Thread: Archive News - Iraqi Dinar Think Tank - 22/06/2010 - 04/10/2010

Odierno : the political blocs may resort to re-election

Gen. Odierno said the political blocs may resort to the proposal for the parliamentary elections after a period of political stalemate

Odierno said that no new government is formed after about six months of the elections would lead to a worsening recession, based in Iraq and lead to poor stability and thus find the parties themselves forced to face new elections.

Odierno emphasized the complexity of this file in the chaos that Iraq is facing at the moment, Odierno predicted that the new government will not see the light two months ago at best.

http://www.wasatonline.com/index.php...7-54&Itemid=99

UPDATE 2-Halliburton wins Eni contract in Iraq

HOUSTON, Aug 31 (Reuters) - Halliburton, the No. 2 oilfield services group, said on Tuesday it won a contract from Italian oil company Eni to help squeeze more oil from 20 wells in the Zubair field in southern Iraq.

Oil producers and oilfield services companies, including Halliburton peer Schlumberger Ltd, are ramping up operations in Iraq, which is hoping to use its vast oil resources to rebuild the country.

Halliburton did not give financial details on the deal, citing a confidentiality clause. It described the job as a 'multimillion dollar' contract involving 'rigless' services such as wire-line logging, perforating and acidizing used to increase production at existing wells.

Work on the contract has already begun and the company's base is fully operational, Halliburton said in an email.

Eni sealed the final contract with Iraq on Jan. 22 for the 4 billion-barrel Zubair oilfield. Eni and its partners, U.S.-based Occidental Petroleum Corp and state-run Korea Gas Corp (KOGAS), set an output target of 1.2 million bpd. The consortium planned to invest more than $20 billion and accepted a remuneration fee of $2 a barrel.

The group agreed with Iraq to set the baseline production level at 183,000 bpd.

'Halliburton has made a strategic investment in our Iraqi infrastructure and the award of this contract, coupled with the recent letter of intent awarded by Shell and its partners, demonstrates that we have the technology and people in place to deliver in Iraq,' Halliburton Chairman and CEO David Lesar said in a statement.

The company, which has headquarters in Dubai and Houston, said earlier this month it had been awarded a letter of intent to work with a Shell-led consortium developing the Majnoon oil field in southern Iraq, one of the world's largest.

http://www.lse.co.uk/FinanceNews.asp...ntract_in_Iraq

Is This the Real Reason US Troops Can Leave Iraq?

President Barack Obama will address the nation tonight to mark what his administration is calling the end of combat operations in Iraq. And already scholars are revisiting how a war once compared to the Vietnam quagmirereached this point of tentative success.

An Iraqi man checks the authenticity of a 25,000-dinar bill before using it in a shop in central Baghdad.


The most intriguing theory comes from Peter Berck and Jonathan Lipow, academics at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Defense Resource Management Institute, respectively. In a recent paper, they argue that it was the Iraqi dinar, and its almost obscene appreciation, that played a crucial role in the decline of insurgent activity, ushering in the current period of relative peacefulness. "[The dinar] played perhaps as large a role as the Surge," Lipow tells AOL News.

Prior to the invasion, sanctions imposed against Iraq kept the dinar "unusually cheap," Lipow says -- so cheap that, during the first throes of the uprising against America's presence, foreign terrorists easily used their more lucrative foreign currencies as a way to recruit insurgents. Mercenaries in Iraq received as much as $5,000 (U.S.) per attack, the study says, the equivalent of three months' income for the average Iraqi family.Terror reigned.

But then the price of oil shot up. By July 2008, it had reached $134 a barrel, an increase of $107.33 from January 2004. This had an appreciative effect on the dinar. As did, frankly, the U.S.'s involvement in Iraq. The journal Military Reviewestimates that U.S. armed forces flooded the Iraqi economy with well over $20 billion in goods and services between 2003 and 2009. As a result, the dinar quadrupled in value, Berck and Lipow write.

This really hurt the Iraqi insurgency. When the dinar rose, the spending power of foreign currencies in Iraq declined; the Saudi riyal, for instance, buys today only a quarter of what it did in 2003 in Iraq, the study says. And so the insurgent groups in the country had to rely more and more on the dinar, which meant they had to find a way to keep their operations afloat using the domestic currency. The best way for the insurgents to do that was to "tax" the locals: basically, extorting and robbing them, and sometimes killing them for failing to pay up.

The locals didn't like that. And so, the authors argue, they quit supporting insurgent groups. Thereafter, the violence decreased: Average civilian fatalities declined from 72 per day in 2006 to 7.2 by the end of last year.

Berck's and Lipow's conclusions raise important questionsfor what happens next in the country. If Iraq got to this point because of oil prices and the economic benefits of heavy U.S. involvement, what happens when the price of oil is no longer $134 a barrel and less than 50,000 U.S. troops (and the money they represent) are in country?

