Saturday, June 14, 2014

Iraqi Oil, US foreign policy disasters and the Iraq Civil War




The lion's share of Iraq's oil is in Shiite controlled central and southern Iraq and Kurd controlled northern Iraq.  Whoever controls Iraqi oil controls the wealth of the nation. When the US deposed and executed Sunni Saddam Hussein, and imposed a democracy, power shifted from Sunni minority control of Iraq and its oil to the 60-70% Shiite majority who won elections.  Iraq's natural ally is Shiite Iran with a 90% plus Shiite population.  In the middle east control of oil is everything.

With Iraq busting into a 3 way Shiite-Sunni-Kurd civil war, some interesting things are happening besides the obvious - Iraq is Barack Obama's problem from hell.

The Sunni uprising is driven by radical and murderous Sunni Salafist Wahhabists (Al Qaeda and other Sunni Islamist groups) with the backing of Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, a longtime US alley despite being the global kingpin of Islamist terror.  The US is faced an epic nightmare - support the same Al Qaeda and radical Sunni Islamists that birthed the idiotic US War on Terror or ally with Iran, a nation the US has vowed to destroy one way or another.

The geopolitical consequences of the situation in Iraq are hugely significant.  Oil prices are already soaring, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have become displaced and thousands of Iraqis have been beheaded by Sunni murderers.

There is no way that Iran won't step in to defend the Iraqi Shiites and their oil, much of which is very close to the Iranian border (see the above map).

To further complicate the already volatile situation, the Kurds have not only seized a major oil city in the north, they are loading the oil into tankers and fully intend to sell it in the open market, thus bypassing Baghdad. OilPrice.com follows oil and geopolitics and is an incredibly knowledgeable and astute observer.

What Do Ukrainian Energy and Kurdish Oil Have in Common? OilPrice.com
As the second tanker of Iraqi Kurdish oil leaves the Turkish port of Ceyhan bound for sale on international markets, Baghdad is furious and Washington is fearful of the implications for Iraq.....

Washington has dual concerns right now: Russia’s aggressive energy policy in Europe most recently actuated with the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula; and Iran’s growing influence in oil-rich central and southern Iraq, which Iraqi Kurdish oil could push over the edge.

This is what’s got Washington in a tither: The Kurdistan region of Iraq is moving towards independence, not so subtly, by exporting oil directly to Turkey, bypassing the Iraqi central authorities in Baghdad. If this leads to a conflict inside Iraq, it could push the Shi’ite-dominated central and southern Iraq—where the real oil is—closer to Iran, which is already wielding a great deal of influence. Losing Iraq to Iran definitively would be a major blow to Washington’s existing Iran policy, and to its hold on Iraqi oil.

Adding to fears is the spillover from Syria, which culminated on 10 June in Sunni insurgents seizing control of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city which also sits in the “disputed territories” dividing Iraq from Iraqi Kurdistan.

In the meantime, some 2 million barrels of Kurdish crude are now seaborne.
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera, a Sunni controlled Arab media giant, is attempting to rationalize the situation in Iraq, especially as it pertains to US foreign policy and Obama.  That the entire middle east region is profoundly jittery is an understatement as the Sunni world is demanding that Obama DO SOMETHING while the Shiite Iraqi government in Baghdad is asking Obama to intervene on behalf of the Shiites to stop the Sunni slaughter.  Baghdad of course is not happy with the Kurds but given the extreme violence of the ISIL Sunni insurgency (the ISIL is an radical Sunni Salafist Wahabbist group like Al Qaeda), the Kurds are the least of Baghdad's problems.

Kurds take oil-rich Kirkuk amid advance of ISIL insurgency in Iraq Al Jazeera
Iraqi Kurds seized control of the northern oil city of Kirkuk on Thursday as Sunni insurgents threatened to advance on Baghdad — two developments that further indicate that the central government has now lost large swathsof a country spiraling deeper into chaos and internecine violence.

