“Brendan, I was citing the official line from the Bushies on the political preconditions that have to be met. That doesn’t of course exclude the fact that they might be being disingenuous.”

Mark,

Oh yes, I got that. I was just commenting on it.

Western media hardly deviates from the official line about the oil laws being all about sharing between different Iraqi groups. PSAs are hardly ever mentioned. Nor are statements from the Iraqi oil unions. Nor is the amazing percentage (80% ?) of the profit the oil companies will receive for as long as the U.S. and Britain military can occupy the place.

As if that percentage issue matters anyway. The new oil companies themselves (e.g. Exxon Iraq) will be measuring output and the selling it to themselves (e.g. Exxon Cayman Islands) at the Iraqi docks. And again they will resell it to themselves (e.g. Exxon America) once it arrives stateside.

Gee, I hope they don’t spill any in the process. Otherwise how will they be able to calculate their taxes, and stuff?

But the Liberal Party should be very afraid of the election period proper, when Labor intends to campaign vigorously on Iraq.

I doubt it. There does not seem to be much mileage for the Opp. in trying to win votes off the Govt. by playing to its strengths. The LN/P lead the ALP on national security issues, according to Newspoll. The Australian reports:

Newspoll analysis showed John Howard opening a 20-point lead over Kevin Rudd on national security (50-30)

Latham kicked up a fuss about how bad the Iraq war was, and was going, and it did not seem to do him much good.

The ADF’s presence in Iraq was always tokenistic, done to pay premiums on the ANZUS alliance. Most Australian voters know this fact instinctively. But most Australian commentators ignore this fact intellectually.

Iraq war has mostly been a non-event as far as AUS national interests are concerned. It has not cost AUS all that much in blood or treasure. We havent done much fighting, mostly just own-force protection. It has harmed our reputation with the UN, but helped our credibility with the US.

I predict that Iraq-war will be a non-issue during the campaign, unless an ADF convoy gets hit by an IED or a patrol gets wiped out in an ambush.

And don’t forget that Sunni elements were the ones who provided most of the bombing, kidnapping, and murder in the initial aftermath of the invasion, that led to the current state of affairs.

All this may be true.

But in the welter of tail-chasing indulged in by apologists of Bush during the course of the Iraq fiasco is this overarching fact: The theocratic cultural revolution that has occurred right under the very noses of the soldiery of the only remaining superpower has ensured the hegemony of clients of Iran.

Is this really what the US sees as “a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with”?

If so then the Bush Clique is easily satisfied.

The Bush Clique could have achieved this with one thousandth of the expenditure of blood, treasure and credibility that they have squandered so far in Mesopotamia.

As if the Bush regime would care if any group in the Middle East was missing out. LOL

Brendan, I was citing the official line from the Bushies on the political preconditions that have to be met. That doesn’t of course exclude the fact that they might be being disingenuous.

And don’t forget that Sunni elements were the ones who provided most of the bombing, kidnapping, and murder in the initial aftermath of the invasion, that led to the current state of affairs.

It’s sad for Sunni innocents caught up in this. But, hey, it was sad too for ethnic German civilians in Eastern Europe in ‘45.

As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory� but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

Is this a bad joke?

Large parts of Iraq have been cleared of Sunni. More than 2,000,000 have fled the country. There are none left to kill.

As Tacitus said of the Romans: “They created a wilderness and called it peace.”

From the NYT’s op-ed pages, “A War We Just Might Win”:

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory� but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/30/opinion/30pollack.html?em&ex=1186027200&en=25372190b5db8e13&ei=5087%0A

And from the Guardian, an article titled “Violence ebbing. Wealth returning. Can this be Iraq?”:

And while in Iraq it has usually been the best policy to deal with officials with a strong dose of scepticism following the years of pronouncements of victory around the corner, for now at least there appears to be corroborating evidence that in the north, the war may be drawing, ever so slowly, towards some kind of close.

In Mosul, which once hosted 21,000 US soldiers in the city, now only a single battalion, in the mid-hundreds, remains inside the city, matched by an equivalent drop in attacks. And it is not only in Mosul that security is improving. The sense that things are getting better is reflected in Nineveh Province. In two years US troop levels around Tal Afar, once the heartland of al-Qaeda, have been reduced from 6,000 to 1,200.

The general trend for acts of violence - despite some spikes - also has been steadily decreasing. Indeed, until Jamil Salem Jamil detonated his human bomb there had not been a suicide vest attack in Tal Afar since 14 January.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2126636,00.html

“This is generally understood to mean a settlement of oil revenue allocation which would not squeeze out the Sunnis, laws which revise de-Baathification, an inclusive government, disarming militias, and so on.”

Mark,

the laws are meant to allow the control of all new oil fields by the major oil companies and the cancellation of previous oil arrangements, for instance those arrangements the kurds made with smaller oil companies.

Its all about PSAs. As for the Sunnis being locked out. The Anbar province has rich deposits of oil and gas.

As if the Bush regime would care if any group in the Middle East was missing out. LOL

[*ducks*]

Hey, don’t look at me. I never read those interminable threads.

That’s why I’d bet the house on a Rudd prime ministership.

fear of terrorism and national security.

And how effective is that going to be after the Keystone Cops thing with Haneef?

And of course Ratty is on the nose out in McMansionland.

But Iraq doesn’t count hard against Ratty.

And the mention of Iraq by the ALP provides Ratty with an opening to score his only realistic opportunity for victory — fear of terrorism and national security.

Threfore the ALP would be well advised to run dead on Iraq.

Check out some of the polling about the swing against the coalition in its safe seats.

The highly-leveraged folks hanging on by their shredded fingernails to their McMansion dream know nothing and care less about foreign policy fiascos.

I’m not sure that’s true anyway, and it’s wrong to think that this (perhaps partly mythical) group are the only voters who swing.