“Iraq’s Ministry of Defense is considering buying 140 of the United States’ most advanced tanks, at approximately $4 million to $5 million per tank, plus hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of support equipment to go along with the tanks. “
- USA Today: Link.

You can sell a lot of different weapon systems to foreign militaries, but where exactly do we get off in selling the Iraqi army our top military weapon systems? Do they rank with the Saudis now? We just got done beating these guys a few years ago. Do we want to come back some day and stare down the 120mm tubes of our own “used tanks”? And as we’re growing our Army’s end-strength, is there such a situation where we sell “used tanks” instead of refurbing them and using them ourselves?

This isn’t a smart decision. Give the Iraqis some old APCs or let some other countries sell them tanks. Nothing good will come of this other than profits for the military-industrial complex.

- Jason Sigger @ Armchair Generalist: Link.

The $2 Trillion Nightmare

Because the administration actually cut taxes as we went to war, when we were already running huge deficits, this war has, effectively, been entirely financed by deficits. The national debt has increased by some $2.5 trillion since the beginning of the war, and of this, almost $1 trillion is due directly to the war itself … By 2017, we estimate that the national debt will have increased, just because of the war, by some $2 trillion.

- Joseph Stiglitz @ New York Times: March 4, 2008: Link.

Via Cassandra @ Newsvine: Link.

Iraqis use Google Earth as military intelligence asset

Google Earth … is being used to help people survive sectarian violence in Baghdad ….

… Some Iraqis have set up advice websites to help others avoid the death squads … people to draw up maps of their local area using Google Earth’s detailed imagery of Baghdad so they can work out escape routes and routes to block.

… For some time now, vigilante-style guard forces have been operating in many neighbourhoods, especially in Sunni areas targeted by Shia militias.

… Many Sunnis see the Shia-dominated police forces as just as much of a threat, because of evidence of their involvement in kidnappings.

… It’s thought that insurgents have also used the map site, examining the detailed images to pick out potential targets.

[BBC]

Via Boing Boing.

Producer Gwynne Roberts discusses the PBS Frontline/World film “Saddam’s Road to Hell,” which follows the investigation into the alleged abduction and execution of 8,000 Kurds in the dictator’s early years.

“Did you know for example that the UN reached an agreement with Saddam in 1993 not to reveal the names of western companies which had supplied the regime with [chemical weapons] materials?”

“Saddam’s Road to Hell” follows a team of investigators led by the Kurdish minister for human rights, Dr. Mohammed Ihsan, who are trying to establish forensic proof of Saddam’s guilt in the 1983 disappearance of Barzani Kurds following their decision to side with Iran against Iraq in the 1980s. Saddam’s retribution against them has left many in this mountainous part of Iraq in mourning and without resolution about the fate of their loved ones.

I’ve been involved in reporting Iraq for the past 30 years. So I am well contacted in the region.

… I think it highly unlikely that Iraq will survive in its present state. Doing this film showed me that there is absolutely no trust between the Kurds and the Arab Sunni closely associated with Saddam’s regime. In the absence of any truth and reconciliation process, the Kurds will find it impossible to live within a unitary state along these people. That is why there is such a huge movement towards independence in the north. That, of course, is contrary to the wishes of the US and British governments, and the states surrounding Kurdistan.

… I personally believe that western support during the Iraq-Iraq War was a complete mistake. Western governments knew what was going on and were well aware of the Anfal campaign in which more than 100,000 Kurds died in 1987 and 1988. They did nothing about it. Had they moved to stop such dire human rights abuses, an invasion in 2003 would not have been necessary.

… There are governments out there which drew economic advantage from letting Saddam flourish. I think those which supported him with arms - for example the chemical weapon precursors used against hundreds of Kurdish villages, including Halabja, - should be named and shamed. If [Saddam Hussein’s] trial is allowed to go on, this issue will arise. Did you know for example that the UN reached an agreement with Saddam in 1993 not to reveal the names of western companies which had supplied the regime with these materials? When atrocities become known, governments should be honour bound to act and stop them - or am I being terribly naive?

