www.sunherald.com Posted on Thu, Mar. 20, 2003
BRUCE STANLEY Associated Press

LONDON - Saddam Hussein may have organized a meticulous plan for sabotaging Iraq's oil fields in a scorched-earth tactic designed to cripple Iraqi production.

The oil industry has buzzed with reports in recent weeks that Iraqis are rigging their wells with explosives, hoping to slow a U.S.-led attack and making the country's oil wealth worthless for any new government.

"We can confirm reports that (Saddam) has taken measures to booby trap oil wells by wiring the wells so that one person can blow them up," said U.S. Defense Department spokeswoman Megan Fox.

"If the worst happens and he does detonate something that causes the oil wells to catch fire, we'll do everything we can. Those assets belong to the Iraqi people, and as much as possible we'd like to keep them intact," she said.

Already, those fears may have become reality. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday that three or four Iraqi oil wells may already have been set afire in southern Iraq. Witnesses in Kuwait heard explosions and saw orange flames in the sky across the border.

In 1991, Iraqi troops needed just a few days and some plastic explosives to destroy more than 700 well heads and turn Kuwait's occupied oil fields into a desert inferno.

A loss of oil from Iraq - home to the world's second-largest oil reserves - could crimp supplies for importing countries, including the United States, which depends on Iraq for 2 percent of all the crude it consumes.

However, both Saudi Arabia and Venezuela have pledged to keep the oil flowing in wartime.

Oil exports are also a major source of the money that would be needed to pay for Iraq's reconstruction after a war. Because of their strategic importance, the Defense Department says it will try to secure Iraq's oil fields quickly to prevent Iraqi forces from damaging the country's 1,685 wells.

When Iraqi troops retreated from Kuwait in February 1991, they attached plastic explosives to well heads and piled sandbags against them to direct the force of the explosions for maximum effect.

The result was geysers of burning crude at 603 wells, serious damage at more than 100 others and widespread environmental degradation. Teams of firefighters from the United States, Canada and eight other countries worked from April until November to put out the fires.

Most of the teams used sea water pumped through Kuwait's empty oil pipelines to battle the fires. The heat was so intense, at more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, that water sometimes continued boiling on the ground for two days afterward, said Mark Badick of Safety Boss, Inc.

"We've had fire helmets melt on our heads," said Badick, whose Calgary-based firm put out 180 of the Kuwaiti well fires.

Firefighters from Hungary had a different technique, using two jet engines mounted horizontally on a tank chassis - a homemade vehicle they called "Big Wind" - to blast flame-retardant foam at the fires.

It took Kuwait more than two years and $50 billion to restore its oil output to prewar levels. If Iraq sabotaged its oil fields, any cleanup could take far longer and cost much more.

Iraq's fields and pipelines are badly run-down after 12 years of U.N. economic sanctions. Its fields are also much farther from the sea than those in Kuwait, meaning a ready source of water might not be so easily available.

Destruction could be especially bad if Iraqis set off explosives underground, deep within the well shafts themselves. If that happened, firefighters would have to drill a new "relief well" and pump a mixture of sand, gel and mud into each damaged shaft to try to plug it up and stop the blowout.

"It's a long, arduous process," Badick said. Whereas he and his crews put out as many as five fires a day in Kuwait, cleaning up after a single underground explosion can take two months.

Even if the Iraqis did booby-trap their oil fields, Manouchehr Takin, an analyst at the Center for Global Energy Studies, said Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and other OPEC member countries could increase production to offset Iraq's 2 million barrels a day in exports.

Saudi Arabia, which has the world's largest crude reserves, repeatedly has suggested it would boost its output to keep supplies flowing. Also, the United States and other oil importing nations could tap their 4 billion barrels in strategic petroleum reserves, if necessary, to cover a shortfall.

Brown & Root Services of Houston has drawn up a plan for the Defense Department for containing and assessing any damage to Iraqi oil installations, but the Pentagon so far has awarded no contracts.

The challenge for such companies would multiply if Iraq used chemical, biological or radioactive material to sabotage its oil fields.

