Barack Obama: Incompetency’s Gift to Big Oil?

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No ‘Daylight’ Between White House & Pentagon On Afghanistan, Gen. Jones Says • July 2nd

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U.S. Marines Try to Retake Afghan Valley From Taliban • July 1st

Almost 4,000 United States Marines, backed by helicopter gunships, pushed into the volatile Helmand River valley in southwestern Afghanistan early Thursday morning to try to take back the region from Taliban fighters whose control of poppy harvests and opium smuggling in Helmand provides major financing for the Afghan insurgency.

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The Cost of Poppy Production

At about $2,000 per acre, no annual crop can match poppy in terms of gross revenue. (This is an average—prices are higher for farmers closer to the Pakistan border and thus the international market.) Even at the historically high prices of 2008, wheat didn’t clear one-fifth of that. This is a staggering sum for Afghan farmers, most of whom work small farms of less than two jiribs (that’s about one acre). But due to the labor investment, the actual profit on one acre of poppy (about $850), while still higher than wheat ($200), is far less than for other traditional Afghan crops like grapes ($1,000), pomegranates ($5,000), and almonds ($6,000). Unfortunately, without international aid—which is difficult to deliver in Taliban-infested regions like Helmand—most Afghan farmers can’t afford to wait the few years it takes to get a fruit or nut orchard up and running

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Captured, Tortured, Still in Prison

Jawad also complained about being mistreated at Guantánamo, saying he had been moved with absurd frequency from cell to cell — the idea being to deprive him of sleep. A check of the official prison logs showed that Jawad had in fact been moved 112 times, without explanation, from one cell to another in a two-week period — an average of eight moves a day for 14 days.

As Colonel Vandeveld said in his affidavit: “Upon further investigation, we were able to determine that Mr. Jawad had been subjected to a sleep deprivation program popularly referred to as the ‘frequent flyer’ program.” The colonel said he lacked the words “to express the heartsickness” he felt as he came to fully understand the way Jawad had been treated by American soldiers.

On Dec. 25, 2003, Jawad tried to kill himself by repeatedly banging his head against a wall of his cell.

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Few Bidders to Develop Iraqi Oil and Gas Fields

After the day long event, which was broadcast live on national television, the government came away with just a single deal struck from among the six giant oil fields and two gas fields it had put up for bid.

The single successful contract went to a pairing of BP and the China National Petroleum Corporation for the largest field on offer: Rumaila, near the southern city of Basra, which has proven reserves of 17 billion barrels.