02-16-09

Rothschilds' Sarkozy Romances Saddam Hussein's Kurdish Oil Partner and President of Iraq, Sunni Jalai Talabani

The Rothschild family is from France and owns a big part of the US banking system which it obtained by having Henry Flagler murdered. The Rothschild family financed Hitler and though the family is Jewish the Rothschild family is responsible for Holocaust I. The Rothschild family is in the process of manipulating a Holocaust II. The Rothschild family is probably the world's richest family and the Rothschild family is the most evil entity ever in the history of the planet Earth. If France makes a move then it is because the Rothschild family told France to do this, that or the other. The Rothschild family is the worst of Satan incarnate and when one says Above the AntiChrist, they are referring to the Rothschild family. When Jesus returns one of his main jobs will be to throw the Rothschild family is the Lake of Burning Sulphur.

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy first allegiance is to the Rothschild family. President Sarkozy and France are making it clear that they are on the side of Sunni and Saddam Hussein as the article states "French firms would not face difficulties because of their country's refusal to join the effort to oust Saddam." Also President Sarkozy is meeting with Iraq's President Jalai Talabani, a Sunni Kurd connected with Kurd oil and a round about business partner of Saddam Hussein's son Uday Hussein. President Talabani wants the Maliki government forced out of Iraq and an independent Kurdistan, and logic dictates Talabani is willing to trade the Rothschilds a big chunk of the Kurd's oil to see this happens. This is why Talabani and Sarkozy are meeting, to set up a plan to kick Maliki and the Shiites out of running Iraq and go back to Saddam Hussein and Sunni Baathist running Iraq. In Tom Hayden's new book Ending The War In Iraq (a must read), he writes: Talabani brags that the Kurdish town of Sulemaniya (the town Talabani used to run) now has twenty billionaires and 2,000 millionaires, that he spends an estimated half-million dollars for a week's hotel stay in Paris, and that he receives up to $1 million per month in discretionary funds. " Our courageous Kurd went on to say that there was a time when Talabani and Barzani were enemies. Barzani ran Erbil and Dohuk and Talabani ran Suleymaniye. Now, they are friends and each has profited nicely. Talabani is President of Iraq and Barzani, President of Kurdistan. Barzani's son-in-law -- who is also his nephew -- Nejivan Barzani, is the Prime Minister of the region. Nejivan was also the partner of Saddam Hussein's son, Uday Hussein, in Asia, a government oil marketing company.

Kurdistan oil money is the reason the Rothschild's Sarkosy is romancing Jalai Talabani, President of Iraq. The Rothschilds also want Saddam Hussein's Sunni Baathists back in power. Except for Iran, which is Shiite, the Mid East Is Sunni. A big benefit of defeating Iran, from the Rothschilds' point of view, is this paves the way to the theft of Iran's massive oil and gas supplies, but also a defeated Iran leaves a huge Sunni army and power base free to attack and steal Russia's Caspian Sea oil supplies for the Rothschilds . Don't forget that Barack Obama is a Sunni also.

But how big are Kurdistan's oil supplies? Big. Big. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=afn8J5LAR6KU&refer=home 55 billion barrels of oil are minimum estimates of Kurdistan oil Talabani is putting on Rothschild's table. At $100 per barrel that translates into $5.5 Trillion dollars. $4.5 Trillion dollars was the total amount of debt the US had when comrade Little George became President of the USA. Isn't a Rothschild directed France acting the way one would expect. The Rothschilds manipulate the USA to go to war in Iraq which has cost us lots on money and the lives of many brave men and women, so the Rothschilds can end up with billions of barrels and trillions of dollars worth of Iraqi oil. To make matters worst, putting Saddam Hussein's Sunni back in power takes the world back to where we were before the USA-Iraq War. Not to mention that attacking Iran will bring on World War III. Check out the photo. It is a huge oil well which has been deliberately set on fire to flare the well.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=afn8J5LAR6KU&refer=home

Kurdish Oil Riches Lure Wildcatters Unswayed by Deaths in Iraq
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By Kambiz Foroohar

July 2 (Bloomberg) -- A few miles outside the village of Tawke in northeastern Iraq, black smoke billows over the green hills as a 100-foot fire rages unchecked.

Najman Yousef, a former Kurdish guerrilla, inspects the scene. This blaze, unlike the attacks roiling the rest of Iraq, is a positive sign: It's burning the excess oil gushing from one of the first wells drilled since the fall of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein four years ago.

Yousef, who once fought off Saddam's Republican Guard in the mountains nearby, has given up his Kalashnikov AK-47 to work on an oil platform built by Norwegian wildcatter Det Norske Oljeselskap ASA, or DNO. Oil producers such as Canada's Western Oil Sands Inc. and Heritage Oil Corp.; Switzerland-based Addax Petroleum Corp.; Genel Enerji, a unit of Turkey's Cukurova Holding AS; and the U.K.'s Sterling Energy Plc are all exploring the region, which the Kurds have controlled since 1991.

``Before, I was a fighter,'' says Yousef, 30, who survived Saddam's war of annihilation against the Kurds. ``Now, I'm building Kurdistan, and the oil will help us.''

Yousef and the rest of the area's 5 million Kurds are sitting atop what the Kurdish natural resources minister and Iraqi government estimate to be 25 billion barrels of oil in a rugged stretch of land twice the size of New Jersey.

That's double the 12.9 billion-barrel estimate for Mexico's reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, and equivalent to more than 80 percent of U.S. reserves.

Extending Reach

The Kurdish territory encompasses three provinces, Suleimani, Erbil and Dohuk, which are wedged between Turkey on the north, Syria on the west and Iran on the east.

Freed from Saddam's regime -- which the Kurds say used bombs and chemical weapons to kill more than 180,000 of their brethren -- the Kurds are opening the door to outside investment. They're also weighing the risks of extending their reach into neighboring areas that have large Kurdish populations.

The prime target is the multiethnic Iraqi city of Kirkuk, which is 60 miles (97 kilometers) from the Kurdish capital, Erbil, and home to the second-biggest oil field in the world.

The new territories would give the Kurds potential reserves of about 55 billion barrels, or almost half of Iraq's oil. That counts 10 billion barrels in Kirkuk and 20 billion barrels in other disputed areas, Kurdish Natural Resources Minister Ashti Hawrami says.

`Lost Time'

Controlling those areas would mean Iraq's Kurds would have more oil than Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer. Expansion would also set up a confrontation with Turkey, which has its own Kurdish minority and opposes Iraqi Kurds' taking over Kirkuk.

``The Kurds want to make up for the lost time under Saddam,'' says former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce Franklin Lavin, who resigned in June. The U.S., which invaded Iraq in 2003, is trying to persuade construction and petrochemical companies to use the Kurdish area as a base.

``We want to encourage companies that are looking at Iraq to think about the Kurdish region as a possible gateway into the country,'' Lavin says.

Douglas Layton, director of Kurdistan Development Corp., an Erbil-based firm that promotes the region, says the Kurds aim to create a trading and commercial hub that extends beyond oil.

``Our goal is to be in a position to challenge Dubai,'' says Layton, referring to the Persian Gulf emirate that's become a financial and tourism center.

Oil Law Stalemate

Numerous roadblocks stand in the way of the Kurds' ambitions. In February, after more than a year of negotiations, Iraq's cabinet approved an initial version of a petroleum law. The Kurds benefited because the draft gave regional governments the right to manage undeveloped fields such as the one at Tawke.

The Kurds are the only group so far to take advantage of a provision in Iraq's new constitution that allows one or more of Iraq's 18 provinces to designate itself a region.