… When I was covering the Anfal — the near genocidal action by Saddam against the Kurds - it became clear that no single Arab state had mentioned anything about the destruction of 4, 000 villages, the death of more than 100,000 men, women and children nor the use of poison gas against civilians. Quite an omission don’t you think. Hopefully, things will now change. If you look back in time, one of the most famous Islamic leaders against the crusades was Kurdish. His name was Salahadhin.

… I am well aware of the Stephen Pelletiere report which I have to say I found simply wrong. I questioned hundreds of Halabjans (who had survived the attack) about who was responsible for gassing them and, everyone blamed Iraq. I talked to Kurdish commanders who were involved with the Iranians and who, when I talked to them in 1998, were hostile to Teheran. They also said Iraq was to blame. I also recollect Tariq Aziz admitting that they had attacked Halabja with gas.

[Washington Post]

Flashback 1984:
Donald Rumsfeld urges Saddam Hussein to Buy American

Donald Rumsfeld, special envoy from the Reagan White House, meets with Saddam Hussein.

The al-Anfal Campaign

The al-Anfal Campaign (Arabic: حملة الأنفال; Kurdish: Şallawî Enfal), also known as Operation Anfal, was an anti-Kurdish campaign led by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein between 1986 and 1989 (during and just after the Iran-Iraq war), and culminating in 1988.

… Thousands of civilians were killed during chemical and conventional bombardments stretching from the spring of 1987 through the fall of 1988. The attacks were part of a long-standing campaign that destroyed almost every Kurdish village in Iraq — along with a centuries-old way of life — and displaced at least a million of the country’s estimated 3.5 million Kurdish population. [1]

Independent sources estimate 50,000 to more than 100,000 deaths; the Kurds claim about 182,000 people were killed. Amnesty International collected the names of more than 17,000 people who had “disappeared” during 1988. [2] The campaign has been characterized as genocidal in nature, notably before a court in The Hague.

[Wikipedia]

Peter Galbraith: One Man’s Battle to Stop Iraq

Few Americans know - or care - as much about the plight of the Kurds as Peter Galbraith.

A former ambassador to Croatia from 1993 to 1998 he documented the Iraqi authorities’ attacks against the Kurds in the late 1980s when he served as senior advisor to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1979-1993). He was one of the first to witness the genocide of the Kurds by the Iraqi government during a trip he made to the region in 1987.

Peter Galbraith: “As we traveled from the Iraqi area to the Kurdish area, we were stunned to see that the villages were gone. These were places that had been inhabited for millennia. The graveyards were removed, the mosques, all the wire had been taken down form the electric poles. It had become a desolate region. And we could see where the people had been moved. Iraq called them victory cities but in reality they were a kind of concentration camp.”

… On March 16, 1988 Saddam’s horrific plan became clear to the entire world. Saddam’s helicopters swept over the Kurdish city of Halabja leaving clouds of chemical gas behind. Five thousand innocent civilians died in the first few hours. The images of bodies piled on the streets were broadcast around the world.

… “I sat down and dictated, in about an hour, a bill to my secretary. I imposed every sanction on Iraq that I could think of. The legislation banned oil sales, required U.S. to oppose loans, cut off $700 million in agricultural and export credits and banned any export requiring a licence. I drafted this, and said what should we call it?

The Bill was called the Prevention of Genocide Act (download the Act). It would have imposed the harshest American economic sanctions against any country in twenty years.

… Lobbyists took this message into the corridors of congress and warned that the Bill would only punish Americans who were doing business with Iraq. Galbraith found himself facing farmers, bankers, exporters and oil men.

In the end, the Prevention of Genocide Act ran into its stiffest opposition at the White House. The Reagan administration believed that the sanctions were ‘premature’. Galbraith was stunned.

