Thread: Iraq/Dinar News. 09/05 to 01/14/07

I don't know if this topic is still germane, but I had Indira ask her brother to get a translation from their end of the word *Raise* that has been batted around . . .

After two days . . . he got back to us with the following . .

"IT IS MEANT AS TO INCREASE IN VALUE" . . .

In my mind this settles the *Lop / Drop / Increase* issue once and for all . . .

Best to all . . . RR

Originally Posted by clueless

but iraq is not NYC and 6 USD is about one weeks budget for the average iraqi and, as was pointed out a while back, that is very similar to what the US did with the cash tax rebate not too long ago.

Cost of living


The UN says 25% of Iraqis are totally dependent on the food rations that most of the population receives.
These provide about 80% of recommended daily calorie intake in the form of wheat, rice and beans. No meat, vegetables or fruit are included.

Petrol is heavily subsidised, but periodic shortages since the 2003 war have meant long queues at times.

Prices have risen since the invasion, but wages are also up dramatically – although unemployment remains high.

Consumer goods have poured into Iraq, with car ownership reported to have doubled since 2003 and mobile phones and satellite television spreading rapidly. However, in a 2004 UN survey, only 20% of households said they had any savings.
BBC NEWS

Originally Posted by archangel

I don't get it, the insurgents want the USA out of there country, we are not leaving until things are in order so why do these morons keep killing and causing havoc when all they have to do is stop the trouble making and were out of there.
The Iraqi Government is a joke also, they seem not to want to do anything but fight among oneanother, and get nothing done, while there citizens keep dying and starving every day, It's really becoming a @#$%^&* joke.
Get your shite in order already............whatever it might be just get something done.

Somewhere back in this thread is a news article about letters found in the ruins after the bombing where they thought they had killed 'the Egyptian', an Al-Quaida in Iraq leader (were doing DNA testing, didn't pan out- that one.) Those letters discussed how PROLONGING the American presence in Iraq was in their best interest.

If you're going to use logic, you have to use it from their point of view. Like any business, if you aren't growing, you're dying. Al-Quaida is in the business of fighting the infidels. Before the invasion, we were largely protected by the oceans. No, I would never forget 9-11, but that took YEARS of planning to pull off one day of killing Americans. A spectacular day, yes, but only a day. On the other hand, we made ourselves easy targets going to their home court. Now they have opportunities EVERY day. Not as many Americans, but they get the same play from our media every day for every downed soldier that they got for one day of 9-11. The fact that they continue to exist day after day despite our presence makes them heros to like-minded persons. Our being in Iraq has essentially given them a focus. There's no telling how long it took them to realize it - that they can't get rid of us militarily any more than we can get rid of them. The difference between them and us is that in the day-to-day perspective, we need to win; they just need to survive. And they do, which is bringing in new recruits and funding from all over the world. Stability, order, and god forbid, prosperity in Iraq ALONG WITH an American presence would be a huge defeat for them. They need to make it appear that the ongoing chaos is our fault. Hamas, Hezbollah, and similar organizations maintain the hold they have in their autonomous regions not only by talking smack about Israel, but also by supporting schools, hospitals, etc - INFRASTRUCTURE. Al-Quaida isn't a part of that process in Iraq, so all they have left is killing infidels.

Al-Quaida has no interest in the prosperity of Iraq at all, or the well-being of its citizens. The tribal leaders in Anbar province are recognizing this now - they backed them originally to get rid of the infidels, but when it turned to majority civilian deaths of one sect or another, they began to get wise. Not to mention that the closer they are to getting a piece of the Iraqi oil pie, the more it is in their interest to support the gov't and progress being made.

In a nutshell though, if Americans left Iraq, what would Al-Quaida and all the foreign insurgents in Iraq do?

