According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, “southern Iraq’s most important historic sites … had neither been seriously damaged nor looted after the American invasion” contrary to countless assertions stating otherwise. Journal author Melik Kaylan hints the mainstream press has ignored a report by “top archaeologists from the U.S. and U.K.” for political reasons.

Kaylan’s main source comes from an article by Martin Bailey of The Art Newspaper which states, “Not a single recent dig hole was found” during an early-June British military mission to eight sites in northern Basra led by Dr. John Curtis of the British Museum. While the Art Newspaper report is somewhat accurate (see the full report by the British Museum [pdf]), claims made by Kaylan and others leave the reader with the impression that very little (or no) looting has taken place throughout the country. This based on the brief inspections of eight sites. One problem is the British Museum’s own report which states “[t]here were clear indications of looting holes” at five of the eight areas inspected, others were damaged due to neglect or military activities.

Kaylan denigrates warnings made by specialists as unscientific and prone to politically motivated fear mongering:

Considering the political impact of such data, one would expect the experts to approach the subject with scientific circumspection, using numbers sparingly and conservatively. Too often they seem to have done the reverse. So now, as a matter of course, their method, their probity in sifting the evidence — do they have a political agenda? — has come into question.

So the anti-American tendency runs deep indeed, forget the actual concerns of trained scientists. But yet again the scientific evidence proves who actually has the political agenda here. In a more detailed discussion of the known evidence, Hugh Eakin, writing in The New York Review of Books, covers Elizabeth Stone’s research (among others) of thousands of satellite images taken between 2003 and today. Eakin cites Stone as writing that the total amount lost as a result of recent looting is “many times greater than all archaeological investigations ever conducted in southern Iraq – and must have yielded tablets, coins, cylinder seals, statues, terracottas, bronzes and other objects in the hundreds of thousands.” Of course, how much has been taken can’t be known for sure, but the pace and rapidity of the retrieval is clear.

Laying the blame is less important than knowing the truth. But as Kaylan knows the truth sometimes hurts. Considering something that makes perfect since if we examine, according to the most detailed scientific data covering thousands of archaeological sites, the most extensive looting – though by no means not all – took place immediately prior to the invasion when the Baathist regime in Iraq had more pressing worries than protecting (as it had done) Iraq’s cultural heritage. And of course in war the conflicting parties always have greater concerns than whether some ancient artifact is stolen, therefore such an environment provides a perfect opportunity for some to profit on the black market. And items turn up day after day. So much for Kaylan’s conspiracy.

Raad Alkadiri, an oil and gas industry advisor for PFC Energy, writing in the Washington Post, scoffs at the idea that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq had anything to do with oil. Despite his acknowledgment that “a number of international oil companies are on the brink of signing contracts with Iraq,” Mr. Alkadiri argues, “If the Iraq invasion was about oil, let the record show that that mission has been botched even worse than the war’s toughest critics claim the military expedition has been.”

He goes on to assert that since Iraqi production declined as an immediate result of the war, the entire affair therefore had little to do with energy resources. The obvious and immediate fallacy in this argument is that it assumes that greater access to oil, and hence increased production, is the primary goal of the industry rather than control over it. Increasing the global oil supply would result in lower prices and therefore lower profits. Tightly dictating production and keeping most of the profits out of Iraqi hands provides a much more advantageous result for the Western companies negotiating the terms of contract.

Investigative journalist Greg Palast has reported on this aspect of the Iraq strategy extensively over the last few years. After reviewing the British and American strategy since 1925 to limit Iraqi oil production, Palast writes in his 2006 book Armed Madhouse:

The decision to expand production has, for now, been kept out of Iraqi’s hands by the latest method of suppressing Iraq’s oil flow – the 2003 invasion and resistance to invasion. And it has been darn effective. Iraq’s output in 2003, 2004 and 2005 was less than produced under the restrictive Oil-for-Food Program. Whether by design or happenstance, this decline in output has resulted in tripling the profits of the five U.S. oil majors to $89 billion for a single year, 2005, compared to pre-invasion 2002. That suggests an interesting arithmetic equation. Big Oil’s profits are up $89 billion a year in the same period the oil industry boosted contributions to Mr. Bush’s reelection campaign to roughly $40 million.