At the end of April, Iraq's Shiite oil minister, Hussain Shahristani, introduced amendments to the draft, called annexes, which allocated management of 93 percent of the country's oil reserves to Iraq National Oil Co. The Kurds say they ended up with fields that were commercially unattractive to develop.

The Kurds countered. Under their plan, 58 percent of Iraq's reserves would be run by the national oil company; the rest would fall to the Kurdistan Regional Government and other local bodies. The Kurds also want the country's oil revenue to be split among the regions based on population.

`Enough Money for Everyone'

Kurdish members of the Iraqi parliament, who make up about a quarter of that body, will reject the draft law as it stands, says Kurdistan Regional Government spokesman Khaled Salih.

``There's enough money for everyone,'' says Adnan Mufti, the speaker of the Kurdistan National Assembly.

As Iraq's factions jostle for influence in the new national government, Shahristani has warned the Kurds not to sign oil deals with foreign companies. In March, he said that even the agreement with DNO may not be valid because it hasn't been approved by the central government.

``All the contracts that have been signed either by the previous regime or by the northern region will have to satisfy the conditions of the new law,'' Shahristani said in Vienna at a meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Major oil companies are staying on the sidelines amid the feuding and escalating violence. Iraq's Interior Ministry reported that 2,123 civilians died in May alone even as the U.S. deployed an extra 30,000 troops.

Majors Stay Away

In the Kurdish region, a car bomb exploded outside the Ministry of the Interior in Erbil on May 9, killing 19 people. The area had been free from terrorism since May 2005.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe's largest oil company, says it's concerned about safety. Shell had stipulated three requirements before it would allow its employees to work in Iraq: free elections, a petroleum law and improved security across the country, says Adam Newton, a spokesman in London. Only one condition has been met.

``We were pleased to see that free elections led to the formation of Iraq's democratic government,'' he says. ``The security situation continues to pose considerable challenges to the lives of the Iraqi people.'' He declined to comment specifically on the Kurdish region.

U.S. companies are hanging back too. Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's biggest oil producer, is waiting for a petroleum law, spokesman Len D'Eramo said in a May 24 e-mail.

``If the Iraqi government decides it wants international oil companies to partner with them in developing their resources, Exxon Mobil would be interested in participating,'' he wrote.

Wildcatters Welcome

Rochdi Younsi, an analyst with Eurasia Group, a New York- based firm that advises on political risks, says big companies worry that if they enter the Kurdish region before a petroleum law is ratified, they'll hurt their chances of working in the rest of Iraq.

``Major oil companies don't want to damage their relationship with Baghdad,'' Younsi says.

For now, that leaves Iraqi Kurdistan to wildcatters such as DNO. The Norwegian company sealed two production-sharing agreements with the Kurdistan Regional Government in 2004, gaining a 55 percent stake in the two licenses. DNO will take 10-30 percent of the profits; the rest will go to the regional government.

Dawn Convoy

Magne Normann, head of DNO's Iraq unit, hired Great Wall Drilling Co., a unit of Beijing-based China National Petroleum Corp., to dig for the oil. DNO has 80 trucks standing by at the field to begin shipments to local markets. It's waiting for the national government in Baghdad to issue an export license to use an Iraqi-owned pipeline to Turkey.

``We signed our agreements before the interim government was in place in 2004,'' Normann says. ``We took all the political risk. There should be compensation for that.''

DNO is shouldering physical risks, too. Getting to Tawke from Erbil is a logistical challenge. Normann and his team of Kurdish and French engineers leave the capital in a convoy of three sport utility vehicles at 4:30 a.m. on a March morning. Before they go, they're briefed by a security adviser, who gives only his first name, Graham.

``If your team leader is killed, follow your driver,'' says Graham, referring to the person who's in charge in each vehicle. ``If you're fired upon, just drive. Do not stop.''

Signs of Wealth

After five hours navigating bone-rattling dirt roads, the convoy reaches Tawke. Apart from a satellite TV dish, the mud houses appear not to have changed in 100 years. There's one sign of incipient wealth: On a hilltop, streams of black, gooey crude oil cut through the green grass.

``The oil seepages were a hint that there could be commercial oil here,'' Normann says.

Later, at the site of the well fire, Normann almost skips with joy. After drilling, companies typically open up the well to see how fast oil is coming out. In most cases, there are no storage facilities during such tests, so drillers simply burn the oil. The blaze's intensity can be an indication of the oil pressure in a well.

At first, DNO had estimated the Tawke field held 100 million barrels and would reach peak production of 50,000 barrels a day next year, he says. Now, it appears that it may contain much more. The well that's burning, DNO's fifth in Tawke, has a flow rate of 12,000 barrels a day, 40 percent greater than a previous well in the same area.

``A couple of more wells like this one and we'll meet our target for this year,'' Normann says.

`Great Potential'

The company aims to produce as much as 30,000 barrels a day in 2007 from the Tawke field. ``The oil structure is huge and has great potential,'' he says. ``We still don't know how much oil there is.''

Iraq, awash in oil, hasn't lived up to its potential output for almost three decades. The country reached peak production of 3.7 million barrels a day in 1979, behind only Iran and Saudi Arabia.

A year later, Saddam attacked Iran. During the ensuing eight-year war, wells were bombed and Iraq diverted manpower to fight its enemy, the Iranians.

In 1990, two years after peace with Iran, Saddam invaded Kuwait, leading to the first Gulf War in 1991. The United Nations curbed oil development by imposing sanctions that prohibited companies from investing in Iraq. The sanctions stood until Saddam was toppled in 2003. He was charged with war crimes by the Iraqi Special Tribunal and convicted in November 2006. He was hanged on Dec. 30, 2006.

Doubling Production?

Today, Iraq pumps 1.95 million barrels a day, according to the U.S. Special Inspector General, which is monitoring the country's reconstruction. That's about half of its 1979 level and 27 percent less than its 2.6 million barrel-a-day production before the U.S. invasion. It's using just 27 of its 78 known oil fields. Only 10 percent of Iraq has been explored for oil, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Oil production could double to 4 million barrels a day within five years, according to the Iraq Atlas, a report published in May by Englewood, Colorado-based consulting firm IHS Inc. says.

Once the violence has abated, Iraq will need investment by foreign companies with technologies such as 3-D seismic imaging. With better equipment, reserves of 116 billion barrels could increase by another 100 billion barrels, the report says. That would make Iraq second only to Saudi Arabia in reserves.

`Gold Mine'

``The security situation and the absence of a petroleum law mean most oil companies will stay out,'' says Saad Rahim, an analyst at PFC Energy in Washington, which advises oil companies. ``Otherwise, Iraq will be a gold mine.''

The Kurds have been waiting for years to benefit from the riches. About 30 million Kurds live in the mountainous regions of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, making them the Middle East's largest ethnic group without a state of their own.

Most Kurds are probably descended from the Indo-European tribes that moved across Iran. They're ethnically closer to Iranians than to Arabs and speak an Indo-European offshoot of Persian.

Today, most students in Iraqi Kurdistan study English as a second language rather than Arabic, the language of the rest of Iraq.

The Iraqi Kurds have never accepted that they're part of Iraq. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the Kurds won the promise of autonomy in the August 1920 Treaty of Sevres. The pact was never ratified.

Ottoman Empire

Instead, France and Britain took over the Ottoman Empire's Middle Eastern territories. Winston Churchill, Britain's colonial secretary at the time, helped lump together Kurds, Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims in 1920 to create modern-day Iraq. When the Kurds and Shiite tribes rebelled, Britain's Royal Air Force bombed the insurgents into submission.

