Say Anything Blog

BAGHDAD — Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.

There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract. The Bush administration has said that the war was necessary to combat terrorism. It is not clear what role the United States played in awarding the contracts; there are still American advisers to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.

The US has accepted that foreign contractors in Iraq will no longer have immunity from Iraqi law under a new security agreement now under negotiation, says the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari.

Mr Zebari, speaking to The Independent in Washington, said that if there was a further incident like the one in which 17 Iraqis were killed by workers from the Blackwater security company in Baghdad last September, the Iraqis would arrest and punish the contractors held responsible.

The American concession would have a serious effect in Iraq, where there are an estimated 160,000 foreign contractors, many of them heavily armed security personnel. The contractors, who outnumber the 145,000-strong US Army in the country, have become a vital if much-resented part of the military machine in Iraq.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The decision to authorize harsh interrogations including waterboarding was pushed “from the top down,” a former top State Department official testified Wednesday.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell in President Bush’s first term, said six key officials “colluded” to develop a legal rationale for allowing detainees to be subjected to harsh treatment.

Wilkerson named Alberto Gonzales — who was Bush’s legal counsel at the time and later became attorney general — as well as John Yoo and Jay Bybee at the Department of Justice, William J. Haynes and Douglas Feith at the Department of Defense, and David Addington, who was Vice President Dick Cheney’s legal counsel at the time.

“I think they all participated initially in developing this legal opinion for a finding the president had probably signed with regard to the CIA, and it gravitated or migrated over to the Defense Department,” Wilkerson testified before the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties.

WASHINGTON — The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing “war crimes” and called for those responsible to be held to account.

The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who’s now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.

“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

Taguba, whose 2004 investigation documented chilling abuses at Abu Ghraib, is thought to be the most senior official to have accused the administration of war crimes. “The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture,” he wrote.

A White House spokeswoman, Kate Starr, had no comment.

Nobody is yet calling John McCain a “flip-flopper”. [?????] But the Republican nominee’s increasingly finely balanced efforts to shore up his support among the shrinking Republican base while reaching out to independents is starting to fire up the critics.

On Tuesday morning, he launched an advertisement reminding voters of his repeated clashes with President George W. Bush over climate change, which Mr McCain believes is real and requires urgent action.

In the afternoon, he delivered a speech to the oil industry in Houston, calling for a lifting of the moratorium on offshore drilling in order to reduce petrol prices.

Mr McCain’s shift on offshore drilling – which contrasts with his strong support for upholding the moratorium in his 2000 bid for the Republican nomination – could further chip away at his reputation for being a “straight talker”.

Some even compare his shifting stances with those of John Kerry, the 2004 ­Democratic candidate, who was skewered by Mr Bush for his contortions over the Iraq war.

“John McCain was against Mr Bush’s tax cuts before he was for them, and now he is in favour of offshore drilling after he was against it,” says Thomas Mann at the Brookings Institution think-tank. “If Senator McCain continues to try to appeal to the base and to the centre simultaneously in this way, then his straight-talk brand is going to suffer.”

KBR overcharged the U.S. Navy for providing meals to workers and service personnel in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, according to a Pentagon audit.

The Pentagon Inspector General said he could find no documentation in Navy contracting files to back up KBR claims it paid fair and reasonable prices to subcontractors that served meals in New Orleans.

“The prices KBR agreed to pay were greatly inflated,” the 86-page audit said.

“The Navy paid approximately $4.1 million for meals and services we calculate should have cost $1.7 million, more than a $2.3 million difference,” said the audit, signed by Assistant Inspector General for Acquisition Management Richard Jolliffe.

KBR paid for 227,500 meals over a 34-day period, yet the subcontractors served only 113,654, fewer than half, and the remaining meals were discarded, the audit said. It recommended the Navy demand a refund from KBR of at least $1.4 million.