A previous report where they are encouraging the oil companies to get established in the more peaceful regions and spread from there is exactly what will slowly push out Al-Quaida. Why blow yourself up for $100 when you can work for BP? The prosperity will spread quickly, though it might not be apparent. They have a strong family/tribal system, so as family members become more prosperous in the peaceful regions, they will share with those in the less peaceful regions, or bring them into a better region, whichever fits their family's purposes the best. Like immigrants sending money home here in the US; some might seem to live poorly, but it's by choice such that the extended family lives somewhat better than they would have otherwise.

Originally Posted by whatever

Right on Susie. Economics is a mixed bag of folly and fact. The Iraqi's know they've got 70% unemployment, they know the average Joe on the street is in a world of hurt, and the infrastructure has only begun to be repaired. But then we read articles like kids are goin to school every day, even with the threat of death upon their little heads. Budgets come and go, they get changed constantly. Give the everyday Iraqi some substance to feed, cloth and house their family's, and half the battle is won right there. The friggen' world wants to invest in Iraq, they have untold trillions sittin' under their tents. The biggest military power in the world wants and needs this little empire to thrive, and it will. The bureaucrats have to wake up and "git 'er done" My teenage son's can balance a checkbook better than any of those parlaiment guys, but we're finally applying more pressure and with any luck some housecleaning will be done if they don't get with the program.

It seems to me that there should be no unemployment in Iraq as there is so much work that needs to be done except for the fact that the insurgents keep blowing up stuff. I swear! they need to just disarm the intire country and the kill anyone the find packing heat.
I'm sorry folks, just very frustrated that the powers that be can't seem to get things under control over there.

Originally Posted by rodney ewalt

It seems to me that there should be no unemployment in Iraq as there is so much work that needs to be done except for the fact that the insurgents keep blowing up stuff. I swear! they need to just disarm the intire country and the kill anyone the find packing heat.
I'm sorry folks, just very frustrated that the powers that be can't seem to get things under control over there.

One of the big reasons people aren't working is the daily cost of living, it cost more to go to work everyday than they make. I posted this on IIF but, being full of myself, I wanted more people to see it.

I agree that the timeline I suggest is short however if something is not done soon (within the next year) We will not only lose American elections but any chance of establishing an independent Iraq. I think everyone would agrees that for Iraq to continue as a free, democratic society and for Iraq to become a peaceful nation they have to have at least one of 2 things. A.) A dictator who will rule by fear through violence and killing or B.) Wealthy prosperous citizens. You can see what option A will create if you look at countries like Iran and North Korea, this is the last thing any American politician (at least republicans) want. Therefore I think our only chance is option B. even if the US and our Allies have to back the dinar for 10 years it is the only acceptable solution. You can see it work in countries like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. There are many tribes in these countries that, if the people where impoverished, would be fighting amongst themselves. In my opinion we (the US) must do whatever it takes to make Iraq a wealthy as possible in as short a time as possible.

Originally Posted by haydenh

Hmmmm, Something keeps bugging me, I hope that some of you can ease my mind. What on earth are they using to determine what is going to be in the 2007 budget. They seem to have determined what they are going to spend, and therefore what they are going to earn. If I were running a business, and I knew there was going to be a price change in the near future, why would I got to the effort of putting big costings together that are going to change. Now I know that if they do it right, they can re-calculate instantly at a new rate, however it still puzzles me why they would bring out a big budget that has massive spending in it and costings based on the current rate. Now Iraq needs to outsource many of its resources like steel and everything else they need to build ports and so forth and those items cost a pretty penny. However if the RV goes through soon then the costings on projects will significantly reduce, anything that is being imported is going to cost less, and anything that is exported is going to produce significantly more. However this is assuming that all prices are based on the current value of the USD or EUR. It would be really interesting to see some of the details of the budget, what they are forecasting to see if this takes into account many of these things. They can’t work out what they are going to spend unless they know what they are going to earn, so have they used the current exchange rate. And again why would they do this if they know it is going to change potentially in the immediate future.

