Thread: Iraq/Dinar News to April 19, 2007 10PM CST

Originally Posted by Jola

Something is not right here.

I see the date: they will start to give this money on April 15, 07.

But 1 mil and a half ??
If ISX opens on April 15, and we think of an RV taking place before that, then ...man, I don't know anymore...

If it revals before then Jola, then this would be adgusted to reflect the new rate. Nothing serious going on here that I can see.

Gloribee

Do we really think they would state a revalued amount in these statements?
I don't believe they would tip their hand through one of these news stories. Whenever this happens, EVERYTHING will have an adjustment, from these payments to retail goods, etc,etc. I would read nothing into articles stating dinar amounts.


***thanks Gloribee-you beat me to it

That's right...
Thank you.

The only way that I see it possible is if they give amounts in dinar but with $ value.

For example:
1 mil and a half dinars @ 1272/dollar is $1179.24. If - let's say - RV @ 1-1, then they would receive 1179-1180 dinars. Just an example- easy to calculate... Which is about right for now, is it?

I know we have been thru with this stuff before, but I guess I have been thrown off by the date stated - April 15th, as in my mind that was the ISX opening ( which I still don't know for sure if it is correct)....

Man, I almost burst my own bubble again! LOL

Originally Posted by Sudden Impact

If they reval at $0.05, then that amount would be $75,000.00 USD. Does that seem like a reasonable amount?

Originally Posted by wciappetta

What if they're not showing the decimal place for the fils? would make a world of difference or again it could one of those "Value" type remarks that can be adjusted as needed. confusion is what they're sowing and maybe that is the best thing we could see right now. Sorry i can't be anything but an optimist on this investment simply because it will pan out.

Too much, Sudden. People make that money in a year. IF they make it. And they are talking about two months here...April and May.

Originally Posted by tiffany

OORRRRRRR....What about two decimal points? 1500000...take the two decimal points over = 15000.00 at 1:1 that would be $15,000.00 ~ No?

Looking for solutions...

That's why I love you , guys...

Originally Posted by One Oar

Do we really think they would state a revalued amount in these statements?
I don't believe they would tip their hand through one of these news stories. Whenever this happens, EVERYTHING will have an adjustment, from these payments to retail goods, etc,etc. I would read nothing into articles stating dinar amounts.


***thanks Gloribee-you beat me to it

Thanks One Oar and Gloribee...I wasn't looking at it that way, but it does sound logical. I was just seeing this as their intent to do nothing until sometime after mid-May. I just don't see how they can continue to do this to their people who would seem to need this to take place more so than many of us. I have bills to pay off too, but not having to dig food out of the trash to survive. Thanks to you two for the clarification...I should have given it more thought before piping in .

Patty

Originally Posted by One Oar

Do we really think they would state a revalued amount in these statements?
I don't believe they would tip their hand through one of these news stories. Whenever this happens, EVERYTHING will have an adjustment, from these payments to retail goods, etc,etc. I would read nothing into articles stating dinar amounts.


***thanks Gloribee-you beat me to it

Only by a milli-second One Oar. Sooner or later I had to be first. LOL

Gloribee

Commentary: Playing politics with Iraq blood for oil
Nicola Nasser

April 11, 2007

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Bracing for the 2008 US presidential election, Democrats and ruling Republicans have embroiled the American public in a political crisis between the executive and legislative powers over deadlines for combat operations in Iraq that could develop into a constitutional showdown. However, for Arabs in general and Iraqis in particular, such a crisis merely plays out electoral politics with Iraqi blood for oil, since the Democratic alternative to President George W. Bush's strategy, when scrutinized, promises no fundamental change to Iraq's bloody status quo.