For the past 60 years, the Iraqi Kurds have been fighting for autonomy and losing. They've become political pawns caught between Iraq, Turkey and Iran, says Himdad Muhammad, a professor at Salahaddin University in Erbil.

In 1974, encouraged by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran, the Kurds rose against Saddam's Baath Party. The U.S. and Iran supplied weapons, money and advisers. After Iran and Iraq made up, Kissinger pulled the plug and the Kurdish insurgency collapsed.

``A Kurdish proverb says the Kurds have no friends but the mountains,'' Muhammad says. ``The mountains cannot betray you when their interests change.''

Chemical Ali

From 1986 to '89, Saddam launched the so-called Anfal campaign to punish the Kurds. His cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, better known as ``Chemical Ali,'' was in charge.

In one attack in March 1988, the Iraqi army and air force dropped poison gas on the Kurdish city of Halabja, near the Iranian border. About 5,000 people were killed. Al-Majid was eventually charged with using poisonous gas to clear Kurdish villages when he went on trial before the Iraqi Special Tribunal in August 2006. Chief Judge Abdullah al-Amiri entered a plea of not guilty for him after al-Majid refused to make a plea. In June, al-Majid was sentenced to death.

The Kurds rose against Saddam again in March 1991. The dictator's Republican Guard used helicopter gunships to crush the rebellion. Almost 2 million Kurds fled to the snow-covered mountains on the borders of Iran and Turkey. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees called the exodus the largest in the agency's 40-year history.

Television cameras broadcast images of people starving and freezing amid a severe blizzard, galvanizing the West to launch a humanitarian rescue mission, Kurdistan Development's Layton says.

Rescue Mission

The U.S., U.K. and France imposed a no-fly zone in northern Iraq to protect supplies of food and clothing. Iraqi aircraft were forbidden in the area. That effort, in response to the blizzard, allowed the Kurds to survive and to win back the three provinces they now hold.

``It was the worst snow in 50 years, and that saved their lives,'' says Layton, who worked for a medical nongovernmental organization in the Kurdish region 16 years ago. ``It was turning into a humanitarian catastrophe and it was live on CNN.''

Even before Saddam's fall, the Kurds were planning their own oil industry. In 2002, Jalal Talabani, then leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two main Kurdish political parties, invited Turkey's Cukurova to set up an oil unit in Iraq.

Taq Taq

Talabani's goal was to develop the Taq Taq field about 75 miles northwest of Suleimani, the Kurdish region's second- largest city. The unit, Genel Enerji, signed a production- sharing agreement in July 2002.

It took over the field in February 2003, a month before the U.S. invasion. Genel has since formed a joint venture, TaqTaq Operating Co., with Switzerland's Addax. The field has 400 million barrels in recoverable reserves, says Les Blair, TaqTaq's general manager. The company aims to start pumping 200,000 barrels a day by 2009, he says. By then, the field's reserve estimates may be revised higher.

``After the no-fly zones were instituted at the conclusion of the first Gulf War, the Kurds had a degree of autonomy but no opportunity to build an economy,'' Lavin says.

Now the economy -- and the Kurds' clout -- is gaining steam. In 2005, they elected their own regional president, Massoud Barzani. An army of 90,000 Peshmerga soldiers, named after the Kurdish for ``those who face death,'' patrols Iraqi Kurdistan's borders. No Iraqi flags fly in the region. Iraqi soldiers can't enter without permission.

`Uncle Jalal'

The Kurds are full participants in Iraq's national government for the first time, says Safeen Dizayee, an adviser to Kurdish President Barzani. Talabani, the Kurdish Patriotic Union leader, is now Iraq's president. He's affectionately known as ``mam Jalal,'' a Kurdish term meaning ``uncle Jalal.'' Deputy Prime Minister Salih Barhim and Foreign Secretary Hoshyer Zubari also are Kurds.

``We're the glue that's holding Iraq together,'' Dizayee says. ``We've been trying to put Humpty back together again.''

In Erbil, 220 miles from Baghdad, more than two dozen yellow cranes tower over construction sites. Almost all foreign investment in Iraq is in the Kurdish region, says Layton, who keeps a loaded Kalashnikov by his desk. He says he learned how to shoot when he was 9 years old, adding that Saddam had put a price on his head in the 1990s because he helped the Kurds.

``Everyone in Iraq has a gun,'' he says.

Kurdish New Year

In April, National Real Estate Co., one of the largest publicly traded companies in Kuwait, signed a deal with Kurdistan Development to build a 300-room hotel and a commercial center in Erbil. Those will join luxury housing developments such as British Village, a gated community. Another half- finished development, called Dream City, may have its own conference center, supermarket and U.S.-style school.

The sense of Kurdish separateness and optimism is pervasive on March 20, the eve of the Kurdish New Year known as Nowruz. Iranians, Afghans and Tajiks also celebrate Nowruz. Iraqi Arabs observe the Islamic New Year, which this year fell on Jan. 20.

In the old fort that's the emblem of Erbil, a band plays traditional music using a daf, a large frame drum, and a ney, a flute. Young men in Kurdish-style baggy pants and big woolen belts dance. Giggling children run up and down new escalators at the half-constructed $1 billion Nasdak shopping mall.

`Father of Fire'

The Kurds can still mess things up as they weigh taking over Kirkuk, says Joost Hiltermann, an Amman, Jordan-based project manager for International Crisis Group. Once known as Baba Gurgur, Kurdish for ``father of fire,'' Kirkuk is a coveted prize in the oil wars. It holds reserves second only to the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Saddam pushed as many as 120,000 Kurds, Turkomans and Assyrians out of northern Iraq to make Kirkuk more Arabic, says Narmeen Ahmad, general director at the Kurdistan Regional Government's Ministry of Extra Regional Affairs, which deals with disputed territories. The Kurds say they are the right people to develop Kirkuk's potential.

``Kirkuk is the heart of Kurdistan,'' says Neema Yusuf Juma, 68, who has lived in Kirkuk all of her life. ``If they'll deny us Kirkuk, we'll take Baghdad.''

The 90-minute drive from Erbil to the dusty, garbage-strewn city means abandoning the relative safety of the Kurdish capital for the Iraq of suicide bombings and municipal breakdowns. Hours after a journalist's visit on March 19, a series of car bombs and mortars killed 18 people and injured 50.

Kirkuk's Woes

Past the tan walled compounds Saddam once used as jails, oil rigs dot the barren countryside. A natural-gas flare burns through the haze of the afternoon sun. At an Iraqi army checkpoint, soldiers wearing body armor peer nervously from behind sandbags and coils of barbed wire.

Inside the town, hospitals, police stations and most government services are barely functioning, says Abdul Rahman Mustafa, Kirkuk's governor.

``Baghdad is not providing enough support,'' says Mustafa, who survived an assassination attempt by a suicide bomber in December. ``This city has never benefited from its oil.''

The Kurds are pushing for a legal way to determine Kirkuk's future. One part of Iraq's new constitution, Article 140, calls for a referendum by the end of 2007 to resolve the fate of all territories claimed by the Kurds.

An Iraqi government committee is offering 20 million Iraqi dinars (about $20,000) and a parcel of land in the south of the country to Arab families who leave Kirkuk. There are no statistics yet on whether people are moving.

`Legal Solution'

``Saddam expelled the Kurds and brought in Arabs,'' Ahmad says. ``The constitution offers a legal solution, and we want to implement it.''

Iraq's Shiites and Sunnis oppose a referendum that the Kurds are likely to win. Turkey also is against Iraqi Kurds gaining Kirkuk because the move might provoke Turkey's 20 million Kurdish residents to demand greater rights. That leaves the Kurds in a bind. Angering Turkey may weaken a pillar of the Kurds' oil strategy by denying the landlocked region an outlet for exports.

