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Iraq Oil Attack * Hearings? * Martial Law * UFO Sighting

01 August 2002


"Everyone should realize the secret that oppression thrived only when the oppressed submitted to it."
- Mahatma Gandhi

1) West Sees Glittering Prizes Ahead in Giant Oilfields
2) Iraq: What's Missing From the Hearings?
3) Foundations are in place for martial law in the US
4) What was that bright light in Maryland's sky???

"It would be a tragedy if we removed a tyrant in Iraq, only to leave chaos"
-- Senator Joseph Biden

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1) West Sees Glittering Prizes Ahead in Giant Oilfields


Published July 11, 2002 in the Times of London
by Michael Theodoulou in Nicosia and Roland Watson

THE removal of President Saddam Hussein would open Iraq's rich new oilfields to Western bidders and bring the prospect of lessening dependence on Saudi oil. No other country offers such untapped oilfields whose exploitation could lessen tensions over the Western presence in Saudi Arabia.

After Kuwait's liberation by US-led forces in 1991, America monopolized the postwar deals, but the need to win international support for an invasion is unlikely to see a repeat.

Russia, in particular, and France and China all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council have high hopes of prizing promises of contracts in a liberated Iraq from a United States that may need their political support.

President Bush has used the War on Terror to press his case for drilling in a protected Arctic refuge, but predicted reserves in Alaska are dwarfed by the oilwells of the Gulf.Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that the issue for the US was as much the security of the Gulf as access to particular oilfields.

"You are looking down the line to a world in 2020 when reliance on Gulf oil will have more than doubled. The security of the Gulf is an absolutely critical issue."

Gerald Butt, Gulf editor of the Middle East Economic Survey, said: "The removal of Saddam is, in effect, the removal of the last threat to the free flow of oil from the Gulf as a whole."

Iraq has oil reserves of 112billion barrels, second only to Saudi Arabia, which has some 265billion barrels. Iraqi reserves are seven times those of the combined UK and Norwegian sectors of the North Sea. But the prize for oil companies could be even greater. Iraq estimates that its eventual reserves could be as high as 220billion barrels.

Three giant southern fields - Majnoon, West Qurna and Nahr Umar have the capacity to produce as much as Kuwait. The first two could each equal Qatar's production of 700,000 barrels a day. "There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world. Its the big prize," Mr Butt said.

Extraction costs in these giant onshore fields, where development has been held up by more than two decades of war and sanctions, would also be among the lowest in the world. Provided that the US can ensure stability in a post-Saddam Iraq, it would take five years, at most, to develop the oilfields and Iraq's prewar capacity of three million barrels a day could reach seven or eight million, industry experts said.

However, regime change in Baghdad will be of little value to international oil companies unless it is followed by a stable Iraq with a strong central government. Companies cant go in unless there is peace. To develop Majnoon, you need two to three billion dollars and you don't invest that kind of money without stability, one industry analyst said.

Copyright 2002 Times Newspapers Ltd.

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Related article: White House Acts to Shed Arrogant Image
---- New PR Office to Sell Bush Policies and War on Terror ----
Published on Wednesday, July 31, 2002 in the Guardian of London
Posted: http://commondreams.org/headlines02/0731-02.htm

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Related Article: "Iraqi weapons 'a growing threat'"
from BBC News - 1 August, 2002, 02:32 GMT 03:32 UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2163183.stm

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2) Iraq: What's Missing From the Hearings?


Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org
___________________________________________________
Thursday, August 1, 2002
Iraq: What's Missing From the Hearings?
As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee continues to hear testimony from the individuals it has selected, the following analysts are available for interviews:

PHYLLIS BENNIS, pbennis@compuserve.com,
http://www.ips-dc.org/projects/newinternat.htm
Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-editor of "Beyond the Storm: A Gulf Crisis Reader." Her testimony was put in the Congressional Record on Wednesday; she was not asked to testify.

KATHY KELLY, kkelly@igc.org,
http://www.vitw.org
Coordinator of Voices in the Wilderness, a group which has challenged the economic sanctions against Iraq, Kelly has been to that country over a dozen times, most recently in June. She will be in New York City after 1 p.m. on Thursday.

SCOTT RITTER, wsritter@aol.com,
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0731-09.htm
Ritter, who was a chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, is the author of "Endgame: Solving the Iraqi Problem Once and For All."

HANS VON SPONECK, von_sponeck@yahoo.com,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,759512,00.html
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0702-03.htm
As a former UN Assistant Secretary General, Von Sponeck headed the UN "oil-for-food" program until he resigned two years ago in protest over the continued sanctions. He was in Iraq in July.

JIM JENNINGS, jimjennings@earthlink.net,
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june98/iraq_3-13.html
President of Conscience International, a humanitarian aid organization, Jennings has led medical and public health workshops in Iraqi hospitals since 1991, training 500 Iraqi doctors and nurses in child survival techniques. He said today: "Any new war with Iraq would only bring a fresh humanitarian catastrophe. We are still dealing with the devastating effects of the last war and the subsequent harsh embargo on vulnerable women, children, and the aged. Since the Gulf War, the death rate for children under age 5 in Iraq has risen from 56 per thousand to 131 per thousand. One in every eight Iraqi children dies before his or her first birthday. Sixty percent of mothers are anemic, and one child in three suffers from chronic malnutrition. The incidence of childhood cancer and leukemia has more than tripled in the Basra governorate..."

