The leading expert on the ins and outs of the Iraqi oil and broader energy sector, Ben Lando, has started an excellent and informative blog at
http://www.iraqoilreport.com. Highly recommended. His opening reports remind us of how and why it is that Bush is not getting his way in Iraq regarding an oil law to help the US companies. He also makes it clear that the anathema that Moqtada al-Sadr is held in Washington (with neocons like Charles Krauthammer openly declaring that US troops should have killed him back in 2004, easier said than done) is not how he is held by decisionmakers in Iraq, especially those in charge of the oil industry.
Neocons? I stopped reading when I see the word neocons because that is a clear marker of where you stopped thinking.
ReplyDeleteBarkley, please reread your last sentence - it's very poorly worded, and it's not easy for me to understand what you're trying to say there.
ReplyDeleteI apologize for bad reading, however I think a careful parsing makes it clear that I do not agree with or approve of the neocons, the nauseating Krauthammer in particular) for their call for al Sadr to have been assassinated. The point is that he is taken seriously by the most important decisionmakers in Iraq, those who run its oil industry, and may well come to head its government eventually (he is pretty young). So our current campaign against him in the surge is assinine, and also incoherent in that he is actually the anti-Iranian among the leading Shi'a, given that supposedly the US wants to support a nationalistic Iraqi government that is not a puppet of Iran, with the people we are most strongly supporting in the Iraqi government, al-Hakim and his SIIC, being he most pro-Iranian.
ReplyDeleteOh, and if somehow somebody misread my message to say that Lando is a neocon, that is also a misreading. He most definitely is not. I was criticizing the neocons, although perhaps that was not clear. Again, I apologize for any confusion due to bad writing on my part.
ReplyDeleteNeedless to say, I now realize that "anonymous" is probably a neocon upset at the use of the term "neocon," especially given that this term has come to mean a lying scumbag warmonger thanks to the conduct of the most prominent neocons. In the beginning, they were proud of the term, and invented it themselves, or at least its original longer version, "neoconservative," a label many of them were proud of. Not much to be proud of now.
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