By JAMES GLANZ

Between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels a day of Iraq’s declared oil production over the past four years is unaccounted for and could have been siphoned off through corruption or smuggling, according to a draft American government report.

Using an average of $50 a barrel, the report said the discrepancy was valued at $5 million to $15 million daily.

The report does not give a final conclusion on what happened to the missing fraction of the roughly two million barrels pumped by Iraq each day, but the findings are sure to reinforce longstanding suspicions that smugglers, insurgents and corrupt officials control significant parts of the country’s oil industry.

The report also covered alternative explanations for the billions of dollars worth of discrepancies, including the possibility that Iraq has been consistently overstating its oil production.

Iraq and the State Department, which reports the numbers, have been under relentless pressure to show tangible progress in Iraq by raising production levels, which have languished well below the United States goal of three million barrels a day. Virtually the entire economy of Iraq is dependent on oil revenues.

The draft report, expected to be released within the next week, was prepared by the United States Government Accountability Office with the help of government energy analysts, and was provided to The New York Times by a separate government office that received a review copy. The accountability office declined to provide a copy or to discuss the draft.

Paul Anderson, a spokesman for the office, said only that “we don-t discuss draft reports.”

But a State Department official who works on energy issues said that there were several possible explanations for the discrepancy, including the loss of oil through sabotage of pipelines and inaccurate reporting of production in southern Iraq, where engineers may not properly account for water that is pumped along with oil in the fields there.

“It could also be theft,” the official said, with suspicion falling primarily on Shiite militias in the south. “Crude oil is not as lucrative in the region as refined products, but we-re not ruling that out either.”

Iraqi and American officials have previously said that smuggling of refined products like gasoline and kerosene is probably costing Iraq billions of dollars a year in lost revenues. The smuggling of those products is particularly feared because officials believe that a large fraction of the proceeds go to insurgent groups. Crude oil is much more difficult to smuggle because it must be shipped to refineries and turned into the more valuable refined products before it can be sold on the market.

read more at THE NEW YORK TIMES

Hopefully, this time, the big bully in the White House will get a clue and sit down and not only negotiate, but concede a few things. As for the Democratically led Congress, I am becoming disillusioned with their stance and constant backing off from Bush, letting him have his way.. Take a stand, Democrats…and keep it. We voted you IN office in 2006. We can vote you out in 2008. End this illegal war, bring our men and women home. As seen by the recent tornado and flood devastation, the troops (Nat’l Guard) are needed here. The fact that there’s such slow response to this recent tornado and flooding on the Mississippi, only makes me believe that we’re in huge trouble if there’s a massive disaster or some kind of attack. - Jim Swanson

By ANNE FLAHERTY Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush, under growing political pressure, agreed Thursday to negotiate with Congress on a war’spending bill that sets benchmarks for progress in Iraq.

The turnabout in Bush’s position came as Republicans expressed anxieties about the war and the House was expected to pass legislation that would cut off funding for U.S. troops as early as July.

Bush said he would veto the measure. “We reject that idea. It won’t work,” the president said, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon after a briefing on Iraq and Afghanistan.

The bill being voted on Thursday is opposed by nearly all Republicans and unlikely to survive in the Senate. But House Democratic leaders say the measure shows they refuse to back down in challenging Bush on a deeply unpopular and costly war.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters he has felt a shift in the administration’s approach to Democrats.

“It’s very clear that the people around the president recognize there are some problems,” said Reid, D-Nev. “And I think I have felt with my conversations with administration officials that there is a right admission that things are not going very well.”

Senate Democrats said they anticipate a vote on a war bill by next week, although Reid said it remains unclear what the Senate bill might look like.

“There are 150 scenarios as to how this matter is going to be handled,” said Reid. Finding a bill the Congress will pass and the president will sign is “extremely difficult,” he added.

Bush pressured Iraqi leaders to move swiftly on a number of long- pending measures, including legislation to share Iraq’s oil wealth, hold provincial elections and update the constitution.

