iraq - Blogs - TheBlackList Pub2024-03-29T10:11:05Zhttps://www.theblacklist.net/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/iraqWhy So Many Mass Killings? Look in a Mirrorhttps://www.theblacklist.net/profiles/blogs/why-so-many-mass-killings-look-in-a-mirror2016-07-05T22:00:00.000Z2016-07-05T22:00:00.000ZNana Baakan Agyiriwahhttps://www.theblacklist.net/members/NanaBaakanAgyiriwah<div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align:left;"><h2 style="margin:0in;text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:18pt;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}3828586305,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="320" src="{{#staticFileLink}}3828586305,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left" alt="3828586305?profile=original" /></a><span class="font-size-3" style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">NB Commentary:</span></span> <span style="font-weight:normal;font-family:georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-3"><span style="font-size:large;">Think about it. Whether real or contrived, the idea that it happens should cause one to pause and think. Why does this country thrive on this type of fanfare, violence, false flags, hoaxes or whatever you wish to call them? Over and over again, we see people die, or maybe not, killed or maybe not, but whatever the case may be, DEATH is the calling card and then the other is GUN CONTROL. Ironically, the Powers that Shouldn't Be feel that if they do this enough times they will beat the public down so far they will cry for two things.</span></span></h2><div style="font-family:'times new roman';margin:0in;"><span class="font-size-3" style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><span style="font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:large;"><br /></span></span> <span style="font-size:large;font-weight:normal;">1. More protection from the PTB, which is ironically not being very protective.</span></span></div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';margin:0in;"></div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';margin:0in;"><strong><span class="font-size-4"><a href="http://nanas-rants.blogspot.com/2016/06/why-so-many-mass-killings-look-in-mirror.html" target="_blank">Read More..</a></span></strong></div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';margin:0in;"></div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';margin:0in;"><span style="font-weight:normal;font-family:georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-3"><span style="font-size:large;"><i>And</i></span></span></div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';margin:0in;"><span style="font-weight:normal;font-family:georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-3"><span style="font-size:large;">2. Gun Control, which these events just make the sale of guns skyrocket.</span></span><br /> <span style="font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:large;"><br /></span></span> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><iframe width="560" height="315" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z7pzePwGZeg?feature=player_embedded&wmode=opaque"></iframe></div><div style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:large;"> </span></span></div></div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';margin:0in;"><span style="font-size:large;font-weight:normal;">So what is the real agenda here? Do they do this to keep the stock market booming with the gun sales, the consumers fear purchases, the media hype and tons and tons of views while they parrot the same story? Somebody is getting over like a fat rat and these events are milking the public of their sensibilities and wreaking havoc on the mental, emotional and physical health of the populace.</span></div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';margin:0in;"></div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';margin:0in;"><span style="font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-size:large;">Please read this article, it says it all. Whether these events are true or false, the fact that they even happen says a lot about the American Psyche.</span></span></div><h2 style="font-family:Cambria;font-size:17pt;font-weight:bold;margin:0in;text-align:left;"></h2><div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LrDG0TAicj4/TqCXARImHYI/AAAAAAACUUU/HYaeul2F7yI-AWJINfAHRujnd7GdaBF-wCKgB/s1600/crazy-world.jpg" style="margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LrDG0TAicj4/TqCXARImHYI/AAAAAAACUUU/HYaeul2F7yI-AWJINfAHRujnd7GdaBF-wCKgB/s320/crazy-world.jpg" width="320" alt="crazy-world.jpg" /></a></div><h2 style="font-family:Cambria;font-size:17pt;font-weight:bold;margin:0in;text-align:left;"></h2><h2 style="font-family:Cambria;font-size:17pt;font-weight:bold;margin:0in;text-align:left;">Why So Many Mass Killings? Look in a Mirror</h2><div style="font-family:Cambria;font-size:17pt;font-weight:bold;margin:0in;text-align:left;"></div><div style="font-family:Cambria;font-size:17pt;font-weight:bold;margin:0in;text-align:left;"><span style="font-family:'times new roman';font-size:18pt;">By Joe Clifford</span></div><div style="font-family:Cambria;font-size:14pt;margin:0in;"></div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';font-size:18pt;margin:0in;">June 27, 2016 "<a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/">Information Clearing House</a>" - We will never understand the mass killings in Orlando, Aurora, Newtown, or any of the many others, until we take a long hard look at ourselves in a mirror. Why does this happen so frequently, and why is it such a rare occurrence in other industrialized nations? We cannot comprehend this because we fail to come to grips with certain very hard realities about who we are as a nation and a people.