Iraqi Lawmakers Will Take August Off

Are they trying to piss us off?

For the love of God, let that be the last straw. They are already whining that giving them benchmarks "set them up for failure".

Why are we expected to give a crap when they obviously don't? Why couldn't they accomplish something, even if it is hot? I'm sure THEY have air conditioning even if no one else in the country does.

Just the symbolism of staying there and working would mean something. But why should they as long as Bush provides them with an unlimited crutch that keeps them from having to do any heavy lifting?

This is a carefully crafted plot by the Bush Administration and the Iraqi Government. The Bush Administration can claim that they had to take a month off to regroup and that the Sepetember report can not be taken as a full report since after the August break they will be just "Starting" back up again. Just a Hunch.

Larry

"Vice President Dick Cheney and the US ambassador, Ryan Crocker, have tried to convince the Iraqi parliament not to take such a long break at a time when US soldiers are fighting and dying and US support for the war is at a low ebb."

Gee, why is Cheney suddenly so caring about our soldiers...

& Rice says news.yahoo.com wait till Fall for Iraqi results...on the oil bill?:>)

I think that we should tell the Iraqi Parliment that our troops will only work when they do.

The timing of the Lugar Warner Bill just announced seems to be aimed at telling the Iraqis that they should keep working.

$12 billion a month for Iraq's welfarestate is chump change for the overall prize, though:>)

Iraqis water down the draft oil law
By SAMEER N. YACOUB, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jun 22, 5:36 PM ET

BAGHDAD - Iraqi officials said Friday that a U.S.-backed draft oil law will soon be returned to the Cabinet for approval after Kurds agreed to a compromise revenue-sharing measure. But they said many key sticking points remain unresolved -- and not even addressed -- in the watered-down legislation.

>

The United States has pressed the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to pass the oil law and several other pieces of benchmark legislation as a means of spurring reconciliation among the country's sectarian and ethnic groups. The law is especially important to Sunni Arabs, who populate regions of Iraq that are largely without oil resources.

Kurds, who have big reserves and active fields in the north of the country, balked at previous draft legislation, believing it did not guarantee them a fair share of the revenue from fields they control or hope to control.

news.yahoo.com

Why they love us so over there:>)

RUMMY SHAKING HANDS WITH SADDAM PICTURE

www.gwu.edu

Conclusion

The current Bush administration discusses Iraq in starkly moralistic terms to further its goal of persuading a skeptical world that a preemptive and premeditated attack on Iraq could and should be supported as a "just war." The documents included in this briefing book reflect the realpolitik that determined this country's policies during the years when Iraq was actually employing chemical weapons. Actual rather than rhetorical opposition to such use was evidently not perceived to serve U.S. interests; instead, the Reagan administration did not deviate from its determination that Iraq was to serve as the instrument to prevent an Iranian victory. Chemical warfare was viewed as a potentially embarrassing public relations problem that complicated efforts to provide assistance. The Iraqi government's repressive internal policies, though well known to the U.S. government at the time, did not figure at all in the presidential directives that established U.S. policy toward the Iran-Iraq war. The U.S. was concerned with its ability to project military force in the Middle East, and to keep the oil flowing.

Most of the information in this briefing book, in its broad outlines, has been available for years. Some of it was recorded in contemporaneous news reports; a few investigative reporters uncovered much more - especially after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. A particular debt is owed to the late representative Henry Gonzales (1916-2000), Democrat of Texas, whose staff extensively investigated U.S. policy toward Iraq during the 1980s and who would not be deterred from making information available to the public [Note 2]. Almost all of the primary documents included in this briefing book were obtained by the National Security Archive through the Freedom of Information Act and were published in 1995 [Note 3].

They cry about us putting too much pressure on them, then say that we shouldn't leave.

I think that we tell them that if they don't live up to the benchmarks that they set for themselves, then they now have to clean up the mess.

Whoever they is by Sept...

Even if they do take their break, "they" will still be talking, but the message that this sends is terrible.

I'm pretty sure that Sheik Jurbooti doesn't give a shit about what the US Congress thinks.

I'm pretty sure that Sheik Jurbooti doesn't give a shit about what the US Congress thinks.

Posted by Rightocenter

Because he probably knows who the real power brokers are?:>)

old news...

New Oil Law Means Victory in Iraq for Bush
The reason that George W. Bush insists that "victory" is achievable in Iraq is not that he is deluded or isolated or ignorant or detached from reality or ill-advised. No, it's that his definition of "victory" is different from those bruited about in his own rhetoric and in the ever-earnest disquisitions of the chattering classes in print and online. For Bush, victory is indeed at hand. It could come at any moment now, could already have been achieved by the time you read this. And the driving force behind his planned "surge" of American troops is the need to preserve those fruits of victory that are now ripening in his hand.
As the paper notes, the law will give Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell and other carbon cronies of the White House unprecedented sweetheart deals, allowing them to pump gargantuan profits from Iraq's nominally state-owned oilfields for decades to come. This law has been in the works since the very beginning of the invasion - indeed, since months before the invasion, when the Bush administration brought in Phillip Carroll, former CEO of both Shell and Fluor, the politically-wired oil servicing firm, to devise "contingency plans" for divvying up Iraq's oil after the attack.

Posted Jan 9, 2007 08:25 AM PST
Category: IRAQ

So this is what American troops and Iraqi citizens have been dying for: Iraqi oil.

www.truthout.org

My money says that 3/4 of the Iraqi parliament immigrate to the US within three months of the US withdrawing troops. And Al Maliki will be the first one here.

they should vote themselves a pay raise just before they leave, that would be the icing on the cake :)

Taking time off?

