Iraq has the world’s second largest oil reserves. It is high quality and easy to produce. Iraq can produce six million barrels of oil a day, or more than three-times current output, which could keep the lid on world oil prices.
Iraq has established a national oil commission with the power to review contracts within 60 days. They will continue to manage existing production while regional affiliates would participate in new exploration and production. The deal is not as yet complete. The items left to be agreed upon are how much revenue will go to the central government, a charter for the new national oil company; the role of the oil ministry; and the principles upon which the new commission could reject regionally negotiated contracts.
Once the agreement is finalized we would expect attacks and theft on the pipelines would cease and corruption would be reduced. The Bush administration thought Iraqi oil revenue would cover occupation and reconstruction costs, but only 1.85 m/b/d were produced last year, less than the year before, less than the year before, less than prewar output and well below the 3 m/b/d the neocons expected. 200,000 barrels a day has been siphoned off by insurgents and militias. We look forward to seeing what kind of a final deal the US and British oil companies get.
Every time our president is going to have a news conference or there is a special event, up pops Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda. Two days before the State of the Union Address word emanated from the White House that those opponents of the war and the troops were assisting America’s enemies. That includes 65% of the public and the 70% who think their performance is terrible. Yes, Dick Cheney and Tony Snow think we are aiding and abetting our enemies. We now have a long history of videotapes and sightings every time Bush is under pressure. This is orchestrated by Karl Rove. This whole gang is a fraud and our government in total is a fraud.
The President’s State of the Union address was described as sober and somber. We found it more like the utterances of a zombie. The stage was set for the address week’s before by leaks deliberately disseminated by the administration to judge reactions to the new proposals to be put forward.
We were given the same old theme on Iraq. We cannot leave without finishing the job and to protect ourselves against terrorists. It was simply the same old bologna. What our President should have said is we are not leaving until we have secured our oil deal and we are sure we can protect the interests of US and British oil companies. We’ll do whatever it takes, no matter what the casualty rate. That includes billions more to be spent on operations and $1.2 billion on a make work program modeled on FDR’s, Civilian Conservation Corp., which is payoffs to Iraqis not to fight US troops. Of course, the mandatory 50% or more will be stolen by those in the puppet government. As far as the surge is concerned, we’ll be surging three years from now. What is next is an expansion of fighting mercenaries so they won’t have to be reported in coming surges. We already have some 30,000 of them plus 100,000 civilian contractors. The effort to build democracy is long gone. No, George and the neocons have no intention of leaving Iraq for years. There is too much money to be made. Besides a combination of all Iraqi and US troops cannot continue to hold and occupy Iraq and an additional 21,500 troops is laughable to professionals. There is simply no way to disarm the militias. The only logical explanation is a troop buildup as a prelude to an Iranian invasion, or even perhaps a return to Somalia, where this time we are backing the warlords who killed our troops in Mogadishu.
Remember Diebold? Diebold is of course the company who is the manufacturer of the easily hackable paperless voting machines used heavily in the US. While they make secure and robust bank machines, they cannot make a secure and reliable voting machine, not with two free hands with a flashlight. There has been documented proof of how hackable these devices are. Even a chimpanzee was proven capable of hacking a Diebold voting machine in one study. Now the idiots at Diebold released a photo of their master key on their website that is good enough for anybody with a blank key, a file, and a bench vise to copy. This is absolutely the most stunning example of security incompetence by a company that has been publicly embarrased repeatedly over its corruptible voting machines. Now here is one for the Darwin awards for stupidity:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4066