Special suits designed to protect a wearer against biological or chemical agents would disintegrate in the heat of a burning well. Firefighters might have no choice but to wait until the fires burn themselves out.

"That's a whole new ball game," said Peter Gignoux, head of the oil desk at Salomon Smith Barney.

OPINION: Myths And Facts -This war is not the result of a failure of diplomacy. This war is not a pre-emptive war. This war is not about weapons of mass destruction. This war is not about terrorism. This war is not about the liberation of the Iraqi people.

www.outlookindia.com RAHUL MAHAJAN, ROBERT JENSEN

Last night, our president announced a war to the nation and the world. Let us be clear about what this war is and what it is not.

This war is not the result of a failure of diplomacy. This war is not a pre-emptive war. This war is not about weapons of mass destruction. This war is not about terrorism. This war is not about the liberation of the Iraqi people.

Diplomacy: Nations typically engage in diplomacy to avoid having to go to war. After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, numerous attempts at diplomacy were made by France, the Soviet Union, and the Arab League. They all foundered, primarily on the intransigence of the first Bush administration. In this case, the second Bush administration tried to use "diplomacy" to create a war out of whole cloth, making no attempt to negotiate with Iraq. In fact, as Iraq made concession after concession -- as it became increasingly clear that whatever pitiful arsenal Iraq had could be found and dismantled if inspections were allowed to continue -- U.S. attempts to strong-arm other countries into supporting the war became increasingly crude and coercive. Although those attempts mostly failed, they were hardly aimed at preventing the war.

Pre-emption: In order to pre-empt a threat with war, there must be some credible reason to believe that the threat exists and that no other strategies will address it. A threat involves capability and intent. In this case, the Bush administration was not able to show that Iraq has the capability, and no attempt was made to show that it had the intent to attack.

Weapons of Mass Destruction: As time passed, the administration's lies, half-truths, and distortions became increasingly ridiculous. From scare stories about an "unmanned aerial vehicle" that turned out to be a glider held together with spit and baling wire, to forged documents claiming that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger, nothing has held water. Claims of mobile biological laboratories were refuted by weapons inspectors, as were claims that Iraq had or was about to get nuclear weapons. And, of course, ongoing inspections would have ensured that no arsenal could be built.

Terrorism: This claim is even more absurd. The best the Bush administration could come up with was a Jordanian militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a member of Ansar al-Islam whose ties to either al-Qaeda or the Iraqi government are completely unsubstantiated. A recent British intelligence assessment concluded that there is no link between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

Liberation: The United States does not care about true democracy for Iraq. In 1991, when a popular uprising after the Gulf War threatened to oust Hussein's government, the United States intervened to keep Hussein in power. The reason, as officials explained later, was that the United States wanted a military coup to preserve what Richard Haas of the National Security Council called "Saddam's regime without Saddam." Since 9/11, the Bush administration has funded a coup attempt in Venezuela, installed a puppet regime in Afghanistan, and cracked down on basic democratic protections in the United States. It would be ironic if the administration wanted democracy for Iraqis but not for Americans. U.S. plans for Iraq clearly involve establishing yet another puppet regime

So, what is this war? It is an act of premeditated aggression. It is part of an attempt to put the tremendous energy reserves of the Middle East more tightly under American control. It is the key stage in the building of a new empire. It is part of a long-term attempt to establish more clearly than ever the rule of force in international affairs and sweep away any role for international law or institutions beyond those in service to the empire.

Another fact we must remember: This war did not begin last night.

March 19, 2003, was simply the start of a new, more intense phase of the U.S. attack on Iraq that has been going on since the end of the 1991 Gulf War, through the harshest economic embargo in modern history and through more than four years of regular bombing.

Already, hundreds of thousands -- possibly more than a million -- innocent Iraqis have died in this ongoing assault. As we count the civilian casualties from this newest phase, they must be added to this roster of the dead so that the costs of the U.S. war will not be obscured.

