<p>GOP lawmakers agree on the need for results in one more Friedman Unit or else:</p>
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<p>Of course, what he doesn’t say is that the “or else” is a call for another Friedman Unit after that.</p>
<p>“Or, as Senator Clinton put it last week, the Bush admistration has no problem cutting off education funding for 4th graders if they don’t meet firm benchmarks, but won’t agree to benchmarks on the Iraqi government.”</p>
<p>It’s their government, and where does the U.S. get off setting conditions for another sovereign government to cover up for its own failures, and for failing to meet its own promises to rebuild the country they invaded and destroyed? How about benchmarks for rebuilding the country? For caring for the two million refugees? For reparations for those killed by the Clinton genocide? For lost oil revenues? For the education of children turned topsy-turvy? For the victims of Abu Ghraib?</p>
<p>InterestedDad, it’s a startling coincidence, I’m sure, but do you realize that the initials for “Friedman Unit” are FU, as in FUBAR? Astonishing.</p>
<p>sorry, until the pres and the gop come out and call for a draft and moblize detroit into war production… it’s just a lie. I can’t sit here and be afraid of some person across the globe whom my president tells me is a threat to my way of life, but only commits 150,000 troops to. </p>
<p>Want me to believe? call for a draft, start building tanks and bombers and stop fooling around. Then I know “we” truly are threatened. Right now all that is threatened is GOP control of the country and they are willing to die the death of 1,000 cuts to keep their control in place. Kids are dying to maintain a voting block. </p>
<p>Yes, you can disagree with me, but let me ask you this… If you were ever in a real fight, a fight where you could get really hurt or killed, would you only fight with one hand?</p>
<p>BTW, here’s an interesting analysis of the proposed Iraqi “oil law” that the Bush administration is trying to ram down Iraq’s throat. From this professor’s standpoint, the oil law is hideously favorable to foreign oil companies and hideously unfavorable to Iraq. Unlike Saudi Arabia and the other mideast oil suppliers who contract for “fixed price” development of oil fields and keep the profits for their own countries, the Iraqi oil law establishes heavy profit sharing with the foreign oil companies – a mechanism that is typically used only when exploration is heavily speculative and difficult. Iraq’s oil reserves are easy to access and may prove to be the largest in the world. Exploration is not at all speculative.</p>
<p>The so-called Iraqi Oil Law, written by the US, enjoys nearly unanimous disapproval by all of the competing factions in Iraq – the Sunnis, the Shia, and the Kurds – which is why it is not being passed. The Iraqis are not stupid. Most of what we see taking place is driven by rational, if bloody, self-interest.</p>
<p><a href=“Home - TomDispatch.com”>Home - TomDispatch.com;
<p>BTW, as always I like to read the opposing viewpoint on an issue to understand the weakness and strengths of competiting positions. This article clearly represents one viewpoint. If anyone can provide a similar article from the viewpoint of the US government and/or the US oil companies, I would love to read it.</p>
<p>Why should there be benchmarks for the Iraqi government when there aren’t any for Halliburton? (as if I didn’t know…;))</p>
<p>The thing that makes me see red: it is in the United States’ long-term self interest to have friendly, cooperative relations with a stable, functioning Iraq economy. Obviously, the way to do that is to help them put in place structures and an oil industry that are favorable to Iraq, not that the Iraqis perceive as being an attempt to “steal their oil”. Superpower colonialism is so passe.</p>
<p>Not when “vital U.S. interests” are at stake.</p>
<p>It is in the U.S. long-term self-interest to have friendly, cooperative relations with ALL Muslim nations. And not so long ago, that was in fact the case, and one would have to look very hard for an exception. Bipartisan foreign policy and the powerful thinktanks and experts took a very wrong term decades ago (I think around 1967, but one could argue for other dates), and we haven’t recovered since.</p>
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<p>Of course, it was easier back when all the countries were run by dictators and autocratic regimes.</p>
<p>To the extent that we have leverage, we should be using it to push for reform policies that address the problems in the street not using our leverage to steal oil. It’s not like there’s a shortage of profits under an oil distribution system that is fair.</p>
<p>send in the A-Team, or Chuck Norris, or Jack Bauer…</p>
<p>Where the hell are all those guys ?</p>
<p>Well, there’re profits, but then there are <em>PROFITS</em> (Exxon, etc. is currently enjoying the latter, thanks to the war machine).</p>
<p>“Of course, it was easier back when all the countries were run by dictators and autocratic regimes.”</p>
