26 Comments. Add your own...

• 1. paul | November 14th, 2009 at 4:35 pm

  7alaaaaaaaaaaaal.

  actualy,mister Salameh the BANKER, must know that high interest means own interest.

  good luck M.D.

• 2. paul | November 14th, 2009 at 4:37 pm

  bass ntibih ma ljelye libneniye t7ittillak chi mi7cheye bil bradil

• 3. Mountain | November 14th, 2009 at 7:13 pm

  what does Salameh has to do with Mi. Di’s story?

• 4. kataebi wsar ouwet | November 14th, 2009 at 8:50 pm

  i think the executive is from the Tayyar!

• 5. Fuziyad | November 15th, 2009 at 4:13 am

  Mr Salameh is a genius undoubtebly, and we’ve all benefited from his talent…

• 6. Delta | November 15th, 2009 at 10:16 am

  Doc

  in case you missed my post about martyrdom
  I dont wanna debate tih you ya Doc cause I have respect for martyrdom… and this is a very touchy subjct no I dont believe hizbullah fighters launching rockets on innocent Isreali civilians are martyrs when they get identified and toasted by an appachi. but I believe in someone fightng for the freedom security of his village city and town is a martyr….

  american military dying inIraq for our safety are martyrs
  Lebanese young mans fighting a syrian army that streches its tanks from bey to damascus are martyrs…..

  No matter how many times we argue. I try hard to respect you I confess I fail lot of times. and Dont even like to disrespect you, but on that one I am going to be honnest withyou.

  If you believe dying under a syrian Shoe is better than dying under an Isreali you are afool. if you would decide to have agov of unity you need to answer the fears of others. but you wont and its fine…..

  You are in power now enjoy it .

  every good man who fight for freedom and dignity is a martyr…..

  chicky dirty coward assasins like the one that shot the army captain hanna and the taliban and the people that put IED’s for our military in Iraq and the Assholes that attacked us in 9/11 are not martyrs are terrorists..

  I am sure you disagree untill we agree on these basis I wont be surprized if you call a 14 year old who blow his ass up in a school bus a martyr…

  the Definition f martyr for me is different from yours and we will disagree for ever…..

  Good luck to you man

• 7. Mike | November 15th, 2009 at 11:11 am

  Delta I understand your point and I would support what you said if that was the case.

  american military dying inIraq for our safety are martyrs??????????????????????????????

  These moefoez killed 1.5 million people since they came in there. They tested almost all their new weapons on 100s of thousands of iraqi civilians and killed them. Depleted uranium on 300,000 residents of fallujah? Killing 580 scientists and professors through assasination teams collaberated by the mosaad and SAS.They don’t even protect the christian iraqies there.Since they invaded; they’ve been dying out. Saddam actually liked the christian community and protected it much more than the US millitary.

  9/11 was done by terrorists. The real experts at it. Mosaad and CIA. Long proven.

  Taliban in Afghanistan is cia run, trained, funded and dealt with. They even run the opium trade together.They even made them underground bunkers almost as good as the one hezbollah has. The same company that made the SF bridge did it for them in the 1970s. If binladen was in afghanistan he would of been caught a long time ago. Just like saddam was except much before.

  Hezbollah terrorists? They only started firing rockets on cities after israel indiscriminatly started bombing buildings FULL of civilians all over lebanon. How dare you say that! They didn’t want to even do that. Look at the casualties on the Lebanese side. Look at the casualty rates. 1,200 Lebanese civilians killed and 5,000+ seriously injured. Israel lost 44 civilians. The rest were millitary. R.I.P. all civilians. The IDF was going to reduce downtown and west beirut to rubble. Hezbollah gave them a severe warning, that if that was going to happen then they would unleash all the long range rockets on tel aviv. They said if you hit beirut then we hit tel aviv. Israel was going to do a surprise attack on lebanon a few months ago also but the hezb hacked israeli millitary computers and the shin bet; they send them a message. If you attack beirut then we will send 600 missiles on tel aviv in the first 24 hours. Now it’s postponed to 2010 spring if not later.Possibly even 2-3 years but most likely not too far.

  A martyr is someone who dies for his cause, religion, country with honor and integrity; he is a man/woman/child of justice and has the love of humanity. All these young men who have been training since a young age to protect your @$$ sitting at home and watching tv and you call them terrorists. If that’s the case. You are disgracing our 5,000 shaheed lal ouwet. Because atleast Hezbollah didn’t commit sabra shatila, religous killing or collaborate with israel. So basically you’re saying we’re terrorists too?

• 8. avi | November 15th, 2009 at 1:17 pm

  Of coarse Mike you are terrorists and you initiated 2006 maybe you forgot????

• 9. anonymous | November 15th, 2009 at 3:34 pm

  MIKE plz dont relate allying with israel as a crime or betrayel or anything bad to lebanon…..some lebanese allied with syria to kill other lebanese…and those other lebanese allied with israel(since they had no choice…they would have died)to defend themselves….so stfu….the 5000+ ouwet martyrs didnt hide in civilian houses and attacked syria….they fought in forests, snow, mountains, rough terrains….so dont relate us to them plz….freedom fighters are way different from terrorists(HA)

• 10. Delta | November 15th, 2009 at 8:10 pm

  Mike

  I am driving now, I will answer your shitty face when I get home and don’t use abusive language with me cause I dislike it…

• 11. Delta | November 15th, 2009 at 8:28 pm

  First of all don’t how the fuck you dare calling the Us military MOFs? who the Fk you think you are a little terrorist nothing more this is what you are .These men and women are brave enough to go fight for us ( american Citizens) while we are sitting home……..

  Give me a reliable source for all your accusation : “Killing 580 scientists and professors through assasination teams collaberated by the mosaad and SAS”..????
  where did you read that on Mannar.moukawama .irhab.com?

  no 9/11 was not done by terrorists …. 9/11 was done by islamic Terrorists….

  Ha is recognized by the Un as a terrorist org so I go by what the UN go

  As per Iraqi Christians I would say that the Us did not do enough to preserve them…..

  you say all these young man trainning to protect me . First of all I did not ask HA militia men to protect me I ask the Lebanese Gov to protect me. and I remeber these MOf HA young men as u call them blocking the Airport roads in May and killing arround 200 lebanese …….
  wlak rouh ayre bili khala2ak chu inak hmar w2a3ma…..

  collaborating with Isreal was not the best we have done but your mother has been collaborating with syria for the last 30 years.

  Sabra and shatila you can blame it on your allie hbayka hizb il wa3ed ya khara halifak…….

  after all God bless all american troops it is such honor to be protected by real educated,brave and committed wise young man and women…..

  and please dont disgrace the Lf martyrs by comparing them to your retarded ass militias…..
  one more advice count till 10 before you reply to my posts little terrorist.

• 12. Mike | November 16th, 2009 at 5:57 am

  Leek ya………. Ihterim halak( I took out what I originally wrote).

  I have far relatives from my mothers side in the US millitary that served in WWII, the Vietnam era and in Iraq.

  I’ve been to Kuwait and to the Camp doha millitary base and talked with the soldiers.

  Don’t talk about stuff you don’t know about. Alright papi?

  The shyt they are doing in Iraq is unpatriotic and most of them even admit so. They were sent on false millitary intellegence saying saddam had weapons of mass destruction of which they found NONE. AND THEY KNEW HE HAD NONE.This info was given to them by israelies and used by the idioc bush administration to attack iraq for financial reasons and finding a scapegoat for 911. Plus Saddam changed exchanging oil barrels into euros instead of dollars and it was causing the american oil companies lots of money due to that. America’s currency was becoming lower.If they are so interested in providing freedom and liberty. WhyTF did 1.5 million people die, assassination teams running freely though private security of which their is almost as much as the whole US millitary in Iraq. Not to mention taking the oil and appointing a puppet government. If they believe in freedom and democracy they would of liberated saudi arabia a long time ago.

  Many of these soldiers are brave and good people because because they THOUGHT they were send to iraq to fight for their country. But some if not a lot of them committed crimes against humanity and killed civilian bystanders. If you’re not atleast smart enough to realize. If the zionist run government in the US cares so much about their army cadets and soldiers. Why in the world do they inject them with up to 20 injections when they first join the army. Why the hell do they infuse all kinds of experimental diseas in their bodies. I’ve met some soldiers with side effects. Some die of cancer, some feel slower and have physchological problems. And why are they injected by radioactive isotopes too? And then when they feel all messed up from “doing stuff” in Iraq; why the hell do they give them mind altering drugs to mess them up even more.

  Seems you know nothing and are blindly BLINDLY following things you have no slightest clue what they are about.

  The US millitary is full of people our age or younger that joined to get money for college and the future benefits. They also love their country but how the hell do you defend an administration that sends it’s youth to die for a useless unpatriotic untrue cause that DOES NOT BENEFIT AMERICA ONE BIT BUT FILLS THE POCKETS OF PRIVATELY OWNED COMPANIES WITH TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS? Do you even know why we had the economic collapse? It’s because the idiots invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and they had to keep inflating and inflating money to keep up with the debts of which they owe to a privately owned company the federal reserve. I bet you didn’t know that. Not that they weren’t inflating since they opened the federal reserve.

  I’m tired of you guys thinking you’re american because Oh yippy I have the passport so gosh im just going to go on and blindly support every action the idiots in the presidency and administration do whithout using my brain to think if its for the benefit of the country and the world or not.

  Listen to people like Ron Paul for a change. The only strict constitutionalist. Invading Iraq is not ONLY ILLEGAL, IT IS INHUMANE, NOT NEEDED AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL. That’s if you know what that means. So basically you are supporting people who DO NOT abide by the constitution or bill of rights. Who drug young americans and send them to die in foreign lands for their own pockets. I sincerly congratulate you on all the brainpower it took to come out with the statement. They are fighting for us in Iraq so we can live bla bla. Yea I’m sure they’re really fighting to protect Lebanon and it’s people, borders and everything in it. Afterall they’re all in iraq testing their new weapons and securing logistical perimeters for uknown reasons except my commander says so.

  Yalla bsharafak go watch some documentaries. Talk with soldiers that have been there and the ones who refused to go for their 2nd or third tour. They aren’t given a dollar by the gov and many escaped to canada or living bankrupt.

  As for the 580 Iraqi scientists killed in iraq, here is a websiteto fill up your memory with:

  http://www.nogw.com/download/2006_mo_murdered_530_iq_scientists.pdf

  The last PDF is all the proof you can get. Names and region and statistics. So hush little boy.

• 13. Mike | November 16th, 2009 at 6:15 am

  Additional sites on this subject:

  http://www.williambowles.info/iraq/2006/0506/mossad_hit_squads.html

  http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_21935.shtml

• 14. Delta | November 16th, 2009 at 6:26 am

  Ya Mike YA Mike…

  I dont ven have a clue about what you are trying to say are you accusing the military on doing experiments on their own soldiers???? man have you ever attended a science class where they try the shit on a rat or a syrian …… to know if the Med works???? no need to try them on our military I can not even believe I am wasting time answering this subject….

  I am not going to answer your low class statement :Yalla bsharafak go watch some documentaries……

  I don’t need To watch documentaries that Cnn made and biast anti americans like you make up to bash president bush…………

  The Truth is that you are struggling to accept that the Us kicked ass in Iraq and is Kicking some balls in Afghanistan….

  For your records…I have encountered soldiers and I encounter them on a daily base…… and I hear feedbacks all the time, true some of them dislike the fact that we invaded Iraq on false accusations, but the fact is undeniable that we won this war in 17 days and finished the Job and already pulling out ………. Another dictator down……

  Yep the war Costed us a lot on the economical level but you seem to ignore the fact that the Real state market collapse is behind the recession too and lot of other factors … including Shipping US businesses off seas….

  I am not going to debate with you on theseIssues, But I want to make things clear I am Lebanese- American ……. I live in this country and unlike you I wont spit in the cup I drink from….

  No I did not have my moms cousin in the Military But I have best friends and Colleagues that I trust to accomplish a Mission your people triggered and all what we did is answer back….

  I appreciate you watching your vocab, It makes me enjoy the Conversation more.. please keep it tight …

  And try to respect martyrdom, Cause Martyrs from all over the world has moms dads and fathers some of them can be reading your posts and you can harm some people with your swordy tongue…

  Be carefull…….

  and Take care

• 15. Mike | November 16th, 2009 at 7:51 am

  Okay I am accusing the US gov for doing experiments on their soldiers. 100s of thousands which suffered the consequences after geting these injections in desert storm and other operations. Also before and after. I am accusing them of creating a war in the name of america and democracy which disgraces both to the fullest extent. I am accusing the zionist run government of murdering 1.5 million people in iraq since 2003. If 5,000 soldiers make much more importance than 1,500.000 people then their is something really wrong. Basically more Iraqies died than Armenians in the armenian genocide and we are in the 21st century! Yet no one cares or covers it on the news and what ticked me off the most is that you were cursing at the vary people who are opposing this unamerican intervention in the middle east and saying they are terrorists. Their is many in the US who became aware of the situation and have the same feelings towards the US administration. Are they terrorists too? Their are jewish rabbis which are denouncing zionism and its control over american society. Here is their site: http://www.nkusa.org
  I am not some brainwashed supporter who chants death to america and etc. I base my arguments on real facts EVEN THOUGH they might hurt my political group’s political stance. Because the truth must be revealed to the public about what’s happening in the world and if we don’t do anything about it then we will be in direct effect of it. And it is certainly not a good effect.

  I’m also accusing the mosaad and the privately owned security firms like blackwater for carrying out assasinations against the intellegent intelectuals of iraq. Who instead of being rewarded for their contributions, get assasinated by mass explosions which kill 10s of civilians in order to ensure Iraq has a dark future. Once Iraq is in turmoil, it will open the way for all the privately owned companies to suck out the resources and money. Basically do whatever they want. America had almost full control of Iraq in the first few days. The iraqi army surrendered. Their could have been stability but no they don’t want that. More conflict=more money=more reasons to stay Going back to my other point; Imagine 580 of the smartest people in Lebanon being assasinated. No Riad Salameh,michel suleiman etc. What will be made of the country? Who will run the future?They do not want anyone who can pose a threat to their plans of domination over resources and wealth of the world. Which is basically anyone who is smart, is educated, has a high position and has the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. Why kill all the smart people in Iraq? Mish haram?

  I respect martyrdom. It is you who pointed out on selectively choosing who gets to be respected for it. Even though they are fighting for a cause which can reshape american history to its founding constitutional processes. The country is hijacked by the neo-cons like mccain and bush and is controlled internally by the zionists. Even all of obamas appointees like rahm emanuel and ben bernanke are well known zionists. Rahm’s father was an israeli terrorist in the Irgun. Ben bernanke the chairman of the federal reserve which prints american money and loans it to the gov. The federal reserve and IRS are privately owned companies. Look it up. So we are paying taxes to companies and not the gov. for further hijacking the american gov and constitiution into more debt for the federal reserve. Why do you think the gov issues all these unpatriotic legislations; they are so much in debt to these privately owned companies; they have to actually comply to what these people want. And in the end of the day invading iraq and aghanistan has not made the world a safer place bu the exact opposite.

  Invading other countries and killing millions is something of the dark ages. If someone loves America so much then they should oppose all kinds of wars which in the end only bring destruction to the country and the world as a whole.

  I am LF but I’m supporting Hezbollah because they are stopping the neo-con plan for lebanon and the middle east in which no lebanese will get his share. I don’t want the country to turn into another iraq or afghanistan or anything like that. Even though many in the LF might not like hezbollah for their political stances against us; we have to realize what they are doing is good in the pracitical sense. The neo-cons have decided to reduce Lebanon to rubble via israel in the future. Why not strengthening the country’s
  defenses in order to prevent it or counter it. When our president michel suleiman says he supports the resistance. He does not say it to appease them. He is a millitary general who understands defense and attack in war. He knows the whole country will be sitting ducks if we only rely on the Lebanese army. The Lebanese army that was ordered to give tea to invaders in 2006 and then bombed after surrendering and “gauranteed” safe passage to beirut by the IDF. So if people are defending Lebanon and belong to another religous group. It is not a problem; in the end of the day we are Lebanese and safegaurding the country’s future from any dangers. and it is our priority.

