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Did the US get it wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Lt. Gen. Daniel Bolger on how Washington approaches overseas conflicts.
By: Fox News
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Did the US get it wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan? - Video
1500 More Troops Sent to Iraq, Total Now 3000. We Are Back In
An additional 1500 troops are being sent to Iraq http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/08/world/middleeast/us-to-send-1500-more-troops-to-iraq.html?_r=0 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-3000.
By: David Pakman Show
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1500 More Troops Sent to Iraq, Total Now 3000. We Are Back In - Video
ISIS taking a beating from iraq, key city recaptured from ISIS
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By: benalvino1860
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ISIS taking a beating from iraq, key city recaptured from ISIS - Video
Iraqs semi-autonomous Kurdish government approved plans to create an oil exploration and production company separate from the central government and a sovereign wealth fund to take in all energy revenue.
A bill to create the company for oil exploration and production, with shares to be sold to the public, was approved by the cabinet of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvian Barzani said in a statement yesterday. A separate initiative approved by the cabinet would create a Kurdish fund for oil and gas revenue. Both draft laws need to be approved by the KRGs parliament.
The KRG, which started crude oil exports by pipeline through Turkey this year, wants to control sales of oil pumped from fields in the Kurdish region in the north of Iraq to boost its financial independence from the central government in Baghdad. The Kurdish region holds 45 billion barrels of oil reserves, while the rest of Iraq has 150 billion barrels, the worlds fifth-largest known deposits.
The new company will oversee all the oil and gas sectors, for example, the signing of contracts for oil exploration, extraction, development, investment, export and marketing, Barzani said in the statement. This company can become within a limited time a shareholding company, and all the citizens can buy shares in it.
The Kurds were producing 320,000 barrels of oil a day in October, Sherko Jawdat, head of the natural resources committee in the Kurdish regions parliament, said Oct. 2. The remainder of the country produced 3.3 million barrels a day last month.
Iraqs Kurdish enclave is set to produce 1 million barrels a day of oil by the end of 2015, the regional government said in a Nov. 7 statement. It plans to export 500,000 barrels a day via neighboring Turkey by the end of March, it said. The Kurds exported 300,000 barrels a day in the first week of November.
The Kurds efforts to sell crude separately from the central government has provoked legal action by authorities in Baghdad and fanned speculation that the semi-autonomous region will pursue greater independence.
Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), Chevron Corp. (CVX) and Total SA (FP) are among companies caught in the dispute between the KRG and the central government over land and oil revenue. The Kurds stopped exporting crude via Iraqs national pipeline system in December 2012 and began operating their own link to Turkey this year. The central government has suspended payments to the Kurds from the national budget.
To contact the reporter on this story: Khalid Al-Ansary in Baghdad at kalansary@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nayla Razzouk at nrazzouk2@bloomberg.net Claudia Carpenter, Bruce Stanley
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Iraq Kurds Cabinet Approves Plan for Starting Oil Company
Kurdish leaders in Iraq have quietly expanded a request to Washington for sophisticated arms and protective equipment to battle the Islamic State, but American officials have so far rebuffed the appeals out of concerns about defying the Iraqi government, according to Kurdish officials.
The Obama administrations reluctance to directly arm the Kurdish forces underscores the challenges the United States faces in Iraq, where it is seeking to expand its effort to help Iraqi forces combat militants without upsetting a fragile political balance between the countrys Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.
A Kurdish official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss official communications, said Kurdish leaders had presented the Pentagon with an expanded request for U.S. equipment, including mine-resistant armored vehicles and technology to counter improvised explosive devices, such as bomb-defusing robots.
The peshmerga, as the militia forces of northern Iraqs semiautonomous Kurdish region are known, have had some success retaking territory that Islamic State militants seized this summer. But now, Kurdish officials say, the modestly equipped Kurdish force is struggling to respond to the evolving tactics of militants who are increasingly using explosive booby traps and roadside bombs to defend the territory they hold.
The fighting changed. The style changed, the Kurdish official said. We started to ask for heavier military equipment.
Navy Cmdr. Elissa Smith, a spokeswoman for the Defense Department, said the Pentagon had responded to the new Kurdish request on Oct.15, promising to review it and urging leaders of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to coordinate their requests with the Iraqi government in Baghdad.
Smith said that a coalition of countries allied against the Islamic State had already provided more than 2million pounds of equipment to help the KRG defend its territory. Most of that has gone through the central government in Baghdad, U.S. officials say.
Support for all of Iraqs security forces, including Kurdish elements, will be critical to defeating this threat, Smith said.
But Kurdish officials say the supplies they have received have comprised only light and medium arms, including ammunition, automatic weapons and artillery rounds. They say heavy arms are needed to combat an adversary such as the Islamic State, which seized large quantities of U.S.-made weapons and equipment abandoned by Iraqi soldiers as the militants advanced this summer.
While U.S. officials have led coordination of the international effort to supply the peshmerga, they have not yielded to Kurdish requests for heavier and more sophisticated U.S.-made military gear.
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Iraqs Kurds appeal for new U.S. arms to combat Islamic State