Kurds have long dreamed of taking Kirkuk, a city with huge oil reserves just outside their autonomous region, which they regard as their historical capital. The swift move by their highly organized security forces demonstrates how this week's sudden advance by the armed group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has redrawn Iraq's map.

An Obama administration official said the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki last month secretly asked Washington to consider carrying out strikes against ISIL positions, but the White House rebuffed the request, The New York Times reported.

"I don’t rule out anything because we do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in either Iraq or Syria," Obama said Thursday at the White House when asked whether he was contemplating air strikes. Officials later stressed that ground troops would not be sent in.

Obama said he was looking at "all options" to help Iraq's leaders. "In our consultations with the Iraqis, there will be some short-term immediate things that need to be done militarily," he said.
Despite the fact that the ISIL appears to have achieved control of significant real estate, including the Kurdish city of Mosel in northern Iraq, the ISIL has yet to takeover any prized oil fields. However, Al Jazeera is reporting that the ISIL, which it considers an Al Qaeda splinter group, absolutely plans to seize the oil city of Kirkuk, here.

And that would be Obama's worst nightmare.  The US foreign policy choice is to ally with the ISIL Sunni Salafist Al Qaeda splinter group or ally with Iran to squash the Sunni insurgency.  While Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds and Turkey (borders northern Iraq) has a long history of brutalizing its Kurds, Iran also has significant Kurdish populations and has managed to keep the peace with the Kurds. The ISIL is probably targeting Kurkuk to test Iran who really doesn't want to be involved in a war with the Kurds.  The last thing Iran wants is to be goaded into a war that would give the US an excuse to attack Iran.

The situation is dire and there are no easy or painless solutions. The US invasion and occupation of Iraq unleashed a 3 way civil war, destabilized a once very stable nation, destroyed the Iraq economy, intensified the Sunni-Shiite rift and killed hundreds of thousand (millions according to some estimates) of Iraqis.  For what?  Ask the families of the 4,489 US soldiers who died in Iraq and the 32,0000 who were wounded, here.

Meanwhile, Obama is saying that he won't send troops back to Iraq but he is considering other options including air support (bombings).  But who in the hell is Obama going to bomb? The Kurds, the Sunnis, the Shiites?

In Syria, the ISIL continues to murder, butcher and terrorize Syrians, here. The US is so determined to get rid of Assad, who did nothing to the US, that it is supporting, arming and funding Sunni Salafist Wahhabist terror groups in Syria.  In fact, the entire Benghazi fiasco was nothing but a CIA operation that funneled arms to Syrian terror groups.

My Two Cents on Benghazi

Lies, Lies and More Lies: Benghazi is pure political theater as well as a cover-up.

Stone Cold Reality Check:  The US is governed by an elected crime syndicate consisting of banksters and the military industrial complex who OWN congress and the executive branch, and they constitute the biggest terrorist threat on the planet.




Friday, June 13, 2014

What's the Empire to do? Iran, Iraq and a US-Iran alliance? Geo-politics makes the strangest of bedfellows!!








Invading Iraq, a nation with a 60-70% Shiite majority, was one of the most monumentally stupidest things the US ever did.  Saddam Hussein was a Sunni strongman and really no different than any of the other psychopaths in the region that the US eagerly endorsed, bribed, supported, funded and armed. However, Hussein was no Sunni Islamist, he feared them and he kept them out of Iraq.  It has been reported that Hussein enjoyed drinking western whiskey and watching Godfather movies, activities decidedly deemed un-Islamic.  I don't even know why the US invaded and occupied Iraq except that the Bush Crime Family and the military industrial complex was obsessed with flexing its military muscle by waging war on SOMEBODY. In any event, my best guess for invading Iraq is that the American crime syndicate that lords over the District of Crime in DC was absolutely obsessed with destroying Iran, a Shiite nation with a 90% plus Shia majority.

