| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"-=+ Osama Bin Kenobi +=-" |
| Date: |
17 Jun 2004 04:40:13 AM |
| Object: |
Last Iraq Pipeline Destroyed, All Oil Exports Halted |
Ready to surrender yet, Republicans? Where's your Je$us to save you?
Oil official is assassinated as guerrillas blow up last Iraq pipeline
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
The Independent, UK
Insurgents stopped all oil exports from Iraq yesterday by blowing up the one
remaining pipeline to the Gulf, and assassinated the head of security for
Iraqi oilfields in the north.
A bomb blast early yesterday morning destroyed a pipeline in the desolate Fao
peninsula south of Basra, where saboteurs had struck the previous day. Crude
oil gushing from the broken pipe formed deep black ponds in the sand. All
crude oil exports from terminals in Basra and Khor al-Amaya have been
stopped.
The attacks show that anti-government guerrillas now have the skill and the
organisation to cripple permanently Iraq's oil exports. This will seriously
damage the prospects of the new Iraqi interim government, which is badly in
need of high oil revenues in order to restore the economy and create an army.
Three gunmen assassinated Ghazi Talabani, the top security official for the
state-run Northern Oil Company, yesterday when his car stopped in a crowded
market in Kirkuk. He was the third senior Iraqi official to be murdered since
Saturday. The export pipeline from Iraq's northern oilfields through Turkey
to the Mediterranean was blown up on 25 May.
An escalation in bombings and assassinations was expected by the US before
the so-called handover of power to an Iraqi interim government on 30 June.
But the attacks on the oil industry and the electric power supply have been
more sophisticated and effective than had been expected.
The international price of oil did not rise significantly after sabotage
stopped Iraqi oil exports but this may change if, as appears likely, the
saboteurs can sustain their attacks. Iraq had been hoping to raise its output
to 2.5 million barrels a day in the near future.
Iyad Allawi, the new Iraqi Prime Minister, is hoping to restore security by
getting senior officers from the old Iraqi army, disbanded by the US last
May, to reconstitute their units. This is very different from the American
plan to allow carefully vetted officers and men from Saddam Hussein's army to
join a freshly raised military force on an individual basis. Iraqi officials
estimate the cost of this new army will be between $3bn (£1.6bn) and $4bn.
The US may have difficulty, however, in stomaching an Iraqi military force
consisting of the same military units that it triumphantly defeated 14 months
ago. Officials here suspect that the US would prefer to create an army in
Iraq which would be like Latin American security forces, easily influenced by
Washington and independent of the civil government.
Although the US has said for a year that it is trying to build up an Iraqi
army it has provided no budget for communications, ensuring that all messages
will have to be passed through the US military forces.
The one piece of good news for the US in Iraq yesterday was that Muqtada
Sadr, the radical Shia cleric, has ordered his militiamen to leave the holy
cities of Kufa and Najaf. They have been fighting US troops there for over
two months.
But even the defusing of the crisis with Sadr is a sign of how far the US has
failed to achieve its political aims in Iraq. At the end of March, Paul
Bremer, the US viceroy in Iraq, started a confrontation with Sadr, seeking to
arrest him and close down his Army of Mehdi militia. A month later US
commanders were saying they would "kill or capture him". In the event they
have so far managed to do neither.
There is a growing sense of anarchy in Baghdad. Foreign contractors driving
around in their distinctive four-wheel-drive vehicles are being regularly
killed in the heart of the capital. When five foreigners were blown up on
Monday, a crowd spontaneously danced around one of the charred bodies
chanting: "America is the enemy of God."
Many Iraqis hope that the interim Iraqi government to which power is
supposedly to be transferred on 30 June will be an improvement on the
occupation. But the new government will depend on the US for armed force and,
given the repeated sabotage of the oil pipelines, it will have to rely on
American money as well.
--
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http://www.bloodforoil.org/ | http://www.ryano.net/iraq/?684397
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| User: "William Brennan" |
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| Title: Re: Last Iraq Pipeline Destroyed, All Oil Exports Halted |
17 Jun 2004 11:51:12 AM |
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"-=+ Osama Bin Kenobi +=-" <abuse@anarchy.gov> wrote in message news:<OBK950B39B322B640001138@r2-dv8.anarchy.gov>...
Snip, snip, snip . . .
So what are you gonna do when your car runs out of gas, *****,
and the price at the pump is one hundred dollars per gallon?
Osama bin Brennan
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| User: "BrianE" |
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| Title: Re: Last Iraq Pipeline Destroyed, All Oil Exports Halted |
17 Jun 2004 01:49:30 PM |
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In article <d712c246.0406170851.693bd659@posting.google.com>,
ltvtgttt@yahoo.com says...
"-=+ Osama Bin Kenobi +=-" <abuse@anarchy.gov> wrote in message news:<OBK950B39B322B640001138@r2-dv8.anarchy.gov>...
Snip, snip, snip . . .
So what are you gonna do when your car runs out of gas, *****,
and the price at the pump is one hundred dollars per gallon?
Osama bin Brennan
More overtime and McDonalds?
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