</div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';font-size:18pt;margin:0in;"></div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';font-size:18pt;margin:0in;">There are cries for gun control every time a massacre occurs, and never once has anyone pointed out the hypocrisy of trying to stop the flow of guns to the US public, while the US government floods the entire world with weapons. We are the undisputed leader in selling killing weapons around the world, and no ever questions the hypocrisy of a government trying to take guns from its people, while our government and military industrial complex inundates the world with weapons. Government always sets the model for the people, and here we have a great example. </div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';font-size:18pt;margin:0in;"></div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';font-size:18pt;margin:0in;">Mass murderers have absolutely no regard or respect for law, and once again it is the US government who sets the example for its people, by defying international law and invading and bombing anyone in callous contempt of the law. Government officials huddle secretly once a week to decide what individuals must be “taken out,” paying no attention to the legality of murder without charges, evidence, or a trial. Currently, Secretary of State John Kerry, the nations’ chief diplomat, is calling for regime change in Syria. What gives the US the legal right to decide who will rule Syria? Nothing; there is no legal right that gives the US the power to determine leadership of another nation. The US has sponsored untold numbers of illegal coups of democratically elected leaders, but again, so much for the law. If the US government is so callous about law, and constantly sends the message that we don’t care about law, why would it be a surprise when citizens do the same? The government sets the example and the people follow.</div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';font-size:18pt;margin:0in;"></div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';font-size:18pt;margin:0in;">The hardest thing for citizens to reconcile, is just how violent a nation we are. Our government is a mass killer. The first people to get in our way were exterminated. We ethnically cleansed the American Indian from his own land. We then enslaved a race of people. More recently, we killed 3 million people in southeast Asia. Can you explain why? We have killed about one million over the past 20 years in Iraq. Do you know why? We invaded Iraq based on a series of lies claiming they had WMD; a hoax that led to a needless slaughter. Iraq was a war of choice, which is illegal, but who cares about law?</div><div style="font-family:Cambria;font-size:14pt;margin:0in;"></div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';font-size:18pt;margin:0in;">Do you know how many nations the US is currently bombing? We have killed untold innocents in Afghanistan over the last 20 years. Can you explain why? Do you know why we bombed Libya for 7 months, turning it into a completely failed terrorist state? Media, pundits, and presidential candidates, condemn Muslims, but the US government has bombed 14 Muslim nations, and perhaps has killed as many as 4 million Muslims in our never ending wars. War has become the American pastime. We are always looking for new enemies, and when none are around our government creates them up by demonizing leaders who might challenge our authority such as North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia and China. We are dangerously provoking both Russia and China almost daily. The State Department has been taken over by war crazy neocons who are risking a nuclear holocaust. It is no wonder that in a poll of 68 nations, the US was named the biggest threat to world peace.</div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';font-size:18pt;margin:0in;"></div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';font-size:18pt;margin:0in;text-align:center;"><iframe width="560" height="315" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eDo55KoKlyM?wmode=opaque"></iframe></div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';font-size:18pt;margin:0in;"><br /> Weapons of war are the leading export. The military consumes the lion’s share of the US budget, and everything else is sacrificed to pay for the largest military in the history of the planet. We spend more on security, war, and defense, than the rest of the world put together. There is no money left for anything else, so kids go to college and acquire a mortgage, while college is free in most industrialized nations. We have the worst health care in the industrialized world, paying huge sums for poor health care compared to the rest of the world. Health care is a right in most civilized nations, but they don’t have the enormous cost of never ending wars that we do. They have luxuries such as free college, excellent government health care, high speed trains, great airports, and infrastructure. Other nations, because they have better health care, treat mental illness. We cannot afford it, as all money goes to support the military. Just about all of the mass murderers have been emotionally troubled, but because we do not treat mental illness, they take up arms and kill. We give lip service to our veterans, but let them live under bridges as homeless troubled people. Other nations, offer treatment to troubled individuals.