“What would have made it ripe for action? The killing of all the Kurds? It was an absurd statement.”

The Prevention of Genocide Act was never passed.

… The Kurds were disappointed; Saddam Hussein would go unpunished. In fact, within the next year business with Iraq increased.

[CBC News]

Reply to Petition: response to inquiry from an Iraqi soldier about the fate of his missing family

Date: October 29, 1990

With regard to your petition dated October 4, 1990. Your wife and children were lost during the Anfal Operations that took place in the Northern Region in 1988.

Yours truly,
[signature]
Saadoun Ilwan Muslih
Chief, Bureau of the Presidency

[Human Rights Watch]

Barzani Tribe - re-burying the dead

In 1983, 8,000 members of the Kurdish Barzani tribe were captured by Saddam Hussein’s forces and later executed and buried in mass graves in southern Iraq. About 500 bodies were exhumed from Samawa, and re-buried in Barzan.

[video of re-burial ceremony: YouTube]

“U.S. Repatriates Historical Artifact to the Iraqi People”
- Press release: U.S. Embassy, Iraq

On Tuesday, July 25, 2006, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, Secretary for Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, and Iraqi Prime Minister Noori al-Maliki participated in a ceremony marking the repatriation of the diorite statue of Entemena to the Iraqi Government, at the Embassy of the Republic of Iraq.

Recovered this year by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wing of the Department of Homeland Security, the statue of Entemena is deemed one of INTERPOL’s most significant recoveries.

Around April 2003, Iraqi cultural institutions and archaeological sites, including the Iraq National Museum, suffered extensive losses of invaluable cultural artifacts. Among the objects illegally taken from the Museum was the Statue of Entemena — a headless, statue of the 4th king in the dynasty of Lagash (modern al-Hiba, Iraq), ca. 2400 BC, excavated at Ur, Iraq.

The Statue of Entemena is the oldest known representation of a king of ancient Iraq. The statue is made of diorite (a rare hard black imported stone), stands approximately 30 inches high, and weighs approximately 300 pounds. The king is standing in the pose of a worshipper, hands folded in front, wearing a fleece skirt. Cuneiform inscriptions on his back and right upper arm tell us that the name of the statue is “Entemena Whom the God Enlil Loves” and that the statue was placed before the god in a temple.

The statue was excavated in the early 20th century in the temple precinct at Ur in southern Iraq by the joint expedition of the University of Pennsylvania and the British Museum, working under a permit from the Iraq Department of Antiquities. Since the text says it stood in Lagash, it must have been taken to Ur at a later time, perhaps as a war trophy.

In late 2005, confidential informants overseas notified DHS of the whereabouts of the statue. Around May 2006, the statue was recovered and shipped to the United States. The statue was authenticated around June 5 and remained in DHS custody.

[Link]

Interpol has pictures and case notes: Link.

Iraq Museum International reports: “Manhattan Art Dealer Helps Recover Priceless Iraq Museum Statue” –

Lebanese antiquities dealer Hicham Aboutaam believes this is a good time to consider investing in antiquities, but his refusal to handle the sale of an important statue stolen from the Iraq Museum led to its return to the people of Iraq.

After the looting of the Baghdad Museum in 2003, Aboutaam was approached in Lebanon by black market dealers offering to sell the headless statue of King Entemena.

Worth millions of dollars to collectors of illicit antiquities, the statue had made its way to Syria, and onto the FBI top 10 list of art heists.

Aboutaam, who sells antiquities to museums and collectors from his galleries in Geneva and New York, did the right thing and cooperated last year with agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) wing of the Department of Homeland Security.

Information supplied by Aboutaam helped INTERPOL track down the whereabouts of the statue, and just 2 months ago, it was recovered and shipped to the United States for authentication.

[Link]

The above article is favorable to Aboutaam specifically, and the collecting of antiquities generally. Note, Iraq Museum International (baghdadmuseum.org) is not to be confused with the National Museum of Iraq.

