Posts by Ben Lando

Ben Lando is an energy correspondent for UPI an proprietor of the Iraq Oil Report.

U.S. Congress to Iraq: Pay Our War Expenses With Your Oil Revenue
Posted by Ben Lando, Iraq Oil Report on April 28, 2008 at 6:35 AM.

Iraqis would be forced to pay for U.S. efforts in their country directly or via loans from the United States if any of at least five similar pieces of legislation introduced on Capitol Hill this month is approved.

This comes as Americans deal with — and politicians respond to — an unpopular and expensive war, a sinking economy and record gas prices, Ben Lando reports for United Press International.

“Whether or not you support the war strategy,” said Rep. Ron Klein, D-Fla., “the Iraqi government needs to pay for its fair share after five years and $600 billion in American taxpayer expenses.”

Klein’s resolution would require U.S. funds for Iraq reconstruction and security forces training, as well as the cost of fuel for U.S. operations, to be repaid by Iraq as a loan.

“What this resolution does is put the burden on the Iraqi people to say, ‘no more free lunches from the American public,’” Klein said. “It’s not some benefactor from the outside who just keeps writing more and more checks every month.” …

“This is just our notice to these guys we’re not going to carry the whole load anymore,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif. He’s proposed in the past requiring Iraq to repay all U.S. expenses since the invasion. “Morally I think they should, but that’s a whole other debate.” …

The U.S. auditor of Iraq reconstruction efforts said in a January report more Iraqi funds have been allocated for reconstruction than U.S. funds through 2007. While the United States was initially tasked with spending the Iraqi money — a reconstruction effort criticized for being ill-planned and seeing few results — responsibility shifted to the new Iraqi government, which has had a harder time, regularly spending only a small percentage of its multibillion-dollar capital budget. …

Why Do We Keep Giving Israel a Pass?
Posted by Barry Lando, Truthdig on February 1, 2008 at 7:16 AM.

As I was reading through several news items last week on the Internet about the appalling situation in Gaza, I received an e-mail alert from my wife. It had been forwarded to her by a Parisian friend who is an expert in Orientalist art; she had received it from a well-known French television actress.
According to the alert, courses in England about the Shoah had just been withdrawn from British schools because they “shocked the Muslim population which denies the existence of the Holocaust.”

The e-mail continued, “This is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.

“Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to be ‘a myth,’ it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets. This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people worldwide!

“Join us and be a link in the memorial chain and help us distribute it around the world.”

My attention was now torn from the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza and shifted to the charge that British schools had just stopped teaching the Holocaust.

My curiosity piqued—I hadn’t heard that news about Britain—I went to Snopes.com, a Web site that examines such charges. The story, it turned out, first appeared in April 2007, not last week; according to the site, the report was also wildly inaccurate.

The truth was that “One history department in a northern UK city stopped teaching about the Holocaust because it wished to avoid confronting anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils.”

That fact was originally disseminated in a government-sponsored study—a study which was then grossly misreported by a British newspaper to indicate that, rather than in just one history department in the northern UK, Holocaust studies had been terminated across the country.

That error was further magnified by a British group which launched a worldwide alarm on the Internet with the headline: “Recently, this week, UK removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum. ...”

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Bush Reaches Economic Dead End
Posted by Barry Lando, AlterNet on January 23, 2008 at 4:59 AM.

Last Friday, President George Bush called for a $150 billion dollar stimulus package to “jump start” America’s flagging economy. The problem, he assured his viewers, was temporary.
“I'm optimistic about our economic future,” said the President, “because Americans have shown time and again that they are the most industrious, creative, and enterprising people in the world. That is what has made our economy strong. That is what will make it stronger in the challenging times ahead.”
What was the reaction of the U.S. and the rest of the world to those rousing words from the head of the world’s most powerful nation?

Stock markets tanked across the globe. Tuesday’s historic rate cut by the Federal Reserve has temporarily staunched the bloodletting, but no one believes the crisis is over.

Right now, in Europe we are waiting to learn if markets will plunge even further.

