The Rude Pundit weighs in on the Office of the Vice President.

Posted by: Bea | Jun 23 2007 13:26 utc | 3

The Nonrenewal of Venezuela’s RCTV
An interview with Venezuelan historian and political analyst Vladimir Acosta
Excerpt:

Hopefully the example will spread and be replicated. Hopefully we will see many cases where private TV channels are turned into public channels to serve the majorities, public channels that defend our cultural values and bring us closer to our own history. We are all familiar with the American history and values, but we know nothing about ourselves. Their TV is universal, it is everywhere around the world and they force us to consume their values, their lifestyle. That is how they control us. We do not know anything about our roots, our own values, our cultures. Through TV, mostly American TV, we have been forced to adopt a culture based on values that are foreign to us. Of course we can make our own TV based on our traditions, meeting our own needs. We can make cultural TV that is not opposed to good quality and entertainment. That is a myth disseminated by tacky TV: the myth that fun and entertainment cannot go hand in hand with high-level culture. We can and we must make good and catchy, enjoyable TV. There is Telesur, for example. That is a different communication model: Latin American TV, made by Latin Americans, able to help us see each other and discover each other as we are, not as third-category Americans. We, Latin Americans, do not know each other because of the cultural invasion. A Venezuelan knows much more about the US than about Paraguay, Argentina or Brazil; he or she knows about stereotypes, which is precisely what commercial media broadcasts. Knowing each other in a different way is indispensable to function as brothers and sisters, people united in a true bloc, sharing common goals. And sharing a common enemy too. That is what the Empire does not want, that is why the bombard us with trash TV that can do nothing but confuse us.

Posted by: Alamet | Jun 23 2007 22:49 utc | 5

wapo: North Africa Reluctant to Host U.S. Command: Algeria and Libya Reject Pentagon’s AFRICOM Proposal; Morocco Signals Its Lack of Enthusiasm

RABAT, Morocco — A U.S. delegation seeking a home for a new military command in Africa got a chilly reception during a tour of the northern half of the continent this month, running into opposition even in countries that enjoy friendly relations with the Pentagon.
Algeria and Libya separately ruled out hosting the Defense Department’s planned Africa Command, known as AFRICOM, and said they were firmly against any of their neighbors doing so either. U.S. diplomats said they were disappointed by the depth of opposition, given that the Bush administration has bolstered ties with both countries on security matters in recent years.
Morocco, which has been mentioned as a possible site for the new command and is one of the strongest U.S. allies in the region, didn’t roll out the welcome mat, either. After the U.S. delegation visited Rabat, the capital, on June 11, the Moroccan foreign ministry strongly denied a claim by an opposition political party that the kingdom had already offered to host AFRICOM. A ministry statement called the claim “baseless information.”
Rachid Tlemcani, a professor of political science at the University of Algiers, said the stern response from North African governments was a reflection of public opposition to U.S. policies in the predominantly Muslim region.
“People on the street assume their governments have already had too many dealings with the U.S. in the war on terror at the expense of the rule of law,” said Tlemcani, who is also a scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The regimes realize the whole idea is very unpopular.”

think that will that stop the pentagon, though?
la-la-la… i’m not listening…
from thursday’s DoD press briefing by ryan henry, the principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, discussing the results of their second consultation w/ african officials over AFRICOM

MR. HENRY: Good morning. I’ve just returned from a second consultation trip to the continent of Africa. It was part of a State Department and International Development Agency trip to AFRICOM. We wanted to give you some feedback on the second trip and what we heard.
…
On this trip, we met with senior defense and foreign ministry officials from Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Djibouti and the African Union.
…
As we did in our first trip in April, we explained the broad outlines and goals of AFRICOM and then sought their viewpoints from our partners as their inputs are valuable to us as we start to make the decisions about the way ahead and specifics on the stand-up at AFRICOM.
…
From my perspective, there were three significant takeaways from the trip. First, that counterterrorism was a top security concern for the countries that we met with on this trip. They were interested in how AFRICOM would help support their counterterrorism efforts, how current programs and initiatives would be impacted.
…
..secondly, the countries were committed to the Africa Union as the continent’s common security structure, and they advised us that AFRICOM should be established in harmony with the AU’s regional security structure.
…
Finally, we received positive feedback about the design and mission of AFRICOM, which brings together the diplomatic, developmental and defense aspects of U.S. foreign policy in one regional unified command headquarters.
…
African leaders … saw AFRICOM’s integrated approach as a more constructive way for the Department of Defense to partner with African organizations and help bring about long-term peace and security.
…
..we have not met with any pushback from the people — countries in the region or other partners that are interested in partnering with us on the African continent.

