Replies to post #3232 on Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

If this is true, that the SOFA will not be negotiated in 2005, then Bush has time to put into effect his covert plans to arm certain factions and thus thrust the U.S. into a more favorable position.

Ethnic tensions are to be exacerbated in the Shi’ite south.
The Shi'ites would then require protection from the United States against the armed militias - the very militias the United States clandestinely supports. The US would be asked to stay longer and the Shi’ites would be discredited.

You can probably come up with some different scenarios.

Excerpt: #msg-5461656

In a highly clandestine operation, the US has procured Pakistan-manufactured weapons, including rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, rockets and other light weaponry. Consignments have been loaded in bulk onto US military cargo aircraft at Chaklala airbase in the past few weeks. The aircraft arrived from and departed for Iraq.

The US-armed and supported militias in the south will comprise former members of the Ba'ath Party, which has already split into three factions, only one of which is pro-Saddam Hussein.

[otraque]

<<Follow the money: US$24 billion funded by American taxpayers toward the reconstruction, plus all the rules that have been passed by the US that control Iraq's economy, plus the military occupation.>> Gees what are we taxpayers for but the grand plan of the selfless progression on moving peace justice and american way to the world, right?
We must expand business to keep up the CEO theft of america.
More money for the management less money for the employess this the Democratic way, make the rich richer as fast as possible let the suckers that follow them eat at McDonalds and thank GAWD they are an american.
Of 179 reporting large firms thus far this year, the AVERAGE pay for a CEO is NOW over 9million dollars a year.
CEOs at four companies where employess are being asked to accept cuts in their Pension, the CEOs will have on retirement an average annual pension on 2 million dollars a year.
These pensions have been guaranteed and are in locked trusts that the company can not touch.
The rate of pay of CEOs has continued rising since the scandals.
CEOs in U.S. average pay compared to the average employees pay is roughly 400-1!!!!
Employees pay is, compared to 1970s adjusted to inflation is slightly less than they made in the 70s.
In the 70s the CEO to employee pay ratio was about 10-1 as is the ratio now in Japan.

Do i live in the country with biggest suckers in history or what?
They are getting robbed blind and they are too damned dumb or passive to care.
Ah, what's that sound i hear ah its the gaseous belch of "Truth, Justice and The American Way", it stinks, one turns in disgust at the fetid rotteness of, idealisms now but the rancid substance the powerful use to manipulate the mental slaves that have lost all capacity to think for themselves.
Is China any better--no.
The gap between the have and have nots widening rapidly, the vast peasant population primary function now seems to be to accept that China will unload all the massive chemical waste where they the poor live and watch them get diseases and poorer and poorer.
I think Thelma and Louise had the answer.

[Amaunet]

Adel Abdul-Mahdi chosen as one of Talabani's two vice presidents.



Abdel Mahdi, currently the finance minister and a member of the SCIRI, remains a strong contender for prime minister, alongside Ibrahim al-Jafaari of Da'wa.

On December 22, Mahdi - with US Under Secretary of State Alan Larson by his side - told the National Press Club in Washington in so many words, and to the delight of corporate US oil majors, that a new oil law would privatize Iraq's oil industry. The new law would allow investment in both downstream and "maybe even upstream" operations, meaning foreigners could become de facto owners of Iraqi oilfields. No wonder Mahdi has been touted by US corporate media as the next best candidate for prime minister after "the Americans' man", former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) asset and current Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
#msg-5948379

-Am


Kurdish Leader Named President in Iraq

Updated 10:01 AM ET April 6, 2005

The Iraqi parliament chose Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as the country's new interim president Wednesday, reaching out to a long-repressed minority and bringing the country closer to its first democratically elected government in 50 years.

Ousted members of the former regime including toppled leader Saddam Hussein were shown the announcement on televisions in their prison cells, Iraqi officials said.

Adel Abdul-Mahdi, a Shiite, and interim President Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni Arab, were chosen as Talabani's two vice presidents. After weeks of negotiations, the three candidates received 227 votes. Thirty ballots were left blank.

The announcement drew applause, and many lawmakers crowded around Talabani to congratulate him.

"This is the new Iraq, where no sect or minority controls the whole country," parliament speaker Hajim al-Hassani said. "It is an Iraq where all the people are unified."

Talabani said he would work to improve security in his troubled nation, and he called on neighboring countries to help in the fight by preventing foreign insurgents from crossing into Iraq.



"Our people are patient," he said. "But there's a limit to their patience."

Before the session began, Hussain al-Shahristani of the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance said the choice of Talabani reflected efforts to represent the nation's diverse ethnic and religious groups in the new leadership.

"We agreed on Talabani because of his qualities and patriotic history," he said, adding that Talabani would be sworn in Thursday.

The Kurdish-led coalition in parliament won 75 of the 275 seats in the Jan. 30 elections. Kurds make up 20 percent of the country's 26 million people; Shiites make up 60 percent and the Sunni Arabs are roughly 15 to 20 percent.

Human Rights Minister Bakhtiyar Amin told The Associated Press that lawmakers had asked that Saddam and other jailed members of his former government be shown the process. "There will be televisions there, and they will be seeing it today," he said.

Saddam, captured in December 2003, has been in custody with several of his top aides at a U.S.-guarded detention facility. U.S. military officials declined to comment.

"This is a very important session because this is the first time in Iraq's history that the president and his deputies are elected in a legitimate and democratic way by the Iraqi people," interim Vice President Rowsch Nouri Shaways said. "That's why the Iraqi government thought it would be beneficial that the former dictator see this unique process."

The interim National Assembly must write a permanent constitution by Aug. 15. The constitution, along with elections for a permanent government scheduled for December, are central parts of U.S. plans for an eventual pullout of American troops.

For now, the fighting goes on. The U.S. military said in a statement Wednesday that a Task Force Baghdad soldier was killed a day earlier when his patrol was hit by a bomb and attacked by insurgent gunmen. Four other U.S. service members were killed Monday and Tuesday in an upsurge in violence, the military said.

In videos posted Tuesday on militant Web sites, a man in his 20s identified as Iraqi soldier Jassim Mohammed Hussein Mahdi was beheaded for working with the U.S.-allied government while another man, Hussein Taha Qassim, identified as a police informer, was shot.

The authenticity of the tapes, said to have been posted on Web sites by the militant groups al-Qaida in Iraq and Ansar al-Sunnah Army, could not immediately be verified. Al-Qaida in Iraq has claimed responsibility for beheading numerous Western hostages and members of the Iraqi security forces. Ansar al-Sunnah has claimed to have kidnapped and killed several foreigners.



http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pri&dt=050406&cat=frontpage&st=frontpageap200504....