<p>Tis true. It is much more difficult to make friends with a democratic Iran, when you’ve supervised the torture of its people (and toasted their “King” for his “commitment to human rights)”, had chemical weapons used against them with your blessing in a war that cost 500,000 lives, and worked for three decades to destabilize their country. </p>
<p>But I still remember the days when, under those autocratic regimes, you could go into any home and see a picture of JFK - a symbol of freedom and democracy and a U.S. that was there to help them - on every wall. </p>
<p>Now they know better.</p>
<p>I think it’s what happens when greed and corruption drives US foreign policy and nobody in our government is accountable.</p>
<p>We are ideally positioned to be an engine of economic growth for countries in a way that is also beneficial to US interests. We don’t need to steal them blind with our economic agreements.</p>
<p>For the life of me, I don’t understand why we don’t have some degree of relations with Iran. That’s not even a difficult case in the sense that doing business with a Saddam Hussein, who is gassing his own people, presents a real conundrum.</p>
<p>I know that you consider him to be genocidal murderer, but one of the things I find most attractive about a Hillary Clinton presidency is her idea to use Bill as an “ambassasdor to the world”. I think he has the statue and political skills to “sell” a positive vision of the United States to countries around the world, in the same sense that you refer to with the pictures of JFK. What’s been sorely lacking is salesmanship: a good salesman can get deals done in a way that Cheney, Rice, and that crowd can’t because a good salesman understands that a deal has to be perceived as “win-win”.</p>
<p>What’s been missing in our middle east policy is a failure to recognize the intense regional pride. These countries desperately want to join the world economies but seem to be highly resistant to anything that smacks of colonialism. There’s almost an “inferiority complex” that drives the interaction of Islamic countries with the world. Just look at the showy nouveau-rich development in Dubai. A saavy foreign policy should play to that regional ego.</p>
<p>I am confident that you would agree that national pride is a real force in Iranian politics, as it should be.</p>
<p>What’s so frustrating is that we send the best business management consultants in the world to Iraq to help them draft an oil development policy and then channel that expertise in a direction that screws Iraq. Channel our managerial expertise towards “win-win” deals. The short term profits of a bad deal will be far outstripped over the decades by fair respectful relations with a functioning Iraqi economy. Why do we have to play the conman?</p>
<p>I think what sunk U.S. bipartisan foreign policy (if I had to name a single event) was failure to think through, before and after the fact, the implications of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. LBJ’s mind was on other things (including his incipient retirement), and Nixon’s was soon to be. The only thing that has been absolutely consistent in U.S. foreign policy has been the pursuit of profit.</p>
<p>But that’s a long, long discussion, and not at this time.</p>
<p>Monday, June 20, 2005; CNN</p>
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<p>Thursday, May 10, 2007, Boston Globe:</p>
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<p>drb–as I was reading through this post, your last quote from this morning’s paper is what I was thinking of. Beat me to it!</p>
<p>Why are we building an expensive new embassy in the middle of a war and in the middle of a war zone?</p>
<p>Well, where else can you eat pork?</p>
<p>i don’t know what i would do without pork… or beer</p>
<p>I’ve seen pro-occupation people post here before that Iraq is a sovereign nation and if they asked us to leave, we would. Rice has even said that in some of her speeches.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.wtnh.com/Global/story.asp?S=6496102&nav=3YeX[/url]”>http://www.wtnh.com/Global/story.asp?S=6496102&nav=3YeX</a></p>
<p>A majority of the Iraq Parliment has endorsed a bill asking us to put a freeze on the number of people we have over there, and set a timetable for leaving. (Link is to an AP story).</p>
<p>I’ve known about this for a few days, and I’ve been waiting for it hit the mainstream media to post it. Now we’ll see if the pro-occupation crowd really respect Iraq as a sovereign nation or if they just want to occupy for reasons of their own.</p>
<p>You guys just don’t get it. The OP is sarcastic! Go back and reread it and see how funny it is. Iraq is melting down in a major civil war and many people are dying daily. There is no exit strategy, nor is there a clear vision of victory. And the concept of benchmarks was foreign to the CIC before yesterday when the Republicans went to tell him that his policy might be political suicide for the party. </p>
<p>BUT THERE IS PROGRESS TO POINT TO: AN IRAQUI MILITIA IS GUARDING A MOSQUE! Wow.</p>