OIL WARS

Middle East fears broken Iraq

When you travel around the Middle East and ask people about how the war in Iraq has affected them you get a combination of regret, anger and trepidation.

Meanwhile ...

On the flight deck of the enormous US aircraft carrier the USS Eisenhower in the Gulf this week, warplanes were being shot out of the steam catapults on the flight deck with engines that roared and screamed so loudly you felt it in your sinuses, teeth and jawbone.
"Listen to it," one of the officers told me when the warplanes were launched and streaking up the Gulf to Iraq.

"It is the sound of freedom."

OIL WAR

KBR spent millions to deliver $82,100 of fuel to Iraq

Iraq needed fuel. Halliburton Co. was ordered to get it there -- quick. So the contractor -- with close ties to US Vice President Dick Cheney -- charged the Pentagon $27.5 million to ship $82,100 worth of cooking and heating fuel across the border from Kuwait.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which had assigned Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root the job of getting fuel into Iraq, declined to comment on the substance of the audit report, noting that it contained confidential commercial information that had not been authorized for release outside government channels.
When Government Reform Committee staff indicated that they were considering issuing a subpoena for the audit reports, a Defense Department official replied that issuing a subpoena will not get the material released any faster.

The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed.
Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks" of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US.

OIL WARS

UK MPs seek to impeach Blair

A group of British parliamentarians plans to invoke a parliamentary procedure last used more than 150 years ago to impeach Prime Minister Tony Blair over the invasion of Iraq.
Eleven members of parliament, mainly Scottish and Welsh nationalists who opposed the war, plus two opposition Conservatives, want to use the dated practice to force Blair to defend himself at Westminster over his decision to go to war.
'Although no one voted in this country for george Bush, we have fought his war and followed his disastrous foreign policy,' said Angus Robertson, and MP with the Scottish Nationalist Party.

OIL WARS

The 19-year-old soldier in this photo, Army Pfc. Lynndie England, joined the army straight from school. According to her mother, her commanders told her and her fellow soldiers to do whatever was necessary to make the prisoners talk. She is now in the US, pregnant to a fellow soldier. Because she appeared in many of the released photos, she is now facing charges.

Bush apologises for torture of Iraqi prisoners ... but not to the Iraqis

More images and videos of Iraqi prisoner abuse will surface in the investigation of the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners held by the coalition authority, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told congressional investigators.
"If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

US Army Report on Torture of Iraqis in Abu Ghraib Prison
INVESTIGATION OF THE 800th MILITARY POLICE BRIGADE [prepared by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba]