Iraq has agreed to award $1.1 billion in contracts to Iranian and Chinese companies

[CatWoman]

to build a pair of enormous power plants, the Iraqi electricity minister said Tuesday. Word of the project prompted serious concerns among American military officials, who fear that Iranian commercial investments can mask military activities at a time of heightened tension with Iran.

The Iraqi electricity minister, Karim Wahid, said that the Iranian project would be built in Sadr City, a Shiite enclave in Baghdad that is controlled by followers of the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr. He added that Iran had also agreed to provide cheap electricity from its own grid to southern Iraq, and to build a large power plant essentially free of charge in an area between the two southern Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf.

The expansion of ties between Iraq and Iran comes as the United States and Iran clash on nuclear issues and about what American officials have repeatedly said is Iranian support for armed groups in Iraq. American officials have charged that Iranians, through the international military wing known as the Quds Force, are particularly active in support of elite elements of the Mahdi Army, a militia largely controlled by Mr. Sadr.

An American military official in Baghdad said that while he had no specific knowledge of the power plant contracts, any expansion of Iranian interests was a concern for the military here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/world/middleeast/18grid.html?em&ex=1192852800&en=01be634a5830f23b&ei=5087%0A

[marmar]

1. There's a revolt on the plantation.....

n/t

[CatWoman]

2. lol

:hi:

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. Heh heh heh.... had they done this three or four years ago, hundreds

of American soldiers would still be breathing, thousands of Iraqis would not be considering terrorist acts against American interests and millions of thinking people would not have to be saying, "I told you so".

[msongs]

4. the US primarily destroys things via its war criminal profiteers nt

[BuyingThyme]

5. The big secret:

They're nuclear!

[Solar_Power]

6. How can this be?

Isn't Iran their #1 enemy?

[tom_paine]

7. It's ON, BABY!!!! The Grand Chessboard is on AGAIN!!!

Wooooo-hooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

:woohoo: :woohoo:

Hey wait a minute. Ummmmm...what did the Grand Chessboard of the 1890s culminate in a couple decades later... :shrug: I can't remember...it's right on the tip of my...

Dubya something, wasn't it? Yeah, Dubya Dubya something, I think.

:shrug:

[Peace Patriot]

8. It's fascinating to study war profiteering corporate news monopoly wording--

--the hidden assumptions, the disinformation, the spin. Get this...

"...concerns among American military officials, who fear that Iranian commercial investments can mask military activities at a time of heightened tension with Iran."

1. Is that really the "concern" of "American military officials," or is it, in reality, the fury of the Bush Cartel and its global corporate predator pals, that they are being cut out of the deals, and using "American military officials" as spokesmen for corporate interests, with the massacre power of the military thus backing up those "concerns"?

2. "...at a time of heightened tension with Iran." Right. And who created that "tension"? The Iranians were largely quiescent, minding their own business, prior to the Iraq War. They have never invaded anybody. Their people greatly sympathized with us on 9/11--even with our bloody history of interference in their country. And the people who purportedly did 9/11 were not Iranians--not even one of them. They were all Arabs and mostly Saudis. There has never been any reason whatever for "tensions" with Iran.

3. The truth is that commercial investments are the way to peace! It is the OPPOSITE of the truth--that is, a damned lie--to allege that commercial investment is tied to military activity. WE are the aggressors in Iraq, not the Iranians, not the Iraqi insurgents. It is WE who are causing all the trouble. It is WE who squandered billions down the Halliburton rathole, and failed to build infrastructure, and failed to give a goddamn about the Iraqi people--slaughtered half of million of them, at least, tortured thousands, FOSTERED a civil war, and are failing the care for the millions of refugees, and the sick and wounded, as well as having broken the country's civil infrastructure, so that loss of electricity, potable water and all other services inflict daily hardship and injury on millions of people. And what did we do this for? To grab their oil and turn Iraq into a global corporate predator "free trade" zone (slave labor, dumping ground for products, no regulation). What totally outrageous arrogance it is to accuse Iran of such intentions? Iran wants to DO BUSINESS. Iran wants A PEACEFUL NEIGHBORHOOD. WE don't want those things for them. WE don't want Middle Easterners to benefit. We want to rip the place off. (And you know who I mean by "we"--not the American people.)

4. About six months ago, I read a news article--which quickly vanished from the corporate newsstream--that Russia, India and China were going to hold a meeting on what to do about the lawless and violent U.S., in particular as to the U.S. attacking Iran. I guessed at the time that their measures would be economic. I thought it might be punitive. And it may be that threats of punitive financial action--particularly by China--are one of the things restraining the Armageddonists in the White House. But also, if you create enough commercial investment in Iraq and Iran, multiple countries and interests gain a stake in peace. These power plant projects may be the result of those discussions. So it is especially outrageous for the Bush Junta, speaking through its military lapdogs, to descry the projects as having a military motive.

Anyway, it's amazing what you figure out when you start deconstructing NYT sentences. They are packed with lies of many kinds.