``Iraqi Kurds would have nothing if they cannot export their oil,'' says Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Exporting crude oil is essential, DNO's Normann says. The Norwegian company has installed a 27-mile pipeline from its Tawke field to a pipeline that connects Kirkuk to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

`It May Take a While'

The Kirkuk pipeline runs to a refinery 50 miles south before turning north again toward the Turkish border, passing through an area controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government. Insurgents have crippled the portion that lies in Sunni Arab territory. DNO plans to use only the section controlled by the Kurds, which has been free from attacks.

Amid the violence of Iraq, such tortuous setups don't inspire confidence among the world's petroleum giants.

``Oil companies are not going to commit unless the security improves and they have guarantees about their investment,'' Eurasia Group's Younsi says. ``It may take a while.''

The Kurds are used to waiting. They're betting that this time, even with countless risks, the lure of oil riches will bring the outside help they need.

To contact the reporters on this story: Kambiz Foroohar in New York at kforoohar@bloomberg.net;

Last Updated: July 1, 2007 19:01

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090210/wl_nm/us_iraq_france

French leader in Iraq to heal rifts, push business

On the first visit by a French head of state to Iraq, Sarkozy met President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Violence has dropped sharply in Iraq in the past year and U.S. troops are preparing to pull out of cities and withdraw completely by the end of 2011. Last month, Iraq held its most peaceful elections since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Iraqi officials believe the time has come for foreign companies to invest, especially in oil fields which hold the world's third largest proven crude reserves. French oil major Total SA is among firms qualified to bid for long-term Iraqi oil field servicing contracts.

"The situation is not perfect, but a few months ago who was betting that I was going to visit Iraq and its leaders?" Sarkozy said during a news conference with Talabani, speaking through an Arabic interpreter.

"We say to French companies that the time has come to return to Iraq," he added later after meeting Maliki, saying France would send a business delegation to Iraq in the summer.

Maliki said French firms would not face difficulties because of their country's refusal to join the effort to oust Saddam.

"They will not be starting from scratch, because French firms have a long history in Iraq," he said.

ONCE CLOSE TIES

France was part of the U.S.-led coalition that fought against Iraq in 1991 after Saddam invaded Kuwait, but favored easing sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s. When the United States led an invasion of Iraq in 2003, Sarkozy's predecessor Jacques Chirac led international opposition.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than 4,000 U.S. soldiers died in fighting that erupted in the aftermath between Iraq's majority Shi'ite Muslims and minority Sunni Arabs.

Sarkozy has sought warmer relations with Washington and a visit to Iraq will play better with French public opinion now that the unpopular former U.S. President George W. Bush is gone.

The inauguration in January of President Barack Obama ushered in a new tone in international relations and other European countries that opposed the war, such as Germany, are also expected to send high-level delegations to Iraq soon.

The 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq must leave by end-2011 under a security pact signed by Bush, but Obama pledged during his campaign to withdraw faster. U.S. commanders favor a slower pullout that would not put at risk Iraq's security gains.

Sarkozy praised Iraqis for voting enthusiastically and for a wide variety of parties in the January 31 provincial polls, which took place without a single major attack in the country.

"France wants to look forward to the future and does not want to look to the past," Sarkozy said. "The past is full of pain, not only for Iraqis."

Kadhum al-Muqdadi, a professor at Baghdad University, said France had good relations with Syria and Egypt and wanted to complete "a triangle" by forging better ties with Iraq.

"And let us not forget the economic side," Muqdadi said. "The Iraqi market is a promising one and France used to benefit the most during the reign of the former president (Saddam)."

Despite the steep drop in violence, suicide and car bomb attacks remain common and Sarkozy's visit, part of a Middle Eastern tour, was shrouded in secrecy.

The last high-level visit by a French official occurred in May 2008 when Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who accompanied Sarkozy on Tuesday, spent a few days in the country.

(Additional reporting by Emmanuel Jarry in Muskat, Aseel Kami, Ahmed Rasheed and Missy Ryan in Baghdad; Writing by Estelle Shirbon in Paris and Michael Christie in Baghdad; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

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France's Sarkozy flies to Iraq, to meet Talabani
France's President Nicolas Sarkozy delivers a speech during the signing of an agreement with French car …
Play Video Iraq Video:Family Mourns Loss Of Leominster Soldier WBZ Boston Play Video Iraq Video:Fortress on the Tigris FOX News Iraq Video:Sarkozy on historic visit to Iraq AFP MUSCAT, Oman (Reuters) – French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Baghdad Tuesday morning for a surprise visit during which he will meet Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, French officials said.

It is the first visit to Iraq by a French head of state since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, which France opposed.

Sarkozy was traveling with Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, the officials said.

(Reporting by Emmanuel Jarry, writing by Estelle Shirbon; editing by Michael Roddy)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dal-lamagna/kurdistan-kirkuk-mosul_b_51267.html?view=screen

Dal LaMagna
Kurdistan, Kirkuk, Mosul: One Iraq or Partitioning?
Posted June 8, 2007 | 10:03 AM (EST)

After our grueling morning meeting (see yesterday's blog) a Kurdish man, whose name I cannot disclose to protect him, came to Mohammed's house. He walked in and seemed extremely nervous. He shook my hand while not even looking at me. He looked at the video camera and audio recorder and became even more nervous.

Apparently he is terrified because he is forming a Kurdish Party that competes with the two existing Kurdish Parties. He fears that his family, who still lives in Mosul and Kurdistan, will be attacked. (Note: Erbil, Dohuk, and Suleymaniye comprise Iraqi Kurdistan.)

Kirkuk, although a northern city known for its rich oil production, is not part of Kurdistan, and neither is Mosul, another oil-producing northern city. There is constant talk that the Kurds want Kirkuk and Mosul to become part of Kurdistan. Whether the Kurds will get Kirkuk is what drives every discussion regarding whether Iraq will be partitioned or survive as a single state.

After a long conversation between the Kurdish fellow, Asma (an Iraqi living in exile here in Amman who handles all the translating), and Mohammed, the visitor agreed to allow us to record the conversation. They explained to him that we didn't want to have to take notes and that recording would guarantee that what he said would be reported exactly as he said it.

"Will There Be a War Over Kirkuk?"

After one gets over the hurdle of believing that the Shia and Sunnis can live together peacefully after the American's leave, one is always confronted by the issue of the Kurds and Kurdistan. Until the occupation, the Kurdish people had a degree of independence from the rest of Iraq; Kurdistan even had its own army -- the Peshmerga Militia.

If Iraq is partitioned, will there be a war over Kirkuk?

Yesterday, the Sheik suggested that if there were going to be any civil war in Iraq, it would be over Kirkuk. And if Iraq were partitioned, Former Congressman Tom Downey, who recently met with Barzani in Erbil and with whom I spoke before my trip, thought it would even need a batallion or two of American soldiers to protect it from Turkey.

If Iraq is not partitioned, will Kirkuk and Mosul fold into the Kurdistan region?

Most Iraqis get heated when this question comes up. They see it as overreaching by Massoud Barzani, the President of Kurdistan, who is being accused of illegally bringing in thousands of Iranian Kurds with fake Iraqi passports that establish their birthplace as Kirkuk or Mosul -- the two places where he would want to stack the population for a census that will determine the sharing of oil revenues.

Iraqi Unity

Our Kurd told us that he and his associates believe in the unity of Iraq. He said that Kurds had lived for thousands of years with the Arabs.

"We are intermarried," he said. "Ten percent of my tribe are Christians. We have always lived together. We share one history with the Arabs."