I would really like to wake up one morning and see everything has been done, but every now and again something happens that just makes me think “what the?” Like how much common sense do they really have, if people don’t roll up to parliament because they don’t want to vote on a law, and they can reasonably expect that to happen, why put it on the same day as the ones that they really do want to get passed, none of them will ever pass if they don’t have quorum. I may be asking too much, or being a little harsh, but it has been going to happen and going to happen and then something goes wrong. However these things going wrong are not completely so unexpected, they are not un-avoidable, they are things that are going to happen and they come up with the same excuses over and over again.

No I am not having a dig at anyone here coming up with excuses, so please don’t try and twist my words, I am having a dig at the members of parliament, the president and prime-minister who come up with reasons why it has not been done. Saying week after week we expect the FIL to be passed by next week, a week goes by and we hear sorry that day in parliament nobody showed because they didn’t want to vote on something else. If that were happening in any other country then I can guarantee that those people would not be in that position for very long. I have looked at so many things that show that what people are saying about 1:1 or even more are within the realms of possibility, I believe that it can and will happen. Will it happen tomorrow, I won’t hold my breath. Should it happen, well yes it damn well should.

Unless you have a lot of time on your hands it is real hard to keep up with all the posts that are being made on this board and in this thread.

But one of the major disscussions has been on how with out the reval the budget that they have been sharing in the news for 2007 just would not work. All the figures are just way to low, however with at least a 1:1 reval it would put the budget much more in line and workable. A good example of this is the 10,000 they are giving to each citzen. Without the reval it is only $6.00 USD, with the reval at a mimium of 1:1 it becomes $10,000.00 USD.

I think that you will find most of the posts on that subject in Part Four!

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Published on TaipeiTimes
Taipei Times - archives

Hundreds of police poisoned in Iraq

ARRESTED: Four cooks were held on suspicion of tampering with food at a base south of Baghdad, while elsewhere 11 Iraqi soldiers were kidnapped by gunmen

AGENCIES , BAGHDAD AND NUMANIYA, IRAQ
Tuesday, Oct 10, 2006, Page 7
At least seven policemen died and hundreds of others fell ill after suffering food poisoning on Sunday evening in the town of Numaniya, south of Baghdad, police sources at the base said on Monday.

It was not clear if the poisoning at an Iraqi military base was deliberate but police sources said they arrested four cooks yesterday suspected of tampering with the food.

But the spokesman for the commander of the Iraqi armed forces said no one had died.

"Three hundred and fifty to 400 people were poisoned, they were given medical treatment instantly and four were taken to a nearby hospital and everyone has returned to normal," spokesman Brigadier Qasim al-Musawi told a news conference.

But Lieutenant-Colonel Hasan Nima at the base said the policemen, from the Interior Ministry's 4th division, became ill only minutes after the meal and insisted at least 1,350 of the 2,000 policemen at the base were hospitalized.

The policemen, nearly all Shiite Muslims from southern Iraq, blamed several people, most notably a Sunni contractor, providing food for the military base where the police were "re-training."

But Qasim and other Shiites did not say they believed the poisoning had sectarian motives.

Meanwhile,. in a daring move, gunmen overran an Iraqi military checkpoint in east Baghdad early yesterday and kidnapped 11 soldiers, police said.

The gunmen arrived at the Sadr City checkpoint in a minivan and a car, police spokesman Lieutenant Thaer Mahmoud said. They seized all the soldiers on duty and made off.

It was not clear who kidnapped the soldiers, but Sadr City is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

In other news the brother of Iraq's Sunni Arab vice president was slain early yesterday in his Baghdad home -- the third member of the family to be murdered in the last year, a government spokesman said.

General Amir al-Hashimi, brother of Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi and an adviser in the Defense Ministry, was killed by unidentified gunmen wearing military uniforms in his home in north Baghdad, Brigadier Qassim al-Moussawi said.

Hashimi's sister and another brother also have been murdered in the last year.

Elsewhere, a suicide car bomber slammed into an Iraqi police checkpoint in Tal Afar, 420km northwest of Baghdad, killing one policeman and wounding 12, police Brigadier Najim Abdullah said.