This is not to pin the melt-down on Bush alone. (More on that later.) But the fact is that the prestige of an American President, his ability to reassure jittery investors around the world—never mind his own country--has never been lower.

From the start, Bush’s vacuous promises and pigheaded policies—at home and abroad—have turned out to be miserable failures, bringing only disaster in their wake.

Why give any credence to this latest White House initiative?

In just about ever arena, from its attempts to sabotage the U.S. constitution, to intervene across the Middle East and Central Asia, the Bush administration has reached a dead end.

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Bush of Arabia: What All the Talk Shows Missed
Posted by Barry Lando, AlterNet on January 17, 2008 at 7:22 AM.

For late-night talk show hosts, yukking up George W. Bush’s visit to the Middle East was like shooting fish in a barrel. Supposedly on a mission promoting peace (between Israel and the Palestinians) the President spent most of his trip rattling sabers against Iran. He spoke glowingly in Abu Dhabi of democracy, but spent most of his trip brandishing swords and holding hands with dictators who are the U.S.’s allies across the region.

One flagrant incongruity, however, seems to have gone unnoticed: Bush’s timid request to Saudi King Abdullah and other rulers in the Gulf to rein in soaring oil prices because, said Bush, they are hurting the U.S. economy.

But the point is that the current economic crisis in America was not triggered by Arab but by American greed: the disastrous mortgage melt down provoked by sub-prime loans. That collapse was the result of the Bush administration and U.S. regulatory agencies refusing to reign in the unscrupulous policies of the mortgage industry, despite repeated warnings of looming calamity.

Second point: while our media was focused on Bush’s pitch to the Arabs for lower petroleum prices—which was politely but firmly turned aside by a Saudi official—at the same time, hugely wealthy Arab investors were helping to bail out some of America’s largest financial institutions, staggering in the wake of the sub-prime crisis.

For instance, as Bush was dancing with King Abdullah, the King’s nephew, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, was increasing his stake in Citigroup. This was not the first time the Prince had invested in the stricken company. In fact, he was already Citigroup's largest individual shareholder: Kingdom Holding, which he controls, owns 3.6% of Citirgoup. Meanwhile, the Kuwait Investment Authority, another sovereign wealth fund, with at least $225 billion in assets, announced it would invest $3 billion in Citigroup and $2 billion in a very grateful Merrill Lynch.

Those were just the latest investments by Middle Eastern sovereign funds in ailing U.S. financial institutions. Last November, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority paid 7.5 billion dollars for a 4.9% interest in Citigroup.

The Arab investors are not acting out of altruism. As Harvard University economics professor Kenneth Rogoff put it last Fall, “some people might view Abu Dhabi as buying Citigroup at a "fire-sale price."

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Bush's Middle East Visit Is a Con Game and We're Supposed to Be the Suckers
Posted by Barry Lando, AlterNet on January 15, 2008 at 1:06 PM.

Shadow Play in the Middle East

Much of the reporting of President Bush’s trip to the Middle East is shadow play, an incredible con game. The suckers are the American public.

Today’s headline, for instance, has Bush telling Saudi King Abdullah that the high price of oil is hurting the U.S. economy. This, the White House press people, reporters and editors apparently all agree, is front page material. But who are they kidding?

The Saudi leaders and their good, old family friend, George Bush have known for ages about the havoc that rocketing oil prices are wreaking on the U.S. economy. All along, in fact, the Bush administration has been cautiously attempting to convince the Saudis, OPEC’s largest producer, to keep prices down. To no avail.

Back in April 2005, for instance, in Crawford Texas, when Bush last met King Abdullah face to face before he took over the Saudi throne, the subject of high oil prices came up. Oil then was selling for $54 a barrel. It’s now $94.

What new leverage does George W. Bush suddenly have?

Instead, he comes bearing gifts. To thank the Saudis for supporting the latest, feeble U.S. peace efforts in the Middle East, Bush is promising them 20 billion dollars in sophisticated weapons—including 121 million dollars worth of precision guided bombs.

But to defend the Saudis against whom? Iran? Does anyone really think the mullahs in Tehran are going to dispatch their forces to attack the Saudis? Or are the Saudis supposed to use those arms against Iraq’s shattered forces? Or is it just a great way for the Saudis to recycle some of their petroleum wealth back to U.S. industry?

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JP Morgan Buys Tony Blair for One Million Dollars a Year
Posted by Barry Lando, AlterNet on January 10, 2008 at 8:03 AM.

This morning brings the remarkable news that Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has gone to work as a part time consultant for the huge JP Morgan investment bank, at a salary estimated at a million dollars a year.

What I find remarkable is not so much the news as the apparent lack of reaction to it.

It’s not just a question of a British leader leaving his nation’s top office for employment in a sprawling company with worldwide interests—everyone does that these days—but the fact that Blair is doing it—while at the same time continuing official duties in a very sensitive and financially key part of the world.

Blair is not being hired by Morgan for his economic skills, which were never impressive. As JP Morgan’s chief executive Jamie Dimon announced frankly, "There are only a handful of people in the world who have the knowledge and relationships that he has."

Such relationships are key to Blair’s current official duties.

Thanks to pressure from his friend George Bush, Blair was handed a very sensitive assignment: Middle East envoy working on behalf of the US, Russia, the UN and the EU.

Though supposedly focused on Palestinian development, Blair’s activities necessarily involve top level contacts with leaders throughout the world, particularly the leaders of the Middle East, leaders flush with trillions of dollars in assets, leaders making enormous deals and investments around the globe--the kind of deals that are Morgan’s bread and butter.

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On Arab Chutzpah, Kurds and Kissinger
Posted by Barry Lando, AlterNet on December 19, 2007 at 12:03 PM.

From our "Plus ca change" department

--Some 90 nations met in Paris this week to pledge more than seven billion dollars in aid to the Palestinians to help the relaunched peace process. Analysts have pointed out that the new aid promised to the Palestinians, will be of little use if Israel continues to throttle the Palestinian economy with border crossings, checkpoints and the huge barrier wall.

But you’ve got to admit the Europeans who joined the Paris aid effort have to be some of the most masochistic donors on the planet. They’ve already poured hundreds of millions of dollars into various projects in the West Bank and Gaza, only to see them blown to smithereens over the past couple of years by Israeli bombs and rockets.

But why should Europeans even be raising new funds?

If the Arab states really wanted to set the Palestinian economy back on its feet they could do it all by themselves—with both hands tied behind their backs. They’re rolling in new wealth. Right now, just in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, there are more than two trillion—that’s trillion--dollars worth of hotels, condominiums, sky scrapers, artificial ski slopes and islands being built. The Emirates are spending hundreds of billions of dollars more so that each sheikh can have his own airline. At the same time they’re snapping up banks and businesses around the globe—particularly in the United States – at bargain basement prices. .

Instead of buying a chunk of Citi Bank they could have bankrolled all of Gaza.

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Kirkuk Oil Battle Heats Up; Oil Funds for Refugees
Posted by Ben Lando, Iraq Oil Report on November 30, 2007 at 11:00 AM.

Iraq's Oil Ministry is accusing the Kurdistan region of preventing development of one of Iraq's oldest, largest and most controversial oil fields, another dispute in the battle over control of the country's vast reserves. While the rift has been public, the issue of the Kirkuk oil field project is starting to surface in conflicting accounts. …"We have an engineering procurement contract. When equipment arrived, we started working ourselves," Falah al-Khawaja, director general of the State Company for Oil Projects, an arm of the ministry, said on the sidelines of an oil conference in London. "They prevented us from continuing our work, which is actually against the law. "Khawaja wouldn't elaborate on who "they" actually are, adding: "I've been there. I know what's going on in Khurmala. The equipment started to arrive only seven months ago."

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The U.S. Media Plays Along With the Farcical Trial of Chemical Ali
Posted by Barry Lando on August 25, 2007 at 7:20 AM.