This man believes in democracy and is against any partitioning of Iraq, against regionalization (or federalization). He is also against the Iranian influence in Iraq and said, "We are now occupied by two occupiers: America and Iran."

He believes that a coalition needs to be formed to force out the Maliki government. He does not recognize the political process as legal, but does believe the process can be corrected and that the Constitution needs to be corrected to include all the entities -- ethnic and religious -- opening a path for a nationalist, secular unity government.

Thus, he is working to form a new Kurdish political party to confront the Barzani and Jalai Talabani groups, both of whom want Iraq partitioned into areas including an independent Kurdistan.

I understand that this is what makes him a nervous man.

He is not a member of Parliament, but his party will run candidates in the next election. Millions of dollars are at stake and in a place where you can be killed just because you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, imagine what might happen if you were in the way of someone's greed.

The Reality in Kurdistan

Our Kurd told us that the majority of Kurds live in fear of being persecuted by the Barzani and Talabani groups. He explained that there is no freedom of press and no democracy for the Kurds He said anyone who speaks or writes against these two groups is imprisoned. For instance, a Kurdish journalist who lived in Austria came to Kurdistan and criticized the situation and was imprisoned for 36 years. (Note: Because of public outcry, the prison sentence was reduced to six years.) He said that Talabani and Barzani are millionaires as a result of siphoning off Iraqi money immediately after the invasion. According to Mohammed, they even stole 150 automobiles from the government warehouses.

In Tom Hayden's new book Ending The War In Iraq (a must read), he writes:

Talabani brags that the Kurdish town of Sulemaniya (the town Talabani used to run) now has twenty billionaires and 2,000 millionaires, that he spends an estimated half-million dollars for a week's hotel stay in Paris, and that he receives up to $1 million per month in discretionary funds. " (See footnote.)
Our courageous Kurd went on to say that there was a time when Talabani and Barzani were enemies. Barzani ran Erbil and Dohuk and Talabani ran Suleymaniye. Now, they are friends and each has profited nicely. Talabani is President of Iraq and Barzani, President of Kurdistan. Barzani's son-in-law -- who is also his nephew -- Nejivan Barzani, is the Prime Minister of the region. Nejivan was also the partner of Saddam Hussein's son, Uday Hussein, in Asia, a government oil marketing company.

The visiting Kurd invited me to Kurdistan to talk to many people. Then, I asked him if he knew Dr. Ali Sindi, my friend and classmate from the JFK School of Government at Harvard. Ali is a Senior Advisor to Massoud Barzani and has invited me to Erbil. Our Kurd told me that if I met with Barzani, I would be prohibited by him from meeting anyone else. If I wanted to meet with anyone else, I would have to go to Erbil, Mosul, and Kirkuk as a tourist.

Bottom Line

There will be a two-hour transcript of this meeting, only some of which I have recounted here. The bottom line is that Kirkuk and Mosul are issues that are not yet resolved.

I remember last August, during the CodePink/Global Exchange Peace delegation meeting Dr. Imad Khadduri who is an associate professor at the University of Mosul. Dr. Khadduri told me that it was "only the leaders" who wanted to break away from Iraq. (Watch that short video clip.)
---------------------------------------

Iraqi Events on Tuesday June 6, 2007

Everyone in the house here is glued to the TV set watching for Iraqi news. Mohammed is constantly getting phone calls on one of his three cell phones. Here are the news flashes that came in on Tuesday:

Today in Baghdad, 85 members of Parliament -- out of a total of 144 members present -- voted that Maliki has to get approval from Parliament in the future if he wishes to extend the stay of the coalition (lead by the American Forces). The Kurdish Parties and the Iranian line of the Shia coalition voted against this. The Sadrists, Fadheela, the Independence within the Shia Coalition, Accord, al-Hiwar as well as al-Iraqia voted for it. This is a binding vote. No Prime Minister can now unilaterally invite the American Forces to stay. They must get approval from the Parliament.

Parliament asked Hussein al-Shahrestani, the Minister of Oil, to be present at Parliament for questioning and he refused, sending his two deputies instead. Parliament members proceeded to question the deputies, in particular about the corruption in his Ministry. One of the most important questions concerned the counting gauges in the southern fields (Basra), which are functioning. In other words, the oil continues to be smuggled out of the country. Parliamentarians think that al-Shahrestani, intends to present his resignation because he is responsible for a lot of corruption taking place in his department.

The government announced yesterday that it is going to reveal huge incidences of oil theft that are taking place in Iraq which involve parties who are members of the government in partnership with one of Iraq's neighbors.

Footnote: Tom Hayden cites Jon Lee Anderson, "Mr. Big," New Yorker, February 5, 2007

NEW SHOWDOWN WITH IRAQ COULD REFLECT RELIGIOUS SPLITS

U.S. forces in the middle east remain on high alert today following the
capture of the Kurdish stronghold of Irbil by 30,000 Iraqui troops and a
faction of Kurd fighters. The city is the administrative center of a "safe
haven" zone established by the United Nations in 1991 following the end of
the Persian Gulf war. Meanwhile, there are reports that despite a pullback
by Iraq from Irbil, a column of IraqiT-72 tanks is rolling toward
Sulamaniye, a main staging area for Kurds opposing the rule of Iraqui
strongman Saddam Hussein.
The situation reflects not only the ever-changing political alliances of
the region, but deep religious divisions as well.
The 22 million Kurds make up the world's largest ethnic group without a
nation; they are spread throughout portions of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and
Armenia. Most are Sunni Muslims, and there are several distinct rebel
groups. The fighting in Irbil underscores continued differences between the
Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) of Massoud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan (PUK) under the leadership of Jalai Talabani. According to the
Washington Post, "each Kurdish faction is now loosely allied with a country
that Washington long has despised."
The Iraqi regime has been hostile to any aspirations of Kurdish
nationalism, and resents the fact that the "zone" administered from Irbil. is
comprised of three former provinces of Iraq, and protected by the "no fly"
umbrella of U.S. air power based in Turkey. In the 1980,s Hussein's elite
Republican Guards massacred thousands of Kurds, and reportedly used
assasination squads and poison gas.
But Iran entered the picture in the 1990's and began courting the PUK.
Talabani's group was already disgruntled with the KDP which, it charged, was
not sharing illicit oil revenues from sales to Turkey. Complicating matters
even more is the recent victory in Turkey by Islamic fundamentalists led by
Necmettin Erbakan, who last month signed a $23 billion deal with Iran for the
purchase of natural gas. The Post notes that "Iran is eager to expand its
influence in Turkey and in Kurdish Iraq."
In related developments:
* The flow of information in and out of Iran has been cut, thanks to a
unilateral move by the U.S. According to a column in the web version of WIRED
by John Heilemann ("Netizen') , early last month the National Science
Foundation "blocked crucial international links to Iran, apparently in
response to an Iran and Libya Sanction Act...The move prevents people in the
United States from connecting to Iranian computers by cutting off access to
the country's only permanent Net connection -- a single, achingly slow 9600
bps modem."
* Despite the Islamist gas deal, Turkey Prime Minister Erbakan still is
apparently being held in check by both the Army and government coalition
partner Tansu Ciller of the True Path group. In addition, Turkey has a new,
unlikely ally -- Israel -- which is selling dozens of fighter aircraft to
Erbakan's air force. Behind the deal -- Tansu Ciller. Meanwhile, Mr.
Erbakan has called for an "Islamic summit" with Iran, Iraq and Syria.
***

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalal_Talabani

Jalal Talabani
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Incumbent
Assumed office
7 April 2005
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari
Nouri al-Maliki
Preceded by Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Born 12 November 1933 (1933-11-12) (age 75)
Kelkan, Iraq
Political party PUK
Spouse Hero Ibrahim Ahmed[1]
Religion Sunni Islam
Jalal Talabani (Kurdish:????? ???????? / Celal Talebanî / Jelal Talebaní, Arabic: ???? ????????, Jalal Talabani) (born November 12, 1933) is the current President of Iraq and a leading Kurdish politician.

