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Posts tagged with "Iraq War"

美国从伊拉克进口了多少石油？

Thursday, 4. October 2007, 15:12:25

“No blood for oil！”、“美国打伊拉克就是为了石油”……是屡见不鲜的陈词滥调，而且由于道德高洁，理由都免了。今天查了 U.S. Oil Import Dependency - U.S. Imports from Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, 1973- present，发现这种口号喊这么多年却不较真的原因。

美国从伊拉克日平均石油进口数量（单位：千桶）

1990: 518
1995: 0
1996: 1
1997: 89
1998: 336
1999: 725
2000: 620
2001: 795
2002: 459
2003: 481
2004: 656
2005: 531
2006: 553
2007: 477（1－6月平均）

图示如下，很容易发现，90年海湾战争后，美国从伊拉克进口的石油一度锐减到0；而03年伊拉克战争后美国从伊拉克进口的石油还没有联合国制裁伊拉克时期的多。很难说美国从战争中得到了石油。

从表格Total Imports of Petroleum (Top 15 Countries)上看（第二张表格，今年7月份数据），从伊拉克的石油进口排第八，之前的有加拿大、墨西哥、沙特阿拉伯、委内瑞拉、尼日利亚、阿尔及利亚和俄国，这7个国家7月份日均出口到美国的石油是8954千桶，是伊拉克（460千桶）的19.5倍。再换个角度，根据进口量的历史记录，同月美国日平均进口石油约13934千桶，也就是说来自伊拉克的进口只占3.3%。

此数据大大不利于义士们的立论，所以只能省去了。我建议义士们调查一下伊战前后伊拉克蜜枣的进口情况，或许可以找到新的希望。

华盛顿邮报关于“特工身份泄密案”的社论

Monday, 10. April 2006, 15:57:31

Iraq War

《华盛顿邮报》的周日社论A good leak讨论了所谓“特工身份泄密案”，罗列的事实和我从网上了解的差不多，简单总结如下：

1、美国前驻伊拉克大使Wilson于2002年去尼日尔调查英国的关于萨达姆试图从尼日尔获得铀的情报；

2、Wilson回来后，利用在《纽约时报》的专栏和一切接受采访的机会，声称他的报告揭露了布什故意夸大伊拉克的威胁；

3、布什于2003年解密了一批文件（根据美国法律，总统有权解密敏感文件），用来说明他发动伊战的原因。这些解密的情报反而证明了Wilson在对媒体撒谎，因为Wilson报告实际上不仅没有证否、反而证实了萨达姆的确曾经试图从尼日尔获得铀；并且文件也证实了派遣Wilson去尼日尔的并不是Wilson声称的副总统切尼，而是Wilson自己的妻子——一名CIA成员；

4、Wilson表示，这是白宫对他进行的报复，他的妻子（曾经）是身份受法律保护的特工（据说保密有效期五年，但是具体情况不明，Fitzgerald拒绝透露她的身份究竟是什么）；

5、"泄密案"调查开始，迄今2年半时间。目前为止负责调查的Fitzgerald表示没有任何证据证明Wilson的指控。

Editorial
A Good Leak
President Bush declassified some of the intelligence he used to decide on war in Iraq. Is that a scandal?
Sunday, April 9, 2006; B06

PRESIDENT BUSH was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. Presidents are authorized to declassify sensitive material, and the public benefits when they do. But the administration handled the release clumsily, exposing Mr. Bush to the hyperbolic charges of misconduct and hypocrisy that Democrats are leveling.

Rather than follow the usual declassification procedures and then invite reporters to a briefing -- as the White House eventually did -- Vice President Cheney initially chose to be secretive, ordering his chief of staff at the time, I. Lewis Libby, to leak the information to a favorite New York Times reporter. The full public disclosure followed 10 days later. There was nothing illegal or even particularly unusual about that; nor is this presidentially authorized leak necessarily comparable to other, unauthorized disclosures that the president believes, rightly or wrongly, compromise national security. Nevertheless, Mr. Cheney's tactics make Mr. Bush look foolish for having subsequently denounced a different leak in the same controversy and vowing to "get to the bottom" of it.

The affair concerns, once again, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and his absurdly over-examined visit to the African country of Niger in 2002. Each time the case surfaces, opponents of the war in Iraq use it to raise a different set of charges, so it's worth recalling the previous iterations. Mr. Wilson originally claimed in a 2003 New York Times op-ed and in conversations with numerous reporters that he had debunked a report that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium from Niger and that Mr. Bush's subsequent inclusion of that allegation in his State of the Union address showed that he had deliberately "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraq threat." The material that Mr. Bush ordered declassified established, as have several subsequent investigations, that Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth. In fact, his report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium.

Mr. Wilson subsequently claimed that the White House set out to punish him for his supposed whistle-blowing by deliberately blowing the cover of his wife, Valerie Plame, who he said was an undercover CIA operative. This prompted the investigation by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald. After more than 2 1/2 years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald has reported no evidence to support Mr. Wilson's charge. In last week's court filings, he stated that Mr. Bush did not authorize the leak of Ms. Plame's identity. Mr. Libby's motive in allegedly disclosing her name to reporters, Mr. Fitzgerald said, was to disprove yet another false assertion, that Mr. Wilson had been dispatched to Niger by Mr. Cheney. In fact Mr. Wilson was recommended for the trip by his wife. Mr. Libby is charged with perjury, for having lied about his discussions with two reporters. Yet neither the columnist who published Ms. Plame's name, Robert D. Novak, nor Mr. Novak's two sources have been charged with any wrongdoing.