Possiblynothing good. A depreciation in the dinar "seems almost inevitable," Berck and Lipow say in their paper, which was released in June. Indeed, it's already happened: The Wall Street Journalreported last year that Iranian imports are flooding the country, from bricks to buses to rice, because it is once more cheaper to import into Iraq. That means fewer jobs for Iraqis. The Journalquotes an Iraqi brick-factory owner predicting "bad things" will happen if he has to close his shop and lay off the young men who need to support their families. Berck and Lipow write, diplomatically, that what this means for Iraqi national security remains "unclear."

http://www.aolnews.com/world/article...q-war/19611389

Has the U.S. won the war in Iraq? If it has, who are the defeatists?

U.S. combat troops have withdrawn from Iraq, leaving behind a 50,000-strong force ostensibly to train Iraqi forces. Just 50,000 trainers! Imagine!

Both Iraqi and U.S. officials have hailed the withdrawal. News of the withdrawal is almost everywhere, but it is in fact “much ado about nothing”.

The media commotion, particularly in the U.S., is fabricated rather than real. It emanates from total ignorance, after seven years of a ruinous war, of the conditions in Iraq.

What is President Barack Obama going to say to the American people? Will he just say that the mission is over and forget about the blunders his predecessor committed? Perhaps he might say that his troops have emerged victorious in Iraq.

The current media commotion about U.S. withdrawal from Iraq might help Obama improve his image and standing in the U.S. prior to the House of Representatives elections.

Who will ever think of Iraqis? Will Obama stop for a minute and contemplate their conditions?

What kind of withdrawal is this when the U.S. leaves behind 50,000 troops in fortified bases in Iraq? The withdrawal comes following more than seven years of occupation which failed even to install a representative government with the means to have the country under control.

The U.S. might say “the mission is over” and that the troops have done their best. But the mission as far as Iraqis are concerned has not even started and many of them wonder if there was a mission to consider in the first place.

The way Iraqis think is totally different from what U.S. military and civilian leaders have in mind. Their talk of the day is how to dispel the fear that has gripped the country since U.S. troops landed in Baghdad.

Iraqis now think of their security, of their livelihood, of their wealth, their country’s future and the future of their children.

This is the only authentic document the Iraqis have as proof of U.S. invasion, occupation and now withdrawal: the U.S. has left them without security, without food, and without future.

In fact the U.S. cuts and runs, paving the way for Iran to declare victory. Iran has emerged the only beneficiary of the U.S. occupation and its withdrawal.

The latest U.S. move to address conditions in Iraq are laughable. What can U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden achieve in Iraq at a time U.S.’s mighty troops could do nothing?

Even if Obama himself comes to Iraq, stability and security shall not return. The reason is clear. Obama did nothing to rectify his predecessor’s blunders. Obama wanted to withdraw because he was not willing to help Iraqis create a real representative government that would have worked, with U.S. assistance, for a better future for Iraq.

http://www.azzaman.com/english/index...08-31\kurd.htm

Maliki : the next financial budget will give a keen interest in services

Prime Minister Nuri al -Maliki, said the budget would give the next financial interest in "severe" services, and in the forefront of electricity and compensated according to a statement his office."

The statement quoted Maliki as saying during his presence to compensate affected on the day of elections in the governorate building in Baghdad on Monday that "the current budget, the next will give a keen interest in the question of services, notably electricity and compensate the victims as well as the areas of education and building schools and water and sewage," adding that "it would be in priority The work of the next government and parliament."

Maliki said "It was supposed to be this step in all the districts and not only in Baghdad, but delays the law that the Government of National Unity in the House of Representatives took a long time led to that."

http://radionawa.com/Ar/NewsDetailN....765&LinkID=155

Two : political Iraqi oil has weakened national capacities and opened the door to foreign

Economist said that the policy of Iraqi oil was characterized by weakening of the national companies and "Show deficit" and seeking to privatize the oil sector was opened for foreign investment, especially through two rounds of licenses, while another felt "there is no" oil policy has Bashavip public opinion would lead to a waste of wealth The nation's oil.

According to the economist Professor Nabil Jaafar oil policy "marked since April 2009 trying to restore production to its previous level before 2003, but did not reach the ceiling of production due to mismanagement of the oil sector and financial and administrative corruption and the lack of major investments to modernize the infrastructure of the sector."