Hicham Aboutaam’s site.

The brothers Aboutaam have their critics, and a reputation for controversy: Aboutaam Brothers in the news

See also Museum-Security.org

FBI Top Ten Art Heists — Although the FBI apparently was not directly involved in the Entemena case, the Bureau does maintain an Art Crimes Team:

Art and cultural property crime — which includes theft, fraud, looting, and trafficking across state and international lines — is a looming criminal enterprise with estimated losses running as high as $6 billion annually.

To recover these precious pieces–and to bring these criminals to justice — the FBI uses a dedicated Art Crime Team of 12 Special Agents to investigate, supported by three Special Trial Attorneys for prosecutions…and it mans the National Stolen Art File, a computerized index of reported stolen art and cultural properties for the use of law enforcement agencies across the world.

[FBI: Link.]

Not breaking news, but interesting:

Money for Nothing: Billions of dollars have disappeared, gone to bribe Iraqis and line contractors’ pockets.
by Philip Giraldi - The American Conservative - October 24, 2005

When the final page is written on America’s catastrophic imperial venture, one word will dominate the explanation of U.S. failure—corruption. Large-scale and pervasive corruption meant that available resources could not be used to stabilize and secure Iraq in the early days of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), when it was still possible to do so. Continuing corruption meant that the reconstruction of infrastructure never got underway, giving the Iraqi people little incentive to co-operate with the occupation. Ongoing corruption in arms procurement and defense spending means that Baghdad will never control a viable army while the Shi’ite and Kurdish militias will grow stronger and produce a divided Iraq in which constitutional guarantees will be irrelevant.

The American-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority could well prove to be the most corrupt administration in history, almost certainly surpassing the widespread fraud of the much-maligned UN Oil for Food Program. At least $20 billion that belonged to the Iraqi people has been wasted, together with hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Exactly how many billions of additional dollars were squandered, stolen, given away, or simply lost will never be known because the deliberate decision by the CPA not to meter oil exports means that no one will ever know how much revenue was generated during 2003 and 2004.

… The 15-month proconsulship of the CPA disbursed nearly $20 billion, two-thirds of it in cash, most of which came from the Development Fund for Iraq that had replaced the UN Oil for Food Program and from frozen and seized Iraqi assets. Most of the money was flown into Iraq on C-130s in huge plastic shrink-wrapped pallets holding 40 “cashpaks,” each cashpak having $1.6 million in $100 bills. Twelve billion dollars moved that way between May 2003 and June 2004, drawn from accounts administered by the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The $100 bills weighed an estimated 363 tons.

Once in Iraq, there was virtually no accountability over how the money was spent. There was also considerable money “off the books,” including as much as $4 billion from illegal oil exports. The CPA and the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Board, which it controlled, made a deliberate decision not to record or “meter” oil exports, an invitation to wholesale fraud and black marketeering.

… The only certified public-accounting firm used by the CPA to monitor its spending was a company called North Star Consultants, located in San Diego, which was so small that it operated out of a private home. It was subsequently determined that North Star did not, in fact, perform any review of the CPA’s internal spending controls. Today, no one can account for billions of those dollars or even suggest how the money was spent. And as the CPA no longer exists, there is also little interest in re-examining its transparency or accountability.

[Link]

The article further notes: “Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, has a no-bid monopoly contract with the Army Corps of Engineers that is now estimated to be worth $10 billion.”

Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a Halliburton subsidiary, has it fingers in a wide variety of pies:

Detention Camps: The Next Generation

Failing to Rebuild Iraq

Wikipedia: Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)

The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was established as a transitional government following the invasion of Iraq by the United States, United Kingdom and the other members of the multinational coalition which was formed to oust the government of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Citing UN Security Council Resolution 1483 (2003), and the laws of war, the CPA vested itself with executive, legislative, and judicial authority over the Iraqi government from the period of the CPA’s inception on April 21, 2003, until its dissolution on June 28, 2004.