  Look at Ron Paul. Listen to his speeches at the presidential debates. He knows about America more than obama or anyone who was running for president. He knows more about running america’s financial system then the ben bernanke and alan greenspan. He opposes unconstitutional acts and the taking away of the bill of rights. HE IS AMERICAN. Yet all the media laughs at him and so do the republican and democratic candidates. They just want to do war and more war and war. Then whoever opposes them is called a terrorist. The CIA actually had to modify the terms terrorist 6 times for legal use because in each time they would fit the definition as terrorist for their activities in the US and abroad. Read over the constitution and tell me if what the zionists and neo-cons are doing in Iraq and the US is even related to what is mentioned. Because I can tell you it has nothing to do with it. Look at the patriot act. Enough explaining for now You do the research and tell me what you find.

• 16. Delta | November 16th, 2009 at 7:00 pm

  Gosh Mike………. that was long……….

  Lets assume that all what you accused the US goverment of is right okay and guess what I Might agree with you on one or two stories but are they facts ya Mike? you and me know that if anything like this come up Cnn will be more than happy to point it out……

  Yeah I agree black water and other privately owned companies might be assassinating people…? but think about it again is in the most interest of the US that Iraq stay unstable ? If you live here you know how much the whole us public wants a pull out from Iraq or afghanistan and you and me know how much the US want to pull out and dig in IRan … so I see no logical reasoning to say yeah we want to stay in Iraq…

  Again lets assume all what you said is right ….but in every war there are innocent that dies in every war genocides are committed in every war there are black and white money involved…. I am not going to keep on…..

  Think again…. How many schools we built up there how many innocent lives we have saved ? since when Iraqis vote? since when all the butchers of Iraq are held accountable, since when Iraq hadall the Tech they have now since when there army was trained?…… Etc..

  I dont wanna just pointing the pros yeah we have done wrong inIraq and I believe it is unintentional? for we are mostly a nation that value human life ……

  Ron Paul I love ron Paul what Are you talking about I agree with all his strategies and think he need too run again…………………………… Tuff luck…. But truthfully he is a great guy, , I dont know about a great Leader.

  How could you be an Lf mike ? you cnot be an LF thats Joke lets move on and Lfr that support wileyet il fakih…. and do you really believe that hizballa can stop Isreal. Since you believe that Isreal runs America do you really believe that hizballa can stand a chance against the US ? directly or indirectly come on bro……… Lets be realistic if sadam took 17 days to be boned. it will take them 1.7 days to get Nasralla from his hall….

  did you see my point you are trying to say that hizbullah is important to the safety of Lebanon I will tell you hizbullah is just a card for the safety of Iran…. andIf you believe that US is run by Isreal well guess what ? I dont want to go there…. because you know it will take 2 days for them to stretch from the south Lebanese border to the North. (if US intervene) .

  Yeah I am selectively choosing martyrs ya Mike martyrs as you defined it someone who died defending a cause ……

  Killing Isreali cause they are jewish is not a cause it is called racism and Ignorance and I dont wan t any explanationIsreal did not cross the border to kidnap two hizbullah terrorists hizbullah is who triggered the whole Issue on the cost of all lebanese that is bullshit……

  Martyrs are the one that dies defending a cause and try to spare civilians not launching rockets to whatever ……… or calling Imad moughniyeh who slaughtered a civilian unarmed members of a family a hero.

  Come on mike .you sound Like a smart man, brake things down and think them again (i am not being sarcastic I am being truthful). Is Iraq therichest place in resources Just FYI 90 % of the Gasoline that enters the US Soil is fromMexico ,Canada and nigeria mainly and from Iraq and others Sec this is a fact ? I am not hundred percent sure but I think 70 % of the Oil we get is from canada Google it….

  Our invasion to Iraq is not about resources or private companies and is about a nation security……

  if All what you said is right … these information should be classified and secret and ordinarry people like you and me should have no access for it… don tyou think so …….

  I enjoyed your post and truthfully made me think.