Talabani is the founder and secretary general of one of the main Iraqi Kurdish political parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). He was a prominent member of the Interim Iraq Governing Council, which was established following the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Talabani has been an advocate for Kurdish rights and democracy in Iraq for more than 50 years.

Contents [hide]
1 Life
1.1 Education
1.2 Rights for Kurds
1.3 Iraq War
1.4 Presidency
2 References
3 External links

[edit] Life
He was born in 1933 in the village of Kelkan in Iraqi Kurdistan near lake Dokan. He descended from the Talabani tribe that has produced many leading social figures.

His youngest son, Qubad Talabani, is the representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government in the United States.

[edit] Education
He received his elementary and intermediate school education in Koya (Koysanjak) and his high school education in Erbil and Kirkuk. He is fluent in Kurdish, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and English. Talabani has a record of lifelong activism and leadership in the Kurdish and Iraqi causes. In 1946, at the age of 13 he formed a secret Kurdish student association. The following year he became a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and in 1951, at 18, he was elected to the KDP's central committee. Upon finishing his secondary education, he sought admission to medical school but was denied it by authorities of the then ruling Hashemite monarchy owing to his political activities. In 1966 he achieved a great right for the Kurds which was an agreement with the Iraqi authority.

In 1953 he was allowed to enter law school but was obliged to go into hiding in 1956 to escape arrest for his activities as founder and Secretary General of the Kurdistan Student Union. Following the July 1958 overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy, Talabani returned to law school, at the same time pursuing a career as a journalist and editor of two publications, Khabat and Kurdistan. After graduating in 1959, Talabani performed national service in the Iraqi army where he served in artillery and armor units and served as a commander of a tank unit. Jalal also went to school in the U.S. He moved to Danbury, Connecticut and went to school at Mill Ridge Intermediate and Primary campuses.

[edit] Rights for Kurds
When in September 1961, the Kurdish revolution for the rights of the Kurds in Iraq was declared against the Baghdad government of Abdul Karim Qassem, Talabani took charge of the Kirkuk and Sulaimani battle fronts and organized and led separatist movements in Mawat, Rezan and the Karadagh regions. In March 1962, he led a coordinated offensive that brought about the liberation of the district of Sharbazher from Iraqi government forces. When not engaged in fighting in the early and mid 1960s, Talabani undertook numerous diplomatic missions, representing the Kurdish leadership at meetings in Europe and the Middle East. When the KDP split in 1964, Talabani along with his long time mentor Ibrahim Ahmed was part of the "Political Bureau" group that broke away from General Mustafa Barzani's leadership, although he later rejoined the KDP and fought during the 1974–1975 revolution against Iraq's Ba'athist regime.

The Iraqi Kurdish separatist movement collapsed in March 1975 after Iran ended their support in exchange for a border agreement with Iraq. This agreement was the 1975 Algiers Agreement, where Iraq gave up claims to the Shatt al-Arab waterway and Khuzestan, which later became the basis for the Iran-Iraq war. Believing it was time to give a new direction to the Kurdish separatists and to the Kurdish society, Talabani, with a group of Kurdish intellectuals and activists, founded the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (Yekiaiti Nishtimani Kurdistan). In 1976, he began organizing armed campaign for Kurdish independence inside Iraq. During the 1980s, Talabani sided with Iran and led a Kurdish struggle from bases inside Iraq until the crackdown against Kurdish separatist from 1987 to 1988.

In 1991, he helped inspire a renewed effort for Kurdish independence. He negotiated a ceasefire with the Iraqi Ba'athist government that saved the lives of many Kurds and worked closely with the US, UK, Turkey, France and other countries to set up the safe haven in Iraqi Kurdistan. He established a close personal relationship with the then President of Turkey, Turgut Özal. At that time, he was said to have a Turkish diplomatic passport to travel freely around the world. Democratic elections were held in the safe haven in 1992 for a Kurdish parliament and the Kurdistan Regional Government was founded.

Talabani has pursued a negotiated settlement to the internecine problems plaguing the Kurdish movement, as well as the larger issue of Kurdish rights in the current regional context. He worked closely with other Kurdish politicians, the rest of the Iraqi opposition factions, and the governments of the UK and Turkey during the Ankara process of Kurdish reconciliation. In close coordination with Massoud Barzani, Talabani and the Iraqi Kurds played a key role as a partner of the US-Coalition in the invasion of Iraq.

Documents found during the 2008 Ergenekon investigations at Turkish General Veli Küçük's house showed that the 1993 deaths of journalist Ugur Mumcu and of General Esref Bitlis were related to an illegal arms trade (concerning 100,00 guns) carried out by the stay behind Ergenekon ultra-nationalist network and Talabani.[2]

In January 2008, the Committee for the Protection of Journalists condemned Talabani for launching a lawsuit against Iraqi Kurdistan's independent newspaper after it criticized abuse-of-power, corruption, and nepotism in the area of Iraqi Kurdistan in which his political party holds sway.[3]

[edit] Iraq War
Talabani was a member of the Iraqi Governing Council that negotiated the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), Iraq's interim constitution. The TAL governed all politics in Iraq and the process of writing and adopting the final constitution.

[edit] Presidency

From left: U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meet with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in Baghdad, Iraq, on April 26, 2006.Talabani was elected President of Iraq on April 6, 2005 by the Iraqi National Assembly and sworn in the following day. On April 22, 2006, Talabani began his second term as President of Iraq, becoming the first President elected under the country's new Constitution. Currently, his office is part of the Presidency Council of Iraq.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani (left) responds to a reporter's question during a joint press conference with U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld following their meeting in the Pentagon on Sept. 9, 2005.On February 25, 2007, Talabani was taken by a United States C-130 Hercules aircraft to Jordan for an undisclosed medical condition. Early reports indicated that Talabani may have suffered a heart attack, but those reports were disputed by Talabani's son during an interview with CNN.[who?][4] Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told Reuters in Baghdad: "He had a drop in blood pressure. Doctors said he needs further tests." A statement issued by Talabani's office said there was no cause for concern, but gave no details of his illness.[5]

During a visit to the Cambridge Union Society UK, in May 2007, he described Tony Blair as a 'hero' for helping secure Iraq's freedom.[6]

Talabani's office announced on August 14, 2008 that heart surgery had been successfully performed on Talabani at the Mayo Clinic in the US city of Rochester, Minnesota, to correct a problem with a heart valve. His office also announced that he was discharged from the clinic on August 14, 2008.[7

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NewsBrief
Entities:Jalal Talabani[1]; John Negroponte[1]; Ryan Crocker[1]; Saddam Hussein[1] ... was attended by Iraqi President Jalai Talabani, Deputy US Secretary of State ...

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/world/middleeast/11iraq.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

By MARC SANTORA and ALAN COWELL
Published: February 10, 2009
BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq signaled a desire to gradually diminish American power over Iraqi politics and increase ties to other Western powers, during a visit on Tuesday by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

Go to the Blog » In a rare news conference with a Western leader who is not from the United States or Britain, Mr. Maliki gave Mr. Sarkozy a warm welcome and rebuffed a recent statement by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that the United States would have to be “more aggressive” in forcing the Iraqis to reach political reconciliation.