This is crucial to understand, because when U.S. military forces topple the government of Saddam Hussein, we shouldn't be surprised if ordinary Iraqis cheer. Their celebrations will not be about only the demise of a dictator but about the hoped-for end of a regime of fear and deprivation imposed by the United States, in which parents have been forced to watch children die of malnutrition and disease caused by the enforced poverty created by the embargo.

And, finally: Just as the war against Iraq did not begin last night, the larger war for empire will not end with Iraq. Other nations, notably Iran, are already on the target list. Bush administration officials talk of remaking the map of the Middle East. Beyond that is the desire to counter the rising power of China.

The American takeover of Iraq likely cannot be stopped. But just as there has been a time for war, there can come a time for justice if we -- the citizens of the empire -- recognize that this battle may be lost, but there is still a world to win.

Rahul Mahajan's latest book is the forthcoming The U.S. War Against Iraq: Myths, Facts, and Lies. Robert Jensen, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream. Both are members of the Nowar Collective

www.mortgage101.com Thursday, March 20, 2003 By Frank O'Brien Inman News Features

Last year, the average price of a new house in Canada rose 4.1 percent, the highest annual increase in nearly 15 years, according to Statistics Canada.

Yet a unique convergence of global events could cause the price of new homes in Canada to rise much faster this year, according to industry associations and economists.

The oil-industry strike in Venezuela, for example, has already forced up the price of asphalt roofing products and threatens to cause a North American-wide shortage. Asphalt shingles are the most widely used roofing product in Canada, nailed on an estimated seven out of every 10 new houses. Venezuela supplies about 90 percent of the crude oil used for asphalt, notes the U.S.-based National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA).

"Prices may increase on the order of $30 to $50 per ton, or roughly 15 to 20 percent above their current levels," NRCA executive vice-president William A. Good warned in a February bulletin to members. Contractors were advised to include provisions in on-going contracts to "deal with volatile pricing."

As the price of crude oil increased, there has been heavy demand for paving asphalt, leaving roofing asphalt in shorter supply. There is generally less refining capacity today than in recent years, and there are other products produced at refineries that are more profitable than asphalt shingles, Good explained.

This January asphalt roofing material prices increased from 3 percent to 5 percent in Canada, but as yet there is no shortage of material.

Most builders are more worried about the cost of wood.

Prices for lumber, the most widely used building material by far, have rebounded from the low levels of 2002, notes Toronto economist Peter Andersen, who presented a paper at February’s Canadian Home Builder Association national conference. "Lumber prices appear likely to continue to increase," Andersen said.

Lumber prices have been bouncing over the past year due to a duty on Canadian softwoods heading into the United States. At first a glut of wood appeared on the market as Canadian mills tried to beat the duty. When the U.S. housing market slowed, the price of lumber fell. Lately, Canadian suppliers have cut back on production, but Canadian housing starts surprised most analysts and hit the highest level in 13 years this January. The result is rising costs for two-by-fours and other building lumber.

"Supply issues are currently the main problem facing new home builders," Andersen explained, "Skilled labor shortages, outright shortages of certain building materials and shortages in the availability of land are cited as problems."

There are other global pressures that are hitting home. Threats of a new Gulf War – it may be underway as you read this – are partly to blame for driving the cost of gasoline in Canada to record highs this year. Further, fears of terrorists have increased freight delays at the U.S.-Canada border. All this impacts on the price of transporting building materials – and the end price of a new house.

Finally, the threat of global warming has convinced Canada to sign the Kyoto Accord, which will soon force all new homes to be built to the toughest energy conservation standards in the world. Under federal government proposals, all new homes would have to meet R-2000 standards by 2010. R-2000 homes use about the half the energy of a conventional house. This will result in higher costs to new home buyers to cover everything from more efficient appliances to high-performance windows and extra insulation.

The bottom line for new home buyers: get the best deal you can today because it appears that prices can only go higher.

Frank O'Brien can be reached at fobrien@dccnet.com.