And remember, these points were made back in the good old days when oil was at a minuscule price of about $60 per barrel rather than today’s $140. So contrary to Mr. Alkadiri’s point, decreased production is anything but proof the war never was about oil and in fact shows it most likely was.

As an advisor to the energy industries on issues of Iraq, it is not surprising Mr. Alkadiri also paints negotiations between oil and gas companies and the Iraqi government as a fair process initiated by a sovereign government, claiming Iraqi oil “ministry officials reached out directly to nine companies” (including the five majors of Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Total and Chevron) that are now poised to claim the prize. But should we assume a nation occupied by a foreign power can truly act independently in these types of negotiations? A recent New York Times report contradicts this assessment by revealing:

A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say.

Of course the administration denies these claims and prefers to argue Iraqis are free to establish any agreements they see as being in their own best interest. Yet if that were the case, it is an interesting coincidence these new no-bid contracts reverse agreements established under Saddam Hussein which opened development of reserves to, among others, Chinese, Russian and Indian firms. It just so happens this is completely in line with US strategic and military interests.

I won’t rehash it here but we now know the Bush administration and the oil industry was interested in dividing Iraq’s oil wealth before 9/11. Documents dated March 2001 from Cheney’s infamous Energy Task Force released as a result of a successful lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act include a detailed map of Iraq’s oilfields, pipelines and oil related capacities. There are also charts and a list of international oil companies titled “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” As is well known, the Task Force was a who’s who of industry insiders. SourceWatch has a comprehensive overview of the group, including its participants and what is known of documents and reports it produced.

So it seems odd to hear members of the political elite still arguing with a straight face that oil had nothing to do with the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In his wit and insight, Noam Chomsky as usual states it most plainly:

Doctrinal managers would like us to believe that the US and UK would have “liberated” Iraq even if its major exports were lettuce and pickles and the major energy resources of the world were in the South Pacific. It takes really impressive discipline “not to see” the obvious.

Following up on my last post regarding the mainstream media’s spin on Iraq and troop withdrawal, I came across this article from the Financial Times. While it does not mention time horizons it purports to describe how Iraqis are “divided” over the idea of a US military withdrawal from their country. Writing from Baghdad – likely not far from the Green Zone if even outside – the author claims “[m]ost Iraqis appear wary of setting any specific timetables for the withdrawal of US troops,” fearing doing so would destabilize the country and lead to civil war.

Yet the article offers but one quote from an Iraqi that is clearly against withdrawal. Of the remaining four quotes, only two are concerned with the issue of a troop pullout, one wants a drawdown in the number of US personnel, the other argues for a gradual withdrawal, no timetables mentioned. The remaining two Iraqis quoted are statements of support for Barack Obama, who has stated his intention of setting a timetable (what form that will actually take if he becomes president we have to wait and see).

This kind of anecdotal evidence abounds in media reports, while actual polling data is rarely mentioned. One such poll taken in early 2006 when the security situation was far more dire than today showed that 67% of Iraqis felt a six month withdrawal from that time would increase security, 70% wanted a timeline of either six months or two years, and 80% approved the Iraqi government calling for such a timeline.

A more recent poll [PDF] shows opinions have changed little since, demonstrating that as of March 2008 61% of Iraqis felt the US presence was making the security situation there worse and 69% claimed a complete withdrawal would either improve security or not change things at all. The numbers supporting the occupation are even worse, yet we are constantly led to believe through media reports such as this one in the Financial Times that Iraqis are torn between wanting to keep American troops in their country and having them leave.

If more news outlets would report the clear position of the people of Iraq – ironically from polling data often commissioned by the very news agencies that rarely use it – rather than confusing things with anectodal evidence, maybe taking a position demanding a full and timely withdrawal wouldn’t seem such a radical idea.

According to Wikipedia a time horizon is a term used in economics describing “a fixed point of time in the future at which point certain processes will be evaluated or assumed to end.” Well as Johndroe makes clear we can’t assume that the US military presence or even current troop levels will end when we reach the time horizon. No, that would obviously be a fiction. Or even better, a science fiction because doesn’t it all sound like some bad sci-fi novel or film? Just think about it: The Time Horizon, where language itself breaks the laws of physics, forming out of nothing from the mouths of PR saavy politicians and repeated unquestioningly by their media robots to have any meaning intended. Wow! That would be scary.