To begin to understand the situation one has to first understand the petro-dollar.  When Nixon made the unilateral decision to destroy the dollar and its purchasing power by de-tethering the dollar from gold in 1971 via an Executive Order that bypassed Congress, the dollar became a petro-dollar.   But for the dollar to become a petro-dollar and maintain its world reserve currency status, the world's oil supplies had to trade exclusively in dollars.  Once oil traded in any currency other than dollars, the dollar would become toast and America would become just another bankrupt banana boat republic.

The cost of maintaining the dollar as the world's reserve currency came with a whopper of a price tag, a real compact with Satan and that deal was cut with Saudi Arabia and other oil rich Sunni nations.  They agreed to forever trade oil in dollars in exchange for having the power of the US military at its fingertips to advance the most vile, the most intolerant and the most evil form of Islam ever to exist - Sunni Salafist Wahabbist Islam - and Sunni nations have reportedly dumped over $100 billion into radicalizing Muslims everywhere, including Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia and many other nations with significant Sunni populations.  On a side note, Bill Clinton was tight with his Sunni masters, as is the Bush Crime Family, and Bill Clinton advanced the cause of Sunni Salafist Wahhabism in the Balkan by invading, bombing and destroying Serbia and other Balkan nations.  In exchange for his loyalty to advancing radical Sunni Islam, Clinton was rewarded with millions from the Sunni Arab world for his presidential library.  Also, Saudi Arabia is reported to be one of the biggest financial contributors to the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), here, which states "One of the Clinton Foundation’s largest donors is the kingdom of Saudi Arabia."

Back to Iraq.  It was impossible for the US not to know that invading Iraq and imposing a US styled 'democracy', complete with purple fingers no less, would result in Shiite majority rule.  Was the US and its neocon MIC so desperate to use Iraq as a forward base for invading Iran that it risked achieving the probable, namely pushing Shiite Iraq further towards its natural ally of Shiite Iran?  The whole thing makes no sense except in the context that the Sunni Muslim world fully expected the US to bomb and destroy Shiite Iran or even ordered the US to do it.  Bear in mind that those who control the world's reserve currency (the petro-dollar) also controls the world, US foreign policy, the Federal Reserve and the entire US government.

However, things began to unravel.  From the Sunni Salafist Wahhabist terror attacks on 911, the bombing of 2 US embassies in Africa, the bombing of the USS Cole, the London bombings, the Madrid bombings, the Mumbai bombings, the Moscow bombings, the Bali bombings and numerous other Saudi engineered Sunni terror attacks, the western world in general became horrified and experienced their WTF moment by implying "what have we done".

Iraq is in shambles and that's no surprise because it's been a fictitious nation ever since British aristocrat Gertrude Bell galloped through the region as the female Lawrence of Arabia and literally drew Iraq's borders with a pencil on a piece of paper and created for the British Empire modern day Iraq, complete with installing a British lackey on the throne.  Besides the perpetual Sunni-Shiite conflict, the Kurds are also victims in the never ending Shiite-Sunni-Kurd conflict.

Heck, even Joe Biden said in 2006 that Iraq should be divided into 3 separate regions, here.  But Biden's idea was insanely foolish because he still wanted centralized control in Baghdad and any centralized government in a nation torn by civil war and constant internal feuding is a guaranteed disaster.  And then there is Iraq's immense oil reserves so the fight isn't just about religious and ethnic differences, it's also a battle for control of Iraq's vast oil wealth.

The Sunni world is paranoid that the Shiite world, namely Iran and Iraq, will become the new kingpins of middle east oil and the Sunni world definitely wants control of that oil and will do anything to achieve that goal. Oil is wealth and wealth is power.  With the OPEC Sunni oil oligarchy already being challenged by Russia, now a major global oil and gas producer, OPEC and its Sunni chieftains are becoming unhinged as they rightfully perceive that their cozy cartel is threatened by significant oil discoveries in other nations as well as chronic Sunni-Shiite feuds in the middle east.