two other stmts i’ll point out in this briefing, to keep in mind as AFRICOM materializes

Q: Well, that integration, is that something that you, in creating Africa Command, see as uniquely needed in this area, or is it a response to needs that have gone unfilled elsewhere?
MR. HENRY: It is clearly needed on the African continent. And it is an opportunity to experiment. We don’t have all the answers, but we do know that we need to look at new ways of doing things. And AFRICOM presents an opportunity to be able to look at how we might do that.

experiment? as in a living laboratory? why does the title of greg grandin’s last book pop into my mind – empire’s workshop: latin america, the united states, and the rise of the new imperialism
and, even though it’s prefaced w/ the word “intention”, let’s see how long this theory lasts outside the sterile confines of the pentagon briefing room

We do not — the intention is not to use it for intervention into any African affairs. The one time that we can possibly see U.S. troops participating on the African continent is in support of a humanitarian disaster, a natural disaster.

Posted by: b real | Jun 24 2007 2:53 utc | 7

The one time that we can possibly see U.S. troops participating on the African continent is in support of a humanitarian disaster
oh please!

Posted by: annie | Jun 24 2007 17:40 utc | 9

In its Sunday Iraq story, the NYT reiterates and expands on Army staffing problems, which were mentioned in the Saturday story. Just as on Saturday, the staffing discussion is buried in the middle of the jump page. Slate’s “Today’s Papers” suggests that NYT “buried the lede” — inside a story about the competing assessments of Iraq that have been commissioned for Sept 15, when the Petraus-Crocker report is due.

“The issue now is when do we start withdrawing troops and at what pace,” one senior administration official said. “Petraeus wants as much time as he can get,” the official said, but added that “the president may not have the leeway” to give him that time.
The reality, officials said, is that starting around April the military will simply run out of troops to maintain the current effort. By then, officials said, Mr. Bush would either have to withdraw roughly one brigade a month, or extend the tours of troops now in Iraq and shorten their time back home before redeployment. The latter, said one White House official, “is not something the president wants to do” and would likely become a centerpiece of the 2008 presidential campaign.

N.B. “senior administration official” at beginning; “officials” in the middle; “White House official” at end of excerpt.
Perhaps we are glimpsing, at least, why the present Iraq action was designated “a surge” – not because of limited ambition, only limited troops.

Posted by: small coke | Jun 25 2007 1:51 utc | 11

Colonizing: ILA destroys Bedouin homes to make way for Jewish town

The Israel Land Administration (ILA), with the assistance of an unusually large police force and IDF soldiers, demolished dozens of tin shack homes Monday in unrecognized Bedouin villages Um Al-Hiran and A-Tir in the northern Negev.
The ILA is destroying the village and evacuating the inhabitants so that a Jewish Community named “Hiran” can be established in the area. Fourteen shacks, which housed some 100 people, have been destroyed by bulldozers so far.
Bedouin women tried to get their children out of the house but police wanted to speed up the process so they grabbed the play pens with the children inside and did not let the mothers come near.
…
According to Adallah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, the residents of the village have been living there for 51 years. They were transferred to the site in 1956 while under martial law. The land they originally owned was transferred to Kibbutz Shoval, while the Bedouin were leased 3000 dunam of land for agriculture and grazing.
In August 2001 the ILA submitted a report on the establishment of new communities, which included Hiran. The Bedouin residents living in the area appeared under the title of “special problems” that may affect the establishment of the community.
The government approved the establishment of Hiran in 2002, and in 2004 the state submitted a court order claiming that residents of Al Hiran should be evacuated as they are using state lands without permission.

Posted by: b | Jun 25 2007 14:02 utc | 13

More details from the article ww linked to above:

“Israel treats Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem as immigrants, who live in their homes at the benificence of the authorities and not by right,” B’Tselem [a prominent Israeli human rights organization] said.
“Treating these Palestinians as foreigners who entered Israel is astonishing since it was Israel that entered east Jerusalem in 1967.”
The watchdog said that a common pretext cited by Israel for withdrawing residence permits was the holding of a foreign passport enabling the Palestinians to emigrate.
“It seems that the interior system has an information system allowing it to identify those Palestinians who hold foreign passports so that their status as permanent residents of Jerusalem can be withdrawn,” B’Tselem spokesman Sarit Michaeli told AFP.
“The injustice in this policy stems from the fact that an Israeli can have several passports and spend his life abroad without anyone questioning his status as an Israeli national.”
Permanent residence gives the holder the right to live and work in the city and vote in municipal, but not parliamentary elections.
But unlike citizenship, it is only passed on to the holder’s children if the holder meets certain conditions.
Since 1996, Arab residents of east Jerusalem have had to prove that they live, work and pay taxes in the city to maintain their residence permits.
A total of 245,000 Palestinians live in east Jerusalem alongside more than 200,000 Jewish settlers.