Building on the recommendation of James Baker's and Lee Hamilton's bipartisan Iraq Study Group, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently engaged Syrian leaders in Damascus amid a cautious Arab diplomatic and media welcome during a visit that enraged Bush in the latest example of partisan clashes over US national interests in Iraq. Pelosi said she hoped to revive lost confidence between Washington and Damascus, but politicians from both mainstream US parties have a long way to go before they can win over the hearts and minds of the Arab masses, redressing the damage done by the Iraq occupation to America's public image, which will probably take years to undo.

Democrats had been viewed by Arabs as promising to offer an alternative to Bush's Iraq strategy, but they have so far proved themselves responsive only to their voters' anti-war sentiments. Sixty percent of the American public wants troops to withdraw from Iraq. The Republicans' defeat in last year's midterm congressional elections was a strong indication of such anti-war sentiment, and public expectation for withdrawing US troops remains high. Yet the killing in Iraq continues and, in some ways, gets worse.

The Democrats' supplemental budget bill provides funding to continue the Iraq war, while setting a controversial date to end it, and there is disagreement on its strategic impact. They can neither raise the "mission accomplished" banner nor promise to do so in the near future - not even after Bush's term of office expires. So, how do frustrated Iraqis and Arabs make sense of such a Democratic alternative?

The vast majority of Arabs want US troops to leave Iraq sooner rather than later. According to a recent survey conducted between late February and early March in five pro-US Arab countries, namely Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Lebanon, and released in Washington, DC March 28 by the Arab American Institute and polling firm Zogby International, 68 percent of Saudi respondents said they considered Washington's influence in Iraq as negative, 83 percent felt similarly in Egypt, and 96 percent concurred in Jordan. In two earlier surveys in late November and early December 2006, also conducted by Zogby International in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco found not only that Washington's standing in the Arab world had hit rock bottom, but also that Iran was the principal beneficiary.

Nearly three out of every four respondents in Egypt and Jordan said they favored an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, while large numbers in the other three countries favored that option over a pullout contingent on Iraq's unity and stability being assured, and over maintaining current US troop numbers or increasing them, as the Bush administration is currently doing. Indeed, support for the latter two options was less than 10 percent in every country except Saudi Arabia. In addition, 47 percent of Jordanian and 38 percent of Egyptian respondents said they found the prospect of a permanent US occupation of Iraq more troubling than its partition, the spread of its civil war, or the strengthening of Iran.

Similarly, 57 percent of Americans support a withdrawal from Iraq according to a recent Newsweek poll, and the findings from the Pew Research Center last week said 59 percent of Americans supported a withdrawal deadline.

The growing public opposition in the United States to the war, the Democrats' electoral victory on an exit platform that led to their control of Congress, and the US debate on the deadlines for an Iraq withdrawal are all public knowledge in Iraq as well as in Arab countries. However, the Democratic "alternative" to Bush's strategy has yet to make its impact felt in a way that can improve the US' image among Arabs; the Democrats' course of action even has the potential to blacken America's reputation further if and when it undergoes more scrutiny.

For one thing, would the Democrats' alternative end the US occupation? So far, nothing is concrete and on record to indicate it would. Would it end the civil war? On the contrary, it would make it worse as all statements by Democrat leaders point only to a "military redeployment" to extricate their troops out of harm's way. How could a sectarian ruling elite - itself an integral part of the Shiite-Sunni divide - end sectarian strife on its own when it is unable to do so with the combined might of US-Iraqi forces? Moreover, is this so-called alternative essentially different from the Republicans' strategy? On the unity of Iraq, oil, the long-term US military presence, the civil war, and the "benchmarks" set for the new Iraqi leadership, both Democrat and Republican Iraq strategies are essentially the same. The two parties' looming showdown over Iraq combat operations deadlines will neither offer a countdown to the end of the Bush era in Iraq nor herald an end to the US' influence in the country.