“The time for putting pressure on Iraq is over,” Mr. Maliki said in answer to a reporter’s question about Mr. Biden’s remarks. “The Iraqi government knows what its responsibilities are. We are carrying out reform, and we are in the last step of reconciliation.”

According to political advisers, Mr. Maliki is intent on changing the nature of Baghdad’s relationship with Washington, shifting Iraq’s role from a client state to a more equal partner.

Mr. Maliki also contended Tuesday that his government had fixed the missteps of the Americans after the invasion, like the American decision to dismantle the pre-war Iraqi Army.

Mr. Biden made his remarks in a speech to fellow Democrats last week in Williamsburg, Va., but also said the progress Iraq had made so far “is real.”

With Americans cautiously handing over security responsibilities to Iraqi forces and with a new president in the White House, analysts in Paris said that Mr. Sarkozy’s visit was intended to signal a new French attitude and promote French business interests and influence in a region dominated by the United States.

The French overture came at a time of intense jockeying among the world’s leading oil companies for contracts in Iraq, with France’s Total among the major competitors.

The visit also allowed Mr. Maliki to make the case that his country was no longer dependent solely on the Americans.

“Iraq, which had many enemies, now has many friends, and that is all because of the direction of the National Unity Government,” he said.

In pressing for more investment in Iraq, where basic services remain in dismal condition, Mr. Maliki noted the long history of French business involvement in the country before Saddam Hussein’s government was toppled.

“They will not be starting from scratch, because French firms have a long history in Iraq,” Mr. Maliki said.

Mr. Sarkozy, who earlier in the day visited with Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, said that only a year ago, such a visit by a French leader would have been unthinkable.

“The situation is not perfect, but a few months ago who was betting that I was going to visit Iraq and its leaders?” he said in a news conference with Mr. Talabani.

Later, after meeting with Mr. Maliki, Mr. Sarkozy said a delegation of French companies would be coming to Iraq soon to explore investment opportunities.

“We say to French companies that the time has come to return to Iraq,” Mr. Sarkozy said.

The French initiative was part of a broader bid to raise France’s profile in the region. Last year, Mr. Sarkozy visited Saudi Arabia and Qatar. On his latest trip, he planned to fly on from Baghdad to Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait.

French officials said Mr. Sarkozy was the first leader of a European nation that opposed the 2003 invasion to visit Baghdad, offering a marked contrast to relations between Paris and both Baghdad and Washington under his predecessor, Jacques Chirac.

French opposition to the invasion was fueled, in part, by a strong animosity in Europe toward President Bush. Anti-French feelings were so fierce in Congress at the time that the word “French” was stricken from the menus of the House of Representatives’ cafeterias. “Freedom fries” and “Freedom toast” were introduced.

But, with the election of Barack Obama, gestures of reconciliation toward the United States carry far less political freight in France, analysts said. Mr. Sarkozy’s visit was not made public until after he landed in Baghdad — as is usual with high-profile foreign visitors worried about their security, despite a marked decline in violence in Iraq.

Yet even as the security gains are evident on the street, a bombing less than a half-mile from the French Embassy aimed at a security officer for Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi provided a reminder of how fragile those gains remain.

A bomb was placed under the guard’s vehicle in the Karada neighborhood on Tuesday, wounding him as well as two bystanders, The Associated Press reported.

The vice president is a member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the chief political rival to Mr. Maliki’s Dawa Party.

Karada is considered something of a stronghold for Mr. Abdul Mahdi’s party, making the attack seem all the more brazen.

Violence also continued to plague the northern city of Mosul. At least five police officers were killed in separate attacks, Iraqi officials said. A Christian woman was also shot and killed in the city, security officials said.

Marc Santora reported from Baghdad, and Alan Cowell from Paris.

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Bad Guy Directed Obama Orders NASA to Zap Russian Spy Satellite - Star Wars' Part of WWIII Starts on My 63 rd Birthday, 2-12-2009

Do you believe two satellites just so happened to crash? I don't. to my mind this was a deliberate act of war and since the USA satelittle crashed into the Russian satellite I believe the USA is the aggressor.

http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20090212/APA/902120561&tc=email_newsletter

Scientists eye debris after satellite collision
By MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer
Published: Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 7:19 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 7:19 a.m.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Scientists are keeping a close eye on orbital debris created when two communications satellites - one American, the other Russian - smashed into each other hundreds of miles above the Earth.

NASA said it will take weeks to determine the full magnitude of the unprecedented crash and whether any other satellites or even the Hubble Space Telescope are threatened.

The collision, which occurred nearly 500 miles over Siberia on Tuesday, was the first high-speed impact between two intact spacecraft, NASA officials said.

"We knew this was going to happen eventually," said Mark Matney, an orbital debris scientist at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

NASA believes any risk to the international space station and its three astronauts is low. It orbits about 270 miles below the collision course.

A spokesman for the Russian civilian space agency Roscosmos, Alexander Vorobyev, said on state-controlled Channel I television that "for the international space station, at this time and in the near future, there's no threat."

There also should be no danger to the space shuttle set to launch with seven astronauts on Feb. 22, officials said, but that will be re-evaluated in the coming days.

Nicholas Johnson, an orbital debris expert at the Houston space center, said the risk of damage from Tuesday's collision is greater for the Hubble Space Telescope and Earth-observing satellites, which are in higher orbit and nearer the debris field.

The collision involved an Iridium commercial satellite, which was launched in 1997, and a Russian satellite launched in 1993 and believed to be nonfunctioning. The Russian satellite was out of control, Matney said.

The Iridium craft weighed 1,235 pounds, and the Russian craft nearly a ton. No one has any idea yet how many pieces were generated or how big they might be.

"Right now, they're definitely counting dozens," Matney said. "I would suspect that they'll be counting hundreds when the counting is done."

There have been four other cases in which space objects have collided accidentally in orbit, NASA said. But those were considered minor and involved parts of spent rockets or small satellites.

At the beginning of this year there were roughly 17,000 pieces of manmade debris orbiting Earth, Johnson said. The items, at least 4 inches in size, are being tracked by the U.S. Space Surveillance Network, which is operated by the military. The network detected the two debris clouds created Tuesday.

Litter in orbit has increased in recent years, in part because of the deliberate breakups of old satellites. It's gotten so bad that orbital debris is now the biggest threat to a space shuttle in flight, surpassing the dangers of liftoff and return to Earth. NASA is in regular touch with the Space Surveillance Network, to keep the space station a safe distance from any encroaching objects, and shuttles, too, when they're flying.

"The collisions are going to be becoming more and more important in the coming decades," Matney said.

Iridium Holdings LLC has a system of 65 active satellites that relay calls from portable phones that are about twice the size of a regular mobile phone. It has more than 300,000 subscribers. The U.S. Department of Defense is one of its largest customers.

The company said the loss of the satellite was causing brief, occasional outages in its service and that it expected to have the problem fixed by Friday.

Iridium also said it expected to replace the lost satellite with one of its eight in-orbit spares within 30 days.

"The Iridium constellation is healthy, and this event is not the result of a failure on the part of Iridium or its technology," the company said in a statement.

Initially launched by Motorola Inc. in the 1990s, Iridium plunged into bankruptcy in 1999. Private investors relaunched service in 2001.

Iridium satellites are unusual because their orbit is so low and they move so fast. Most communications satellites are in much higher orbits and don't move relative to each other, which means collisions are rare.

Iridium Holdings LLC, is owned by New York-based investment firm Greenhill & Co. through a subsidiary, GHL Acquisition Corp., which is listed on the American Stock Exchange.