  Take care hizie…

  Nb:stop calling your self an Lfr :p

• 17. Delta | November 16th, 2009 at 7:47 pm

  http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html
  Us gas importer

• 18. ja3far | November 16th, 2009 at 8:06 pm

  Delta… an old small small article from an interesting book for u:

  It’s the Oil
  Jim Holt
  Iraq is ‘unwinnable’, a ‘quagmire’, a ‘fiasco’: so goes the received opinion. But there is good reason to think that, from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is none of these things. Indeed, the US may be ‘stuck’ precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no ‘exit strategy’.
  Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves. That is more than five times the total in the United States. And, because of its long isolation, it is the least explored of the world’s oil-rich nations. A mere two thousand wells have been drilled across the entire country; in Texas alone there are a million. It has been estimated, by the Council on Foreign Relations, that Iraq may have a further 220 billion barrels of undiscovered oil; another study puts the figure at 300 billion. If these estimates are anywhere close to the mark, US forces are now sitting on one quarter of the world’s oil resources. The value of Iraqi oil, largely light crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30 trillion at today’s prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion.
  Who will get Iraq’s oil? One of the Bush administration’s ‘benchmarks’ for the Iraqi government is the passage of a law to distribute oil revenues. The draft law that the US has written for the Iraqi congress would cede nearly all the oil to Western companies. The Iraq National Oil Company would retain control of 17 of Iraq’s 80 existing oilfields, leaving the rest – including all yet to be discovered oil – under foreign corporate control for 30 years. ‘The foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy,’ the analyst Antonia Juhasz wrote in the New York Times in March, after the draft law was leaked. ‘They could even ride out Iraq’s current “instability” by signing contracts now, while the Iraqi government is at its weakest, and then wait at least two years before even setting foot in the country.’ As negotiations over the oil law stalled in September, the provincial government in Kurdistan simply signed a separate deal with the Dallas-based Hunt Oil Company, headed by a close political ally of President Bush.
  How will the US maintain hegemony over Iraqi oil? By establishing permanent military bases in Iraq. Five self-sufficient ‘super-bases’ are in various stages of completion. All are well away from the urban areas where most casualties have occurred. There has been precious little reporting on these bases in the American press, whose dwindling corps of correspondents in Iraq cannot move around freely because of the dangerous conditions. (It takes a brave reporter to leave the Green Zone without a military escort.) In February last year, the Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks described one such facility, the Balad Air Base, forty miles north of Baghdad. A piece of (well-fortified) American suburbia in the middle of the Iraqi desert, Balad has fast-food joints, a miniature golf course, a football field, a cinema and distinct neighbourhoods – among them, ‘KBR-land’, named after the Halliburton subsidiary that has done most of the construction work at the base. Although few of the 20,000 American troops stationed there have ever had any contact with an Iraqi, the runway at the base is one of the world’s busiest. ‘We are behind only Heathrow right now,’ an air force commander told Ricks.
  The Defense Department was initially coy about these bases. In 2003, Donald Rumsfeld said: ‘I have never, that I can recall, heard the subject of a permanent base in Iraq discussed in any meeting.’ But this summer the Bush administration began to talk openly about stationing American troops in Iraq for years, even decades, to come. Several visitors to the White House have told the New York Times that the president himself has become fond of referring to the ‘Korea model’. When the House of Representatives voted to bar funding for ‘permanent bases’ in Iraq, the new term of choice became ‘enduring bases’, as if three or four decades wasn’t effectively an eternity.
  But will the US be able to maintain an indefinite military presence in Iraq? It will plausibly claim a rationale to stay there for as long as civil conflict simmers, or until every groupuscule that conveniently brands itself as ‘al-Qaida’ is exterminated. The civil war may gradually lose intensity as Shias, Sunnis and Kurds withdraw into separate enclaves, reducing the surface area for sectarian friction, and as warlords consolidate local authority. De facto partition will be the result. But this partition can never become de jure. (An independent Kurdistan in the north might upset Turkey, an independent Shia region in the east might become a satellite of Iran, and an independent Sunni region in the west might harbour al-Qaida.) Presiding over this Balkanised Iraq will be a weak federal government in Baghdad, propped up and overseen by the Pentagon-scale US embassy that has just been constructed – a green zone within the Green Zone. As for the number of US troops permanently stationed in Iraq, the defence secretary, Robert Gates, told Congress at the end of September that ‘in his head’ he saw the long-term force as consisting of five combat brigades, a quarter of the current number, which, with support personnel, would mean 35,000 troops at the very minimum, probably accompanied by an equal number of mercenary contractors. (He may have been erring on the side of modesty, since the five super-bases can accommodate between ten and twenty thousand troops each.) These forces will occasionally leave their bases to tamp down civil skirmishes, at a declining cost in casualties. As a senior Bush administration official told the New York Times in June, the long-term bases ‘are all places we could fly in and out of without putting Americans on every street corner’. But their main day-to-day function will be to protect the oil infrastructure.
