Patrick’s Notebook

by Steve Negus, Financial Times

August 29th, 2007

Iraq’s ministry of industry and minerals would open up all 65 of its state-owned enterprises to joint ventures with international investors by the end of the year, the minister said on Wednesday.

“We have 65 facilities under our banner and all of them will be made available for joint ventures,” Fawzi Hariri told the Financial Times on Wednesday. He was speaking at a conference in Dubai on investment opportunities in Iraq.

Attracting foreign investment is seen as vital to the reconstruction of the economy, to creating employment and, the government hopes, to reducing sectarian violence.

Mr Hariri said that the ministry was already involved in discussions on investing in cement companies in the southern provinces of Karbala and Muthanna, in the northern governorate of Kirkuk and in the far-western district of al-Qaem on the Syrian border.

Continue reading ‘Iraq Privatization Moves Forward’ »

Friday August 31, 2007

by John Smith – IMEMC

    Three innocent Palestinian children killed in Gaza on Tuesday were merely playing near rocket launchers in the area when they were targeted by Israeli fire, and were unconnected with any resistance activity, the Israeli army stated on Thursday.

While a spokesperson for the army had stated on Tuesday that the slain children were somehow involved in resistance, suggesting that they had been used to collect rocket launchers, a military probe launched in the aftermath of the killing revealed that the children were merely playing in the area.

Video footage obtained by the probe reportedly shows three figures of an indeterminate age approaching the site of the rocket launchers and backing away. Despite being unable to identify the targets, the Israeli military would have appeared to use such aerial photography as a justification to open fire.

There have been no indications that those involved in the attack will be subject to a criminal investigation.

Aug. 8, 2007(Weekly Standard) 

This column was written by John J. Tkacik, Jr.

This year, many truckloads of small arms and explosives direct from Chinese government-owned factories to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been transshipped to Iraq and Afghanistan, where they are used against American soldiers and Marines and NATO forces. Since April, according to a knowledgeable Bush administration official, “vast amounts” of Chinese-made large caliber sniper rifles, “millions of rounds” of ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and “IED [improvised explosive device] components” have been convoyed from Iran into Iraq and to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates insists there is “no evidence as yet” that Tehran government officials are involved in shipping weapons to Iraq for use against U.S. forces, a judgment that seems to hinge on the view that the Revolutionary Guards are not part of the “government.” But the administration source cautioned, “these are Revolutionary Guards trucks, and although we can’t see the mullahs at the wheel, you can bet this is [Tehran] government-sanctioned.”

In addition, in early June the Washington Times reported from Kabul that the Pentagon had evidence of new shipments of Chinese shoulder-fired HN-5 antiaircraft missiles reaching Taliban units in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province. This shouldn’t be surprising. The Pentagon has known since last August that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards had supplied Chinese-made C-802 anti-ship missiles with advanced anti-jamming countermeasures to Hezbollah in Lebanon. One slammed into the Israeli destroyer Hanit, killing four sailors on July 14, 2006, during the Lebanon war.

The amount of raw intelligence on these Chinese arms shipments to Iran is growing, according to the official, who has seen it. Some items show Iran has made “urgent” requests for “vast amounts” of Chinese-made sniper rifles, apparently exact copies of the Austrian-made Steyr-Mannlicher HS50 which the Vienna government approved for sale to Iran’s National Iranian Police Organization in 2004 (ostensibly to help customs officers police Iran’s long and sparsely populated mountainous borders). At the time, the United States and Great Britain glowered at the Austrian government and slapped a two-year sales ban on Steyr-Mannlicher. Then in February, as if to confirm the worst suspicions, U.S. troops in Iraq uncovered caches of about 100 of the sniper weapons that looked like the Austrian rifles, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Continue reading ‘China’s Secret Arms Dealings’ »

By R.W. Behan — 29 August 2007

– From its first days in office in January of 2001 the Administration of George W. Bush meant to launch military attacks against both Afghanistan and Iraq. The reasons had nothing to do with terrorism.

This is beyond dispute. The mainstream press has either ignored the story or missed it completely, but the Administration’s congenital belligerence is fully documented elsewhere.

Attacking a sovereign nation unprovoked, however, directly violates the charter of the United Nations. It is an international crime. The Bush Administration would need credible justification to proceed with its plans.

The terrorist violence of September 11, 2001 provided a spectacular opportunity. In the cacophony of outrage and confusion, the Administration could conceal its intentions, disguise the true nature of its premeditated wars, and launch them. The opportunity was exploited in a heartbeat.

