Webloggin » Oil as a Benchmark and Other Iraq News

The goal of oil revenue sharing in Iraq was to help unify the country. This is one of the benchmarks that the Iraqi government are supposed to meet. According to those in the know, they are meeting this benchmark, but what is really happening is simply amending the bill and kicking it down the road. A road with no end? Are the Democrats using the oil as a benchmark for another reason?

Last week, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D) of Ohio, who is a presidential candidate, led off opposition to the draft law in a letter to Democratic colleagues. On Thursday, a coalition of oil industry watchdog groups and peace activists called on Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Reid to drop the Iraqi oil law as a benchmark for progress in Iraq.

“If Democrats are perceived to be advocating withdrawal [of US troops] only after access to Iraqi oil has been assured, this will do little to reassure critics,” says Steve Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International, a watchdog group that drafted the letter.

In an open letter to Democrats in the US Congress last week, Hasan Jum’a Awwad, head of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, echoed that view. He urged that lawmakers “not link withdrawal [of US troops] with the oil law, especially since the USA claimed that it came to Iraq as a liberator and not in order to control Iraq’s resources.” (CMS)

Howard LaFranchi at Christian Science Monitor:

“It will pass, but it still takes much time and much negotiation,” says Bayazid Hassan, a Kurdish member of parliament who warily predicts a late July passage. “We, too, want a law to settle this very important matter for Iraq, but it is too important for us to do this according to the schedule of others.” (CSM)

Success in Iraq is happening one neighborhood at a time, one tribe at a time, rather than in the government.

U.S. soldiers in one Baghdad district are caught in the middle — trying to heal the divisions between Sunni and Shia factions. Members of the 12th Cavalry, which has an outpost north of the Gazalia district, have seen violence there drop substantially. (NPR)

The 4th soldier killed in an ambush in Iraq has now been identified as Sgt. Anthony J. Schober, 23, of Reno, Nevada.

With Schober’s identity known, the following soldiers can be identified as missing, or “duty status whereabouts unknown”: Spc. Alex R. Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Massachusetts; Pfc. Joseph J. Anzack Jr., 20, of Torrance, California; and Pvt. Byron W. Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Michigan. (CNN)

Journalists killed in Iraq:

Cameraman Alaa Uldeen Aziz and soundman Saif Laith Yousuf were ambushed and killed by unknown assailants after leaving ABC News’s Baghdad bureau.

Some 104 journalists and 39 media workers have been killed since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. (BBC)