  This is the ‘mess’ that Bush-Cheney is going to hand on to the next administration. What if that administration is a Democratic one? Will it dismantle the bases and withdraw US forces entirely? That seems unlikely, considering the many beneficiaries of the continued occupation of Iraq and the exploitation of its oil resources. The three principal Democratic candidates – Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards – have already hedged their bets, refusing to promise that, if elected, they would remove American forces from Iraq before 2013, the end of their first term.
  Among the winners: oil-services companies like Halliburton; the oil companies themselves (the profits will be unimaginable, and even Democrats can be bought); US voters, who will be guaranteed price stability at the gas pump (which sometimes seems to be all they care about); Europe and Japan, which will both benefit from Western control of such a large part of the world’s oil reserves, and whose leaders will therefore wink at the permanent occupation; and, oddly enough, Osama bin Laden, who will never again have to worry about US troops profaning the holy places of Mecca and Medina, since the stability of the House of Saud will no longer be paramount among American concerns. Among the losers is Russia, which will no longer be able to lord its own energy resources over Europe. Another big loser is Opec, and especially Saudi Arabia, whose power to keep oil prices high by enforcing production quotas will be seriously compromised.
  Then there is the case of Iran, which is more complicated. In the short term, Iran has done quite well out of the Iraq war. Iraq’s ruling Shia coalition is now dominated by a faction friendly to Tehran, and the US has willy-nilly armed and trained the most pro-Iranian elements in the Iraqi military. As for Iran’s nuclear programme, neither air strikes nor negotiations seem likely to derail it at the moment. But the Iranian regime is precarious. Unpopular mullahs hold onto power by financing internal security services and buying off elites with oil money, which accounts for 70 per cent of government revenues. If the price of oil were suddenly to drop to, say, $40 a barrel (from a current price just north of $80), the repressive regime in Tehran would lose its steady income. And that is an outcome the US could easily achieve by opening the Iraqi oil spigot for as long as necessary (perhaps taking down Venezuela’s oil-cocky Hugo Chلvez into the bargain).
  And think of the United States vis-à-vis China. As a consequence of our trade deficit, around a trillion dollars’ worth of US denominated debt (including $400 billion in US Treasury bonds) is held by China. This gives Beijing enormous leverage over Washington: by offloading big chunks of US debt, China could bring the American economy to its knees. China’s own economy is, according to official figures, expanding at something like 10 per cent a year. Even if the actual figure is closer to 4 or 5 per cent, as some believe, China’s increasing heft poses a threat to US interests. (One fact: China is acquiring new submarines five times faster than the US.) And the main constraint on China’s growth is its access to energy – which, with the US in control of the biggest share of world oil, would largely be at Washington’s sufferance. Thus is the Chinese threat neutralised.
  Many people are still perplexed by exactly what moved Bush-Cheney to invade and occupy Iraq. In the 27 September issue of the New York Review of Books, Thomas Powers, one of the most astute watchers of the intelligence world, admitted to a degree of bafflement. ‘What’s particularly odd,’ he wrote, ‘is that there seems to be no sophisticated, professional, insiders’ version of the thinking that drove events.’ Alan Greenspan, in his just published memoir, is clearer on the matter. ‘I am saddened,’ he writes, ‘that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.’
  Was the strategy of invading Iraq to take control of its oil resources actually hammered out by Cheney’s 2001 energy task force? One can’t know for sure, since the deliberations of that task force, made up largely of oil and energy company executives, have been kept secret by the administration on the grounds of ‘executive privilege’. One can’t say for certain that oil supplied the prime motive. But the hypothesis is quite powerful when it comes to explaining what has actually happened in Iraq. The occupation may seem horribly botched on the face of it, but the Bush administration’s cavalier attitude towards ‘nation-building’ has all but ensured that Iraq will end up as an American protectorate for the next few decades – a necessary condition for the extraction of its oil wealth. If the US had managed to create a strong, democratic government in an Iraq effectively secured by its own army and police force, and had then departed, what would have stopped that government from taking control of its own oil, like every other regime in the Middle East? On the assumption that the Bush-Cheney strategy is oil-centred, the tactics – dissolving the army, de-Baathification, a final ‘surge’ that has hastened internal migration – could scarcely have been more effective. The costs – a few billion dollars a month plus a few dozen American fatalities (a figure which will probably diminish, and which is in any case comparable to the number of US motorcyclists killed because of repealed helmet laws) – are negligible compared to $30 trillion in oil wealth, assured American geopolitical supremacy and cheap gas for voters. In terms of realpolitik, the invasion of Iraq is not a fiasco; it is a resounding success.
  Still, there is reason to be sceptical of the picture I have drawn: it implies that a secret and highly ambitious plan turned out just the way its devisers foresaw, and that almost never happens.
  From the LRB letters page: [ 15 November 2007 ] Kenneth Anderson.
  Jim Holt writes for the New York Times Magazine and the New Yorker.