Continue reading ‘The So-Called “War on Terror:” A Masterpiece of Propaganda’ »

By Jim Michaels, USA TODAY

The United States’ largest and costliest embassy, a heavily fortified compound in Baghdad with its own power plant and lighted softball field, is on track to be completed next month, on time and within budget.

“We’re going to complete it on schedule,” said Charles Williams, director of the State Department’s overseas building operations. It took two years to build, he said.

The 65-acre compound will be largely a world unto itself, insulated as much as possible from problems that plague the rest of Baghdad.

The facility sits on the banks of the Tigris River in the Green Zone, a walled-off area that houses Iraqi and U.S. offices. The embassy will have a separate set of 9-foot-high concrete walls to protect it against car or truck bombs. Many of the buildings also will have specially made bulletproof doors and windows, Williams said.

Continue reading ‘Baghdad embassy-fortress nearly built’ »

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration has confirmed for the first time that American telecommunications companies played a crucial role in the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program after asserting for more than a year that any role played by them was a “state secret.”

The acknowledgment was in an unusual interview that Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, gave last week to The El Paso Times in which he disclosed details on classified intelligence issues that the administration has long insisted would harm national security if discussed publicly.

Mr. McConnell made the remarks apparently in an effort to bolster support for the broadened wiretapping authority that Congress approved this month, even as Democrats are threatening to rework the legislation because they say it gives the executive branch too much power. It is vital, he said, for Congress to give retroactive legal immunity to the companies that assisted in the program to help prevent them from facing bankruptcy because of lawsuits over it.

Continue reading ‘Role of Telecom Firms in Wiretaps Is Confirmed’ »

BAGHDAD 14 July 2007 (AP) — Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saturday that the Iraqi army and police are capable of keeping security in the country when American troops leave “any time they want,” though he acknowledged the forces need further weapons and training.The embattled prime minister sought to show confidence at a time when pressure in the U.S. Congress is growing for a withdrawal and the Bush administration reported little progress had been made on the most vital of a series of political reforms it wants al-Maliki to carry out.
Moreover, the Pentagon on Friday conceded that the Iraqi army has become more reliant on the U.S. military. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, said the number of Iraqi battalions able to operate on their own without U.S. support has dropped in recent months from 10 to six, though he said the fall was in part due to attrition from stepped-up offensives.
In new violence in Baghdad on Saturday, a car bomb leveled a two-story apartment building, and a suicide bomber plowed his explosives-packed vehicle into a line of cars at a gas station in new attacks in Baghdad that killed at least eight people. Continue reading ‘Al-Maliki: Iraqis Ready To Keep Security’ »

By ROBERT BUZZANCO
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
In his continuing attempts to justify escalation of the war in Iraq, President Bush has resorted to historical analogy, warning that a hasty retreat from the Middle East would trigger a bloodbath as it did in Cambodia and Vietnam in the 1970s. Not only is the comparison faulty, it is historically inaccurate.

“In Cambodia,” Bush said, “the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation and torture and execution” and “in Vietnam, former allies of the United States, and government workers and intellectuals and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished. Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea.”

Bush and defenders of the current war and Vietnam ignore crucial aspects of history, however. Vietnam by 1975 had been wracked by a brutal fratricidal war for over a quarter-century, and recriminations were unavoidable, and made inevitable by the nature of the U.S. intervention and occupation of the southern half of Vietnam.
Continue reading ‘Bush’s Vietnam Analogy Incorrect!’ »

By Ken Dilanian, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — At a time when Congress has moved to ban most lobbyist-funded travel, executive branch officials are routinely accepting trips from companies and trade associations with a stake in their agencies’ decisions, according to a USA TODAY review of public records.

In a recent 12-month period:

• A Department of Transportation aviation analyst went to a conference in Geneva, Switzerland, at a cost of $1,900 courtesy of the National Business Aviation Association, which lobbies the department on private jet rules.

• Two Defense Department homeland defense officials attended a conference in Limerick, Ireland, that was sponsored by Rivada Networks, a defense contractor that picked up the $4,200 tab.

• The Consumer Electronics Association, a lobbying group, paid more than $34,000 to host 24 officials from various agencies at the five-star Wynn hotel at its Las Vegas trade show in January, spokesman Jason Oxman said. Continue reading ‘Trips Paid By Firms Officials Regulate’ »