A Tale of Two Fables

www.prospect.org By Robert B. Reich Issue Date: 4.1.03

Fable 1: The world is blessed with an advanced civilization renowned for its dynamism and freedom. Most of the world's peoples admire and emulate it. But this civilization fails to notice a primitive, evil force that emerges worldwide, intent on destroying it. Motivated by envy and hate, the evil force exploits the openness of the civilization to wreak havoc upon it. Only in the nick of time does the civilization find the strength and moral fiber necessary to destroy the evil and thus save humanity.

Fable 2: The world is ruled by a giant corporatist power that exerts control through technologies and materialist comforts. This sinister force acts to seduce, brainwash, monitor and intimidate the world's people. But a few descendants of a former, more spiritual world, hidden away in mountains and teeming cities, keep the old faith alive. Through their cunning and bravery, these outlaws discover weaknesses in the system, and they exploit those weaknesses to destroy it and thereby liberate humanity.

Whatever happens to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, America's long-term security may depend more on which fable most people worldwide believe describes the future.

These are potent and dangerous fables. Each is animated by the righteousness of its cause and the conviction that survival depends on destroying the opposing evil. Each also offers a comprehensive narrative that explains all politics, economics and social change as aspects of a single drama played out on the world stage. And each fable reinforces its opposite: The more one is believed and acted upon, the more plausible its opposite becomes to those who are thereby threatened. And as those who are threatened act upon the opposing fable, they thereby confirm the fears of those who cling to the other.

By acting as if it believes Fable 1, the Bush administration is starting to convince many people around the globe that Fable 2 is closer to the truth. In its commitment to invading Iraq regardless of what most of its major allies believe to be necessary or prudent, its insistence on the right to move preemptively against any nation it considers potentially dangerous to American interests, its quickness to see terrorist links to al-Qaeda in almost any separatist or insurgent movement -- in Chechnya, the Philippines, Colombia, Venezuela and many other hot spots around the world -- and its assertion of American military power as the preferred method of dealing with instability, the administration is fomenting anti-Americanism almost everywhere outside the United States. In a matter of months the White House has undermined NATO, severely jeopardized America's relationships with Europe, Japan and Latin America, and encouraged Arab and Islamic extremism across North Africa and Asia.

The point here is not to suggest a moral equivalency between terrorism and Bush's foreign policy but to understand why the administration's ham-fisted approach to diplomacy -- you're either with us or against us -- is playing into the hands of radicals who want the world to believe Fable 2. That a large and growing number of people outside the United States now tell pollsters America is a greater threat to world peace than al-Qaeda is evidence not just of the White House's inept communications but of its larger failure to explain and justify its actions to a world that had been largely sympathetic toward America in the months following September 11 but is now almost universally cynical about this nation's motives.

Not since the Vietnam War have we witnessed such a profound loss of faith in the moral authority of the United States. The consequences are potentially tragic. If we appear more like the world's bully than its beacon light, how can we count on our friends and neighbors to help us reduce the odds of further terrorist attacks here? If Fable 2 offers the world's destitute and angry a more convincing explanation for their condition, how can we prevent the ranks of terrorists from growing?

Equally worrisome is the possibility that Americans come to believe Fable 1, unleashing a new and more virulent xenophobia and jingoism. An American public scarred by 9-11 and fearful of future terrorist attacks is especially vulnerable to demagoguery about America's unalloyed virtue and a worldwide conspiracy of evil that threatens our survival. A similar narrative captured the American mind in the 1950s when communism seemed poised to obliterate us, but in the 1950s we hadn't been traumatized by thousands of civilian deaths on American soil. The consequences this time around could be a larger erosion of civil liberties at home and a more uncompromising militarism abroad that gives the rest of the world greater reason to believe Fable 2.

Extremists gain power when politics becomes polarized around opposite views of reality. As the two fables gain credibility among opposing camps, the world's single remaining superpower grows ever more isolated, and the world becomes an increasingly dangerous place.