</div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';font-size:18pt;margin:0in;"></div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';font-size:18pt;margin:0in;">The murder rate in this country is light years ahead of other nations. We have an industrialized prison system with more people incarcerated than any other country in the world. War is glorified and neither the military nor the police can do anything wrong. An entire new generation has known only war in their lifetime. African Americans are shot down in cold blood by police, with more than 1000 killed last year, with 50% being unarmed, and none of their killers are held responsible. Without cell phone videos, those deaths would be swept under the proverbial rug.</div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';font-size:18pt;margin:0in;"></div><div style="font-family:'times new roman';font-size:18pt;margin:0in;">So take a long thoughtful look in a mirror. Government sets the example and we follow. Our government’s prime concern is making war on others and killing those who get in the way. We are a cold blooded violent nation led by a cold blooded government, so when all too frequently the blood of our citizens flows in the streets, why are we shocked?</div><div style="font-family:Cambria;font-size:14pt;margin:0in;"></div><br /><div style="color:#666666;font-family:tahoma;margin:0in;">Pasted from <a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44981.htm">http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44981.htm</a> </div></div></div>The US Defeat in Iraq and the Persistence of White Supremacyhttps://www.theblacklist.net/profiles/blogs/the-us-defeat-in-iraq-and-the-persistence-of-white-supremacy2011-12-22T16:00:00.000Z2011-12-22T16:00:00.000ZSendMeYourNewshttps://www.theblacklist.net/members/SendMeYourNews<div><div id="yui_3_2_0_1_132456862852846" class="tripane message content showqr"><div id="yui_3_2_0_1_132456862852884" class="y-module message-header"><div id="msg_details" class="info expanded mentos-enabled"><dl class="details"><dd class="hdr-info"><div>By Ajamu Baraka ~</div>
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<p id="yui_3_2_0_1_1324568628528107" class="yiv1043706547MsoNormal"><em><font id="yui_3_2_0_1_1324568628528106" size="4" face="garamond, serif">“Iraq was always a war of choice. As I never bought the argument that Saddam had nukes that had to be taken out, the decision to go to war stemmed, for me, from a different choice: Could we collaborate with the people of Iraq to change the political trajectory of this pivotal state in the heart of the Arab world and help tilt it and the region onto a democratizing track? After 9/11, the idea of helping to change the context of Arab politics and address the root causes of Arab state dysfunction and Islamist terrorism – which were identified in the 2002 Arab Human Development Report as a deficit of freedom, a deficit of knowledge and a deficit of women’s empowerment – seemed to me to be a legitimate strategic choice.” </font></em><strong><em>Thomas Friedman, New York Times, December 21, 2011</em></strong></p>
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<p class="yiv1043706547MsoNormal">As the final contingents of U.S. troops withdraw from the Iraqi state that the U.S. created and imposed on the Iraqi people, a familiar narrative is re-emerging in the mainstream corporate press – the 21<sup>st</sup> century version of the “white man’s burden.”</p>
<p class="yiv1043706547MsoNormal">Used to complement the main propaganda theme that claimed Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and had imminent plans to turn those weapons over to “terrorists” who would unleash a volley of attacks on the U.S. “homeland,” the white man’s burden subtext asserted that the U.S. had a moral obligation to free the Iraqi people from their backward and brutal history. Couched in the language of neo-conservatism, the white man’s burden now included a more explicit commitment to the need to establish a liberal democratic state in Iraq that would allow the “natives” to experience all of the benefits of a Western-style “democratic” governmental process and, of course, the benefits of “free market capitalism.” That “moral” appeal helped to sell the war to the American people.</p>
<p class="yiv1043706547MsoNormal">The idea of the West’s civilizing responsibilities was always a constant and predominant rationalization in the “new world” conquest and genocidal policies toward Indigenous peoples – in this case, they needed to be destroyed in order to save them from their heathen ways. The populating of the Americas with enslaved Africans was also framed as a “Christian civilizing mission” that gave these otherwise idle human beings something more productive to do.</p>