[Wikipedia: Link]

SourceWatch casts a critical eye upon CPA:

Following the establishment of limited Iraqi sovereignty: June 30, 2004, the CPA is scheduled to cease existence. In its stead will be the US Mission to Iraq.

None the less, “A comprehensive examination of the U.S.-led agency that oversaw the rebuilding of Iraq has triggered at least 27 criminal investigations and produced evidence of millions of dollars’ worth of fraud, waste and abuse, according to a report by the Coalition Provisional Authority’s inspector general,” Stuart W. Bowen Jr. : Link

[C]ontractors accused of fraud in the fulfillment of CPA contacts have been claiming that the United States Federal Court system does not have juristiction in deciding these cases. (see David Phinney, “Iraq Contractor Claims Immunity From Fraud Laws: Seized Oil Assets Paid For Offshore Overbilling”, CorpWatch, December 23rd, 2004: Link

A study publishd by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), authored by L. Elaine Halchin, Analyst in American National Government Government and Finance Division: “The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA): Origin, Characteristics, and Institutional Authorities”, April 29, 2004 - [FAS Hosted PDF file: Link) discovered that there was a great deal of murkiness surrounding the conception of the CPA, and that documents offered by the Bush Administration have served to increase the cloudiness …

[SourceWatch: Link]

The New York Times: “Rebuilding of Iraqi Pipeline as Disaster Waiting to Happen”

A crew had bulldozed a 300-foot-long trench along a giant drill bit in their desperate attempt to yank it loose from the riverbed. A supervisor later told him that the project’s crews knew that drilling the holes was not possible, but that they had been instructed by the company in charge of the project to continue anyway.

A few weeks later, after the project had burned up all of the $75.7 million allocated to it, the work came to a halt.

The project, called the Fatah pipeline crossing, had been a critical element of a $2.4 billion no-bid reconstruction contract that a Halliburton subsidiary had won from the Army …
[Link]

Flash map of Iraqi war casualties.

Coalition military fatalities during the Iraq war unfolds at ten frames per second. Each frame represents one day of the war. One dot marks each casualty site. A death begins as a white flash, then grows to a larger red dot, which turns black after 30 frames (days), fading at last to permanent grey.

Via BoingBoing.

Greg Palast on US goals in Iraq:

[W]hat did the USA want Iraq to do with Iraq’s oil? The answer will surprise many of you: and it is uglier, more twisted, devilish and devious than anything imagined by the most conspiracy-addicted blogger. The answer can be found in a 323-page plan for Iraq’s oil secretly drafted by the State Department. Our team got a hold of a copy; how, doesn’t matter. The key thing is what’s inside this thick Bush diktat: a directive to Iraqis to maintain a state oil company that will “enhance its relationship with OPEC.”

Enhance its relationship with OPEC??? How strange: the government of the United States ordering Iraq to support the very OPEC oil cartel which is strangling our nation with outrageously high prices for crude.

Specifically, the system ordered up by the Bush cabal would keep a lid on Iraq’s oil production — limiting Iraq’s oil pumping to the tight quota set by Saudi Arabia and the OPEC cartel.

There you have it. Yes, Bush went in for the oil — not to get MORE of Iraq’s oil, but to prevent Iraq producing TOO MUCH of it.

You must keep in mind who paid for George’s ranch and Dick’s bunker: Big Oil. And Big Oil — and their buck-buddies, the Saudis — don’t make money from pumping more oil, but from pumping LESS of it. The lower the supply, the higher the price.

It’s Economics 101. The oil industry is run by a cartel, OPEC, and what economists call an “oligopoly” — a tiny handful of operators who make more money when there’s less oil, not more of it. So, every time the “insurgents” blow up a pipeline in Basra, every time Mad Mahmoud in Tehran threatens to cut supply, the price of oil leaps.

Link.