For his part, saw the oil expert Abdul-Jabbar Hilfi that the civil governor Paul Bremer, "The goal of the pre - to privatize the oil sector, but faced opposition from nationalist parties, trade unions and civil society organizations."

http://radionawa.com/Ar/NewsDetailN....764&LinkID=155

Economist warns of the repercussions of poverty in Iraq

Economic expert warned Tuesday Salhi proof of the widening base of poverty and attainment figures dangerous than current levels, especially since the reports of the Ministry of Planning and Development indicate that the proportion of the poor amounted to 23%.

Salhi said that "high rates of poverty in Iraq can portends complications beyond the plans for the development in the country, could hurt the efforts of economic reform."

He said that "the parties concerned to redouble efforts to study the causes of poverty through a strategy devised scientific methods in reducing the risk of poverty in Iraqi society," noting that "the escalation level diagram of the risk of poverty in the country may continue in the absence of implementation of the strategy set for it".

Salhi and stressed the need to "double the amount provided for the poor social segments through a network of social protection, as well as other segments experienced a slowdown in spending daily."

He added that "the government seriously consider the results of the survey conducted by the Higher Committee to combat poverty and showed the salient features of sites in Iraq and the concentration and the extent of inequality among the provinces, and urban and rural areas in the province".

Iraq had admitted in 2009 to form a higher committee to combat poverty by making a policy of seeking to alleviate the growing phenomenon in the country.

http://www.radiodijla.com/cgi-bin/ne...?id=2010-08-31

U.S. Defense Secretary : the time is still too early to celebrate victory in Iraq

Said U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Tuesday that the time is still too early to celebrate victory in Iraq with the end of military operations of U.S. forces in the country.

Gates said in a speech in Wisconsin with the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq does not say that everything is or will be necessarily well in Iraq, warning that recent elections have not yet led to a coalition government.

He said the violence was still aspects of daily life, and that al Qaeda in Iraq is defeated, but did not leave.

Gates said it was not too early for celebrations of victory or of the high esteem he said, adding there is still work to be done and the responsibilities there.

It is scheduled to announce U.S. President Barack Obama on the end of combat operations for U.S. forces in Iraq, seven years after the invasion, which is opposed when he was a senator in Congress.

http://www.ipairaq.com/index.php?nam...itics&id=29742

White House: Our partnership with Iraq would be a lasting partnership

The United States at the end of the combat mission of U.S. forces in Iraq today that the partnership with Iraq will be a lasting partnership.

The spokesman said the press on behalf of the U.S. National Security Council Ben Rudy told reporters that President Obama will speak in his speech tonight about a lasting partnership with Iraq, is believed to be in the interest of Iraq to control the future.

He said Rhodes could not clusters policy in Iraq from forming a new government is not a surprise to the U.S., but we call upon Iraqi leaders to move quickly to form a government that includes all the colors of the Iraqi political spectrum, stressing on the other hand we do not impose any deadline for the formation of this government.

And stressed that the Iraqis were able to maintain the Constitution and refused to sectarian war, adding that the United States are disillusioned and realize that the violence will continue.

Rhodes said that Obama spoke by telephone with former U.S. President George Bush on Iraq for several minutes without giving any details about the conversation.

It is scheduled to deliver a President Barack Obama's speech at a military base in Texas on the occasion of the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq.

http://www.ipairaq.com/index.php?nam...itics&id=29739

A source in Iraq : We will support Maliki's government if he abandoned his party

A source within the Iraqi List, the consent of the list to take over the leader of a coalition of law Nuri al-Maliki as prime minister on condition, giving up his party.

The source (of the Agency by news) on Tuesday: "After the American and Iranian Maliki, the Iraqi started to think realistically and resorted To the plan (b) after the conviction that access to the post of prime minister has become difficult."

The source added : that now that Iraq had no objection to Al Maliki took office, but fears that the Dawa Party, which they perceive as a holistic, and he would push on the promises that He shall give Maliki's office. noting In the case of out of Maliki's Dawa party, all members of the Iraq vote for it.

The source said : that Iran still holds a veto on the leader of Iraq, Iyad Allawi, which makes winning the premiership difficult. source said, to provide the rule of law presentations essential to the Iraqi list is that the composition of the government of the two blocs as the main and then share the other lists in the government. The second is the restructuring of the state and re- consider giving military ranks.

The source continued: Iraq still think about these offers, and that Iraq wants to win a majority government with political state of law and not the government enabled him on the basis of religious sectarianism. adding that the visit of Joseph Biden would have the final pressure Iraqi National List to form a government with the rule of law. The news indicated that the United States has submitted a proposal to the political blocs include the survival of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, in office for a second term, giving the head of the Political Council for National Security of the leader of the Iraqi List, Iyad Allawi, and positions of the sovereign function to the list Add to the Presidency of the parliament, and observers believe that the U.S. administration is seeking through its support of the owners puts the relationship with Iran, which is also supported.

http://www.ikhnews.com/news.php?action=view&id=1135