http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page.htmlRoving in the Red Zone
Back to 'Saddam without a mustache'
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There have been insistent rumors in Baghdad of a US-inspired "white coup" in Parliament to finish off Maliki's ineffective government and install Allawi as the new prime minister. To this end Allawi is even talking to the Sadrists. Ibtisan al-Awadi, a former member of Parliament for the Iraqi List, which has four ministers, is the negotiator in charge.
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"Saddam without a mustache" is convinced he's the right man for the intractable job. So is Washington.
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and this
US eyes still on the Iraqi prize
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The prize
The specific prize in Iraq is certainly worthy of almost any kind of preoccupation. Indeed, Iraq could some day become the most important source of petrochemical energy on the planet.
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It seems clear that what the oil law has the power to do is substantially escalate the already unmanageable conflict in Iraq. Active opposition by Parliament alone, or by the unions alone, or by the Sunni insurgency alone, or by the Sadrists alone might be sufficient to defeat or disable the law. The possibility that such disparate groups might find unity around this issue, mobilizing both the government bureaucracy and overwhelming public opinion to their cause, holds a much greater threat: the possibility of creating a unified force that might push beyond the oil law to a more general opposition to the US occupation.
Like so many US initiatives in Iraq, the oil law, even if passed, might never be worth more than the paper it will be printed on. The likelihood that any future Iraqi government that takes on a nationalist mantle will consider such an agreement in any way binding is nil. One day in perhaps the not so distant future, that "law", even if briefly the law of the land, is likely to find itself in the dustbin of history, along with Saddam's various oil deals. As a result, the Bush administration's "capture of new and existing oil and gas fields" is likely to end as a predictable fiasco.
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who gets the oil
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