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Galbraith's Oil Windfall
Influential former American ambassador Peter W. Galbraith "stands to earn perhaps a hundred million or more dollars as a result of his closeness to the Kurds, his relations with a Norwegian oil company and constitutional provisions he helped the Kurds extract," according to The New York Times. Galbraith, who has been an important voice on Iraq and helped shape policies of Joe Biden and John Kerry, advised the Kurdish regional government during constitutional negotiations, the paper says. Galbraith helped negotiate provisions allowing the Kurds to control many of their own internal affairs, including the rights to almost all new oil finds in their territory. Last month, investigative journalists from the Norwegian paper Dagens Naeringsliv uncovered documents linking Galbraith to a Norwegian oil company doing major business in Iraq. Interviews by The New York Times, together with legal records, confirmed that Galbraith received an enormous stake in at least one of Kurdistan's oil fields in 2004. Months after he helped push through Kurdish constitutional provisions, drillers made a huge oil find in that field. Galbraith maintains that he did no wrong. He says he advised the Kurdish government as purely a private citizen at a time when he held no official position with the U.S. Kurdish officials confirm that they were aware of his relationship with the oil company during the negotiations.
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BFD, Andrew Hall made a Hundred Million smooth, by astute
moves in the derivatives energy trading markets. And that was a smooth Hundred Million paid from CitiGroup, who got
$368 Big from the U.S. Gov.
Big is for Billions. A hundred million is just chicken scratch. I mean, who the hell does this Galbraith joker joker think he is anyway, Lloyd Blankfein?
Aristocrats to the lamp-posts. All of 'em. Now. Before it's too late.
Please, I would have done the same thing if I had the pull or connections he has. Really, who is he cheating besides the dirt poor Kurds, who would only have wasted that money on things like food and clothing? I am sure he needs that money more, what with the upkeep on his private jet and all.
If the timelines are correct, then no story no beef.
If not, then he remains an ex-ambassador and may or may not be held accountable, meaning probably no story no beef.
New story please.
and we want Karzai to clean up his government? It is clear that the Karzai brothers do just this - they use govt connections and insider knowledge to make sweetheart deals and basically run the place as a personal cash machine. It seems Galbraith is no different.
It is very hard to figure out if this is a USA with currently polluted Iraqi government combined sucker jibe at the one person who has succesfully dealt with ANY of the entrenched gridlock in ruined Iraq. Is there a preponderance of legitimacy to this criticism?
Certainly bungling into Iraq and destabilizing an entire global region, allowing the assassination of virtually the entire moderate political and religious leadership element in the first ninety days, solely empowering the violent fringe ,returning the nation's women to caveman times, while loosing billions of American dollars to the global black market along with arms of all sizes when performed by US governemnt in its offical capacity and Blackqwater in its profiteering capacity has not raised many media hackles.
So just why are we picking on Gailbrath--oh because he has helped the Kurds economize ther partition, And made substantive profit personally from it ? well it worked in the balkans and it can work in Iraq--the kurds deserve all the independence they can garner. They are religious moderates and they poltical democrats who supported US in Afghanistan when we battled the Soviets there and empowered the Taliban.As we pulled it out they were left alone with their US flags on their tanks and their hopes for a nation of their own we abndoned the Kurds to be exterminated and marginalized by Saddam and the vestiges of USSR..now they are empowered enough to pay a consultant in the fledging oilagarchy USA created.
i think gailbreath should be celebrated and not censored for making teh only potential working democracy to emrge from the ruins which is not impotant, misogynist and reactionary.
Thank you.
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