True, Congress voted 218 to 212 March 23 to stop paying for US combat operations in Iraq as of August 31, 2008; four days later, the Senate voted 50 to 48 for a pullout deadline March 31, 2008. The narrow margin of the two votes emboldened Bush to confirm he will veto both. Congress obviously doesn't have the two-thirds majority necessary to override his veto. It is almost certain, therefore, that Bush is going to keep his combat troops in Iraq for as long as he wants - or at least until the deadline set by the US constitution for his own departure, January 20, 2009.

Only then will the Bush era end in Iraq - to make room for continuing the US era in the country either by a new Republican or Democrat administration, which will depend on the outcome of playing politics with more Iraqi blood. The US Congress will continue the deadline play after its recess for two weeks.

Meanwhile, Bush - defying US public opinion and his Democrat rivals - is sending more troops to Iraq instead of bringing some back home, in a race against time to achieve a military success on the ground to pre-empt a Democratic presidential victory next year; on their part, the Democrats are betting on his failure in Iraq to recapture the White House. Under the Bush administration's new strategy announced earlier this year, the Pentagon has increased force levels in Iraq by about 30,000 troops. Thus, the United States currently has about 145,000 troops deployed in the country.

But it would hardly have escaped Arab observers that the Democrat-approved $124-billion supplemental funding was more than Bush himself had requested. "We gave him more than he asked for, we gave him every dime that he asked for," said House Majority Whip Democrat James E. Clyburn. In addition, the Senate March 27 vote on a withdrawal plan was nonbinding on the president. Democrats only require Bush to seek congressional approval before extending the occupation and spending new funds to do so. All these factors effectively empower Bush to continue his bloody war for at least one more year, until the eve of the next presidential election; the Democratic leadership is expected merely to appear to oppose the war while continuing to fund it.

Arab observers, especially Iraqis, have equally noticed that the Democrats have adopted the same benchmarks as those laid out by Bush for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki. The House bill of March 23 mandates these benchmarks for the Iraqi government. If the Maliki administration fails to meet those benchmarks, US troops would be withdrawn at an earlier date. These benchmarks and both parties' consensus on them can only be interpreted as a bipartisan decision to empower the pro-US ruling Iraqi coalition to serve as Washington's proxy in combating the local anti-occupation insurgency and terrorism, which boils down to nothing less than a decision to "Iraq-ize" the war, forgetting that the "Vietnamization" failed to save the US in the Vietnam war.

"Iraq must take responsibility for its own future, and our troops should begin to come home," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. The difference is only one of approach. Democrats seek to extricate US troops from Iraq's civil war militarily by pulling them out of inhabited areas and assigning their mission to Iraqis and their diplomatic allies - engaging regional powers, particularly Syria and Iran. Republicans want the US troops to enforce security first and install their Iraqi representatives in stabilized urban centers before redeploying.

A second Bush-appointed and Democrat-adopted benchmark that the Maliki government must meet concerns Iraq's oil industry and Iraq's multibillion-dollar oil revenues. Both parties agree that the new Iraqi oil law should be adopted this year to favor investing foreign oil companies with 70 percent of oil revenue to recoup their initial outlay; such companies can then reap 20 percent of the profit without any tax or other restrictions on their transfers abroad. Both parties seek to distribute the oil revenues on an ethnic and sectarian basis in accordance with the new draft hydrocarbon law. The Democrats had proposed that by July 1, 2007 Bush should certify that progress is being made on these issues or US "withdrawal" would begin within 180 days. The widespread Iraqi opposition to this law is a major contributing factor to the civil war.

On maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity and unity there is also a Democrat-Republican consensus on "federalism" - itself another cause of the civil war. Joe Biden, the Senate's top Democrat on foreign relations matters and a 2008 presidential hopeful, envisions an Iraqi "confederation" and not an Iraqi republic. "On Iraq, there is a Democratic alternative. And the bottom line of the alternative is that we're going to have to figure out how this president or the next president, whoever it is, how long it goes, turns around and makes sure there's more autonomy for each of the sectors that are there, the [Sunnis, the Shiites], and the Kurds," he said.