Like a distant historical footnote to the bloody tragedy raging in Iraq, the trial of Saddam Hussein’s cousin, Chemical Ali, and 14 other former lieutenants of Saddam, began this week. The prosecutor accused them of perpetrating “ among the ugliest crimes ever committed against humanity in modern history.”

In a just world, George H.W. Bush and James Baker would also be in the dock.

Chemical Ali and his cohorts are being charged with the slaughter of tens of thousands of Shiites following the failed uprising of 1991. It is the third trial before the Iraqi Special Tribunal for crimes against humanity committed during Saddam’s reign.

But, from the beginning, the Tribunal has been a uniquely Kafkaesque affair: first because of the total disconnect between the drama being played out in the court room and the slaughter going on outside the heavily fortified Green Zone. Secondly, by the fact that the horrific history of the 1991 repression is being recounted as if it occurred in an international vacuum. No mention whatsoever of the complicity of the United States and President George H.W. Bush in those bloody events,

Though the British Press has made some mention of America’s role, as far as I can make out, the major American media –and that includes the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, CNN and the Associated Press— have not made even the faintest allusion to the U.S. involvement.

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Israel’s Primal Myth: A Barrier to Peace
Posted by Barry Lando on July 22, 2007 at 12:58 PM.

This post, written by Barry Lando, originally appeared on Truth Dig

Forget about Hamas, the wall, Gaza and the occupied territories. There can be no peace in the Middle East until Israel and the Palestinians deal with one key issue: the Palestinian demand that Israel recognize their right of return. That demand is based on the Arab charge that the Zionist state created the refugee problem in the war of 1948-49 by a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing. It's an accusation that Israel's leaders have consistently rejected. Jewish soldiers could never commit such crimes. It was the Arabs themselves, they say, who created the refugees.

It has become increasingly evident, however, that the Israeli position is, in fact, a self-serving myth created when the Jewish state was born, perpetuated ever since by the country's leaders and still blandly accepted by Washington.

The myth goes like this: In 1948, when the Arabs attacked the newly declared state of Israel, the Arab population fled by the hundreds of thousands. They left not because of attacks by Israeli soldiers but because of the calls of their own Arab leaders, who guaranteed them a speedy return once the Arab armies had triumphed over the upstart Jewish state. Indeed, they fled despite the attempts of many Israelis--as was movingly portrayed in the film "Exodus"--to convince their Palestinian neighbors to remain. Why should such treacherous people have the right to return? Not to mention the fact that their return by the millions would spell the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

This is the story that Israel's leaders and Jews throughout the Diaspora have clung to for more than half a century. But since the early 1990s a new generation of Israeli historians and investigative journalists--drawing on formerly classified documents as well as recollections of Israeli leaders of the War of Independence--has demolished the traditional Israeli position.

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A Calamitous View of Iraq's Future-from Basra
Posted by Barry Lando on June 26, 2007 at 2:00 PM.

While everyone is focusing on the U.S. led surge in Baghdad, Iraq’s second largest city Basra—a city that the British army were supposed to be pacifying — has been going down the tubes. That may well be the fate of Baghdad and much of the rest of Iraq as well, warns a report just issued by the International Crisis Group. It’s a report that should be must reading for anyone attempting to decipher where Iraq is heading.

Basra is Iraq’s economic capital, its major port; it sits astride vital supply routes for the country, and is located in Iraq’s most oil rich region. In other words, what happens in that city is crucial.

Between September 2006 and March 2007 carried out a “Operation Sinbad,” which was similar to Baghdad’s current surge. The British called it “clear, hold and civil reconstruction”– the idea being to turn over control to Iraqi military and police. According to the report, as the British continue to draw down their forces in Basra, the plan has failed miserably. Some excerpts follow—but I suggest anyone really interested in the subject, read the full report.

