Cheney Enrages Iraqis with Demands for New Laws- “This Law Is a Bomb that May Kill Everyone”

[Ichingcarpenter]

Cheney Enrages Iraqis with Demands for New Laws

“This Law Is a Bomb that May Kill Everyone”

by Gary Leupp / June 7th, 2008





Dick Cheney wants the Iraqi government installed by the U.S. occupation to sign a “security pact” with Washington by the end of July. (The pact, including a status-of-forces agreement, would be signed by the U.S. president but not constitute a treaty requiring Congressional approval.) U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker has been feverishly struggling to meet the deadline and to commit the next administration to the agreement’s terms. But that may be a tall order. Prime Minister Nour al-Maliki says negotiations are only in a beginning stage; public opinion is opposed to the pact based on leaked information about its content; and a majority of members of the Iraqi parliament have endorsed a letter to the U.S. government demanding U.S. withdrawal as the condition for “any commercial, agricultural, investment or political agreement with the United States.”

Few Americans are familiar with the proposed treaty. If they were, they might be shocked at its provisions, ashamed about its naked sadism. It:

* grants the U.S. long-term rights to maintain over 50 military bases in their California-sized country
* allows the U.S. to strike any other country from within Iraqi territory without the permission of the Iraqi government
* allows the U.S. to conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting with the local government
* allows U.S. forces to arrest any Iraqi without consulting with Iraqi authorities
* extends to U.S. troops and contracters immunity from Iraqi law
* gives U.S. forces control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000ft.
* places the Iraqi Defense, Interior and National Security ministries under American supervision for ten years
* gives the U.S. responsibility for Iraqi armament contracts for ten years
* gives foreign oil companies 90% control of Iraqi oil


Humiliating, right? The sort of conditions most Americans can’t imagine themselves accepting from a foreign occupying power.

What self-respecting people would ever agree to such provisions? Especially after their country’s been illegally invaded and occupied, on the basis of lies. Perhaps a million have been killed by the invaders and the civil strife they’ve unleashed. Two million have been driven into foreign exile, two million internally displaced. Thousands have been humiliated, terrified and tortured by the invaders. Millions’ electrical and water supply still lags behind Saddam-era levels. Millions’ personal security and enjoyment of human rights has deteriorated as a result of the invasion. Why should their leaders sign such an agreement?

No doubt some key figures in the Bush administration have asked themselves that, and here’s what they come up with. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York holds $ 50 billion of Iraq’s foreign exchange reserves as a result of the UN sanctions dating back to the first Gulf War. These include virtually all oil revenues that under UN mandate must be placed in the Development Fund for Iraq “controlled” by the Iraqi government. $ 20 billion of this is owed to plaintiffs who’ve won court judgments against Iraq, but a presidential order gives the account legal immunity. Bush can threaten to remove the immunity and wipe out 40% of Iraq’s foreign reselves if Baghdad doesn’t cooperate. At the same time, Bush can tell al-Maliki that if Iraq enters into a ‘strategic relationship” with the U.S., the U.S. will arrange for Iraq to finally escape those lingering UN “Chapter Seven” sanctions. Perhaps Bush and Cheney are confidant that this carrot and stick approach will force the Iraqi government to sign the deal.

>>>>>>>snip



Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion at Tufts University, and author of numerous works on Japanese history.


http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/06/cheney-enrages-iraqis-with-demands-for-new-laws/

[Connie_Corleone]

1. Link?

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. Updated....... The US is basically using Extortion to get the Iraqis to sign

This Farce.


Also the Bush administration is not even calling this a treaty to sidestep
the Constitution.

[crickets]

3. "would be signed by the U.S. president but not

constitute a treaty requiring Congressional approval"

Why not? It certainly sounds like a treaty- a really mean one. :eyes: Extortion at gunpoint. Sigh.

[spanone]

4. how can they do this without congress' involvement? are these treaties not subject to congressional

oversight?

[Ichingcarpenter]

5. This non treaty TREATY commits America to Foreign obligations

It is a major Constitutional Crisis just like all the other ones.

Not many people have been paying attention to this
with the primaries going on. It is a major clusterfuck.

[ShadowLiberal]

16. By calling the treaty an 'executive agreement' I think

According to a history text book for a political class I had in the last year, a case about if 'executive agreements' are valid treaties has already gone before the Supreme Court, and they ruled that executive agreements are indeed as valid as a treaty under US law. (though this was ages ago, not recently under Bush)

[Frustratedlady]

6. What happened to bringing democracy to Iraq, purple fingertips, all that stuff?

I can't imagine this could get by Congress. Isn't anyone watching? These are steps backward, not forward.

I'd say that would keep Halliburton, KBR, et al., busy for a good deal of million$.

Has the MSM mentioned it?

[Ichingcarpenter]

7. I have nominated threads on this and the Web is aware of it

but it hasn't been picked up by the Corporate Media.

[TechBear_Seattle]

8. Much like the conditions the Allies forced on Germany at the end of WW I

And we all know how well that turned out. :eyes:

[Botany]

9. Cheney should go over himself and enforce the laws

That asshat needs to go on trial @ the Hague for war crimes.

How much has he made on this war?

[Fleshdancer]

10. This is far worse than taxation without representation

This is America doing the most un-American thing imaginable.

Please tell me this is a sick, sad joke.

[Ichingcarpenter]

11. No, there are congressional members that wrote a letter complaining but

I think this is beyond letter writing but another constitutional crisis.

[Fleshdancer]

12. You're absolutely right.

What is the point of creating a constitutional crisis of this magnitude if you think you're going to lose your power by the end of the year?

WTF is going to happen? This is scary.

[Zhade]

13. The Iraqi people will drive out the invaders, and it will be bloody.

Bloodier than it has been.