When the hell did they convene?

When the hell did they convene?

Posted by keith204

Hell is there?

"You know, it's 130 degrees (54 Celsius) in Baghdad in August."

Letters from Hell?

www.uruknet.de

"Dear Gerri:
No words can describe the real terror of what's happening and being committed against the population in Baghdad and other cities: the poor people with no money to leave the country, the disabled old men and women, the wives and children of tens of thousands of detainees who can't leave when their dad is getting tortured in the Democratic Prisons, senior years students who have been caught in a situation that forces them to take their finals to finish their degrees, parents of missing young men who got out and never came back, waiting patiently for someone to knock the door and say, "I am back." There are thousands and thousands of sad stories that need to be told but nobody is there to listen.

I called my cousin in the al-Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad to check if they are still alive. She is in her sixties and her husband is about seventy. She burst into tears, begging me to pray to God to take their lives away soon so they don't have to go through all this agony. She told me that, with no electricity, it is impossible to go to sleep when it is 40 degrees Celsius unless they get really tired after midnight. Her husband leaves the doors open because they are afraid that the American and Iraqi troops will bomb the doors if they don't respond from first door knock during searching raids. Leaving the doors open is another terror story after the attack of the troops' vicious dogs on a ten-month old baby, tearing him apart and eating him in the same neighborhood just a few days ago. The troops let the dogs attack civilians. The dogs bite them and terrify the kids with their angry red eyes in the middle of the night. So, as you can see my dear Gerri, we don't have only one Abu Ghraib with torturing dogs, we have thousands of Abu Ghraibs all over Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.

I was speechless. I couldn't say anything to comfort her. I felt ashamed to be alive and well. I thought I should be with them, supporting them, and give them some strength even if it costs me my life. I begged her to leave Baghdad. She told me that she can't because of her pregnant daughter and her grandkids. They are all with them in the house without their dad. I am hearing the same story and worse every single day. We keep asking ourselves what did we do to the Americans to deserve all this cruelness, killing, and brutishness? How can the troops do this to poor, hopeless civilians? And why?

Can anybody answer my cousin why she and her poor family are going through this?? Can you Gerri? Because I sure can't."

A whole month? Who do they think they are? The French? The US Congress?

"A whole month? Who do they think they are?"

Well, they have to go their home districts and get shot at by their constituents.

A whole month? Who do they think they are?
The French? The US Congress?

A whole month? Who do they think they are?
George "vacation entire month of August" Bush?

It is a one month opportunity for the Iraqis to try to avoid giving away most of the oil profits. I am sick of the term "benchmarks" which is used to avoid the ugly truth that our oil companies are stealing their oil and we are keeping our troops in their country until they sign the deal. I am ashamed of our country's behavior and this is just one more reason that we should impeach the president and arrest the administration. Personally, I hope the Iraqis never agree to all the "benchmarks" and Bush runs out of time with his surge.

"Personally, I hope the Iraqis never agree to all the "benchmarks" and Bush runs out of time with his surge."

Suspicians confirmed...you want the United States to LOSE! Just so that you can blame Bush. And YOU accused ME of too much hate...remember? I don't give a sh1t WHO is in the White House, I want the United States to WIN.

As a two-time Bush voter, and someone who gets tired of hearing the "Bush bashing"......PLEASE LET THIS BE THE LAST DAMN STRAW!!!!! Our troops can't get longer rest periods between employments, and these ragheads we are fighting for take a month off because it is too hot????? I say, bring 'em home NOW!

I meant..DEployments.....I am at work, what do you expect..lol!

They will need the whole month to spend the $300 million missing from the Baghdad Bank.

By the way, was that the shortest lived story of the war?

$300 million will buy a lot of bad things.

Wifenothome: You blame the "ragheads" for the situation? They never asked the US to invade. No country wants to be invaded and have hundreds of thousands of its people killed (which is exactly what the Republicans under GWB orchestrated.) The last thing the Iraqi people ever wanted was to have that madman Bush take over their land. And now you have the nerve to blame those "ragheads" for not embracing our invasion. Iraq is in a civil war which we ignited. You seem outraged that they have embraced your values as a conservative republican and agreed to install a government of your liking. Get over yourself.

Doesn't Bush go on vacation in August as well? I wonder if some of them are vacationing in Crawford Texas. I believe Bush is the most vacationed president in history.

As a two-time Bush voter, and someone who gets tired of hearing the "Bush bashing".........

Posted by wifenothome at 2007-07-14 09:07 AM | Reply

Well, if you're sick of the Bush-bashing then quit voting for that arrogant, lying, war profiteering, Neocon fool to stay in office.

Can anybody deny global warming now? For thousands of years, Baghdad functioned year round. Now, with global warming, it has to shut down one month a year.
Gotta say, somebody shoulda bitch slapped Tony Snowjob's arrogant mouth at that briefing. He wasn't even trying to pretend to give a rats ass. I guess 130 degrees is just a number, too.

"I guess 130 degrees is just a number, too."

Maybe he meant Kelvin.

Bani: The Iraqi oil deal has been sent to a "Committee" after the sunni and shia said it sucked.
I don't think the committee is scheduled to hold meetings in August.

And btw, with all that extra electricity and clean water we've created (Bush promised it back in 2003 and he's never been wrong about how things are going in Iraq), why isn't Baghdad under an air-conditioned dome?
With lots of fountains?