Iraqi government officials and American analysts have asserted that Mr. Galbraith's dual role during the constitutional negotiations implied a conflict of interest, since the provisions he championed could have increased the value of his own interests. But he has rejected such claims, saying that he was merely helping the Kurds press their long-stated policy goals. "So, while I may have had interests, I see no conflict," Mr. Galbraith said last year.
Farah Stockman (Boston Globe) adds that the latest news could harm Peter's state senate run in Vermont and observes, "Yesterday’s announcement confirms that Galbraith played a crucial role in helping a Norwegian oil company, DNO, set up operations in the semi-autonomous Kurdish territory of Iraq in 2004. A year earlier, Kurdish leaders had paid Galbraith to help them negotiate with Iraq’s central government. He also helped draft provisions of Iraq’s constitution that gave Kurds control over newly discovered oil fields in their region. In 2005, he advised the Kurds informally on an unpaid basis."
We've covered this issue since before the DNO details came out. I've repeatedly called Peter out here for years and years, check the archives. We've now finished up the issue unless there are charges and/or new details that emerge or unless Peter speaks on the issue. I know the family and I showed no favoritism on the issue but I'm done with it now and if Glanz wasn't covering it today and/or Peter wasn't running for elected office, we wouldn't be noting it today. But we did and we opened with. Barring the already noted new developments, we're done with this story except as a detail in the story of greed and how it motivated the illegal war.
On greed, know how to detect a con job? A con artist offers you what sounds like a really good deal but there's a qualifier to it, usually something along the lines of, "there's a limited window of time" as they attempt to hurry you into making a risky move. Remember that as you read Leila Fadel's report (Washington Post) about US officials such as the Commerce Dept's Francisco Sanchez leading an Iraq tour and telling business execs, "If you want to really play a role here, you have to be here now." As Fadel points out, "Iraq is ranked fifth from the bottom on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index - tied with Sudan and ahead of only Burma, Afghanistan and Somalia. Iraq's ranking has dropped drastically since 2003." Jane Arraf (Christian Science Monitor) quotes Sanchez insisting, "I'm not trying to sugar-coat this but what I am trying to say is, the Iraqi government is sorting through some of these challenges as the physical security increasingly improves. You can't wait for everything to be perfect." Serena Chaudhry (Reuters) notes, "Companies on the mission included Boeing, Bell Helicopter Textron, ICON Global Architectural Engineering and Wamar International." One wonders Sanchez will promise to attend any and all funerals? Probably not. He'll pitch to get American business into Iraq but he'll be busy if and when the funerals roll around. Like most con artists, he'll have moved on to his next mark. In other blood money news, CBS News reports, "The State Department is awarding contracts that could amount to $10 billion to eight private security companies over the next five years. The Worldwide Protective Services contracts will cover safeguarding State Department facilities and personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Israel, according to sources familiar with the contracting arrangements. The contracts, which are for one year with four options to renew, will be awarded over the next few months. So far, close to a billion dollars has been awarded to SOC to provide security for the U.S. Embassy and diplomats stationed in Baghdad."
The illegal war has led to filings with the Iraq Inquiry from human rights attorneys. The UK's Law Gazette reports, "The Solicitors International Human Rights Group and the Law Society’s international action team found fault with the UK government’s two main justifications for the invasion, in a written submission to Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry into the Iraq conflict."
Alsumaria TV reports, "Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki held talks with US under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns over Iraq government formation." And in a ridiculous attempt to make Nouri look 'powerful,' his administration leaks news of a supposed assassination attempt that was foiled. That many people want Nouri dead would not be surprising. But it's 2010 -- nearly 2011 -- and when you leak news of a 2007 attempt today, you really are reaching. But it's a special day.
