Saturday, November 10, 2007

"Oil pipeline set ablaze by bomb in Iraq"

From Xinhuanet.com

TIKRIT, Iraq, - Iraqi insurgents blew up a roadside bomb under an oil pipeline in the central province of Salahudin on Saturday, setting up a huge fire, a provincial police source said.

The pipeline, which carries oil from the northern oil fields of Kirkuk to Beiji refinery, went into flames before midday in the Fatha area near the town of Beiji, 200 km north of Baghdad, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Fire engines rushed to scene to put out the fire and prevented an escalation of the damage.

Thick black smoke billowed high into the sky, as intense heat from the fire prevented fire fighters from approaching the blaze, he said. TIKRIT, Iraq, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi insurgents blew up a roadside bomb under an oil pipeline in the central province of Salahudin on Saturday, setting up a huge fire, a provincial police source said.

The pipeline, which carries oil from the northern oil fields of Kirkuk to Beiji refinery, went into flames before midday in the Fatha area near the town of Beiji, 200 km north of Baghdad, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Fire engines rushed to scene to put out the fire and prevented an escalation of the damage.

Thick black smoke billowed high into the sky, as intense heat from the fire prevented fire fighters from approaching the blaze, he said.

_________


Some facts about the "War on Terror" By Richard W. Behan posted @ Alternet.org:

• In Afghanistan the state was overthrown instead of apprehending the terrorist. Offers by the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden were ignored, and he remains at large to this day.

• In Iraq, when the United States invaded, there were no al Qaeda terrorists at all.

• Both states have been supplied with puppet governments, and both are dotted with permanent U.S. military bases in strategic proximity to their hydrocarbon assets.

• The U.S. embassy nearing completion in Baghdad is comprised of 21 multistory buildings on 104 acres of land. It will house 5,500 diplomats, staff and families. It is ten times larger than any other U.S. embassy in the world, but we have yet to be told why.

• A 2006 National Intelligence Estimate shows the war in Iraq has exacerbated, not diminished, the threat of terrorism since 9/11. If the "War on Terror" is not a deception, it is a disastrously counterproductive failure.

• Today two American and two British oil companies are poised to claim immense profits from 81 percent of Iraq's undeveloped crude oil reserves. They cannot proceed, however, until the Iraqi Parliament enacts a statute known as the "hydrocarbon framework law."

• The features of postwar oil policy so heavily favoring the oil companies were crafted by the Bush administration State Department in 2002, a year before the invasion.

• Drafting of the law itself was begun during Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority, with the invited participation of a number of major oil companies. The law was written in English and translated into Arabic only when it was due for Iraqi approval.

• President Bush made passage of the hydrocarbon law a mandatory "benchmark" when he announced the troop surge in January of 2007.

...The Afghan pipeline is a dead issue. As the warlords and the poppy growers in Afghanistan thrive, and as the Taliban regroups and regains dominance, the country tilts ominously into chaos once more.

The Iraqi hydrocarbon law -- the clever disguise for capturing the oil fields -- is fatally wounded, its true purpose becoming more widely known. Organized resistance is growing quickly, both in Iraq and in the United States. And the factions who need to agree on the law are otherwise engaged in killing each other....

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