101st in continuing blog series on the administration push to war. As summer 2003 wears to an end, Iraq has been dominated and broken, but conquest is one thing; control is another.
August 19-31, 2003:

 

 

Aug 19, 2003 – A truck bomb in Baghdad kills the chief United Nations envoy to Iraq and at least 17 other people, wounding 100. Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N. special representative in Iraq, is killed by a blast from a demolitions-laden cement truck under the window of his hotel.

 

The bombing is but one in a series of similar attacks. Already, even this soon after the invasion, U.S. officials are coming to believe that Iraq is now the stomping grounds of al-Qaeda terrorists who present more of a threat than the Baathists formerly associated with Saddam Hussein. Incidentally, many or most of the militants are Saudis, newly entering the country in the wake of the U.S.-U.K. invasion. U.S. forces launch three operations in August, 2003, alone, just part of a lengthy series of sweeps intended to pacify Iraq.

 

Aug. 25, 2003 – An Israeli newspaper reports that the U.S. is checking out the possibility of pumping Iraqi oil out to Israel:

“The United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem.

The Prime Minister's Office, which views the pipeline to Haifa as a "bonus" the U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led campaign in Iraq, had asked the Americans for the official telegram.

The new pipeline would take oil from the Kirkuk area, where some 40 percent of Iraqi oil is produced, and transport it via Mosul, and then across Jordan to Israel. The U.S. telegram included a request for a cost estimate for repairing the Mosul-Haifa pipeline that was in use prior to 1948. During the War of Independence, the Iraqis stopped the flow of oil to Haifa and the pipeline fell into disrepair over the years.

The National Infrastructure Ministry has recently conducted research indicating that construction of a 42-inch diameter pipeline between Kirkuk and Haifa would cost about $400,000 per kilometer. The old Mosul-Haifa pipeline was only 8 inches in diameter.”

 

One main reason this short-lived proposal is being mooted is that the usual oil transit, the line through Turkey, is being hit by saboteurs. Good news from Iraq has come already to be in short supply. Oil exports have not yet risen back to their pre-war levels.

 

However, for obvious reasons the security business is booming, and August 2003 sees the beginning of large-scale security contracting. Erinys International is among security entities in Iraq, landing a contract in August worth $40 million and charged with protecting Iraqi oil wells, pipelines and refineries.