JUAN COLE REPORTS: BUSH BLACKMAILING AL MALIKI WITH 50 BILLION IN U.S. FED

The intrepid Patrick Cockburn reveals that the White House is more or less blackmailing the Iraqi government into signing a security pact with George W. Bush. At stake is $50 bn. of Iraqi money held in the US Federal Reserve, at least $20 bn. of which could be lost to Iraq if the government of Nuri al-Maliki declines to sign on the dotted line.

Bush Blackmailing al-Maliki with $50 Bn. in US Fed
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Cockburn also reveals that the Iraqis wanted to diversify their receipts from oil sales away from dollar holdings into euros, and that the Americans vetoed the move. Bush wants 50 bases in Iraq and the prerogative of the US military to act unilaterally and with impunity inside the country.

Although the Bush administration is playing hardball to get this wideranging set of commitments from Iraq before July 31, and although Iraqis are eager to escape Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which limits their government's sovereignty, the negotiations may collapse in the face of widespread opposition to the baldly neocolonial terms sought by Washington.

Even remaining under the UN Security Council, under Chapter 7, may be preferable to Baghdad. There were large demonstrations against the security agreement, barely covered by the US press, last Friday, and Iraqi religious and political leaders are coalescing against it. Postcolonial states of the Arab world, which only attained real independence from Britain and France with great difficulty and in living memory, are touchy about being seen as kowtowing to imperial demands. The Shah's government was overthrown in 1979 by huge crowds and a wide cross section of the public precisely on these grounds.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has issued a 170-page report accusing Bush and Cheney of exaggerating the intelligence on the threat posed by Iraq, in the build-up to the Iraq War.

A big explosion in north Baghdad killed at least 15 [late reports say 18] persons and wounded 75 on Wednesday. Iraqi police said it was a suicide bombing. The US military said it was an accidental explosion of munitions a Shiite militia was moving up for an attack on US forces. Robert Reid writes, "The force of the blast crumbled several two-story buildings, buried cars under rubble, sheared off a corrugated steel roof and left a large crater on the residential street." There were several other bombings and attacks, making Wednesday a particularly violent day in Iraq (details below).Sadly, Reid notes, "The three American soldiers died when gunmen opened fire on them near the town of Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad, a U.S military statement said. No further details were released.