The overcharges were one element of mismanagement by Houston-based KBR, of three Navy contracts valued at $229 million for cleanup and restoration of Navy facilities damaged after Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and Katrina in 2005, the audit said.

Altogether, the audit requested that the Navy seek refunds of at least $8.5 million for “inappropriate” payments to KBR.

KBR spokeswoman Heather Browne said “KBR does not agree with many of the conclusions contained in the report.”

WASHINGTON —  Military lawyers warned against the harsh detainee interrogation techniques approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2002, contending in separate memos weeks before Rumsfeld’s endorsement that they could be illegal, a Senate panel has found.

The investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee also has confirmed that senior administration officials, including the Pentagon’s then-general counsel William “Jim” Haynes, sought the help of military psychologists early on to devise the more aggressive methods — which included the use of dogs, making a detainee stand for long periods of time and forced nudity, according to officials familiar with the findings.

...Rumsfeld’s December 2002 approval of the aggressive interrogation techniques and later objections by military lawyers have been widely reported. But the November protests by service lawyers had not, and the interest by Pentagon civilians in military psychologists has surfaced only piecemeal.

...Rumsfeld later rescinded his own memo and issued new guidance in April 2003. Mora was among those military lawyers who logged objections to the administration’s treatment of detainees in that 2002 and 2003 timeframe, according to a February 2006 article in The New Yorker. In a July 2004 memo, shortly after images surfaced of abuses at Abu Ghraib, Mora detailed his 2 1/2-year effort to halt a policy that he said was illegal and cruel.

KABUL, Afghanistan — American soldiers herded the detainees into holding pens of razor-sharp concertina wire, the kind that’s used to corral livestock.

The guards kicked, kneed and punched many of the men until they collapsed in pain. U.S. troops shackled and dragged other detainees to small isolation rooms, then hung them by their wrists from chains dangling from the wire mesh ceiling.

Former guards and detainees whom McClatchy interviewed said Bagram was a center of systematic brutality for at least 20 months, starting in late 2001. Yet the soldiers responsible have escaped serious punishment.

...Nazar Chaman Gul, an Afghan who was held at Bagram for more than three months in 2003, said he was beaten about every five days. American soldiers would walk into the pen where he slept on the floor and ram their combat boots into his back and stomach, Gul said. “Two or three of them would come in suddenly, tie my hands and beat me,” he said.

When the kicking started, Gul said, he’d cry out, “I am not a terrorist,” then beg God for mercy. Mercy was slow in coming. He was shipped to Guantanamo around the late summer of 2003 and imprisoned there for more than three years.

According to Afghan officials and a review of his case, Gul wasn’t a member of al Qaida or of the extremist Taliban regime that ran Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. At the time he was detained, he was working as a fuel depot guard for the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

...The eight-month McClatchy investigation found a pattern of abuse that continued for years. The abuse of detainees at Bagram has been reported by U.S. media organizations, in particular The New York Times, which broke several developments in the story. But the extent of the mistreatment, and that it eclipsed the alleged abuse at Guantanamo, hasn’t previously been revealed.

Guards said they routinely beat their prisoners to retaliate for al Qaida’s 9-11 attacks, unaware that the vast majority of the detainees had little or no connection to al Qaida.

Former detainees at Bagram and Kandahar said they were beaten regularly. Of the 41 former Bagram detainees whom McClatchy interviewed, 28 said that guards or interrogators had assaulted them. Only eight of those men said they were beaten at Guantanamo Bay.

...

WASHINGTON - Republican presidential candidate John McCain admitted on Saturday it can be difficult at times to be proud of the United States.
“I’ll admit to you … that it’s tough in some respects,” McCain said when asked by a questioner at a town hall meeting how to be proud of the country.

“We have not always done things right and we mismanaged the war in Iraq very badly for nearly four years.”

