Maine Owl

Fascinating, "The administration has withheld the official English translation of the agreement in an effort to suppress a public dispute with the Iraqis until after the Iraqi parliament votes."

If I read this correctly, it seems the U.S. intends fully to continue to operate covertly in Iraq for an indefinite period, and somehow weasel its way into using the country to launch attacks on others, as it arrogantly and brazenly did in Syria a few weeks ago.

Also, if anyone wants to read the Treaty"Agreement," McClatchy does have it. Raed Jarrar had posted a translation a couple of weeks ago.

For his part, Obama has decided that Robert Gates is just the guy for managing the continuity at the Pentagon.

I may have to rip up my "I Voted for Change" stickers from three weeks ago. Except the little devils are wicked difficult to tear off the jacket I wore during canvassing.

Status of forces agreement seen by "progressives" as a U.S. "blink"

Last night, Rachel Maddow had THIS interview with a McClatchy reporter who yesterday filed a story, "Why the U.S. blinked on its troop agreement with Iraq."



The idea is that "U.S. negotiators had failed to understand how the two countries' political timetables would force the U.S. to make major concessions that relinquish much of the control over U.S. forces in Iraq."

I just read THIS from an interesting "progressive" site that I've never heard of before:

Did the Bush Administration blink when negotiating the Iraq SOFA?
November 20, 2:37 PM - by Jay McDonough, Progressive Politics Examiner

Did the U.S. get the best deal with the recently completed status of forces agreement (SOFA) with Iraq? The agreement has been finalized and accepted by Prime Minister Maliki's cabinet and is now being debated in Iraq's Parliament. But some U.S. military personnel are privately criticizing the Bush Administration for giving Iraq too much control over U.S. forces.

This SOFA, once approved, will provide Iraq authority over Iraqi airspace, give Iraq potential authority over U.S. military operations and intelligence activities in Iraq, forbid the U.S. from using Iraq as a launchpad to attack Iraq's neighbors, and allow Iraq jurisdiction over U.S. troops for crimes committed outside the U.S. bases.

This is a radically different SOFA from the one the U.S. pressed for at the onset of the negotiations. At that time, the U.S. had wanted an open ended agreement that would allow U.S. forces in Iraq for an indefinite period, the establishment of semi-permanent U.S. military bases, U.S. control of Iraq's airspace and no Iraqi jurisdiction over American military forces or subcontractors.

So, how did the U.S. get so snookered?

I think "blinked" or "snookered" are the wrong terms. It's more like cutting losses. The U.S. did not receive the earlier brazenly arrogant terms first floated because its power over the Iraqi political process is much diminished. Also, go to afsc.org HERE and read Raed Jarrar's translation of the actual thing. While it does contain hedge language that the U.S. could use to try to extend its stay or challenge Iraqi jurisdiction, the Iraqis have managed to set forth a 3-year timetable for complete withdrawal.

"Complete" is key for the Iraqis, who are fearful of U.S. continuing covert control. Patrick Cockburn has been writing consistently about how the Iraqis are driving that hard bargain out of these genuine concerns, especially about intelligence forces. See THIS recent Cockburn piece for more.

Can you blame the Iraqis for driving a tough bargain after almost six years of their doors being kicked in, millions killed or displaced, their sewers flowing in the streets, and their country in general being laid to waste?

The U Maine - Iraq Business Conference


"Postponed" on November 11, 2003 but never actually canceled, the original agenda still is posted HERE! We're still waiting for a new date for the Conference.

More than any other event around which we have organized against the Iraq invasion, conquest, and occupation, none hit home harder than the University of Maine School of Business / Iraq Business Alliance conference which was scheduled for Scarborough, Maine on November 13, 2003.

It's agenda was extremely revealing of reasons for the invasion other than "weapons of mass destruction." The keynote speaker was to have been the late Casper Weinberger Sr., the former Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration. Rumors flew that the Dark Lord himself, Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney, would drop in for a secret slot on the agenda. This is a partial listing of people and presentations that were to be included.

The Future of Economic Development for Iraq
Moderator: Ambassador Frank Wisner, Vice Chairman, AIG

Panel: Mr. Ross J. Connelly, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of OPIC; Mr. Don DeMarino, National Chairman of the U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce, and Member of Executive Committee and Founding Director of U.S.-Iraq Business Alliance; Mr. Rubar Sandi, Chairman of Corporate Bank, Chairman of Al Katin Group, and Founding Director of U.S.-Iraq Business Alliance; Mr. Richard Greco Jr., Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Special Projects, Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance

Priority Sectors for Development
Moderator: Ambassador William Walker, Managing Director of Millenium Capital Consultants

Panel: Mr. Don DeMarino ? Banking; Mr. Dennis A. Sokol ? Healthcare; Mr. Rubar Sandi ? Development Construction; Mr. Bob Barnett ? Communications...

So what went wrong that stopped all these serious people from having their Conference? First, Iraqis objected and an insurgency was just getting into full swing. Evidently, some Iraqis felt that the program these business people had in mind represented plunder of their country, and they were not having any of it. I believe that to be one of two real reasons the Conference did not happen.

The second was that the plan for "rapid" privatization of Iraq's economy and Iraqi industry (including oil) ran seriously afoul of 100 years of international law. Of course concepts like limits on "usurfruct rights" meant absolutely nothing in the Cheney system. A Mount Desert Island resident and close friend of the late Mr. Weinberger, Denis Sokol, put this unconcern for international law on full display in an interview with the Bangor Daily News, published in a front-page article, provocatively titled "Gold Rush," on November 1, 2003.

Because this piece is no longer available online, I have posted it in its entirety below the jump. It's a stunning piece of capitalist arrogance that should be a key chapter in the book of failures of the Bush Administration.

A few days after the Conference was "postponed," the Americans totally shifted gears and instituted the new "sovereignty" plan, about which at the time I posted very extensively in the original Deep Blade Journal, still in the archives HERE. The horrors that followed are almost too terrible to reflect on right now.

Here are archive links on this period that reveal crucial history of the real reasons behind the invasion of Iraq and the role played by the University of Maine along with how our protest of the business conference put that truth into sharp focus.

Contemporaneous blog postings in the original Deep Blade Journal: HERE.

My Reference Article containing many links for original documents and news stories, HERE.

Our November 8, 2003 op-ed in the Bangor Daily News, U Maine and war profiteering, HERE.

Post discussing what the BDN Sokol interview reveals about secret pre-war decisions and planning during mid 2002, in light of the contents of the "Downing Street memo" first publicly seen in May 2005, HERE.

Below is the November 1, 2003 article from the BDN, "Gold Rush."