---

AP science writer Seth Borenstein in Washington and AP technology writer Peter Svensson in New York contributed to this report.

---

On the Net:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov">http://www.nasa.gov

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=11

Will Grigg writes the Pro Libertate blog. He is the author of Liberty in Eclipse: The War on Terror and the Rise of the Homeland Security State.
"National Service" and Conscription: A Question of Ownership
By William Norman Grigg

Printer-friendly version

Government-mandated "community service" is integral to Barack Obama's vision of "change." Obama has described such service as a key element of creating "a new era of responsibility -- a recognition on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept, but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task."

Actually, there is nothing novel about Obama's emphasis on government-imposed citizen "service." National service, in some form, has been endorsed by every U.S. president since George Bush the Elder. But none has promoted it as insistently as Barack Obama.

Of course, most Americans are hardly strangers to responsibility. They hold jobs, provide for families, and perform volunteer work for schools and churches. Thousands of acts of service occur literally every second of every day in America, both in the form of mutually beneficial business transactions and charitable deeds performed out of conviction.

The problem with such service, apparently, is that it is neither mandated nor brokered by the government. So from the perspective of those who believe that life should be organized by the state, such spontaneous service simply doesn't count.

Before it created a small but significant scandal, the Obama campaign's position paper on national service promised that as president he would "inspire" Americans to render "universal voluntary service."

It was not explained how service could be both "universal" and truly "voluntary": Was the assumption that differences over opinion regarding the proper type of "service" would simply vanish? Or would the reluctance of many Americans to surrender valuable time to carry out government-approved activities be overcome by the sheer power of Obama's charisma?

Obama's vision of "Universal Voluntary Service," as originally outlined in his campaign literature, displayed far greater ambition and more than a touch of authoritarianism: "Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year." The blueprint likewise called for the expansion of AmeriCorps from 75,000 to 250,000 and the creation of five separate "Corps" of government-funded "volunteers" to deal with education, health, energy, veterans affairs, and homeland security.

One element of the Obama plan, the "Classroom Corps," employed frankly militaristic language, stating that the administration would "enlist" retired teachers, "recruit" civic leaders, and "draft" parents, grandparents, and others to serve as mentors.

The campaign for "universal voluntary service" is bipartisan and enjoys enthusiastic support from the mainstream media. Richard Stengel, Time magazine's managing editor, is co-chair of Service Nation, a non-profit established to promote Obama's service campaign. Former GOP presidential candidate John McCain has joined with Obama in promoting government-imposed service.

Tony Blankley, who served as chief of staff for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, has called in his new book American Grit for the re-introduction of a universal military draft.

Blankley's proposed system is similar to legislation being promoted by House Democrat Charles Rangel; it would require all Americans who turn 18 to spend two years either in military service or in a government-selected "Homeland Security" role. He proposes a "compulsory program for all Americans aged eighteen or nineteen, men and women, after most have graduated from high school. The military, reviewing these graduates' transcripts, extracurricular activities, and medical reports, would select however many they needed to fulfill their draft allotments for a two-year period of military service. Those not chosen by the military would undertake a two-year service obligation."

Setting a tone likely to be emulated by other Republicans, Blankley condemns Obama's national service proposal not because it represents a presumptuous imposition on the lives of Americans, but because it wouldn't provide soldiers for ongoing and envisioned military conflicts.

"We will soon be faced with the choice of severely scaling back our role in the world or expanding the army through conscription," observes Blankley, blithely assuming that the former option is simply inadmissible. Since "there is a limit to the number of people willing to volunteer to be a soldier," the government must return to a system its critics consider nothing less than military slavery.

All "national service" proposals, whether civilian or military, are rooted in the assumption that individuals owe service to the State -- indeed, that the State has the first claim on the individual's time, labor, and wealth.

Although the legally protected practice of chattel slavery ended roughly a century and a half ago, politicians routinely insist that the government is entitled to claim uncompensated labor from the citizenry in the name of "community" or "national" service.

The first American public figure of significant stature to endorse this concept was philosopher and psychologist William James, who in 1910 urged "a conscription of the whole youthful population. . . for a certain number of years as part of the army enlisted against Nature." James envisioned a national system of conscript labor to build roads and bridges, skyscrapers and tunnels; to extract ore from the ground, and fish from the sea; and to do various other kinds of manual labor as a way of having "the childishness knocked out of them."

Through government-imposed labor, James insisted, young men "would have paid their blood-tax" to the amorphous entity called "society" without serving in the military. In fact, it was through this proposal for universal conscription that James infected American political discourse with the phrase "moral equivalent of war," an expression that has become one of our more obnoxious clichés.

William James was not the first or only one to propose universal conscription. The eighth plank of the Communist Manifesto dictates a "universal liability of all to labor" as the state directs, and the creation of state-supervised "industrial armies."

After seizing power in Russia through the Bolshevik coup, Vladimir Lenin demanded that his subjects consider themselves part of a "great army of free labor" to be deployed as the ruling oligarchy saw fit: "The generation that is now 15 years old. . . must arrange all the tasks of their education in such a way that every day, in every city, the young people shall engage in the practical solution of the problem of common labor, even the smallest, most simple kind."

Undergirding such grand pronouncements is the shared assumption that only labor or "service" that is mandated and supervised by the state is worthwhile. Left to attend to their own business, human beings have an amazing capacity to serve each other in mutually beneficial ways.

But this is done without the intrusive and presumptuous involvement of social engineers who desire to correct what they see as defects in the way other people live. For such people "service" is simply unsatisfactory unless it somehow helps build and fortify the state. And to them the state of crisis produced by a war, or the "moral equivalent" thereof, is useful as a pretext for the regimentation of society.

This is why aspiring social engineers welcomed the onset of World War I, which offered unprecedented opportunities for government intervention in private life.

During World War I, Bernard Baruch, chairman of the Wilson administration's War Industries Board, brazenly endorsed the concept of state ownership of every American:

Every man's life is at the call of the nation and so must be every man's property. We are living today in a highly organized state of socialism. The state is all; the individual is of importance only as he contributes to the welfare of the state. His property is his only as the state does not need it. He must hold his life and possessions at the call of the state.

Baruch insisted that this form of human bondage -- that is, the ownership of one person by another -- was not prohibited by the 13th Amendment, since "involuntary service for a private master is and has been clearly and repeatedly defined by the Supreme Court as slavery." This isn't the case, he insisted, regarding the military draft of conscripted labor, since in those arrangements there "is but one master. . . and that master is America."

In its decision in the 1918 Selective Draft Cases, the Supreme Court took a very similar approach to the 13th Amendment in dealing with the World War I military draft: Grandly describing compelled military service as "the supreme and noble duty" of a citizen, the High Court simply insisted that the amendment didn't apply.

The common understanding is that government exists to protect the lives and individual rights of citizens. Military conscription, which is the most severe form of "national service," is based on the idea that the people exist to protect the government. This principle was given voice in a July 1863 editorial supporting the draft in which the New York Times claimed that "our national authority has the right -- to every dollar and every right arm for its protection" (emphasis added).

In any form, government-compelled "service" is an assertion of state ownership of the individual, and a violation of the most fundamental property right -- self-ownership. In the Western tradition of individual liberty under law, no other human being, either individually or acting as part of a collective, can properly claim ownership over any part of our lives, or the product of our exertions, without our consent. That consent can be expressed through contract, commerce, covenant, or charity. It cannot properly be obtained through coercion or fraud.

Thomas Jefferson, in a letter written to John Adams during the War for Independence, referred to conscription as "the last of all oppressions." If the State can steal you -- not just your labor, but your physical being -- as those controlling it see fit, you have no rights.