To place this development in context, one must understand the essence of Israel’s approach to Jerusalem, which is that the demographic balance outweighs everything else. Here is the critical thing to know:

“In 1973, the Israeli government adopted the recommendation of the Inter-ministerial Committee to Examine the Rate of Development for Jerusalem (hereafter: the Gafni Committee), which determined that a “demographic balance of Jews and Arabs must be maintained as it was at the end of 1972,” that is, 73.5% Jews, and 26.5% Palestinians. Over the years, all Israeli governments, through the Ministerial Committee for Jerusalem, have affirmed that goal as a guiding principle of municipal planning policy, and it has been the foundation of demographic and urban plans prepared by government ministries.

This quotation is from the B’Tselem report, A policy of discrimination: Land expropriation, planning, and building in East Jerusalem, May 1995, p. 30. Full report available on the web.)
Meron Benvenisti, Former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem (1971-1978), has written:

In the 1970s someone came up with a “desirable” demographic ratio between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem, and since then the natural growth of the Arab population has been the dominant factor in city planning. All other considerations are dwarfed by the danger that the Arabs will win in the war of wombs. Everyone, whether “green” environmentalists or “orange” right-wingers, bows to this racist scarecrow and argues only about whether the so-called solution should be to destroy the existing urban fabric or to ruin the open areas to the west of the city.
No one mentions the fact that the “demographic balance” is fundamentally fictitious. It was created through a manipulation of Jerusalem’s borders in 1967, based on the principle of preserving a minimum of Arabs and a maximum of land for Jews. In the name of this principle, more and more exposed or dispensable hilltops have been annexed to the city since 1967 and anointed with the holy oil of the Eternal City.

Some other key figures have commented:

“I do not like the growth of the non-Jewish population in Jerusalem.” — Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert, May, 1997, quoted in Maariv (Hebrew)

“I am seeing to the Jewish majority… the majority in Jerusalem. That is why we are here, to see to that.” – Teddy Kollek, while mayor of Jerusalem [Minutes of Jerusalem Municipal Council meeting, 24 January 1982, Report 42, pp. 11-12.](translated by B’Tselem. Cited in B’Tselem, 1995, same report as above)

In east Jerusalem, however, the stakes were different.…Allowing “too many” homes in Arab neighborhoods would mean “too many” Arab residents in the city. The idea was to move as many Jews as possible into east Jerusalem, and move as many Arabs as possible out of the city entirely. Israeli housing policy in east Jerusalem was all about this numbers game. Israel believed that the more Jews it moved into east Jerusalem, the stronger its hold on that part of the city. Israel saw each new Jewish neighborhood in east Jerusalem as another insurance policy against the re-division of the city.
— Amir Cheshin, Bill Hutman, and Avi Melamed. Separate and Unequal: The Inside Story of Israeli Rule in East Jerusalem. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 32.

Meron Benvenisti wrote in Haaretz on Jerusalem Day in May of this year: Keeping Jerusalem Jewish

The minimalist decision of Moshe Dayan made it possible to create a Jewish majority in Jerusalem and a ratio of three Jews for every Arab. This fictitious formula has been and continues to be an important factor in Jerusalem planning and a valuable tool in the hands of real estate sharks and urban planners, who are happy to sacrifice the values of view, environment and urban quality of life on the altar of the sacred, fictitious demographic gap.
People used to believe that the Jewish majority in Jerusalem could be maintained by the massive construction of neighborhoods around the city’s edges; now what is being advocated is the removal of Arab neighborhoods on the fringes of the city, which would reduce the number of Arab residents in an artificial, bureaucratic way.
Israeli politicians, sworn democrats that they are, appear alarmed by the loss of a Jewish majority. After all, this process will lead to an Arab majority, if democratic elections ever take place. But there is no greater hypocrisy. Have they asked the Arabs if they want to be annexed by Israel? And are they asking them now if they want to be removed from the city, as has already been done to 60,000 Jerusalem residents who were placed beyond the separation line [ie, the Wall]? Indeed, every time the Arabs of East Jerusalem have a leader like Faisal Husseini – who tried to establish an independent community center, Orient House – Israel made sure to neutralize him and destroy the institution that had been established.