McCain’s wife, Cindy, pounced on Michelle Obama, the wife of presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama, for saying in February that she was proud of her country “for the first time in my adult life.”
The Arizona senator said it was important for the United States to be more humble and inclusive.
“I think we can be proud of America because of what we’ve achieved and accomplished in this world,” he said.
“What we have to do is tell our friends around the world that we will be proud of America because of what we’re going to do.”

Sen. John Ensign of Nevada has one of the least enviable jobs this year. As chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he’s in charge of defending the 23 Senate Republican seats up for re-election (versus 12 for Democrats) in a chilly political environment for his party.

...Democrats are poised to increase their majority in both chambers of Congress, but while House Republican leaders still make optimistic—but unlikely—claims to have a shot at winning back a majority, Ensign is more pragmatic. “The chances of [Republicans] getting back in to the majority, obviously, it would be fairly miraculous,” he told reporters Thursday during a lunch meeting hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

Of the 10 most competitive Senate races this year, nine are for seats now held by Republicans. Only one Democrat, Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, faces a serious challenge in November. Ensign said his best-case scenario would be a three-seat loss on Election Day. “That would be a terrific night for us, absolutely,” he said. “I don’t want to slip below the four-seat loss. That’s kind of where we’ve set our absolute worst goal is to be down to 45 seats.”

...Ensign identified the 10 most competitive races in the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Alaska, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Virginia. Two — Virginia and New Mexico — are heavily favored at this point to flip to Democratic control. Asked if the NRSC was mulling walking away from these two races to focus resources elsewhere, Ensign was non-committal, but added, “You don’t waste money on races that don’t need it or you can’t win.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Says Security Agreement With U.S. at ‘Dead End’

BAGHDAD —  Iraq’s prime minister said Friday that talks with the U.S. on proposals for a long-term security pact have reached an impasse over objections that Iraq’s sovereignty is at stake, but held out hope that negotiators could still reach a compromise plan.

In his strongest comments yet on the debate, Nouri al-Maliki echoed concern by Iraqi lawmakers that the U.S. proposals would give Washington too much political and military leverage on Iraqi affairs.

“The first drafts presented left us at a dead end and deadlock,” he told reporters in Amman, Jordan. “So, we left these first drafts and the negotiations will continue with new ideas until the sides reach a formula that preserves Iraq’s sovereignty.”

The security agreement would provide a legal basis for the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq after the U.N. mandate expires at the end of this year. Failure to strike a deal would leave the future of the American military presence here to the next administration.

U.S. negotiators offered new proposals this week after Iraqi lawmakers expressed outrage over the direction of the negotiations, claiming that accepting the U.S. position would cement American military, political and economic domination of this country.

“Any agreement that infringes on Iraq’s sovereignty and its components will be dismissed and will not be acceptable,” he added, promising any deal would be presented to Iraq’s parliament for final approval.

“It is a negotiation process that will continue until we reach a common ground that is acceptable by the Iraqi and the other sides,” al-Maliki said. “So, I see no reason to be worried about the possibility that Iraq will be chained by agreements. The Iraqi politicians are aware of the importance of sovereignty.”

Glenn Murphy Jr. had a top spot in local Republican politics and was making a name for himself as president of the Young Republicans National Federation. But after a Young Republicans get-together last July, a young man claimed Murphy made a bold sexual advance on him.

Police reports said Murphy shared a bunk bed with his victim, a 22-year-old who had had too much to drink, and the next morning the victim said he awoke to find Murphy performing a sex act on him. The victim said he told Murphy to stop and pushed him away.

Prosecutor Stanley Levco said other incidents involving Murphy would have been presented as evidence had the case gone to trial. A Clarksville police report shows Murphy was involved in a similar incident in 1988, but no charges were filed.

Levco said he thinks that may have been another reason Murphy pleaded guilty as charged.

Criminal deviate conduct is a Class B felony in Indiana. If the judge accepts his plea, Murphy will have to register as a sex offender. Sentencing is set for June 30.

Murphy resigned his political posts when the allegations surfaced.