.Iraqis Say They Deserve Aid for Fighting Terrorism
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 30 — Two high-ranking Iraqi government officials said today that their country was fighting international terrorists on its own soil on behalf of other countries and, as a result, should be compensated with economic and military assistance.
Also today, the American military said four marines had been killed in combat on Saturday in Anbar Province, a volatile region west of Baghdad where Sunni Arab insurgents have fiercely fought American-led forces. The deaths bring to eight the number of marines killed in the province since Thursday, and they illustrate the danger that remains in outlying regions as the Pentagon begins shifting troops into Baghdad in a bid to quell the rampant violence here.
The comments by the Iraqi national security adviser and a deputy prime minister suggest an emerging strategy from the fragile coalition government to portray Iraq as the global frontline against terrorism and deserving of compensation from other nations.
Their reasoning is, in one sense, an extension of the view publicly adopted by the Bush Administration after the war to justify the 2003 invasion after its original reason — to prevent Saddam Hussein from possessing weapons of mass destruction — proved unfounded.
“We are fighting terrorism in Iraq, not only for Iraqis but also on behalf of the international community,” said Barham Salih, the deputy prime minister, during a news conference that covered a wide range of economic, security and anticorruption initiatives.
The national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, who also attended the news conference, followed that statement a short while later with one using remarkably similar language. “Iraq is now defending not only Iraqis but is also defending the region and the world,” he said. “So what is the world giving us in return?”
Mahdi Al-Hafith, a member of Iraq’s Parliament and a former planning minister who leads an independent policy and development group here, said the officials’ apparently coordinated statements remained slogans that yet to bear fruit. "It has to be further elaborated,” he said. “We should have some specific and concrete details. Otherwise it would be just a political statement.”
Mr. Rubaie said economic and military aid to Iraq’s foundering economy and beseiged security forces were most urgently needed. He, Mr. Salih and the ministers of oil, finance and planning also praised Iraq’s new five-year initiative with the United Nations to reduce corruption, create jobs and stabilize the nation’s security to attract investment from foreign investors.
Foremost among them are several American and European oil companies eager for a share of Iraq’s oil reserves, regarded as the second largest in the world.
Currently, national daily oil production is estimated to be 1.9 million barrels a day, well below the 2.5 million barrels produced before the invasion. Mr. Salih, citing petroleum wealth as the key to Iraq’s economic viability, said a recent Oil Ministry study suggested that a daily rate of four million barrels a day was possible by 2010, and six million a day by 2012.
“We cannot accept any failure as Iraqis,” Mr. Salih said flatly, seated next to the other officials in a conference room in the fortified Green Zone, “because it will have grave economic and political consequences throughout the region.”
In a sign of how dependent economic growth is to Baghdad’s deteriorating security, the American military announced today that an operation killed two members of an Al Qaeda cell that had launched several mortar attacks on civilians from a location in the remote southwestern part of the city.
The attack killed two members of the group and, inadvertently, one child.
F-16 jets destroyed the mortar cell using two 500-pound guided bombs, according to a statement from the American military. “Compelling intelligence,” the statement said, showed that the cell was responsible for Thursday’s attack on a shopping mall in Baghdad’s normally peaceful Karada neighborhood that killed 32 people, injured 102 and wiped out more than a dozen family-run businesses.
In Falluja, one of the province’s most volatile cities, a member of a Sunni Arab insurgent group, the Army of Muhammad, was killed by a rival Sunni group, perhaps as a result of divergent opinions about whether to participate in the government’s national reconciliation plan.
In Baghdad, a house used for making car bombs and improvised explosive devices blew up around 2:30 p.m. local time today in western Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said. Three people were killed and one woman was wounded and a few cars damaged because of the explosion.
Also, the corpses of 15 people apparently killed execution style were found in different areas of the city, the official said.
In the Tunis neighborhood of northern Baghdad, a roadside bomb injured three policemen this morning, the official said. An hour later, a second improvised bomb detonated beside a house in the Huriya neighborhood, injuring two occupants, the official said.
In Kirkuk, an oil-rich city in northern Iraq, a car bomb exploded in a high-security compound that houses the American and British consulates and the state-owned Northern Oil Company, said a police official, Colonel Afram Hanna. The explosion killed one civilian injured four others.
In Mosul, a suicide bomber attempting to kill local police officers blew himself up in a car around noon today. The explosion killed one civilian and wounded three others, said a local police official, Brigadier Abdul Hameed Asfoor.
