News Release

· Bomb and Run — for Office · Scuttling Peace Plans · The Oil Timeline

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JAMES ABOUREZK
A former U.S. Senator from South Dakota, Abourezk said today: “Bush clearly wants to have images of U.S. troops coming home before the election. During the Vietnam War, when Nixon felt the pressure to pull troops out, he resorted to increased bombing, putting civilian lives at high risk. Nixon wanted to ‘turn things over to the Vietnamese’ and ‘Vietnamize the war’ — and increase the bombing. I think there’s a parallel with the increased bombing in Iraq. For example, instead of sending troops in to get Zarqawi, they just bombed him — and killed civilians in the process, which is the problem with bombing: you kill a lot of civilians — and cause more and more resentment against the United States in the longterm.”

RAHUL MAHAJAN
Mahajan is author of the book Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond and writes the blog EmpireNotes.org. He said today: “Political meddling by the Bush administration in the affairs of the supposedly sovereign Iraqi government may have sabotaged a real chance for peace. According to the Times of London and Newsweek, Prime Minister al-Maliki’s ambitious political reconciliation plan had originally envisaged two major steps: a commitment to U.S. withdrawal, backed up by a U.N. Security Council resolution, and a comprehensive amnesty for insurgents who had not engaged in terrorist acts.

“The watered-down final version made no mention of withdrawal and eviscerated the amnesty proposal, making the plan a non-starter already condemned by the major insurgent groups. The Democrats’ political posturing on the amnesty has also been very unhelpful.”
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ANTONIA JUHASZ
Juhasz is the author of the book The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time. She said today: “The real timeline driving the conclusion of the war is the oil timeline. The U.S. government has been methodically, relentlessly pursuing a new national oil law for Iraq with its roots in the State Department. According to Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani, the oil law is two months away from being passed and six months away from being implemented. This would give U.S. firms unprecedented producing sharing agreements in Iraq. After that, U.S. firms would need U.S. troops for protection.”

Juhasz’s most recent piece, “Trading on terror to profit a few: The U.S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement deserves greater scrutiny as it makes its way in Congress under the radar,” was just published by the Los Angeles Times.
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167