<p class="yiv1043706547MsoNormal">But the benevolence of the White West did not stop there; enriched with the spoils provided by the Atlantic slave trade that created an industrial economic base which in turn enhanced their war-making abilities, Western powers took their civilizing mission global, building vast colonial empires where they could demonstrate to the peoples of the world how to more effectively use their natural resources and labor – by taking those resources and exploiting their labor.</p>
<p class="yiv1043706547MsoNormal">Clearly one could assume that this crude, racist framework would be discredited and have no place in the sophisticated, multi-cultural discourses of the 21<sup>st</sup> century. Yet the very fact that many millions of people in this country were swayed by the crude representations of Iraq as a backward, undeveloped nation in need of the modernizing influences of the civilized West demonstrated that in the culture and psychologies of most people in the U.S., despite their assigned or assumed racial identity, white supremacist assumptions and world views were deeply ingrained.</p>
<p class="yiv1043706547MsoNormal">And now that the U.S. has been defeated in Iraq (and one should not be confused by any other explanation as to why the U.S. is leaving despite stated plans to maintain a military presence there for the next fifty years), the narrative that is now being relied on to mask this defeat is that the civilizing mission has run its course, with the U.S. having done as much as it could to prepare the Iraqis for “independence” in the grown-up world. Employing classic revisionist history, the architects of the war are suggesting that this was the main reason why the U.S. went to Iraq in the first place. Like the first time parents hand their keys to their teenage children for their first solo drive, the U.S. must simply hope that the Iraqis have learned enough to avoid a major accident!</p>
<p class="yiv1043706547MsoNormal">The successful use of this narrative demonstrates that ten years, 700,000 Iraqi and 4,500 American lives later, the one casualty that did not occur in Iraq was the death of white supremacist ideology. While the physical retreat of the U.S. from Iraq represents a significant defeat for U.S. imperialist aspirations and its geo-political goals in the region, the ideological obscurantism that masked the imperialist interests of the “1 percent,” who saw their opportunity to seize Iraq in the wake of the 9/11 war hysteria, was recently evoked again to provide a cover for the seizure of Libya. Few in the US seemed to notice the irony of calls being made by the Obama Administration and many Republicans, including New York Congressman Peter King, to support NATO’s no fly zone to protect Muslim lives – in the same week that hearings were called in Congress by the notoriously anti-Muslim Peter King, whose agenda is to racially profile all Muslims in the US.</p>
<p class="yiv1043706547MsoNormal">Again, images of barbarism were conjured up as the corporate media saturated their reports with grainy cell phone photos of a dumpster on fire with a voice over from a “Libyan” woman with an American accent pleading for outside intervention to save the Libyan people. Once again, the American people were convinced with breathtaking ease that military intervention was morally justified – even if it meant, as Defense Secretary Gates warned, that enforcing a “no-fly zone” was essentially an act of war!</p>
<p class="yiv1043706547MsoNormal">Some might argue that the response from at least some segments of the American public to military action in Libya represented an authentic desire to save lives and cannot be simply reduced to some nefarious desire to extend or impose so-called “white Western dominance.” Perhaps, but the authenticity of the concerns on the part of many Americans is not the issue. Rather, the real issue is that people in the U.S. and the West believe that they have the right to intervene anywhere on the planet to remake a society or the world to correspond to their ideas. That uncontested right based on the supposed superiority of liberal Western civilization that has been assimilated by the collective consciousness of the West is the central prerogative of white supremacist ideology.</p>
<p class="yiv1043706547MsoNormal">The public slaughter of Kaddafi and the hanging of Saddam Hussein are two sides of the same arrogant, white supremacist coin. In both cases it is the imperialist West, using the power of the military and with the full support of a majority of the people, that bombed cities; murdered and imprisoned leaders and government officials; displaced populations, tortured prisoners to death; raped women; and deliberately destroyed the population’s electrical and water supplies in order to bring to those people the benefits of living in “free societies” like those of the West. And now, as the U.S. slinks out of Iraq, we are being told that all that was done in that country was for the good of the Iraqi people and that it is up to the Iraqis to protect the gift of freedom that the U.S. has bestowed upon them.</p>