“They have got to speed up their clock,” the president said. Washington is unhappy that Iraq’s parliament plans to take a two-month vacation this summer in the midst of the war.

Bush’s willingness to put benchmarks in a war-funding bill represented a shift by the president.

“One message I have heard from people of both parties is that benchmarks make sense and I agree,” Bush said. He said his chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, would talk with congressional leaders “to find common ground” on benchmarks.

White House officials decided Bush, after refusing to discuss his negotiating stand, should change course and declare what he is for since he been emphatic about what he is against.

The Democrats’ bill in the House would provide the military with $42.8 billion to keep operations going through July, buy equipment and train Iraqi and Afghan security forces. Congress would decide shortly before its August recess whether to release an additional $52.8 billion for war spending through September.

read more at BREITBART.COM

By ANNE FLAHERTY and LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON - The White House threatened on Wednesday to veto a proposed House bill that would pay for the war only through July - a limit Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned would be disastrous.

The warnings came as Democratic leaders wrestled with how to support the troops but still challenge President Bush on the war. Bush has requested more than $90 billion to sustain the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through September.

Democrats were unbowed.

“With this latest veto threat, the president has once again chosen confrontation over cooperation,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

In a flash of defiance, House Democratic leaders this week promoted legislation that would provide the military $42.8 billion to keep operations going through July, buy new equipment and train Iraqi and Afghan security forces. Congress would decide shortly before its August recess whether to release an additional $52.8 billion to fund the war through September.

“In essence, the bill asks me to run the Department of Defense like a skiff, and I’m trying to drive the biggest supertanker in the world,” Gates told senators Wednesday. “And we just don’t have the agility to be able to manage a two-month appropriation very well.”

The veto threat came from White House spokesman Tony Snow, traveling aboard Air Force One with Bush to tour tornado damage in Kansas.

“There are restrictions on funding and there are also some of the spending items that were mentioned in the first veto message that are still in the bill,” Snow said.

House members planned a vote Thursday, just two days after David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the Appropriations Committee, briefed White House chief of staff Josh Bolten on the plan.

read more at YAHOO! NEWS

It’s starting to look like the Democrats are going to wuss out on the Iraq Accountability Act. As a fellow Progressive, I strongly urge you to call your Congressman / Congresswoman today and demand, as an American citizen, for them to stand their ground and stop letting George W. Bush bully the Country into giving him more money for his cronies. Until he shores up the military by giving them the equipment they need, the training they need, and the medical care they need when they come home, there will be no more money for his Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL). Enough is enough. We have the responsibility, whether we like it or not and whether we want it or not to take back our government and take back our country. I love America, but I hate what’s being done to her. The President, Vice-President, Attorney General, Secretary of State and others must be impeached now. Do NOT take this “off the table”. What do we need to get things straightened out? A full scale, honest to God REVOLUTION? - Jim Swanson, Blue Herald

Now the story…….

By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - House Democratic leaders planned to brief party members Tuesday on new legislation that would fund the Iraq war through July, then give Congress the option of cutting off money after that if conditions do not improve.

If members agree to back the plan as expected, a vote on the new war spending bill could come as early as this week. The proposal, pitched last week by Rep. David Obey (news, bio, voting record), D-Wis., was first disclosed Thursday by The Associated Press.

White House spokesman Tony Snow on Tuesday called the approach “just bad management.”

“We think it is appropriate to be able to give commanders what they are going to need, and also forces in the field, so that you can make long-term decisions in trying to build the mission,” Snow said.

Congressional Republicans immediately dismissed the Democratic proposal as unfairly rationing funds needed in combat and said their members would not support it.

Democrats “should not treat our men and women in uniform like they are children who are getting a monthly allowance,” said Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, his party’s leader.

read more at YAHOO! News

He’s leaving us high and dry……or not.

From KCKB

GREENSBURG, Kan. (AP) — The rebuilding effort in tornado-ravaged Greensburg, Kansas, likely will be hampered because some much-needed equipment is in Iraq, said that state’s governor.
Governor Kathleen Sebelius said much of the National Guard equipment usually positioned around the state to respond to emergencies is gone. She said not having immediate access to things like tents, trucks and semitrailers will really handicap the rebuilding effort.

