This fiasco by Bush and Co. is turning into a nightmare. They have failed in literally every aspect of this occupation. No Saddam, no WMD, no increased oil, and certainly no help for the Iraqi people, who continue to live without basic neccesities such as electricity and clean water. All they have done is to further inflame the Islamic World, while US troops are bushwacked and killed almost daily. This will be remembered as a blunder of monumental proportions, imo.
Iraq victory fails to oil world economy
Heather Stewart and Charlotte Denny
Tuesday August 19, 2003
The Guardian
www.guardian.co.uk/oil/st...41,00.html
If President Bush's real reason for rolling his tanks into Iraq was to turn on the taps of the world's second-largest oil reserves to lower the cost of energy, he must be sadly disappointed. Following this weekend's attacks by saboteurs on Iraq's main oil pipeline to Turkey, oil prices in London are nearly back to where they were as military commanders prepared the first strikes in March.
The three months since full-blown hostilities ended have been a hard lesson for markets which had hoped to see oil exports from Iraq climb swiftly towards the 2m barrels a day the US promised to deliver by the end of the year. Southern refineries have been plagued by power cuts, the north-south "strategic pipeline" had already been sabotaged, and the weekend's attacks brought exports from the north of the country to a complete standstill.
After the fragility of America's energy supply was demonstrated last week by the worst blackouts for 30 years, and with US oil reserves running at historic lows, the attackers chose their timing well. Brent crude for October delivery was trading up 35 cents a barrel yesterday at $29.16, after hitting a high of $30.34 earlier this month.
With some analysts predicting that it could take more than a month to fix the damaged pipeline, and Opec showing no signs of using reserves to cool the overheated markets, oil prices could stay at this level for some time.
"I think the only hope one has of a drop in prices would be the Opec meeting in September," said Sarah Lloyd, senior Middle East energy analyst at the World Markets Research Centre. But most analysts believe Opec's 11 members are likely to be happy to continue reaping the benefits of prices at the top end of their target range.
Leo Drollas of the Centre for Global Energy Studies said: "Iraq is helping keep prices around $28-$29, which suits producers such as Saudi Arabia, but affects oil demand growth in the long-term."
With anti-coalition guerrillas having discovered economic terrorism, few now believe the 2m barrel objective is achievable. "There are a lot of factors out there supporting the oil price right now, but the overriding question is when Iraqi production comes back," said Razia Khan, of Standard Chartered bank. A prolonged period of $30-a-barrel prices is not the prescription central bankers and finance ministers would have written for the world economy right now.
While second quarter growth in the US and Japan was stronger than expected, three of the eurozone's 12 members are in recession. The UK is the only major economy to have avoided recession since the dotcom bubble burst but it looks set to chalk up its third year of below-trend growth.
Forecasters on both sides of the Atlantic are relying on businesses to take over from consumers as the engines of growth, but with high energy prices putting the recovery in doubt, firms could rethink investment plans.
However, not everyone is pessimistic about the threat to Iraq's oil exports. David Gignoux at Citigroup said the markets overreacted to weekend pictures of the burning oil pipe - reminiscent of the mass torching of Kuwaiti oil fields in the first Gulf war.
Hawks in the Bush administration had hoped before the war that oil revenues of up to $15bn a year would offset the $4bn a month cost of keeping troops in Iraq. But far from profiting from the war by seizing a cheap source of energy, Washington is having to throw money at securing Iraq's oil sector, at a time when its finances are already showing a record deficit.
Note: This fiasco by Bush and Co. is turning into a nightmare. They have failed in literally every aspect of this occupation. No Saddam, no WMD, no increased oil, and certainly no help for the Iraqi people, who continue to live without basic neccesities such as electricity and clean water. All they have done is to further inflame the Islamic World, while US troops are bushwacked and killed almost daily. This will be remembered as a blunder of monumental proportions, imo.
Saudis in Iraq 'preparing for a holy war'
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Saudis in Iraq 'preparing for a holy war'
By Mark Huband in London
Published: August 18 2003 19:45 | Last Updated: August 18 2003 19:45
news.ft.com/servlet/Conte...2571727162
Increasing numbers of Saudi Arabian Islamists are crossing the border into Iraq in preparation for a jihad, or holy war, against US and UK forces, security and Islamist sources have warned.
A senior western counter-terrorism official on Monday said the presence of foreign fighters in Iraq was "extremely worrying".
A statement purportedly from al-Qaeda was broadcast on Monday by the Arab satellite television channel al-Arabiya. It claimed the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the leader of the Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime Mullah Mohammed Omar were still alive. But it also asserted that recent attacks on US forces in Iraq were the work of jihadis.
The focus of concern for US counter-terrorist officials was at first on a reconstituted Ansar al-Islam, the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group based in northern Iraq before the war. But US officials have recently acknowledged the presence of other foreign fighters in Iraq.
Paul Bremer, the US administrator in Iraq, said recent raids, including one near al-Qaim last month, uncovered fighters "carrying travel documents from a variety of countries".
According to Saad al-Faguih, a UK-based Saudi dissident, the Saudi authorities are concerned that up to 3,000 Saudi men have gone "missing" in the kingdom in two months, although it is not clear how many have crossed into Iraq.
Saudis who have gone to Iraq have established links with sympathetic Iraqis in the northern area between Baghdad, Mosul and Tikrit, where they have hidden in safe-houses, a Saudi Islamist source said on Monday.
Pressure on Islamists in Saudi Arabia has grown since the bombing of an expatriate residential compound in May killed 35 people. The subsequent arrest of many Islamists has forced some underground while others are trying to flee to Iraq.
"Part of this movement of people has been individual, but it is getting more organised now," Saad al-Faguih said, adding that the loose organisation of Saudi Islamists did not have a clear link to al-Qaeda. "Al-Qaeda is there and not there. But its umbrella is huge, which is what has given it its ability to survive," he said.
A senior UK official said there was evidence of extremists from several countries focusing on Iraq, though it was unclear what role al-Qaeda played.
"I don't know whether you can talk about an al-Qaeda strategy in Iraq, though there is great evidence of al-Qaeda involvement in the jihadi cause inside Iraq. But there's as much talk about other people doing things inside Iraq," the official said.
Additional reporting by Peter Spiegel in Washington |