“In Basra, the British appear to have given up on the idea of establishing a functioning state, ….. Four years after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, they are facing increasingly frequent and bloody attacks, and it is hard to imagine them remaining for long. Indeed, even were the coalition to re-engage in Basra, it already may well be too late to salvage the situation by creating a functional state. Over time, local government in the south could well resemble a small failed state; the government might collapse, a victim of the ruthless struggle between unregulated and uninhibited militias.”

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The Iraqi Tribunal Charade --the Media Plays Along
Posted by Barry Lando on June 24, 2007 at 7:26 AM.

As expected the Iraqi Special Tribunal sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majid alias Chemical Ali to death, along with two other defendants for their role in the killing of tens of thousands of Kurds in the late 1980’s

All the key players in the media were there to capture the dramatic courtroom scene. What none of the reporters mentioned however was that when Saddam and Chemical Ali and the rest of Saddam killers were doing their worst, the U.S. governments of Ronald Reagan and later George Bush Senior were their de facto allies, providing them with vital satellite intelligence, weapons and financing, while shielding them from U.N. investigations or efforts by the U.S. Congress to impose trade sanctions for their depredations.

I admit to being somewhat obsessed by the subject, but perhaps someone can explain how it is that none of the accounts of Sunday’s session that I’ve read mention in any fashion how close were the ties of the U.S. and Saddam—and how carefully the U.S. and its Iraqi allies have manipulated the Tribunal from the beginning so that the complicity of the U.S. and other Western countries with Saddam and his crimes are never discussed.?

Surely it might be worth a side bar or analysis piece from the likes of the New York Times or the Washington Post or the LA Times or Time or Newsweek or the Boston Globe or CNN or ABC or CBS. Put things in context for your audience who might be led to think that Saddam and Chemical Ali were operating in an international vacuum. I find it difficult to believe that none of the many excellent reporters who have covered the Tribunal have never suggested the subject to their editors. Nor that none of those editors ever requested such a piece from their vast stable of reporters. But I guess they didn’t.

So it remains my obsession.

For what I’m talking about here’s an article I did earlier this week for Truthdig:

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A Breakthrough Proposal for U.S. - Iranian Cooperation in Iraq
Posted by Barry Lando on June 12, 2007 at 4:12 AM.

With all the talk of the U.S. and Iran working together in Iraq—here’s a modest proposal for possible cooperation: the two countries should join together to arm the Sunni insurgents in Iraq. It’s not at all as outrageous an idea as it sounds, since both Iran and the U.S. are already doing just that.

Indeed, in Baghdad this week a US military spokesman accused Iran of arming Sunni militants fighting in Iraq. Those arms, according to Major Gen William Caldwell, included mortar rounds and rocket-propelled grenades. According to the BBC, Caldwell went on to charge that the Iranians were not only furnishing weapons to groups fighting the coalition but training them too.

What do you know, but the
New York Times also reports out of Baghdad that for the past few months the United States has also been quietly arming Sunni insurgent groups, many of which have previously been involved in attacks against U.S targets. The idea behind the U.S. policy is to provide the Sunnis the military wherewithal to battle militants linked with Al Qaeda who were formerly their allies.

Many Sunni insurgents have become disenchanted with Al Qaeda’s extremist Islamic policies and suicide bombings that have killed thousands of civilians. Though the Sunni groups have apparently promised they will not turn their new weapons against Americans, the fact is that most of the groups are still dead set against the U.S. occupation and the Maliki government.

A fact which makes several American officials in Baghdad question the whole concept. Others also point out that those arms being doled out to the Sunnis are almost certain to be used in the on-going civil war against the Shiites—who control the military and police that the U.S. has also been arming and training.

But, hey, why not put aside such misgivings. Imagine if the U.S. and Iran could forget the years of suspicion and hatred and instead pool their distribution of arms to Sunni insurgents. Just think of the possible savings involved, not to mention a great chance for these two traditional enemies—the U.S. and Iran—to work together in Iraq.

The cynical debate on Iraq: the candidates are dodging the major issue.
Posted by Barry Lando on June 6, 2007 at 8:37 AM.