Posted by: Bea | Jun 25 2007 17:21 utc | 15

Swopa at Needlenose picks up a couple of interesting developments in Iraq.
1- Via Iraqslogger, last week, during Iraq President Talabani’s visit to China, China signed an agreement to forgive all Iraqi debt. And Iraq revived a contract signed by Saddam to allow a Chinese oil company to develop the al-Ahdab oil field, which borders Iran on the east and Diyala province on the north.
2- The US deputy commander for operations in the Diyala area, Brig Gen Mick Bednarak, says Iraqi forces “don’t even have enough ammunition” to hold the areas that US forces have “cleared.”
And the commander south of Baghdad, Major General Rick Lynch, agrees that Iraqi forces are lacking, saying U.S. troops are too few to garrison the districts newly rid of insurgents. “It can’t be coalition (U.S.) forces. We have what we have. There’s got to be more Iraqi security forces.”
So, at best, all these murderous operations can hope to do is stir up the pot and throw insurgent forces off-balance temporarily, while simultaneously providing them more recruits from an outraged, violated population. Is that all there is?

Posted by: small coke | Jun 25 2007 22:18 utc | 17

This seems like an excellent proposal.
World Refugee Day: Name Every Victim

Last year was one of the worst ever for refugees, and 2007 is getting even worse, with conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan’s Darfur. The Iraq War alone has displaced nearly 5 million people.
The U.S. military is directly involved in the first three of these noted wars. In addition to being the biggest purveyor of arms in the world, we also now may be the biggest producer of refugees.
Not surprisingly, these three theaters of U.S. militarism rank #2 (Iraq), #3 (Somalia), and #8 (Afghanistan) in the Failed States Index 2007 released by Foreign Policy this month. Sudan, with its ongoing genocide in Darfur, remains #1….
What we need, if we are ever to value life and peace and security in this world — is a new policy, one that honors every victim of war. Imagine if we named every victim, showed every photo on the nightly news, compensated every surviving family for their loss. It would be difficult for us to maintain “business as usual” in war, or to wage war at all.
Maybe we could take it one step at a time. Start out by passing a simple “Name Every Victim” law.
We could require the U.S. military — working with groups like CIVIC, International Rescue Committee, International Committee of the Red Cross, and Relief International — to document a good faith, best efforts attempt to identify and name every victim of every engagement.
The law would require the military to exercise the same level of care that we do for our fallen soldiers in this regard. Give every victim a name — a human dignity and identity.
There is a popular saying that “truth is the first casualty of war.” I have always considered it the second. Humanity — both, “ours” and “theirs” — is the first casualty of war.

Posted by: Bea | Jun 26 2007 4:08 utc | 19

Peston nails it: the BAE deal to pay Bandar Bush a £1bn “sweetner” for the biggest-ever UK arrms deal was never a private thing.
It was a deal between two goverments, the British and the Saudi, and the UK MoD must now decide whether to comply with a supoena from the US DoJ to know more.

Posted by: Dismal Science | Jun 26 2007 14:46 utc | 21

general petraeus, as everyone knows, is the locus of military genius, sort of ghengis khan, marshal rommel and capt. kirk all at once. but allawi, in his book, has an interesting tale:

The Plunder of the Ministry of Defence
The Iraqi Ministry of Defence was reconstituted in April 2004 under the CPA. It operated under a budget set up by the CPA, which was premised on a small force of three light infantry divisions. With the advent of the Interim Government, pressure was afoot to increase the budget of the Ministry of Defence dramatically, in line with a revised security strategy that called for the establishment of `rapid deployment forces’ and mechanised divisions. These were assumed to form the elements of an expanded Iraqi army and an enhanced Iraqi involvement in counter-insurgency operations. The CPA’s defence doctrine was jettisoned by the Interim Government, with little protest from the MNF advisers who had been assigned to the Ministry of Defence. General David Petraeus, who had been responsible for security in the Mosul area, between invasion and February 2004 as head of the 101st Airborne Division, was brought back to Iraq with new responsibilities. He commanded the group responsible for the training and expansion of Iraq’s army, the Multinational Security Transition Command in Iraq, commonly known as `Minsticky: The Security Transition Command subscribed to the new military doctrine for the Iraqi army and signed off on the expansion proposals of the Interim Government. The Ministry of Defence assumed responsibility for procurement of the armaments and transport for the new Iraqi mechanised divisions, even though the Security Transition Command was supposed to have an oversight role. Petraeus was a firm believer in giving the new Iraqi government as wide a latitude as possible to make its own decisions, without intrusive involvement by the Security Transition Command. Writing in the Washington Post in September 2004, Petraeus waxed lyrical about the progress in setting up the new Iraqi army and the rapid equipping of these forces: `Training is on track and increasing in capacity. Infrastructure is being repaired. Command and control structures and institutions are being re-established .120 But under the very noses of the Security Transition [362] Command, officials both inside and outside the Ministry of Defence were plotting to embezzle most, if not all, of the procurement budget of the army.
The new Minister of Defence, Hazem Sha’alan, had no experience either in the security arena or in the professional management of large organisations?’ He was probably selected because of his loyal service to the intelligence agencies when he was the CPA-appointed governor of Qadissiya province. Sha’alan had been involved in a losing power struggle in the province with the ascendant Islamists, whom he deeply loathed. He brought Mishal al-Sarraf into the ministry as his special adviser. Al-Sarraf, born into a Najafi family, was a business adventurer with a murky background. He had previously been a real-estate speculator in war-torn Lebanon, a dealer in cardamom from Guatemala, a grower of spring onions on the Arizona-Mexico border, and a promoter of halal canned meats in Europe and Lebanon. As the war clouds gathered in early 2003, he popped up in Kuwait, hovering around the growing ORHA operation of Jay Garner, and became one of its numerous camp followers. Mishal al-Sarraf would boast, while in Kuwait, that he had become one of the CIA’s recruits for Iraq. It is unclear what role he had played during the CPA period, but his appointment as senior adviser to the Minister of Defence was received with incredulity.
Fred Smith, the CPA-appointed senior adviser to the Ministry of Defence, was an effective and capable administrator, with impressive career credentials in national security and defence. He stayed on throughout the month of June 2004 during the handover of the Ministry of Defence to the incoming Minister, Hazem Sha’alan and al-Sarraf, his adviser. Smith was dismayed by the unfocused and grandiose security schemes that the new team at the Ministry of Defence was concocting.z2 The new staff was of uneven quality. They were seeded throughout the Ministry of Defence’s headquarters to form the backbone of the new civilian-dominated administration. Five of these senior civilian appointments would feature, knowingly or unknowingly, in the unfolding embezzlement scandal. Two of them would be later murdered under mysterious circumstances, probably because of their knowledge of the details of the unfolding massive fraud. A third one would confess after her arrest and would provide most of the incriminating evidence against the key players.
As a harbinger of things to come, Dale Stoffel, one of the innumerable freelance military contractors who gravitated towards Iraq in search of El Dorado, received a contract from the Ministry of Defence for the refurbishment of mothballed Soviet-made tanks and other armoured vehicles of the former Iraqi army.Z3 Stoffel was extremely proficient in this area, and had managed to land a number of contracts for the procurement of Russian and East European military equipment for testing by the Pentagon. He was introduced to al-Sarraf, who then brought him to the Minister of Defence. Sha’alan
awarded a multimillion dollar contract to Stoffel’s company, Wye Oak Technology, for the refurbishment of equipment for three battalions. It was the first substantial contract awarded by the newly sovereign Iraqi Ministry of Defence. Curiously, however, the Ministry of Defence insisted that Stoffel route his billing through a Lebanese middleman, Raymond Rahma Zayna, an associate of al-Sarraf and one of the band of fixers and commission agents that hung around the US military abroad. Stoffel performed part of the contract and was seeking payment for nearly $25 million of work already accomplished. The Ministry of Defence cut three separate cheques, routed through the Lebanese middleman for `processing: It was clear to Stoffel that this abnormal payment mechanism was for hiding commissions that would be kicked back to senior Ministry of Defence officials by Raymond Zayna. In any case, Stoffel did not receive his promised payment, and he complained to the office of Senator Santorum in Washington and to senior Pentagon officials. Following a meeting held in the Taji army base north of Baghdad to sort out the problem between Stoffel and Zayna, the British deputy commander of the Security Transition Command, Brigadier Clements, ordered Zayna to release the money to Stoffel. Stoffel never saw the money. Returning to Baghdad after their meetings, Stoffel and an assistant were ambushed and killed. Stoffel’s computer was stolen. Investigators noted a number of unusual occurrences and concluded that the attacks were made in such a way as to disguise an assassination. The murders may have been ordered because of fear that Stoffel’s ‘whistle-blowing’ might alert the MNF to the corruption inside the Ministry of Defence. Suspicion hung around the entire Wye Oak deal, but investigators probed it insufficiently, possibly because of the fallout that might have occurred on senior Ministry of Defence officials who benefited from the corruption. The Security Transition Command did not want to see its efforts tarnished by allegations against its Iraqi counterparts. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence was being systematically looted.