It's a good damn thing that 'bomb, bomb, bomb Iran' McCain never became president because, astounding, the unthinkable is being openly discussed - the possibility that the US might consider allying with Iran.  I know it's an utterly preposterous idea but the idea is surfacing.

Iran open to shared role with US in Iraq CNBC

US airstrikes to support Iranian Revolutionary Guard's offensive in Iraq? Russia Today

Exclusive: Alarmed by Iraq, Iran open to shared role with U.S. - Iran official Reuters

Iran Deploys Forces to Fight al Qaeda-Inspired Militants in Iraq WSJ

Now what?  Iran also supports Syria and Assad who the US and radical Sunnis have vowed to destroy.

Is it even likely that the US would consider ending military aid to Sunni Salafist Wahabbist terrorists simply because the fate of the dollar is at stake?

With Russia also emerging as a major oil-gas power, pissing off Russia by supporting the neo-Nazis regime in Kiev has driven Russia and a neurotic China to cut energy deals that will not be dollar dominated, a situation that directly threatens the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

As with any dying empire on life support, it grows more violent as its extinction is glaring them in the face. The US is accustomed to barking orders and having folks all over the planet just humbly genuflect before DC and comply.  But no more.  The barking dogs of the US Empire have resulted in absolute and raw hatred toward the US, its murderous wars, its bloody interventions, its foreign policy and its profound arrogance. Folks all over the planet are rising up and barking back and they are not content to just bark, they fully intend to bite the vermin that has been biting them for decades and sucking the life and liberty out of their people and nations.

For a recap of what is currently happening in Iraq, Drudge 6/13/14 headlines  provides just about everything you need to know about the current situation in Iraq.

BAGHDAD FALLING
Exodus from Iraq as chaos spreads...
UN: 800k refugees...
CHRISTIANS ON THE RUN...
Terrorists 'full-blown army'...
Medieval Sharia Law Imposed...
'Roads lined with decapitated police and soldiers'...
Iraqi government 'paralyzed'...
Army Collapses...
VIDEO: Thousands of soldiers captured by ISIS...
Iran Deploys Forces...
Americans evacuated...
USA Secretly Flying Drones...
ISIS terror leader released from U.S. custody in 2009...
Pentagon: Rebels may have captured military equipment...
PAPER: 'Worst case scenario'...
FLASHBACK: Biden: Iraq One of Obama's 'Great Achievements'...
Vets in Congress: 'What was point of all that?'...
Oil Soars...
OBAMA HINTS AT ACTION...

What is the Empire to do?  Ally with Al Qaeda and Sunni Salafist terrorists?  That's precisely what America has been doing for so long that it's ingrained as a foreign policy imperative, despite all the propaganda that America marched off to war to fight Al Qaeda and similar Sunni terrorist groups.  Americans are no longer buying into the War on Terror phony baloney talking points propagated by the government and its partner in crime, the US media.  Sane folks on the right and left fully comprehend that they were lied to and duped.

Geo-politics is profoundly complicated which why most folks avoid it because it involves an eternal quest for knowledge and truth, especially in  history and economics.  It's where history, resources, religions, cultures and empires have always collided. More information on these issues for those folks who do search for truth:

A Guide To Understanding the Middle East, Syria, The West and Oil

Why Sunni Islam is Crucial to World Peace and Crushing the NWO

Why Syria is Serious - It's Where Oil, Monetary Power and Religious Feuds Collide

The Making of the Modern Middle East

A Cruise Through History: Islam, the West and the Rest of the World

With Charity Toward None, A History of Israel

America's $2.3 Trillion Dollar Foreign Aid is Mostly a Defense Contractor Subsidy

The Cost of America's Wars - $3 Trillion, $4 Trillion, $5 Trillion, $7 Trillion, $8 Trillion, Going Once, Going Twice, SOLD