As Mr. Fitzgerald pointed out at the time of Mr. Libby's indictment last fall, none of this is particularly relevant to the question of whether the grounds for war in Iraq were sound or bogus. It's unfortunate that those who seek to prove the latter would now claim that Mr. Bush did something wrong by releasing for public review some of the intelligence he used in making his most momentous decision.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/08/AR2006040800895.html

“真正的深喉” Wilson 撒谎记

Friday, 4. November 2005, 11:42:57

wilson, Iraq War

（这篇短文翻译了部分Seixon的分析，全文地址在这里。）

11月1日晚，Joseph Wilson作客Larry King Live，这位被中国“新新闻人”安替称为“真正的深喉”、“揭露政府在撒谎”并且被美国现政府“近乎无耻的报复”的人展露了他撒谎的能耐，不用纠缠细节，就能找到若干“近乎无耻”的谎言。

节目全文参见： http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0511/01/lkl.01.html

第一个大谎，是Wilson的习惯性谎言：

WILSON: There was my report, there was one done by our ambassador on the ground and there was a separate one done by a four-star Marine Corps general, all of which concluded that there was no there there, that there was no reason to believe that the transaction that had been alleged in this documents that were later deemed to be forgeries had ever taken place or could have taken place.

Wilson针对的“16 words”是“The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”。这句话中哪里提到有个“交易（transaction）”，这个“THE transaction”是谁编造出来的？

第二个更神奇：

KING: You're a retired diplomat. The CIA asked you to go to Niger. Why did you go?

WILSON: I went because a question that was raised by the vice president was a very serious question. Now, the vice president inquired about a report, as he has later acknowledged. That report was based on documents that were later deemed to be forgeries.

Wilson去尼日尔是2002年2月，而伪造的尼日尔文件是2002年10月出现的。也就是说Wilson去尼日尔调查一个报告是否有问题，而这个报告居然是基于8个月后出现的一份伪造的文件做出来的。这种时间关系，大约只有天才的“新新闻人”才能理顺。

之三：

KING: What do you think they were hoping to gain just to discredit you, what?

WILSON: Well, I think they were trying to divert attention from the 16 words. They didn't want people to focus too hard on the case that they had made. And, as we now know, of course, they began making the case in September of 2002 when they started talking about we can't afford to wait for the smoking gun to come in the form of a mushroom cloud. Right after that you saw support for military action in Iraq surge, both in the Congress and in the polls, so this was the deal clincher for them.

Seixon给出一个证据，正确的时间关系是：

3/03: 65%
2/19/03: 54% [TIME/CNN]
2/5/03: 67%
2/2/03: 57% [LA Times]
1/20/03: 57%
12/11/02: 49% [Chicago Tribune]
12/02: 62%
11/02: 64%
10/02: 55% [Pew Research]
9/02: 64% [Pew Research]
9/14/02: 68%
9/8/02: [Rice's "mushroom cloud" comment]
8/02: 64% [Pew Research]
8/11/02: 69%
3/02: 72%
11/01: 78%

“激增”（surge）在哪里？莱斯讲话后对军事行动支持率的降低才是真趋势。

这个“真正的深喉”质量实在无法恭维。激动的“新新闻人”为了成名，很“buy”这种劣货，希望不是家常便饭。

WWP和上周末华盛顿的“反战”示威

Thursday, 29. September 2005, 17:15:40

Iraq War, hitchens, WWP

Hitchens在Slate.com发表了一篇评论，给本月24日华盛顿的反战游行揭了点底。

这篇评论是从纽约时报的两篇报道[1][2]开始的，其中[2]的作者叫做Michael Janofsky，他对这次示威是这么介绍的：

抗议活动主要由两个组织资助，答案联盟(the Answer Coalition)，其中包括了广泛的进步的政治目标；以及更专注于反战的和平与正义联合(United for Peace and Justice)。

也许出于无知，也许没认真做好案头工作，这位纽约时报的先生似乎不知道所谓“国际答案(International ANSWER)”组织，Hitchens文中指出，这个组织由工人世界党(WWP)运作，领导者是Ramsey Clark，公开支持的是金正日、卡斯特罗、米洛舍维奇，以及在阿富汗和伊拉克的“抵抗力量”，Clark本人还自愿为卢旺达种族屠杀者做辩护——看来真是“广泛的进步的政治目标”。

工人世界党源自原托洛斯基运动的一次分裂，1956年，大部分托洛斯基主义者都谴责苏联入侵匈牙利，但是有一小部分人认为这种谴责是错的，工人世界党就是后者的嫡系产品。Hitchens认为只要那位纽约时报的记者稍微去查查资料，就会找到两位激进左派记者——David Corn和Marc Cooper——揭露“答案国际”是属于法西斯主义、斯大林主义和圣战主义的。

Hitchens认为，罗莎.卢森堡(Rosa Luxemburg)和卡尔.李普克耐希特(Karl Liebknecht)那样的反对战争和军国主义是一回事，世界工人党这种支持苏联红军入侵东欧、支持塞尔维亚的种族清洗、支持塔利班的组织现在冒出来“反战”，显然就是另外一回事。美国左派记者们把它当作反战者，真是一种耻辱。那些示威的队伍中有哪怕一个标语牌写着“对圣战说不”，或者“支持库尔德人的自决”，或者“我们支持阿富汗妇女的斗争”么？Hitchens说：您别逗了。

Hitchens眼里的这次“运动”的领导人物中最无耻的是George Galloway和Michael Moore，Moore是《华氏911》的导演，在那部电影的消息来源中，也包括了工人世界党的阴谋论。

[1] Speaking Up Against War
[2] Antiwar Rallies Staged in Washington and Other Cities