The Ministry of Defence’s budget for 2004 was set at about $100 million by the CPA, a patently inadequate figure given the ambitious expansion plans for Iraq’s military. This was subsequently adjusted as the Interim Government took over sovereignty, and a new budget for the ministry was set at about $450 million. Nevertheless, the main burden of financing Iraq’s military fell on the USA. The Pentagon’s budget included appropriations for the supply, equipping and training of Iraq’s security forces, as well as for the building and refurbishment of bases. The US budgetary support for the Iraqi armed forces was possibly in the region of $8 to $10 billion.” The establishment of the mechanised divisions and the rapid deployment forces did not feature in the original plans for the Iraqi army, and the costs of setting them up had to be borne directly by the Iraqi treasury. The normal procedure, according to the TAL, was to submit requests for budgetary changes to the National Assembly, after [364] they had been approved by the Cabinet. The National Assembly had been formed to act as a legislative and oversight body during the interim period, until elections in January 2005. The decision to form these divisions was taken unilaterally, without any reference to either the Cabinet or the National Assembly.
In a series of circulars issued by the Cabinet secretariat office, the Ministry of Finance was instructed to appropriate $1.7 billion in one lump sum and to put it at the disposal of the Ministry of Defence. The Ministry of Defence, in turn, was informed by the Cabinet secretariat that it had prime ministerial approval for the formation of two rapid deployment divisions, and that the Ministry of Finance would make available the necessary appropriations for these divisions. At no point did the Ministry of Defence present any detailed proposals for these forces, or justify the amounts involved. The MNF was not consulted about the details of these divisions and was purposely kept out of the loop. The entire procedure was at best irregular and contravened both the Financial Management Law and the terms of the TAL. Prior to receiving the approval for funding these divisions, the Ministry of Defence had sought and received exemptions from the standing instructions of the Ministry of Finance that limited ministerial discretionary spending to the equivalent of $350,000. The exemptions were predicated on the understanding that all Ministry of Defence expenditures beyond the applicable limits would need the approval of the prime minister and deputy prime minister. The stage was set for a mad shopping spree for armaments with an unlimited chequebook, all to be effected in the period of the last three months in the life of a supposedly `interim’ government.” With just enough procedural niceties out of the way, the Ministry of Finance, under Adel Abd el-Mahdi, imprudently allowed the Ministry of Defence access to $1.7 billion in funds to spend in an uncontrolled and unauthorised manner, contravening a number of laws and regulations.
The locus of activity now moved to the Ministry of Defence’s own senior staff, to make these purchases actually happen. In a series of astounding and brazen decisions that broke every contracting and procurement rule, the Ministry of Defence started to award huge contracts without any bidding and with minimal documentation. 16 The CPA had appointed Bruska Shawys, the Secretary General of the Ministry of Defence, to his jab, a unique position in the Iraqi civil service. In fact the post of secretary general of the Ministry of Defence was deliberately invested with extra powers that made the holder the chief operating officer of the ministry. Shawys was a KDP stalwart and a brother of the then vice-president of Iraq in the Interim Government. Shawys authorised his deputy, Ziad Qattan, to be the head of the Ministry of Defence’s procurement department, in addition to his duties as the deputy secretary general of the Ministry of Defence. By his own admission, Qattan knew [365] nothing about weapons procurement. `Before, I sold water, flowers, shoes, cars – but not weapons. We didn’t know anything about weapons; he said in an interview later with the Los Angeles Times newspaper.” Qattan ingratiated himself with the US military in his neighbourhood, and became one of those elected as a local councillor in the Coalition’s attempts to foster grassroots democracy.” He was then recruited into the nascent Ministry of Defence by the chief Coalition talent scout, Colonel Dermer. Qattan distinguished himself in the early Ministry of Defence by arranging the purchase of office furniture. Following the transfer of sovereignty, Qattan’s star in the Ministry of Defence rose rapidly.
As chief procurement officer and with a billion-dollar budget, Qattan turned to a recently established company, with no background in military procurement and with only $2,000 in paid-up capital, to provide the Iraqi army with equipment for its rapid deployment forces. The company, called the Ayn al-Jariah (the `Flowing Spring’), was established on 1 September 2004, with three shareholders: Abd el-Hamid Mirza, the secretary of the office of the then vice-president; Zina Fattah, a Jordanian-based Iraqi and associate of Mishal al-Sarraf, the senior adviser to the Minister of Defence; and Naer Muhammed Ahmed al-Jumaili.21 This last shareholder was the operator of the sham company, which was to be the conduit for the equipping of two Iraqi divisions. In all, Ziad Qattan signed $1.12 billion in contracts with the `Ayn al-Jariah company and other front companies of Naer al-Jumaili. The contracts were awarded without any competitive bidding. Astoundingly, full payments of the contracts were often made in advance, with none of the usual requirements for performance bonds or guarantees. The legal department of the Ministry of Defence did not vet the contracts, and no original contract copies were lodged with it.3° The contracts themselves were drawn entirely to the advantage of the intermediary company. For example, the supplier could change the origin of the military equipment at will, with no reference to the Ministry of Defence.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 26 2007 18:49 utc | 23

