If you call a major oil pipeline being blown to smithereens a success, that is:
AMMAN -(Dow Jones)- Unknown attackers have blown up part of an Iraqi pipeline that pumps crude oil from Kirkuk oil fields to the Turkish export terminal, Ceyhan, a senior Iraqi oil official and a shipping agent said Wednesday.
“The pipeline was attacked and damaged Tuesday,” the official told Dow Jones Newswires by telephone from Baghdad.
The attack took place in the section of the pipeline connecting the oil-rich city of Kirkuk to the Baiji, home to Iraq’s largest oil refinery. Iraq usually pumps Kirkuk crude oil to the refinery, 250 kilometers north of Baghdad, which takes what it needs before it pumps the rest to Ceyhan.
The official said the pipeline blast was “catastrophic” as it caused huge quantities of crude oil to spill into the Tigris River.
It isn’t known yet how long it will take the Iraqi authorities to repair the damaged pipeline.
But hey, Anbar province was safe enough for Bush to make an unannounced visit to a heavily fortified Marine base there two weeks ago, so it’s a wash I guess. And more success: we’ve lowered the goalposts once again. Now we don’t need a viable, stable democracy, all we need is a compliant, “national union” dictatorship to take over the reins of the Iraqi government:
Some think-tanks, desperately seeking solutions, expect a national union dictatorship [preceding phrase in English in original] to emerge from the Iraqi chaos, a kind of Saddam-light that could pick up the pieces of the Iraqi mosaic. What a spectacular turnabout! The United States is starting to see Iraq for what it is, and not for what it would have liked it to be. Far from having become a democracy the former Mesopotamia is a country in tatters, in which conflict has become internalized, within the Shi’i and Sunni communities, with Iranian, Turkish, and Saudi neighbours that wants the chaos to continue. In order to prove effective, this embryonic realism must soon be coupled with an end to the marginalization of the Sadr-ist movement, the most popular among the Shi’i majority.</blockquote
Timing is everything, isn’t it my dear Muqtada al-Sadr?
Ah, the smell of a US sponsored strongman in Baghdad. It smells like permanent American military bases forever and ever, doesn’t it?