<p class="yiv1043706547MsoNormal">What is more sad than the fact that this line is being fed to the people in the U.S. to cover their defeat (and that it is being accepted), is the knowledge that until we undermine forever the false assumptions and prerogatives of white supremacist ideology, more blood will be shed, more victims tortured and imprisoned and more nations destroyed – all in the name of a monstrous lie.</p>
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<div id="quick-reply-box"><span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong>submitted by</strong></span><br /><a href="http://cybergroundrr.com" target="_blank">thandisizwe chimurenga</a></div></div>It's Somebody Else's Warhttps://www.theblacklist.net/profiles/blogs/its-somebody-elses-war2010-10-04T19:07:01.000Z2010-10-04T19:07:01.000Zkenyatta yamelhttps://www.theblacklist.net/members/kenyattayamel<div><div class="post-291 post type-post hentry category-uncategorized tag-president-obama tag-iraq-war tag-aghanistan-war tag-tax-cuts tag-secretary-of-defense-gates tag-eric-cantor tag-war-bonds"><h1 id="logo"><a href="http://kenyatta2009.wordpress.com/">Kenyatta2009's Blog</a></h1><br /><div class="snap_preview"><p>I rarely agree with anything Secretary of Defense Gates says so today will be a breakthrough. I think of this <br />in response to a statement that someone made about how President Obama was spending all kinds of money on frivolous programs. First Republican Eric Cantor said that President Obama was adding more to the national <br />debt than ever. When that statement was proven false, a republican on Facebook twisted the argument to try to claim that somehow the rate of spending was still somehow unprecedented. I wondered whether anyone had <br />told this person that America is fighting two wars and that believe it or not, wars cost money.</p><p><br /></p><p>And then I thought back to something Secretary Gates said about how disconnected most Americans were from the wars. Because we switched to an all volunteer military the government must spend more money to retain<br />troops. We keep deploying and re-deploying the same troops and preventing them from leaving due to “stop-loss” orders. During the Vietnam War, I was quite aware that the US was at war and that I was at <br />risk of being drafted and sent to fight. So I made it my business to learn about the war and decided I didn’t like the war.People like me in the peace movement raised our voices when W. Bushwas yammering for war. In fact we had tried to get President Clinton before him to realize that the sanctions against Iraq were cruel and <br />unusual. But our cries for justice were left unanswered. <br /></p><p><br /></p><p>When W. got his first opportunity for war, he took it. It was popular, exciting, shock and awe and better yet no one had to pay for it. W. gave away the budget surplus that he inherited from Clinton in the form of tax breaks <br />that he said would stimulate the economy. In fact, the economy tanked, banks were on the edge of disaster and the auto industry was shrinking.</p><p><br /></p><p>No wonder W.’s approval rating was microscopic when he left office. No wonder so many of us voted for Obama and other Democrats in 2008. But that hasn’t prevented the Permanent Presidential Campaign of disinformation from creating an entirely new myth about those years. The myth under the name of the so-called Tea Party is that the economy was fine, in 2009 until Obama used government to provide stimulus. Money was even provided to directly subsidize private businesses so that they could hire workers. Obama lowered taxes for most Americans while imposing a modest tax increase on the wealthy to help end the scandal of people dying from preventable causes because they lacked health insurance. He allocated money to help states pay for teachers, police and other vital workers. He extended unemployment to help cushion workers from the brunt of the recession.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Republicans said these programs were wasteful and made it easy to avoid getting a job. And President Obama looked at the tangled web of war that W. had woven in Iraq and Afghanistan and attempted to unravel <br />it. Some of us fear that Obama may have been ensnared in the web, too. These are President Obama’s wars but they belong to everyone. Our taxes have made it possible to continue the bloodshed. We pay for the corrupt <br />politicians. We own the drones. It’s not somebody else’s war, it’s ours.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now, deal with it as an adult, America, not like sniveling children crying for another tax break for the wealthy. At some point, America, you’ve got to realize that you can’t always be fighting all these countries. You don’t have the troops. At some point, you’re going to have to turn off those radio clowns at Fox News in the Permanent <br />Presidential Campaign and re-join the 21st century.