Please watch this excellent video, The Bases Are Loaded. (h/t Palestinian Pundit) Then please pass the link on to as many people as you can. I think every American should see this video.
The video’s blurb:
Will the U.S. ever leave Iraq? Official policy promises an eventual departure, while warning of the dire consequences of a “premature” withdrawal. But while Washington equivocates, facts on the ground tell another story. Independent journalist Dahr Jamail, and author Chalmers Johnson, are discovering that military bases in Iraq are being consolidated from over a hundred to a handful of “megabases” with lavish amenities. Much of what is taking place is obscured by denials and quibbles over the definition of “permanent.” The Bases Are Loaded covers a wide range of topics. Gary Hart, James Goldsborough, Nadia Keilani, Raed Jarrar, Bruce Finley Kam Zarrabi and Mark Rudd all add their observations about the extent and purpose of the bases in Iraq.

Posted by: Bea | Jun 26 2007 20:07 utc | 25

thanks Bea for the great links, especially the video.
what is it with “b” around here? quite a coincidence to have such high quality posters who all have “b” in their nicks. our host, Bea, and b real. thanks to all of you for making this place special.

Posted by: dan of steele | Jun 26 2007 21:19 utc | 27

Thanks Alamet, that is a great (if utterly depressing) source.

Posted by: Bea | Jun 27 2007 1:28 utc | 29

dow jones newswire: Shell Won’t Re-Enter Nigeria’s Western Delta This Year

Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB.LN) is unlikely to go back into Nigeria’s troubled Western Delta this year despite the area contributing around 500,000 barrels a day to the company’s crude oil production, a Shell executive said Tuesday.
Speaking on the sidelines of an energy security conference hosted by Cambridge Energy Resources Associates here, Ann Pickard, Shell’s Africa Regional Executive Vice President for Exploration and Production, told Dow Jones Newswires that escalating violence in the Delta has shut in production for 1.5 years so far, and production is unlikely to begin in 2007.
“We won’t be back in this year,” Pickard said on the sidelines of an energy conference in Istanbul. “We’re still working with the government to re-enter the Western Delta,” she said.

as i’ve previously posted, she’s refering to the u.s. govt.
continuing w/ the article,

Ongoing kidnappings and attacks on oil workers in the Delta have forced Shell to cut spending there by $100 million over three years, Pickard said.
…
Last year 339,000 barrels a day of Shell’s oil came from its operations in West Africa, most of which comes from Nigeria, Pickard said.
“That was pretty low for Nigeria,” she said. “The official number of shut-in production is 477,000 barrels a day, plus additional shut-ins from periodic attacks on pipelines.”
Shell’s total oil output was 1.9 million barrels a day in 2006. But the country continues to be “very, very important” for Shell, Pickard added.
“We spent $1.8 billion in the region last year, so our $100 million cuts are not significant.”

what’s a hundred million USD to an oil major, eh? i’ll tell ya what — better not let the citizens in the delta hear you talk like that!

