The overwhelmingly Shi'ite south of Iraq remains very poor. The only possible source of employment is government jobs. Infrastructure, all over, remains in tatters -- direct consequence of UN and US sanctions, then the invasion and occupation.
But then there's the shining city on a hill; Iraqi Kurdistan, a somewhat warped development of Pipelineistan.
Big Oil never had a chance to fulfill its 2003 dream of lowering the price of a barrel back to $20 -- in line with Rupert Murdoch's wishful thinking. But there's a lot of action all over the place. Greg Muttitt has been unmatched following the new Iraq oil boom.
Yet nowhere else the action is more convoluted than in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), where up to 60 oil companies -- from ExxonMobil to Chevron, Total and Gazprom -- are in play.
The holy of the holies is a new pipeline linking Iraqi Kurdistan to Turkey, the theoretical Kurdish passport to export oil bypassing Baghdad. No one knows whether that will be the straw to break the Iraqi camel's back -- as Iraqi Kurds are getting closer and closer to Ankara and drifting away from Baghdad. The ball is definitely in Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's court -- just as Kurds have a once in many lifetimes chance of juggling between Ankara, Baghdad and Tehran's interests and finally ending up with an independent, and economically self-sufficient Kurdistan.
So yes, there are plenty of balkanization signs on the horizon. But what about lessons learned by the US out of one of the biggest foreign policy blunders in history? Nothing. Nada. We will have to wait for Nick Turse to come up, in a few years, with an Iraqi equivalent of his masterful book on Vietnam, Kill Anything That Moves. Even more than Vietnam, Iraq's catalog of horrors was the inevitable result of not only official Pentagon policy, but also official White House policy.
Will this harrowing spiral of Iraqi suffering ever be fully acknowledged? We could always start here, with the case stated by former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, Hans Sponeck.
Or, in a pop vein, a non-Hollywood/CIA producer could invest in a made in Iraq movie, distributed worldwide, where in the final act Dubya, Dick, Rummy, Wolfie and assorted hoodlums of the Douglas Feith mould are all sent on a one-way ticket to a Guantanamo faithfully recreated in the triangle of death -- to the sound of Bob Dylan's Masters of War. Now that would be some global catharsis to die for.
But then there's the shining city on a hill; Iraqi Kurdistan, a somewhat warped development of Pipelineistan.
Big Oil never had a chance to fulfill its 2003 dream of lowering the price of a barrel back to $20 -- in line with Rupert Murdoch's wishful thinking. But there's a lot of action all over the place. Greg Muttitt has been unmatched following the new Iraq oil boom.
Yet nowhere else the action is more convoluted than in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), where up to 60 oil companies -- from ExxonMobil to Chevron, Total and Gazprom -- are in play.
So yes, there are plenty of balkanization signs on the horizon. But what about lessons learned by the US out of one of the biggest foreign policy blunders in history? Nothing. Nada. We will have to wait for Nick Turse to come up, in a few years, with an Iraqi equivalent of his masterful book on Vietnam, Kill Anything That Moves. Even more than Vietnam, Iraq's catalog of horrors was the inevitable result of not only official Pentagon policy, but also official White House policy.
Will this harrowing spiral of Iraqi suffering ever be fully acknowledged? We could always start here, with the case stated by former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, Hans Sponeck.
Or, in a pop vein, a non-Hollywood/CIA producer could invest in a made in Iraq movie, distributed worldwide, where in the final act Dubya, Dick, Rummy, Wolfie and assorted hoodlums of the Douglas Feith mould are all sent on a one-way ticket to a Guantanamo faithfully recreated in the triangle of death -- to the sound of Bob Dylan's Masters of War. Now that would be some global catharsis to die for.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
2
2