NYT
This is new, I never heard of a buffer state that asked for money. But I guess Iraq is the first democratic buffer state in the history of war. Nice to see that they are innovating. It's to bad Raed never thought of this.
Also today, the American military said four marines had been killed in combat on Saturday in Anbar Province, a volatile region west of Baghdad where Sunni Arab insurgents have fiercely fought American-led forces. The deaths bring to eight the number of marines killed in the province since Thursday, and they illustrate the danger that remains in outlying regions as the Pentagon begins shifting troops into Baghdad in a bid to quell the rampant violence here.
The comments by the Iraqi national security adviser and a deputy prime minister suggest an emerging strategy from the fragile coalition government to portray Iraq as the global frontline against terrorism and deserving of compensation from other nations.
Their reasoning is, in one sense, an extension of the view publicly adopted by the Bush Administration after the war to justify the 2003 invasion after its original reason — to prevent Saddam Hussein from possessing weapons of mass destruction — proved unfounded.
“We are fighting terrorism in Iraq, not only for Iraqis but also on behalf of the international community,” said Barham Salih, the deputy prime minister, during a news conference that covered a wide range of economic, security and anticorruption initiatives.
The national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, who also attended the news conference, followed that statement a short while later with one using remarkably similar language. “Iraq is now defending not only Iraqis but is also defending the region and the world,” he said. “So what is the world giving us in return?”
Mahdi Al-Hafith, a member of Iraq’s Parliament and a former planning minister who leads an independent policy and development group here, said the officials’ apparently coordinated statements remained slogans that yet to bear fruit. "It has to be further elaborated,” he said. “We should have some specific and concrete details. Otherwise it would be just a political statement.”
Mr. Rubaie said economic and military aid to Iraq’s foundering economy and beseiged security forces were most urgently needed. He, Mr. Salih and the ministers of oil, finance and planning also praised Iraq’s new five-year initiative with the United Nations to reduce corruption, create jobs and stabilize the nation’s security to attract investment from foreign investors.
Foremost among them are several American and European oil companies eager for a share of Iraq’s oil reserves, regarded as the second largest in the world.
Currently, national daily oil production is estimated to be 1.9 million barrels a day, well below the 2.5 million barrels produced before the invasion. Mr. Salih, citing petroleum wealth as the key to Iraq’s economic viability, said a recent Oil Ministry study suggested that a daily rate of four million barrels a day was possible by 2010, and six million a day by 2012.
“We cannot accept any failure as Iraqis,” Mr. Salih said flatly, seated next to the other officials in a conference room in the fortified Green Zone, “because it will have grave economic and political consequences throughout the region.”
In a sign of how dependent economic growth is to Baghdad’s deteriorating security, the American military announced today that an operation killed two members of an Al Qaeda cell that had launched several mortar attacks on civilians from a location in the remote southwestern part of the city.
The attack killed two members of the group and, inadvertently, one child.
F-16 jets destroyed the mortar cell using two 500-pound guided bombs, according to a statement from the American military. “Compelling intelligence,” the statement said, showed that the cell was responsible for Thursday’s attack on a shopping mall in Baghdad’s normally peaceful Karada neighborhood that killed 32 people, injured 102 and wiped out more than a dozen family-run businesses.
In Falluja, one of the province’s most volatile cities, a member of a Sunni Arab insurgent group, the Army of Muhammad, was killed by a rival Sunni group, perhaps as a result of divergent opinions about whether to participate in the government’s national reconciliation plan.
In Baghdad, a house used for making car bombs and improvised explosive devices blew up around 2:30 p.m. local time today in western Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said. Three people were killed and one woman was wounded and a few cars damaged because of the explosion.
Also, the corpses of 15 people apparently killed execution style were found in different areas of the city, the official said.
In the Tunis neighborhood of northern Baghdad, a roadside bomb injured three policemen this morning, the official said. An hour later, a second improvised bomb detonated beside a house in the Huriya neighborhood, injuring two occupants, the official said.
In Kirkuk, an oil-rich city in northern Iraq, a car bomb exploded in a high-security compound that houses the American and British consulates and the state-owned Northern Oil Company, said a police official, Colonel Afram Hanna. The explosion killed one civilian injured four others.
In Mosul, a suicide bomber attempting to kill local police officers blew himself up in a car around noon today. The explosion killed one civilian and wounded three others, said a local police official, Brigadier Abdul Hameed Asfoor.
NYT
This is new, I never heard of a buffer state that asked for money. But I guess Iraq is the first democratic buffer state in the history of war. Nice to see that they are innovating. It's to bad Raed never thought of this.
posted by madtom at 5:40 PM
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