The key issue the candidates should be discussing about Iraq is not the way they voted in 2002 , nor whether the U.S. “surge” of 38,000 U.S. troops should continue after September. All this talk is just shadow play—missing (I would say, purposely) the heart of the matter.

Over the past week, spokesmen for the Bush White House have made it clear that the administration is planning a major American presence in Iraq not for months or years but for decades. While the U.S. may withdraw “combat troops” in the near future, there is no way they will not be leaving tens of thousands of other American troops in sprawling city-sized bases already built across that country.

Whether those forces are labeled “combat”, “American freedom providers” or whatever other cosmetic term the White House dreams, those bases, and the tens of thousands of troops populating them, will be an endless flashpoint for Iraqi nationalists and recruiting poster for Muslim jihadists around the globe.

Al Qaeda and its hundreds of spin-offs could wish for nothing more.

What’s behind the Bush plans? The same motives that drove the British to create Iraq after World War I: access to the country’s vast petroleum wealth and military bases to protect that access, as well as leaving no doubt—to friends and enemies alike--about who sits astride one of the most important geo strategic parts of the globe.

But how much sense does such reasoning make?

The Bush administration makes its case by comparing Iraq and South Korea—a comparison that, in this day and age, makes no sense whatsoever. Who is North Korea? Iran? For all Iran’s current talk of becoming a nuclear power, what experts seriously believe that Iran’s leaders would consider invading Iraq? Unlike the U.S. the Iranians have long realized the strength of Iraqi nationalism. Tehran may be quite content to see the U.S. occupier getting its head handed to it by Iraqi insurgents. There is no indication they would walk into a similar meat grinder themselves.

In any case, what makes anyone think that Iraqis—once they are given a choice—will agree to accept the bases? The great majority are already against the presence of Coalition-- a.k.a. American-- forces in Iraq.
Nothing makes that clearer than the binding resolution passed by the Iraqi Parliament on June 6th that will guarantee lawmakers an opportunity to block the extension of the U.N. mandate under which coalition troops now remain in Iraq when it comes up for renewal in December. The measure—which will likely be vetoed by Prime Minister Maliki--is in some ways a mirror image of recent attempts by the U.S. Congress to also limit the American occupation of Iraq.

How can anyone seriously think that some present or future Iraqi government could accept huge U.S. bases in their country and not be voted out of office the next day? Or is the White House so delusional that it still thinks it can manipulate the political forces in Iraq so that no future government ever demands that the U.S. pack up and leave?

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Annals of Asymmetry: More to Fight IED's than AIDS
Posted by Barry Lando on June 2, 2007 at 11:27 PM.

Over the coming year, according to the New York Times", the Pentagon will spend $4 billion dollars to defend against IED’s,–Improvised explosive devices—remote controlled makeshift bombs which are responsible for mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. Compare that with $3.6 billion, the annual amount being spent by the Bush administration to combat AIDS worldwide.

$3.6 billion is not a paltry sum; indeed it exceeds the amount committed to combat AIDS by any other nation. But while the fight against AIDS seems to be making progress, those working in the Pentagon’s Joint I.E.D. Defeat organization are far less sanguine.

It’s all about asymmetry.

Despite the billions being spent to defend against the IED’s, the primitive devices have killed 80% of the Americans who died in combat over the past three months—that’s up from 50% in January. Naturally, as Bush has ordered thousands more Americans out onto the streets, the more targets for IED’s are presented.

The Pentagon is developing all kinds of new technology to detect IED’s and armor to defend against them, but the major stumbling block, the Pentagon admits, is human not technical: the fact that there are thousands of unemployed angry men around Iraq and Afghanistan ready to plant the devices, and a large percentage of folks who sympathize with them.

In fact, bitter American soldiers now say that the very Iraqi army and police units they are supposed to be working with are also, at times, turning their backs, allowing insurgents to plant the devices. In some cases, it turns out, members of the Iraqi army themselves are planting the IED’s.


Meanwhile, Israelis are confronting the same asymmetry in Gaza , as young Palestininians continue to fire makeshift Qassam rockets towards Israeli settlers a few kilometers away.

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