Progress?

I called Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish legislator, to ask how things were going after the parliament finally had its members back. Now they could actually pass laws if they could agree on something.

Sadrists, followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, returned Wednesday after weeks of boycotting the parliament until the Shiite shrine in Samara is rebuilt. Sunnis came back today after striking a deal to re-instate the Sunni speaker of the parliament. Now he gets to step down gracefully after he leads the sessions for a few days. If he doesn't, he'll be thrown out a legislator told me.  The speaker, Mahmoud al Mashhadani, was ousted after one of his guards apparently beat up a law maker. He published poetry while he was away, according to an Iraqi newspaper.

"Are you going to make these benchmarks before the assessment," I asked, referring to the mid-September assessment by U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and Commanding General David Petraeus.

"I don't think so," he said.

The parliament is under intense U.S. pressure to meet political benchmarks to show progress in Iraq. But the only legislation in the parliament right now is the oil law, which will regulate the petroleum industry. In less than two weeks the parliament breaks for a month of vacation.

That might not be enough time to get the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Sadrists, who all take issue with the law, to compromise. The law's companion legislation the revenue-sharing law will actually divide the wealth between Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Shiites.

"It's doesn't look like anything can get done by then," I commented.

A more lenient version of the deBaathification law is still being discussed by the cabinet and the Constitutional Review Committee asked for an extension from May 15 to Sept. 4, no date has been set for the provincial elections.

Othman went off about the American pressures that undermine Iraq sovereignty, he said. The more U.S. officials talk about the oil law, he said, the more people think it's an American law to take advantage of the black gold, he complained.

"They insist and press and the Iraqi people react badly. In the last four years they haven’t gotten the message?" he asked. "When you ask America they say they don't need Iraqi oil. Then leave us alone.

I wake up and there is a declaration by the Americans about the oil law, at night there is another declaration about the oil law."

It echoed what Mashhadani had told me earlier this year.

"All this blood shed and they ask about the oil law," he said referring to U.S. officials. This was before his fall from grace.

A lot of Iraqis wonder how passing this law, which is touted as a key element to unifying Iraqis, actually stops the Mahdi Army from displacing and killing Sunnis or halts Sunni gunmen from ousting Shiites from their neighborhood.

"What do you think the Americans will do if you don't make significant progress by mid-September?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said. "I hope they will keep quiet and leave us alone."

Comments

[Occasional Observer]

Leila,

Mr. Othman's suspicion is spot on. The talk about the "oil law" in the administration and most of Congress, bleached out in terms of revenue-sharing, centers on privatizing 83% of Iraq's reserves through long-term production-sharing agreements. These would rob Iraq of revenues that market conditions and industry practices would leave to it, put local workers out of jobs, foster divisive competition among Iraq's regions, and deprive the nation of control of its oil technology.

Any knowledgeable Iraqi knows this. The returned emigres who run the government (such as it is) are not in touch with the people. Fatwas have been issued against them.

The desire for oil and for permanent bases are all that's needed to account for the continuing occupation. The rest -- the post-9/11 fear-mongering and Rovian stratagem, Bush's Oedipal complex, the presidential power grab, the PNAC and "Clean Break" strategies -- bear on the invasion but do little to explain why we refuse to leave.

I said "most of Congress" because a few members have called the administration out on the matter: Jim McDermott, Marie Cantwell, Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, maybe a few others. Predictably, they are ignored or dismissed as conspiracy theorists, though the facts are as clear as the sun at noon.

Not too surprisingly given the media's track record, the subject is underreported in the US media. Antonia Juhasz posts on the oil law and managed to get an op-ed in the NY Times, but I've had to rely on foreign sources to keep abreast of the issue.

McClatchy would do the nation a great service by putting this issue front and center. It's way too late for us to leave Iraq on good terms, but the public hue and cry about this fiasco will sharpen and resist the onrush of obfuscation and fear-mongering if it takes ownership of this issue. Not only that, it will put us on record for the world, which in turn will sleep a lot better knowing that the American people made it clear to their government that this will not happen again so long as we remain a democracy.

Thanks for bringing the issue into focus.

[MCD]

You have to love the irony.

Bush&Co are stonewalling the American people until they can get their hands on the oil concessions.

The Iraqi people are stonewalling Bush&Co because they want to keep their oil.

Not what Bush&Co had planned.

[joseph]

can't agree more with MCD; Iraq has been destroyed and pillaged thanks to mean and filthy Capitalists the likes of GB&Co.

[sam dobermann]

I wholeheartedly agree with all the above. Especially:

McClatchy would do the nation a great service by putting this issue front and center. It's way too late for us to leave Iraq on good terms, but the public hue and cry about this fiasco will sharpen and resist the onrush of obfuscation and fear-mongering if it takes ownership of this issue.

Please, please get the McClathy papers to do this. So many Americans do not have the vaguest idea of what is really going on. The oil law is just spoken of as having to do with revenue sharing which is a total scam. Furthermore, it makes the Iraqis seem stupid. That they are fighting this extortionary law shows that most are not. But it needs to be explained to the American people. It would certainly create outrage. Help those of us who are trying to get the troops out.

Thank for this blog. I read it often. Though I don't have a McClatchy paper in my town I read you on the web every day.

sam