Posted by: b real | Jun 27 2007 3:38 utc | 31

A striking poem – from Iraq:
For God’s sake, tell me where to begin?
I was set out to write about Father’s day and the thousands of fatherless Iraqi children.The thousands of killed fathers, the thousands of fathers trying desperately hard to feed their families, daily putting their lives at great risk, in a country gripped by demonic violence. The exiled fathers, selling scraps in Amman and Damascus, bearing the brunt of daily insults. Or the unemployed fathers, feeling torn inside watching their kids go hungry. Or maybe the head bent down father, slouched posture, hiding scars beneath a worn out shirt. The father that has been imprisoned, humiliated, tortured and sodomized, unable to look his children in the eyes…
Or maybe I should write about sexual torture and sodomy instead…
The further horrors emerging from Abu Ghraib and the Taguba report…
More reports of “abuse”. And I am sure Abu Ghraib is not over. I am certain that more Abu Ghraibs are taking place in Iraq, in those shadowy detention centers…
Abu Ghraib.
An American brave boy caught with his pants down, sodomizing an Iraqi female detainee. I cannot stomach the scene and will prepare a longer post on that, to expurgate your filth… Torn rectums and feces come to mind.
Wait, I think I will write about feces instead…
An orphanage in Baghdad. 24 young boys founds laying naked in their own pool of excrements, starved, covered with feces and flies, hands tied to bare metal beds.
With the “liberation”, the main orphanage of Baghdad was bombed. Of course no one spoke of that one. Hundreds of children took to the streets and were trafficked in, traded in.
UNICEF wrote a brief report on it but then it disappeared from their website.
Trading in dollars for each child’s head, like in a slave market, exported to neighboring Gulf countries as…only Allah knows as what…
Heads and more heads…Perhaps I need to write about rolling heads…
A leaked autopsy report from the Iraqi ministry of Health (what an oxymoron that title is) states that Barzan Al-Tikriti’s head was very slowly slit with a sharp instrument whilst his body showed bruises from kicks. They slowly severed his head, very slowly and kicked his jolting body at the same time, in another pool of blood…
Severed…Wait, maybe I should write about forced circumcision in Basrah. A public castration. Another bloody scene.
Mahdi Militiamen (remember Mahdi, your darling drill boy?)rounded up a group of Sabaeans. Sabaeans are one of the oldest “ethnic” groups in Iraq, converting them by force. At gun and drill point, they agreed to embrace the Mahdi creed.
An old Sabaean of 70 years, with a beard reaching his belly, was circumcised.
Bloody severed foreskin.
Did I say blood? Which reminds me of Othman’s blood clot, stuck in his leg…
“Layla I need some blood thinner, I need aspirin – Help me for God’s sake”.
Othman cannot leave the house, cannot get to a pharmacy, cannot see a doctor. Snipers, checkpoints, fear…”They are burying me alive at home”…he says.
Buried alive at home…Yes this is what I will be writing about.
Alia was driving her car with Auntie Sameera to get some gasoline.
Suddenly, her car was riddled with bullets. They were lucky.
A man in black walks up to her.
– What have you done? You nearly killed all of us.
– Why did you not stop?
– I did not see you. There is no uniform, no checkpoint, no nothing.
– I waved.
– I did not see you. I am sorry.
– I do not want your apology. I want you to go home and stay there. I never want to see your face in this neighborhood again. You are to stay at home where you belong.
Home, a home…any home…I think I will write about that instead.
Marwan is a Palestinian Iraqi. This is how he defines himself.
“I do not know where my family is. They are stranded somewhere in the desert, between Syria and Iraq. Layla, I already lost 4 of them in Baladiyat. I regret Saddam so much…”
Ah regrets and nostalgia…Maybe I need to write about this instead.
Salman, an Iraqi shia. An staunch anti-Saddam says to me.
“There is no end to this dark tunnel, Layla. Give us back a strong government, with an iron fist. I would pay anything to have that back…”
Did I hear pay ? Pay, paychecks…
Now check this one out.
I mentioned in one of my posts that a junior member of parliament in the Green Zone brothel makes 30’000 dollars a month plus fringe benefits. Now do you want to know how much the matron makes? No joke here.
Jalal Talabani makes 1 million dollars A MONTH plus fringe benefits. This heavy hooker has pocketed in 2 years, 24 million dollars! Whilst the majority of the Iraqis don’t have a piece of bread…
Bread…That reminds me of Nadia’s husband. After being sacked from his job as an accountant, he took up the job of a baker. I just learned that he has typhoid.
Raging fevers in raging Iraq…
So kindly tell me, where would you like me to start? Pick and choose.
Fatherless day, orphans in feces, sodomy Americana, blood pools, home burials, severed heads, public castrations, erring homelessness, regrets and nostalgia or how to make a million bucks per month in Iraq? Or maybe I need to stop here and put out this fever?
So when you decide, let me know. But do remember there is no end in sight…
Now, If you don’t mind, I would like to go and crawl into some corner, take up a foetal position and vanish…Vanish from these endless beginnings, vanish from my own powerlessness, vanish far away….
THE END.
An Arab Woman Blues – Reflections in a sealed bottle…
Who am I ? The eternal Question . Have not figured it out fully yet . All you need to know about me is that I am a Middle Easterner ,an Arab Woman – into my 40’s and old enough to know better . I have no homeland per se . I live in Iraq,Lebanon,Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Egypt simultaneously …. All the rest is icing on the cake. / Copyrights reserved, 2006-2007

Posted by: Jake | Jun 27 2007 5:53 utc | 33

the crisis group report linked to by alamet should be read by everyone here.
well, almost everyone.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 27 2007 16:31 utc | 35