resources, these claims could affect reconstruction and economic transformation taking place in Iraq and consequently constitute a grave threat to Iraq's stability and security, and therefore to international peace and security," Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wrote Tuesday to the U.N. Security Council in a letter obtained by the Times.
Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's foreign minister, said his country wants to settle the claims if they could be reduced through negotiations.
"This extension will give us some relief for another year, give us some breathing space," he said.
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe, said the administration supported the extension for now but also "made it clear to the Iraqis that it is important to address the legitimate claims of our citizens."
Without considering legal challenges for compensation, Iraq owes roughly $26 billion for claims handled by the U.N. Compensation Commission and is about $50 billion in debt to other countries, Iraqi officials said.
Is China now more capitalist than the US?
December 11, 2008
by Ed Morrissey
In response to the financial crisis of 2008, the United States has responded by nationalizing industries and electing a president who promised to raise taxes on entrepreneurial efforts. China, the nominally Communist nation, has responded by cutting business taxes to stimulate growth. Remind me which nation supposedly supports capitalism and free enterprise (via Q&O)
QUOTE:
CHINA may soon cut business tax as part of its efforts to prop up the slowing economy amid the global financial crisis, state media reported on Tuesday.
The government is ‘very likely’ to soon cut the business tax for enterprises by one percentage point, the China Daily said, citing an unnamed source close to policymakers.
China’s current business tax varies from three to 20 per cent, boosting government revenue by 600 billion yuan (S$131 billion) last year, according to the paper.
The news follows other state press reports last week that Beijing was planning to cut business tax for commercial banks - possibly to three percent from the current five percent, to help improve their capital adequacy.
==end quote==
While China improves its business climate by lowering the burden of state confiscation, the US plans to increase it, and in some cases by a significant amount. Meanwhile, the House last night voted 237-170 to sink $15 billion into the American auto industry, with government officially owning part of three private auto makers in order to dictate to management how to run their businesses. Management welcomed the move, and in fact wanted Congress to buy an even bigger stake in these companies.
Which nation is capitalist? And which is Socialist? And which party is more of one than the other? It’s hard to tell, since 32 Republicans voted for partial nationalization, and 20 Democrats voted against it. Perhaps Senate Republicans can make the distinction a little more clear with a filibuster to block this new direction in American economics.
When one looks to Beijing for rational tax policies … well, that’s just a sad day for Americans, even if it does portend a brighter future for China.
Don't worry, under Obama these people can pursue nuclear weapons and will use them for peaceful purposes.. just ignore the demonstrations where they, quote, "chanted "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" and burned an Israeli flag" then called for the hanging of Egypt's leader..
War... what war?
That is over there, it will never come here.
===
Egypt: 'Iran wants to devour the Arab world'
By JPOST.COM STAFF
Dec 11, 2008
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak spoke out against Iran during a meeting with members of the Egyptian ruling party, according to a report in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida on Thursday, cited by Israel Radio.
Mubarak accused the Islamic Republic of trying to subsume its Muslim neighbors, telling the forum that "the Persians are trying to devour the Arab states."
Mubarak's comments came after the Egyptian leader recalled the country's diplomatic envoy from the Iranian capital earlier this week following an increase in tension between the two countries.
Recent strain between Cairo and Teheran has grown as several demonstrations in Iran called for the hanging of the Egyptian leader. The Iranian FARS news service reported that participants in recent student demonstrations outside the Egyptian diplomatic mission in Teheran also chanted "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" and burned an Israeli flag.
On Wednesday the Egyptian ministry was quoted as criticizing some Iranian newspapers that have repeatedly insulted Egyptian policies and leadership recently. Teheran media, for example, broadcast incitement against Cairo's policy allegedly preventing aid from reaching Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
You see, it is PUZZLING that Obama would do this policy change to say the US would attack Iran AFTER they attacked Israel with nukes, because, quote, "Israel by itself possesses the capacity to inflict a devastating nuclear response on Iran if Iran strikes Israel with nuclear weapons." So the only real reason is to tie up America into the retaliation.. and give a signal to Iran that they can go ahead and kill the Israelis.
QUOTE: "The problem is that destroying Israel would only take a few nuclear weapons and the powers-that-be in Iran might be willing to pay the price. (Their) theology might welcome an Islamic apocalypse. "mutually assured destruction is not a deterrent factor, but rather an inducement" because the regime's authorities believes it "can hasten the final messianic process."
Don't tell me Obama doesn't understand this.
You can speculate yourself why he is indicating he would give up Israel to slaughter intentionally.
Sara.
=== MAD about Iran?
December 11, 2008
Posted by Scott
Edward Jay Epstein asks whether the CIA was wrong (again) in its 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. "In a stunning departure from all the previous estimates dating back to 1997 under Presidents Clinton and Bush," Epstein recalls, the CIA declared in its 2007 NIE: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program."
Reviewing the most recent evidence, Epstein concludes that the CIA got it wrong. "[I]n light of all the developments in the past year," Epstein writes, "America's new president will have to confront the reality that Iran now has the capability to change the balance of power in the Gulf, if it so elects to do so, by building a nuclear weapon."
Contemplating this eventuality, Obama is reported by Haaretz to be prepared to offer Israel a place under the American "nuclear umbrella." According to Haaretz, the Obama administration "will declare that an attack on Israel by Tehran would result in a devastating U.S. nuclear response against Iran."
The Haaretz report is based on a single "well-placed American source." It is puzzling on its face. Israel by itself possesses the capacity to inflict a devastating nuclear response on Iran if Iran strikes Israel with nuclear weapons. The problem is that destroying Israel would only take a few nuclear weapons and the powers-that-be in Iran might be willing to pay the price.
If true, the Haaretz report would suggest that Obama has essentially abandoned his previous statements declaring Iran's possession of nuclear weapons to be "unacceptable." It would suggest that Obama is reconciled to the prospect of Iran's possession of nuclear weapons. And it would fail to take into account the possible difficulty of deterring a regime whose theology might welcome an Islamic apocalypse.
Bernard Lewis has observed that "Iran's leadership comprises a group of extreme fanatical Muslims who believe that their messianic times have arrived." Accordingly, for the Iranian regime, "mutually assured destruction is not a deterrent factor, but rather an inducement" because the regime's authorities believes it "can hasten the final messianic process. This is an extremely dangerous situation of which it is important to be aware."
Both the interviewe with the Al-Shabbibi and news that the Hydro Carbon Law is expected to be passed in the Spring of 2009 got me thinking about the Dinars rate of exchange.
All of us have heard very conservative and very wild estimates regarding the Dinar once it is revalued, reverted, restored, and/or traded on the foreign exchange market. I personally do not quote amounts because we do not know what methodology will be imposed to calculate the Dinars "real rate" of exchange after the change in the exchange rate is made.
If the Dinar is revalued by the CBI I believe an average of all of the GCC countries exchange rates will be the methodology used to calculate the Iraqi Dinar exchange rate.
If the Dinar's exchange rate is restored according to the Central Bank Governor they would like to use the dinars exchange rate from the 1970's and 1980's. Personally, I am not certain how Iraq can implement a $3.00 exchange rate with the U.S. Dollar.
As I have stated, it is my opinion the only logical method for implementing an exchange rate change is the foreign exchange market. the Dinar's rate can be changed based upon Iraqi oil reserves; especially, if they monetize these reserves. This method will allow cash reserves and gold reserves to also back the Dinar making it a very stable and reliable currency.
So, what will the exchange rate be once the Dinar is released to the forex market. I don't know but the rate it opens at in my opinion will be the "real rate" based upon the resources Iraq possesses.
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