Obama fucking BETTER end this war.

[Ichingcarpenter]

14. This ugly regime we have, will not go out without a fight

too much money to be made and too many willing powerful collaborators.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

15. I'd love to disagree, but I cannot...

...these war criminals have much to lose if they don't maintain the reins of power. I can't envision a smooth transition. Sure hope we're wrong.

[Disturbed]

17. Iraq is not America's to sell

International law is unequivocal - Paul Bremer's economic reforms are illegal
Naomi Klein

Bring Halliburton home. Cancel the contracts. Ditch the deals. Rip up the rules. Those are just a few of the suggestions for slogans that could help unify the growing movement against the occupation of Iraq. So far, activist debates have focused on whether the demand should be for a complete withdrawal of troops, or for the United States to cede power to the United Nations.
But the "troops out" debate overlooks an important fact. If every last soldier pulled out of the Gulf tomorrow and a sovereign government came to power, Iraq would still be occupied: by laws written in the interest of another country; by foreign corporations controlling its essential services; by 70% unemployment sparked by public sector layoffs.

Any movement serious about Iraqi self-determination must call not only for an end to Iraq's military occupation, but to its economic colonisation as well. That means reversing the shock therapy reforms that US occupation chief Paul Bremer has fraudulently passed off as "reconstruction", and cancelling all privatisation contracts that are flowing from these reforms.

How can such an ambitious goal be achieved? Easy: by showing that Bremer's reforms were illegal to begin with. They clearly violate the international convention governing the behaviour of occupying forces, the Hague regulations of 1907 (the companion to the 1949 Geneva conventions, both ratified by the United States), as well as the US army's own code of war.

The Hague regulations state that an occupying power must respect "unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country". The coalition provisional authority has shredded that simple rule with gleeful defiance. Iraq's constitution outlaws the privatisation of key state assets, and it bars foreigners from owning Iraqi firms. No plausible argument can be made that the CPA was "absolutely prevented" from respecting those laws, and yet two months ago, the CPA overturned them unilaterally.
On September 19, Bremer enacted the now infamous Order 39. It announced that 200 Iraqi state companies would be privatised; decreed that foreign firms can retain 100% ownership of Iraqi banks, mines and factories; and allowed these firms to move 100% of their profits out of Iraq. The Economist declared the new rules a "capitalist dream".

Order 39 violated the Hague regulations in other ways as well. The convention states that occupying powers "shall be regarded only as administrator and usufructuary of public buildings, real estate, forests and agricultural estates belonging to the hostile state, and situated in the occupied country. It must safeguard the capital of these properties, and administer them in accordance with the rules of usufruct."
Bouvier's Law Dictionary defines "usufruct" (possibly the ugliest word in the English language) as an arrangement that grants one party the right to use and derive benefit from another's property "without altering the substance of the thing". Put more simply, if you are a housesitter, you can eat the food in the fridge, but you can't sell the house and turn it into condos. And yet that is just what Bremer is doing: what could more substantially alter "the substance" of a public asset than to turn it into a private one?

In case the CPA was still unclear on this detail, the US army's Law of Land Warfare states that "the occupant does not have the right of sale or unqualified use of property". This is pretty straightforward: bombing something does not give you the right to sell it. There is every indication that the CPA is well aware of the lawlessness of its privatisation scheme. In a leaked memo written on March 26, the British attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, warned Tony Blair that "the imposition of major structural economic reforms would not be authorised by international law".
So far, most of the controversy surrounding Iraq's reconstruction has focused on the waste and corruption in the awarding of contracts. This badly misses the scope of the violation: even if the sell-off of Iraq were conducted with full transparency and open bidding, it would still be illegal for the simple reason that Iraq is not America's to sell.

The security council's recognition of the United States' and Britain's occupation authority provides no legal cover. The UN resolution passed in May specifically required the occupying powers to "comply fully with their obligations under international law including in particular the Geneva conventions of 1949 and the Hague regulations of 1907".

According to a growing number of international legal experts, that means that if the next Iraqi government decides it doesn't want to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Bechtel and Halliburton, it will have powerful legal grounds to renationalise assets that were privatised under CPA edicts.
Juliet Blanch, global head of energy and international arbitration for the huge international law firm Norton Rose, says that because Bremer's reforms directly contradict Iraq's constitution, they are "in breach of international law and are likely not enforceable". Blanch argues that the CPA "has no authority or ability to sign those contracts", and that a sovereign Iraqi government would have "quite a serious argument for renationalisation without paying compensation". Firms facing this type of expropriation would, according to Blanch, have "no legal remedy".

The only way out for the administration is to make sure that Iraq's next government is anything but sovereign. It must be pliant enough to ratify the CPA's illegal laws, which will then be celebrated as the happy marriage of free markets and free people. Once that happens, it will be too late: the contracts will be locked in, the deals done and the occupation of Iraq permanent.

Which is why anti-war forces must use this fast-closing window to demand that the next Iraqi government be free from the shackles of these reforms. It's too late to stop the war, but it's not too late to deny Iraq's invaders the myriad economic prizes they went to war to collect in the first place.

It's not too late to cancel the contracts and ditch the deals.


http;//www.commondreams.org/views03/1107-09.htm

[bluesmail]

18. Well it may go like this: Keep ignoring the rules/law

Give everybody who's not on board a big F You, mow all dissenters down, put them in Happy Camps, ignore the consequences after all you own the DOJ and along with your masters Saudi Arabia and Israel you dominate the world. Hey look it's The New World Order, with the US's constitution a scrap of paper. A Scrap Of Paper. Yeah everbody should be :scared: and I might add it's not a far fetched idea at all.

[bluesmail]

19. Sorry I forgot the K&R