The Independent reveals what we’ve always known: the Iraq War was about oil. Or rather, there were significant discussions in Fall 2002–the period when the US and UK were busy lying us into war–about who would get Iraq’s oil. (h/t Susie) The article describes BP’s judgment that Iraq was “the big oil prospect. BP is [...]

Not gonna happen. I have sent the enclosed notice to the Federal Register for publication, continuing the national emergency with respect to the stabilization of Iraq. This notice states that the national emergency with respect to the stabilization of Iraq declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, as modified in scope and relied [...]

I’ve been reluctant to embrace suggestions that torture, iraq, and Valerie Plame were all going to coalesce into one linked story. But it is increasingly looking like that may be the case.

AJ Rossmiller (he of AmericaBlog fame) nailed the 2005 Iraqi election. You might recall that as the election where, after it had long become clear Ahmad Chalabi had little base of support in Iraq, some anonymous sources in the Administration nevertheless had great hopes that somehow Chalabimight end up as Prime Minister.

Condi succeeded in dodging Robert Wexler’s questions about Iraq intelligence. A pity, too, because she sure opened herself up for some doozy questions about the SOTU.

Charlie Savage has a great article summarizing Bush’s threats to establish a security relationship with Iraq without consulting Congress.

President Bush’s plan to forge a long-term agreement with the Iraqi government that could commit the US military to defending Iraq’s security would be the first time such a sweeping mutual defense compact has been enacted without congressional approval, according to legal specialists.

After World War II, for example – when the United States

The NYT had a story yesterday reporting that the Iraqis just can’t seem to spend its aide money as quickly as it’s supposed to be spending it.What the NYT doesn’t say, though, is that the GAO itself also reported on how much money Iraq had spent, in its report issued just before Petraeus’ dog and pony show. In fact, the benchmark of whether Iraq was spending its money as quickly it was supposed to was one of the ones on which the GAO and the Administration disagreed. Whereas the GAO declared that Iraq had “partially met” its goal to spend $10 billion on reconstruction, the Administration declared Iraq’s progress “satisfactory.”

Noah Shachtman has a post linking to Steven Boylan alerting us that we’re no longer at war with Eastasia.

As freep pointed out, the price of oil has officially topped $100/barrel.

Surging economies in China and India fed by oil and gasoline have sent prices soaring over the past year, while tensions in oil producing nations like Nigeria and Iran have increasingly made investors nervous and invited speculators to drive prices even higher.

Digby and Steve Benen are right. Bush’s impending veto of the military spending bill is just weird. It’s weird in that Bush has had months to push a very compliant Congress to write the bill precisely as he wants. And it’s weird because the stated reason for the impending veto doesn’t make any sense.