Meanwhile, Arab leaders during their summit meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia last month demanded that the US-sponsored Iraqi constitution stipulating federalism be reconsidered since it adversely affects Iraqi national unity and the Arab identity of the country.

Similarly, both Democrats and Republicans want a long-term US military "presence" in Iraq. The White House certainly isn't expecting to maintain 160,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely, but it is planning a long-term occupation anchored in what the Pentagon has described as "enduring bases," continuing to construct such bases in the meantime. Democrats, too, are on record as saying they want a similar long-term US presence in the country. The Senate resolution of March 27 provides for a "limited number" of troops to remain after the pullout date, to be devoted to training and to "targeted counterterrorism operations."

Biden had the following to say on this point: "I think we're going to be left with the reality of something the size of a brigade, somewhere in the region, to make sure that the terrorists cannot occupy territory." He added that the "least important part" of the recent Iraq spending bill is its target date for troop withdrawal. More significant was that "it redefines the mission of our troops from fighting in the midst of a civil war to doing what is rational for them to do, which is to continue to train [the] Iraqi Army, to deny Al Qaeda occupation of swaths of territory ... and ... for so-called source protection - protecting our own forces," he said.

Another presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton, who voted for the Iraq war in October 2002, said she would retain a significant residual occupying force to "contain the extremists," "help the Kurds manage their various problems in the north," "provide logistical support, air support, training support" to the Iraqi government, and to carry out larger geopolitical responsibilities like trying "to prevent Iran from crossing the border and having too much influence inside of Iraq."

Former Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim, who has developed a strikingly similar plan, estimates that 75,000 US troops would need to stay on. That's about half of the current force stationed in Iraq.

Noam Chomsky, interviewed February 9 by Michael Shank of the International Relations Center said that regardless of Democrat or Republican perspectives: "the point in the Middle East ... is that this is the center of the world's energy resources. Originally the British and secondarily the French had dominated it, but after [World War II], it's been a US preserve. That's been an axiom of US foreign policy: that it must control Middle East energy resources. It is not a matter of access as people often say. Once the oil is on the seas, it goes anywhere. In fact, if the United States used no Middle East oil, it'd have the same policies. If we went on solar energy tomorrow, it'd keep the same policies. Just look at the internal record or the logic of it - the issue has always been control. Control is the source of strategic power."

A successful conclusion of Bush's new strategy in Iraq war before the 2008 elections would very likely spell political disaster for Democrats; conversely, his failure could easily doom Republican electoral prospects. Many American analysts expect the civil war in Iraq to seriously shape the US presidential election next year. Both Democratic and Republican approaches simply seek to leave it to the Iraqis to fight it out among themselves, which will inevitably exacerbate the country's civil war. For Americans, it is the usual political power struggle. For Arabs it is playing out US politics with Iraqi blood for oil.

Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab Journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank in the occupied Palestinian territories. This commentary was featured on Media Monitors Network (MMN). Acknowledgement to MMN.

Commentary: Playing politics with Iraq blood for oil - Commentary - Middle East Times

Originally Posted by kozmar

Take 'em out is the ticket. All of them.

IMHO

Kozmar

Good point,

That was the intention before Maliki warned Sadr that he could no longer play both sides as U.S. was putting extreme pressure on him finally. We all saw what a two face Malaki is when he was protecting Sadr militia which was covering his a$$, now that he has been forced to give up his protection of Sadr, look what is happening, Sadr is showing his true colors as a trader, so I agree, he and his militia have to be terminated or chased to Iran where their alligiance really was all along.

Good luck and health to all, Mike

Originally Posted by tiffany

OORRRRRRR....What about two decimal points? 1500000...take the two decimal points over = 15000.00 at 1:1 that would be $15,000.00 ~ No?

I really like your thinking tiffany on moving the decimal points over. I never thought of that. GOOD ONE!!!

mewannapeg