[…] price is high due to limited refining capacity. In 1980 there were 425 refineries across America: there are 176 today. His understanding of the oil politics of Iraq is good and he admits the rebuilding programme has failed. You may puzzle why Iraqi oil is a ‘prize’ while the cost of the war exceeds […]
[…] and interesting book but rather hard to describe because it contains so much. At its heart is Souza’s father, an Iraqi Anglophile, who became SIS’s agent in Iraq, and later in London. Using her firsthand knowledge supplemented by her father’s papers, Souza has created a classic of the espionage genre: I know of no […]
[…] beyond their control was facilitated by Gideon Meir, then with the Israeli embassy in London.() The triumph of politicians () On both sides of the Atlantic, Iraq has demonstrated the primacy of politicians. We saw opposition to the attack on Iraq from sections of the Anglo-American military, intelligence agencies and diplomats, accompanied by […]
[…] a whole generation of former lefts, lumping them together as ‘fallen liberals’. (3)Is there really no difference between someone like Nick Cohen (who supported the war in Iraq for what might be called principled reasons) and people like David Aaronovitch and Stuart Hall (who began life as Stalinist reactionaries) and Peter Hitchens (who went […]
[…] that it was Jellicoe who was the ‘risk’, resigning in 1973 when found to be, as they used to say, consorting with prostitutes. Tell me lies about Iraq The Iraq thing is about oil. If Iraq had no oil the US would not be interested. The US is going to buy or steal – […]
[…] August 1990, and in the run-up to the war itself, which commenced on 16 January 1991, there was considerable concern over possible use of chemical weapons by Iraq against coalition forces. A number of western political sources hinted at a nuclear response to any substantial Iraqi CW use, and it was widely assumed that […]
[…] and unwitting links to intelligence agencies’, Anthropology Today, 18 (6) (Dec 2002), pp. 16-21. ‘Un-American anthropological thought…’, Journal of Anthropological Research, 59 (2) (2003), pp. 183-204. Iraq Business Week examines the US military’s heavy reliance on PMCs (Private Military Companies) to help with the provision of essential support services in Iraq. In the […]
[…] provided legitimacy to the Bush regime’s worst excesses and made them an easier sell to sceptical Americans. Propping-up one of the most repressive and imperialistic regimes ( Iraq, Guantanamo Bay etc.) that America has ever had is probably Blair’s legacy to the world. Michael Carlson: It has been odd, as an expatriate American, to […]
[…] much has been learnt from history. With the Cold War over, and with a far less capable opponent, it may have seemed today as if war on Iraq would be an open and shut case without all the attendant risks the US faced in 1964. But what has really changed? One of the lessons […]
[…] is a wonderful thing. After the invasion of Poland, Suez, the intervention of the IMF in the 1970s, the arrival of Maggie Thatcher, the Falklands War, the Iraq War, there are always those who see an inevitability that may never have been there in the first place. So it is with the current problems […]