Meanwhile, a Kurdish woman accused former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein of bulldozing her family into a mass grave yesterday as the ousted Iraqi leader returned to court for the latest hearing in his genocide trial.

The case continued following a two-week adjournment, despite a boycott by Saddam's defense lawyers, and heard more grim prosecution testimony.

The former strongman and six of his top officials are accused of ordering the 1988 Anfal campaign by Iraqi forces in which, prosecutors say, 182,000 Kurds were killed.

The woman told of how Iraqi forces attacked her village in northern Iraq region in April 1988 when she was 13 years old and rounded up members of her family, including her brother and his wife and children.

"I know what happened to my family. They were buried alive," she told the court. The prosecutor said that her relatives' identity cards had been found at a mass grave near Hadhar, in northern Iraq.

I guess they ran out of Dinar to buy IEDs and bullets

U.S. gains in parts of Iraq in jeopardy
2006/10
New Hope Courier

By ANTONIO CASTANEDA, Associated Press Writer 11 minutes ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - For months, soldiers from the 172nd Stryker Brigade fought in riverside towns of western Iraq , trying to clamp off the flow of foreign fighters and suicide bombers that commanders said were terrorizing Baghdad. Now hundreds of these same U.S. soldiers have been sent to deal with what U.S. officials say is an even greater threat — rising attacks between Sunnis and Shiites in the capital itself.

"Seeing the fruits of your labor lost is frustrating," said Capt. David Ramirez of the 4th Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, who was sent to Baghdad from western Iraq.

To secure Baghdad, the Army had to extend the tours of thousands of soldiers from two brigades, including hundreds from the 172nd who had already returned home only to be shipped back to Iraq.

Krepinevich said he had personally recommended drawing down forces in western Anbar to U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Vice President Dick Cheney ‘s staff.

Chiarelli insisted the troops were moved from the less violent parts of Anbar province.

Commanders in western Anbar have long complained privately that they do not have enough troops to control their area, which is about the size of South Carolina and includes notoriously violent cities such as Haditha, Rawah and Haqlaniyah.

Few dispute that the U.S. military had to do something about the deteriorating security in the Iraqi capital, which threatened to spiral into full-scale civil war.

About a third of the 102 U.S. troops who have died in Iraq since Sept. 1 have been killed in Anbar, according to Pentagon reports.

U.S. commanders have also said that the reshuffling of forces makes it difficult to build trust among civilians and convince them to cooperate with American forces.

"It‘s been like a transient area" in Hit, said Lt. Col. Ronald Gridley, the executive officer for Marine Regimental Combat Team 7.

"In a counterinsurgency," he said recently, "you can‘t throw someone in there for 45 days and expect them to understand the communities, the different tribes, the different personalities involved."

That would be like turning Iraq over to the Blue Beret buddies from the UN . . . .the ones in the pretty white APCs.

Originally Posted by ozizoz

I guess they ran out of Dinar to buy IEDs and bullets

Your post made me think of this poor fella.....

(Sorry Neno, couldn't resist.....!)

October 09, 2006
> The establishment of new financial system in Iraq
> The economic, political advisor of the American Agency for International
development, Dr. John Skamber announced the creation of a new financial
management system in Iraq, within the technical assistance provided by the
agency as part of assistance in the reconstruction and economic reform. Skamber
explained that Iraqis will be able to know the balance of payments and what the
Iraqi export of materials are and the amount involved in the state budget
through the new system.
>
> He said that the activation of work on the project will start with the
beginning of next year. Preliminary preparations were set for the success of its
application through unifying financial records of the ministries and the
continuous documenting of financial records.
>
> He added that such a system would raise the level of transparency and reduce
the level of administrative corruption through adopting the mechanic method of
payment by using open electronic communications of government purchases.
>
> Skamber explained that this system will enable government employees to receive
their salaries from banks, that have government accounts and this procedure is
new in Iraq, according to him.(Source)AlSabah
>