Robert B. Reich Copyright © 2003 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Robert B. Reich, "A Tale of Two Fables," The American Prospect vol. 14 no. 4, April 1, 2003 . This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.

asia.reuters.com Thu March 20, 2003 03:00 AM ET By Tanya Pang

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices tumbled by more than $1 to three-month lows on Thursday after the United States began a long-awaited war on oil exporter Iraq, and dealers bet on a swift U.S. victory with little disruption to Middle East crude flows.

The OPEC producers' cartel pledged to fill any gap in supply due to hostilities in the oil-rich Middle East, while the West's energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said it saw no reason to release emergency stocks for the time being.

Hours after U.S. jets began a dawn raid of Baghdad, officials in nearby Saudi Arabia and Kuwait said crude production continued normally, while shippers reported no interruptions to tanker movements.

U.S. light crude CLc1 fell $1.35 to $28.53 a barrel, while London's Brent crude LCOc1 dropped $1.02 to $25.73 a barrel.

"Prices have come down because the uncertainty is gone. The start of the war just means the end of the war is closer," said David Thurtell, commodities strategist at Commonwealth Bank in Sydney.

Geoff Pyne, consultant to Sempra Energy said there were still potential dangers ahead that could cause crude to shoot higher.

"Most obviously, there is a danger that Saddam may blow up the Iraqi oilfields, either as a defensive measure, or to deny them to the United States. Even if this doesn't happen there is a high chance of at least a month of missing Iraqi exports," Pyne said.

The White House in Washington confirmed it had launched a military attack to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"These are the opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign," President Bush said in a televised address.

Washington says Iraq, which supplies more than four percent of world oil exports, has stocked weapons of mass destruction in violation of U.N. resolutions drawn up after Baghdad invaded Kuwait in August, 1990. Iraq denies this.

SAUDI POISED TO FILL SHORTFALL

A Saudi source said OPEC's leading producer was poised to respond to any oil supply disruptions following the U.S. attack on neighboring Iraq.

"The crude oil is there," the source said, reiterating that the kingdom, the world's biggest oil exporter, has 10.5 million barrels per day (bpd) of production capacity.

"The market is well supplied. What everyone fears is Saddam Hussein burning the oilfields," said the Saudi source. "Events are going to be the dictating factor here."

Riyadh has already ramped up production well beyond nine million bpd before war erupted -- in part to cover outages from strike-hit Venezuela, industry sources say.

Kuwaiti crude output is running at around 2.4 million bpd, and the producer has said it will only close its northern fields bordering Iraq, which pump 400,000 bpd, if necessary.

Kuwait's oil sector is on high alert for any attack from former occupier Iraq, whose departing troops in 1991 torched hundreds of the country's oil wells.

Kuwait, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar together ship about 15 million bpd of oil through the Gulf.

OPEC TO USE SPARE CAPACITY

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries immediately pledged to fill any shortfall in world supplies created by the U.S. attack on Iraq, where exports were running at about 1.7 million bpd up to a week ago.

Analysts reckon OPEC has between one million and two million bpd of spare capacity, with many of its members already running at full throttle.

OPEC President Abdullah al-Attiyah of Qatar said he had spoken with members of the 11-strong cartel after the U.S. launched its attack.

"As a result of those consultations, I am herewith reiterating OPEC's resolve to make up for any supply shortfall resulting from developing events," he said in a statement carried on OPEC's official news agency.

"To this end, member countries have pledged to use, in the interim, their available excess capacities to ensure continued supply."

Iraqi exports had ground to a virtual halt after the United Nations evacuated all international staff from Iraq, including those monitoring the country's oil sales under the oil-for-food exchange program.

The Paris-based IEA, the energy watchdog for industrialized nations overseeing four billion barrels of emergency stockpiles, said it saw no reason to dip into strategic reserves for the time being and it as confident OPEC would honor its pledge.

"At the precise hour we speak, I think it is not necessary (to release stocks)," IEA executive director Claude Mandil told Reuters.

"We had a very strong statement from OPEC, which has said they will ensure any shortfall and we are confident they will do their best," he said.

IEA members Japan and South Korea, two of Asia's biggest oil consumers and heavily reliant on Middle East imports, also said they saw no immediate need to release oil reserves.