</p></div></div></div>Imperialism Watch: Iraq and Oil Resource Thefthttps://www.theblacklist.net/profiles/blogs/2055350-BlogPost-77112008-07-06T06:42:18.000Z2008-07-06T06:42:18.000ZBLACKWATCH - Dr. Brother Raheru Ptah Sun of Asaruhttps://www.theblacklist.net/members/BLACKWATCHDrBrotherRaheruPtahSunofAsaru<div><h1>Big Oil's Iraq deals are the greatest stick-up in history</h1>The country's invaders should be paying billions in reparations not using the war as a reason to pillage its richest resourceAll comments (209)Naomi KleinThe Guardian, Friday July 4, 2008Article historyOnce oil passed $140 a barrel, even the most rabidly rightwing media hosts had to prove their populist credibility by devoting a portion of every show to bashing Big Oil. Some have gone so far as to invite me on for a friendly chat about an insidious new phenomenon: "disaster capitalism." It usually goes well - until it doesn't.For instance, "independent conservative" radio host Jerry Doyle and I were having a perfectly amiable conversation about sleazy insurance companies and inept politicians when this happened: "I think I have a quick way to bring the prices down," Doyle announced. "We've invested $650bn to liberate a nation of 25 million people, shouldn't we just demand that they give us oil? There should be tankers after tankers backed up like a traffic jam getting into the Lincoln Tunnel, the stinkin' Lincoln, at rush-hour with thank-you notes from the Iraqi government ... Why don't we just take the oil? We've invested it liberating a country. I can have the problem solved of gas prices coming down in 10 days, not 10 years."There were a couple of problems with Doyle's plan, of course. The first was that he was describing the biggest stick-up in world history. The second that he was too late. "We" are already heisting Iraq's oil, or at least are on the brink of doing so.It started with no-bid service contracts announced for Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and Total (they have yet to be signed but are still on course). Paying multinationals for their technical expertise is not unusual in itself. What is odd is that such contracts almost invariably go to oil service companies - not to the oil majors, whose work is exploring, producing and owning carbon wealth. The contracts only make sense in the context of reports that the oil majors have insisted on the right of first refusal on subsequent contracts handed out to manage and produce Iraq's oilfields. In other words, other companies will be free to bid on those future contracts, but these companies will win.One week after the no-bid service deals were announced, the world caught its first glimpse of the real prize. After years of backroom arm-twisting, Iraq is officially flinging open six of its major oilfields, accounting for half of its known reserves, to foreign investors. According to Iraq's oil minister, the long-term contracts will be signed within a year. While ostensibly under the control of the Iraq National Oil Company, foreign corporations will keep 75% of the value of the contracts, leaving just 25% for their Iraqi partners.That kind of ratio is unheard of in oil-rich Arab and Persian states, where achieving majority national control over oil was the defining victory of anti-colonial struggles. According to Greg Muttitt, a London-based oil expert, the assumption up until now was that foreign multinationals would be brought in to develop new fields in Iraq - not to take over those which are already in production and therefore require minimal technical support. "The policy was always to allocate these fields to the Iraq National Oil Company," he told me. "This is a total reversal of that policy, giving the Iraq National Oil Company a mere 25% instead of the planned 100%."So what makes such lousy deals possible in Iraq, which has already suffered so much? Paradoxically, it is Iraq's suffering - its never-ending crisis - that is the rationale for an arrangement that threatens to drain Iraq's treasury of its main revenue source. The logic goes like this: Iraq's oil industry needs foreign expertise because years of punishing sanctions starved it of new technology, while the invasion and continuing violence degraded it further. And Iraq needs to start producing more oil urgently. Why? Also because of the war. The country is shattered and the billions handed out in no-bid contracts to western firms have failed to rebuild it.And that's where the new contracts come in: they will raise more money, but Iraq has become such a treacherous place that the oil majors must be induced to take the risk of investing. Thus the invasion of Iraq neatly creates the argument for its subsequent pillage.Several of the architects of the Iraq war no longer even bother to deny that oil was a major motivator for the invasion. On US National Public Radio's To the Point, Fadhil Chalabi, one of the primary Iraqi advisers to the Bush administration in the lead-up to the invasion, recently described the war as "a strategic move on the part of the United States of America and the UK to have a military presence in the Gulf in order to secure [oil] supplies in the future". Chalabi, who served as Iraq's oil undersecretary of state and met with the oil majors before the invasion, described this as "a primary objective".Invading countries to seize their natural resources is illegal under the Geneva conventions. That means the huge task of rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure - including its oil infrastructure - is the financial responsibility of Iraq's invaders. They should be forced to pay reparations, just as Saddam Hussein's regime paid $9bn to Kuwait in reparations for its 1990 invasion. Instead, Iraq is being forced to sell 75% of its national patrimony to pay the bills for its own illegal invasion and occupation.naomiklein.org</div>