• 19. Mike | November 18th, 2009 at 8:32 am

  Well said Jaafar. It’s all about the money.You should read “protocols of zion”. You can find it on scribd.com

• 20. Doc1559 | November 18th, 2009 at 9:38 am

  Mikey 19

  It is all about the money my friend, you got that right..

  Do some research on central banking, and how the FED monetizes debt. The FED plays the same games as Wall Street. The hypocrisy is that USA fight the people they previously supported!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Israel Forced USA into Iraq and afghanistan so they don’t have 2 do it nor pay for it. To the date, some $ 700 billion American dollars have been allocated to the war in Iraq since its start 7 yrs ago… the Israeli cost is $0.00 !! Zionist Rules !!

• 21. Doc1559 | November 18th, 2009 at 9:55 am

  Delta 6

  I didnt miss it, I ignored it , ma bade za3lak bass….

  Rachid karami and R.ma3wad are martyrs.

• 22. Doc1559 | November 18th, 2009 at 9:59 am

  in support to mike 12

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOQ7KwESh4A

  4:00 kill everbodyyyyyyyyyy !!!
  4:20 if we kill enough innocent ppl, they will stop..

• 23. paul | November 18th, 2009 at 12:39 pm

  Doc , à propos america…

  القوات اللبنانية” وحلفاؤها يكتسحون انتخابات الجامعة الأميركية

  walaw… ma fi mabrouk

• 24. Delta | November 19th, 2009 at 2:03 am

  Doc

  Karami is a dick head and the bomb that was planted in his ass could not have been planted anywhere better.

  Rene m3awad ws killed by the syrians for sure he is a martyr no good man for lebanon will be allowed to live…

• 25. Delta | November 19th, 2009 at 2:19 am

  Doc
  I watched the Video….. you post it,
  First of all how can you give acreadit for aguy that carries the US flipped flag…
  how could you trust aguy that deserted the military and run to canada cause he did not ike it
  Shoot them all please man come we all saw how we use to empty the cities to get civilians out and we knew that terrorist will blend in with the innocents and get out of the town before we Orahhh it…

  you know what I am talking about and you live here you know how much humain is valued … come on Doc dont just stand by them cause they said a storyy I can make you a better storry then him ….

  please Doll … look deeper (no offence)

  God Bless the USA

• 26. Mike | November 19th, 2009 at 7:47 am

  LOL. Man you seem to misunderstand the point that the US is hijacked by neo-cons and zionists. Why are you defending people who care less about you or anyone else in the country?

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