RAHUL MAHAJAN, rahul@tao.ca,
http://www.nowarcollective.com
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0202mahajan.htm
http://www.fair.org/extra/0111/iraq.html

Mahajan is author of "The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism" and the forthcoming "Desert Deception: Myths and Realities About the War on Iraq." Mahajan said today: "Myths impede discussion about Iraq. Myths like: The economic sanctions would be lifted if only Iraq had complied with the weapons inspectors. (The U.S. government repeatedly stated the sanctions would continue regardless.) Myths like: Inspectors are not in Iraq because Iraq kicked them out in December of 1998. (Actually they were withdrawn by UNSCOM head Richard Butler, just before the Desert Fox bombing campaign.) It was also under Butler's watch that inspectors were used for espionage, something many have forgotten about. Also, the Pentagon continues to bomb Iraq about once a week in the 'no-fly' zones. These hearings add more layers of myth instead of unraveling them."

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

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For a related article, "The Coming October War in Iraq" by William Rivers Pitt, which details a presentation by Scott Ritter in Cambridge, Massachusetts, see:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/07.25A.wrp.iraq.htm

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3) Foundations are in place for martial law in the US

Foundations are in place for martial law in the US
By Ritt Goldstein
July 27 2002

Recent pronouncements from the Bush Administration and national security initiatives put in place in the Reagan era could see internment camps and martial law in the United States.

When president Ronald Reagan was considering invading Nicaragua he issued a series of executive orders that provided the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with broad powers in the event of a "crisis" such as "violent and widespread internal dissent or national opposition against a US military invasion abroad". They were never used.

But with the looming possibility of a US invasion of Iraq, recent pronouncements by President George Bush's domestic security chief, Tom Ridge, and an official with the US Civil Rights Commission should fire concerns that these powers could be employed or a de facto drift into their deployment could occur.

On July 20 the Detroit Free Press ran a story entitled "Arabs in US could be held, official warns". The story referred to a member of the US Civil Rights Commission who foresaw the possibility of internment camps for Arab Americans. FEMA has practised for such an occasion.

FEMA, whose main role is disaster response, is also responsible for handling US domestic unrest.

From 1982-84 Colonel Oliver North assisted FEMA in drafting its civil defence preparations. Details of these plans emerged during the 1987 Iran-Contra scandal.

They included executive orders providing for suspension of the constitution, the imposition of martial law, internment camps, and the turning over of government to the president and FEMA.

A Miami Herald article on July 5, 1987, reported that the former FEMA director Louis Guiffrida's deputy, John Brinkerhoff, handled the martial law portion of the planning. The plan was said to be similar to one Mr Giuffrida had developed earlier to combat "a national uprising by black militants". It provided for the detention "of at least 21million American Negroes"' in "assembly centres or relocation camps".

Today Mr Brinkerhoff is with the highly influential Anser Institute for Homeland Security. Following a request by the Pentagon in January that the US military be allowed the option of deploying troops on American streets, the institute in February published a paper by Mr Brinkerhoff arguing the legality of this.

He alleged that the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which has long been accepted as prohibiting such deployments, had simply been misunderstood and misapplied.

The preface to the article also provided the revelation that the national plan he had worked on, under Mr Giuffrida, was "approved by Reagan, and actions were taken to implement it".


By April, the US military had created a Northern Command to aid Homeland defence. Reuters reported that the command is "mainly expected to play a supporting role to local authorities".

However, Mr Ridge, the Director of Homeland Security, has just advocated a review of US law regarding the use of the military for law enforcement duties.

Disturbingly, the full facts and final contents of Mr Reagan's national plan remain uncertain. This is in part because President Bush took the unusual step of sealing the Reagan presidential papers last November. However, many of the key figures of the Reagan era are part of the present administration, including John Poindexter, to whom Oliver North later reported.

At the time of the Reagan initiatives, the then attorney-general, William French Smith, wrote to the national security adviser, Robert McFarlane: "I believe that the role assigned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the revised Executive Order exceeds its proper function as a co-ordinating agency for emergency preparedness ... this department and others have repeatedly raised serious policy and legal objections to an 'emergency czar' role for FEMA."

Criticism of the Bush Administration's response to September11 echoes Mr. Smith's warning. On June 7 the former presidential counsel John Dean spoke of America's sliding into a "constitutional dictatorship" and martial law.

Ritt Goldstein is an investigative journalist and a former leader in the movement for US law enforcement accountability. He revealed exclusively in the Herald last week the Bush Administration's plans for a domestic spying system more pervasive than the Stasi network in East Germany.

This story was found at:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/27/1027497418339.html

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4) What was that bright light in Maryland's sky???

WTOPNEWS.com
http://wtopnews.com/news/newsdetail.cfm?newsid=584517
07-27-02

Waldorf Puts the U in UFO

What was that bright light in Maryland's sky???

WTOP has learned that residents near Andrews Air Force base were shaken from their beds early Friday morning by some strange activity in the air.

"Incredible. Absolutely incredible" is what Renny Rogers of Waldorf calls it. Just before two in the morning, Rogers says he saw a large blue ball of light streaking across the sky. But it was the military jets that really startled him.

"(The jets) were right on its tail. As the thing would move, a jet was right behind it," Rogers recalls.

He is not the only one who saw it. Several people called WTOP Radio reporting seeing a bright blue or orange ball moving very fast, being chased by jets. Rogers says there was no smoke coming from the object, no flashing lights, and says it was smooth, and eerily silent. The Air National Guard confirms they scrambled the 113th squadron. Spokesman Sheldon Smith says they are investigating and in contact with NORAD.
WTOP Radio, 2002

Copyright 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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For related Flyby News "Disclosure Project" Info (UFO/ET documentation and men in black). see, http://www.flybynews.com/cgi-local/newspro/viewnews.cgi?newsid989633463,12613,m

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