The Greensburg administrator estimated that 95 percent of the town of 1500 was destroyed by Friday’s tornado.

The Kansas National Guard has about 40 percent of the equipment it is allotted because much of it has been sent to Iraq.

Greensburg residents will be allowed to return Monday morning to recover what they can. They will be bused in and must leave by 6 p-m.

Bush finds slightly new talking point but still can’t find common sense.

President Bush, standing firmly against a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from
Iraq, said Tuesday that he will veto the latest war spending bill taking shape in Congress.

“I’m disappointed that the Democratic leadership has chosen this course,” Bush said.

“They chose to make a political statement,” he said. “That’s their right but it is wrong for our troops and it’s wrong for our country. To accept the bill proposed by the Democratic leadership would be to accept a policy that directly contradicts the judgment of our military commanders.”

House and Senate Democratic appropriators agreed Monday on a $124 billion bill that would fund the Iraq war but order troops to begin leaving by Oct. 1 with the goal of completing the pullout six months later. Democrats would need a two-thirds majority to override a presidential veto.

Democrats said they won’t back down and pointed to past remarks by Gen. David Petraeus, the new Iraq commander, that security in Iraq requires a political solution.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who says the war in Iraq is “lost,” likened Bush to President Lyndon Johnson, saying Johnson ordered troop escalations in Vietnam in an attempt “to save his political legacy” only to watch U.S. casualties climb steadily.

Bush said U.S. troops should not be caught in the middle of a showdown between the White House and Congress.

“Yesterday, Democratic leaders announced that they planned to send me a bill that will fund our troops only if we agree to handcuff our generals, add billions of dollars of unrelated spending and begin to pull out of Iraq by an arbitrary date,” Bush said on the South Lawn.

He said the bill would mandate the withdrawal of U.S. troops beginning as early as July 1 and no later than Oct. 1, despite the fact that Petraeus has not yet received all the reinforcements he has said he needs in the latest military buildup to help secure Baghdad and the troubled Anbar Province.

Democrats have argued that the election that left Democrats in control of Congress was a referendum for a change of strategy in Iraq. Bush used the same election results to argue his point.

“The American people did not vote for failure,” he said. “That is precisely what the Democratic leadership’s bill would guarantee.

WASHINGTON - As the Army probed Pat Tillman’s death, investigators implored the CIA and Pentagon last year to scour their databanks for aerial video of the friendly fire incident, footage they believed might have been captured as a Predator drone flew over the scene.

The trail ran cold in October, but lawmakers plan to press the Pentagon on Tuesday with questions still hovering over the one-time National Football League star’s shooting: Was a drone flying overhead when Tillman was killed? Did it videotape the incident, and if so, where is the footage?

Some members of Congress hope to elicit the new information Tuesday when the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform holds a hearing as part of an investigation into misleading information from the U.S. military.

The most recent investigation by the Army, released last month, documented a months long search for the video. The undertaking “suggests the distinct possibility that a Predator drone overflew the battle scene, and, if it did, may have captured yet-unrevealed material information,” said Daniel Kohns, a spokesman for Rep. Mike Honda, a Democrat who represents the San Jose, Calif., area where Tillman grew up.

read more at YAHOO!

There’s been talk that Pat Tillman, the former NFL player, who quit football to go into the military after September 11, 2001, might have been murdered to bolster the Country’s support of the war, instead of the original story that it was “friendly fire”. Below you’ll find a recent transcript of a portion of the ongoing military investigation.

Testimony in the Criminal Investigation Command Report

(released March 26, 2007)

Lockdown of information

Soldier in the Tactical Operations Command (TOC) center when the death of a soldier, identified by code name, was announced over the radio:

“When this came over the radio … I looked on the alpha roster and discovered that it was Pat Tillman who had been killed. I then told the other personnel who were in the [TOC]. There were four other bystanders in the TOC during this time. We rounded everyone else up to notify them that someone had been killed. The phones and Internet had been cut off, to prevent anyone from talking about the incident.”