March 7th, Iraq concluded Parliamentary elections. The Guardian's editorial board noted last month, "These elections were hailed prematurely by Mr Obama as a success, but everything that has happened since has surely doused that optimism in a cold shower of reality." 163 seats are needed to form the executive government (prime minister and council of ministers). When no single slate wins 163 seats (or possibly higher -- 163 is the number today but the Parliament added seats this election and, in four more years, they may add more which could increase the number of seats needed to form the executive government), power-sharing coalitions must be formed with other slates, parties and/or individual candidates. (Eight Parliament seats were awarded, for example, to minority candidates who represent various religious minorities in Iraq.) Ayad Allawi is the head of Iraqiya which won 91 seats in the Parliament making it the biggest seat holder. Second place went to State Of Law which Nouri al-Maliki, the current prime minister, heads. They won 89 seats. Nouri made a big show of lodging complaints and issuing allegations to distract and delay the certification of the initial results while he formed a power-sharing coalition with third place winner Iraqi National Alliance -- this coalition still does not give them 163 seats. They are claiming they have the right to form the government. In 2005, Iraq took four months and seven days to pick a prime minister. It's seven months. Seven months, blow out the candles, Nouri.
What a sad and telling moment for Iraq.
We'll close with this from Sherwood Ross' book review at OpEdNews:
As the World War I “Bonus Army” veterans and their families scattered under clouds of vomiting gas fired by the U.S. Army to clear them out of their shantytowns near the U.S. Capitol that July day in 1932, they might well have thought that their protests were in vain. Not so. It led years later to enactment of the G.I. Bill of Rights.
Seventeen thousand veterans as well as their family members, friends, and supporters were routed from their tent city on the order of U.S. Attorney General William Mitchell. No less a figure than World War I hero General Douglas MacArthur led foot soldiers against them, backed by six tanks, with World War II hero-to-be Major George Patton astride his mount at the head of the cavalry. The squatting veterans were driven out and their shacks and tents and their possessions were torched on orders of a government defiantly opposed to their demand for early payment of “Service Certificates” for World War I duty issued by Congress in 1924 but not redeemable until 1944. A large segment of the U.S. population suffering the hardships of the Great Depression was sympathetic to the veterans, including the outspoken U.S. Marine Corps General Smedley Butler, shortly to become famous for his opinion “war is a racket.”
Seymour Langer, a suburban Chicago radiologist whose father may have served in the army during WWI, often spoke of the futile effort of the tear-gassed veterans to get paid and told his son, Adam, a writer, that he was considering writing a book on the subject. At one point, Seymour wrote historian Barbara Tuchman asking if she thought a book on the Bonus March was a good idea and she replied telling him, yes, to write the book. Years passed, though, and when Dr. Langer died in 2005 at age 80 he had never found time even to begin his project. Yet the very thought of it fascinated Adam, who had fantasized of accompanying his dad on research trips to mine information for the book. Adam, with the novels "Ellington Boulevard" and "Crossing California" to his credit, had never before written a work of nonfiction. Today, Langer told The Los Angeles Times, his new book, "My Father's Bonus March" "is the story of what we didn't do together, of the conversations we didn't have, of the projects we didn't finish, of the stories he left out, of the inner life, about which I knew so little, of what our relationship could have been but wasn't."
In a wide-ranging television interview with Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover and host of the Comcast broadcast "Books of Our Times," broadcast nationally, Adam Langer said that some of his father's stories may have been made up or embellished, such as the one that grandfather Sam Langer served during the Great War. "Nobody I talked to---cousins, uncles, my father's broker or friends ever heard of him serving in the military (and when) I looked into that story I could find no verification for it." When he tried to verify that story at the National Archives Adam discovered many of the records from that period were burned and so he cannot be sure if Sam ever served or if his father contrived the tale to explain his interest in the Bonus March. Such ambiguities deepened the mystery and the challenge of writing the book.
Adam speculates that his father's interest was fueled by the fact he was the only member of his inner circle of friends that did not see service in World War II and "he thought that these veterans should be honored." In fact, the historic GI Bill of Rights enacted in July, 1944, was in significant part a nation's belated response to the failure of past administrations to do right by its veterans such as those who served in the horrific World War. Adam thought that the quest to discover his father's reasons for being interested in the Bonus March prompted him to "keep looking, keep searching for what's not being told." He goes on to say, "And that's what I got out of it. Whether he intended to give me that message or not, what I got out of it was 'Here's something left out of the history books and your job is to find out what's missing and to put together the pieces on your own,' and that's what the book was about for me." Adam said his father told him the Bonus March was "the most overlooked incident in American history." He added that he wanted to view his father's life "through the lens of the Bonus March, and to see what had been forgotten that he thought should be remembered, at the same time seeing what I thought might be forgotten about his life, and seeing what should be remembered about that."
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