Destruction of evidence

Soldier back at the base the evening Tillman’s body was brought in:

“At that time, I was in my tent [REDACTED] came to my tent and put a lock on communications … [REDACTED] then came to me with an orange plastic bag containing Cpl. Tillman’s clothes. He then related that he wanted me to burn what was in the bag for security purposes. Additionally [REDACTED] related he wanted me alone to burn what was in the bag for security purposes to prevent security violations, leaks, and rumors … I then took the bag to the back of [REDACTED]. I got a burn barrel and started it up. I began placing items of clothing into the burn barrel. [REDACTED] came out one time to ensure that everything was going all right … [REDACTED] then came back right at the end when I was finishing.”

This soldier testified he burned Tillman’s uniform, “socks, gloves and I believe the RBA [armor-plated vest] … I vividly recall one armor plate that I burned because … there appeared to be an indentation in the top right corner which I thought may have been where a round had impacted … The RBA itself was soiled with blood.” … He said he also burned a small notebook of Tillman’s.

Soldier from another platoon in the regiment on his actions three days after Tillman’s death:

“Then, after we were back [REDACTED] my 1SG [REDACTED] asked me to come with him to destroy Pat Tillman’s equipment. The first thing I pulled out was his Molle vest. I said to my 1SG that the holes in the vest appeared to be made by 5.56mm [American bullets] not 7.62mm [enemy ammunition]. He said they know and to keep quiet and let the investigators do their job. At this time was when I had realized Tillman may have been killed by friendly fire. At the place we destroyed his equipment there was body armor that was burned completely except for the actual plates.

…The 1SG had me tell him what equipment was being destroyed and he wrote it down. I do not know where the list went after that; I can just assume it was turned into higher.”

Asked why he was told to keep quiet, the soldier said, “…because [REDACTED] did not want me informing unit members that SPC Tillman was killed by friendly fire.” Rather, 1SG wasted the investigation to be the one that put out the official results. He said he did not see bullet fragments with the equipment but “I did see the flashbang [flash grenade] and it had also been hit with a 5.56 round. The last time I saw it was when [REDACTED] had it in an ammo can. He was going to destroy it.”

Quotes from the inspector general’s report

(released March 26, 2007)

Silver star fabrication

“LTC [REDACTED] said that he used the narrative and the two valorous award witness statements attributed to SGT [REDACTED] and PFC [REDACTED] to edit the citation. We interviewed [the two witnesses] who purportedly signed the two valorous award witness statements … PFC [REDACTED] … specifically recalled writing that CPL Tillman’s actions saved his life, but [he] stated that he did not sign the valorous award witness statement … [and] also pointed out parts he knows he did not write and parts that were not accurate.”

“SGT [REDACTED] was not as clear about writing a statement to support the award, but he testified that he might have. He testified that he did not sign such a statement. [He] confirmed some parts of the … statement as accurate. But [he] also pointed out parts that were inaccurate, in that he was unable to see CPL Tillman’s actions from his location. Finally, [he] pointed to a phrase “in the most gallant Ranger fashion” that he found ‘hokey’ and stated that it was a phrase that he would not have written.

“Based on our interviews, we believe the purported statements of SGT [REDACTED] and PFC [REDACTED] were submitted to LTC [REDACTED] by personnel NCOs at 2nd Battalion or at the Regiment, but we were not able to identify the specific drafter.”

Three years and nine months after the U.S.-led Coalition began its war against Saddam Hussein, researchers have quietly recorded another grim milestone in the cost of the conflict. American military casualties have now exceeded 25,000. Almost 3,000 U.S. soldiers are dead; 22,000 are injured. Some 245 other Coalition soldiers–mostly Brits–have also died, as well as at least 50,000 Iraqi civilians. Glenn Kutler, a researcher for the non-partisan iCasualties.org, has analyzed the patterns behind the numbers–and says he sees a conflict of gruesome logic and distinct phases.

Source: Newsweek