Would you have voted for John Key if you had known: The Subprime crisis and John Key.

This was originally posted on December 16th, 2008 but in light of the financial collapse now actually happening in Europe and the US and with New Zealand at  risk of voting a banking criminal in again I thought I’d publish it again

—————————

Let’s start with a few quotes

“The products which underpinned the sub-prime boom – then bust – were hatched in 2004-2005, long after Key had left Merrill.” Eugene Bingham about the subprime Crisis and John Key’s banking career in the NZ Herald 19 July 2008.

“Not since the Great Depression has the world experienced such a significant financial crisis as we have seen in recent months. We have seen an expansion of credit and leverage at levels that were so unprecedented and arguably so uncontrolled that they now threaten the very stability of the world’s banking system.” John Key, APEC speech Nov 22 2008

“These forces were, in turn, fuelled by excessive optimism in asset markets, and a more relaxed, and in many cases, recklessly complacent attitude to risk.” John Key, APEC speech Nov 22 2008

What is now apparent is that as the pressure to boost profits grew, Wall Street assumed more and more risk. The quantity, and also the complexity, of this risk saw investment banks evolve into pseudo hedge funds with balance-sheets and risk exposures well beyond what anyone would have previously deemed acceptable. John Key, APEC speech Nov 22 2008

But Key, who made an estimated $50 million buying and selling the New Zealand dollar as a trader in the 1980s, ducked any blame for the current situation, saying the system was now radically different to when he was a trader. Colin Espiner 22 Nov 2008 Fairfax media.

Much has been made of John Key’s squeaky clean banking image. He only worked with Andrew Krieger after he attacked the NZ dollar, avoided the Asian crisis and the LTCM hedgefund and the subprime did not happen until 2004-2005. But how much of this is true and how does John Key really fit in the scheme of things and when did the subprime scheme really start?

———————–

On order to understand what is happening now and what role John Key played in the Wall street/ City of London banking disaster we need to understand how it could have come to this and the first thing that happened was that

1987 Alan Greenspan became the Chairman of the Federal Reserve of New York.

With the ascent of Alan Greenspan a new era dawned on Wall street and the international investment banking world.

In the years that Alan Greenspan ruled the banking world would be totally deregulated, opening the world up to unprecedented financial speculation and speculative mayhem with at it’s pinnacle the repeal of the Glass Steagall act unofficially in 1997 and officially in 1999 when Pres. Clinton signed the act into oblivion.

The act voted into existence in 1933 after the first “Great” depression kept commercial banks and Investment banks separate in order to prevent the speculative investment bankers from running roughshod over the economy as they had done in the years leading up to the Great depression.

It had long been a thorn in the side of the big investment banks and it had taken from 1987 until 1999 and $100- $ 200 in lobbying fees to get it repealed.

It was a huge deal to the Bankers of Wall street and the City of London!

It was the final obstacle in a long list of clearing the road to unfettered speculation and greed.

However this was only one of the elements leading up to the financial disaster we are now facing and which has been caused by Investment bankers such as John Key.

The second factor leading up to the collapse of our financial system is the fact that Alan Greenspan after the crisis of 1987 introduced the trade in Derivatives.

Syria and Iran are next!

Libya is broken and will become an American puppet state to be looted by the rich 1% and next will be Syria.

Turkey allows armed rebels to use it as their base and again we are being lied to about the support level for President Assad and like Gaddafi, Assad is warning against an invasion which will most certainly cause a major destabilisation in the region.

But the crazies are ruling the nut house and they don’t care after Syria they have their eyes on the next price;  Iran (and here and here,  and if we don’t stop them they will continue until the human species is wiped out and what remains will be back to medieval conditions of feudal slavery

Keiser Report: Bring down Bernanke Gaddafi style

To these people we are nothing but cattle and they are planning to cull the herd of useless eaters!

Some of the biggest men in the United States are afraid of something. They know there is a power somewhere, so organised, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it. – President Woodrow Wilson

When the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, in the late 1700s, there was lots of money to be made by investing in factories and mills, by opening up new markets, and by gaining control of sources of raw materials. The folks who had the most money to invest, however, were not so much in Britain but more in Holland. Holland had been the leading Western power in the 1600s, and its bankers were the leading capitalists. In pursuit of profit, Dutch capital flowed to the British stock market, and thus the Dutch funded the rise of Britain, who subsequently eclipsed Holland both economically and geopolitically.

In this way British industrialism came to be dominated by wealthy investors, and capitalism became the dominant economic system. This led to a major social transformation. Britain had been essentially an aristocratic society, dominated by landholding families. As capitalism became dominant economically, capitalists became dominant politically. Tax structures and import-export policies were gradually changed to favour investors over landowners.

It was no longer economically viable to simply maintain an estate in the countryside: one needed to develop it, turn it to more productive use. Victorian dramas are filled with stories of aristocratic families who fall on hard times, and are forced to sell off their properties. For dramatic purposes, this decline is typically attributed to a failure in some character, a weak eldest son perhaps. But in fact the decline of aristocracy was part of a larger social transformation brought on by the rise of capitalism.

The business of the capitalist is the management of capital, and this management is generally handled through the mediation of banks and brokerage houses. It should not be surprising that investment bankers came to occupy the top of the hierarchy of capitalist wealth and power. And in fact, there are a handful of banking families, including the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers, who have come to dominate economic and political affairs in the Western world.

Read more

Be Honest – The European Debt Deal Was Really A Greek Debt Default

Once the euphoria of the initial announcement faded and as people have begun to closely examine the details of the European debt deal, they have started to realize that this “debt deal” is really just a “managed” Greek debt default.  Let’s be honest – this deal is not going to solve anything.  All it does is buy Greece a few months.  Meanwhile, it is going to make the financial collapse of other nations in Europe even more likely.  Anyone that believes that the financial situation in Europe is better now than it was last week simply does not understand what is going on.  Bond yields are going to go through the roof and investors are going to start to panic.  The European Central Bank is going to have an extremely difficult time trying to keep a lid on this thing.  Instead of being a solution, the European debt deal has brought us several steps closer to a complete financial meltdown in Europe.

The big message that Europe is sending to investors is that when individual nations get into debt trouble they will be allowed to default and investors will be forced to take huge haircuts.

As this reality starts to dawn on investors, they are going to start demanding much higher returns on European bonds.

In fact, we are already starting to see this happen.

The yield on two year Spanish bonds increased by more than 6 percent today.

Read more

Radioactive uranium passing through NZ ports

Harmless dirt? This is where this stuff ends up and what it does. Is John Key a share holder in the nuclear industry? It might explain why no news is being published about Fukushima and the 20 Tokyo hotspots either!

What is also terrifying is that the biggest harbour of New Zealand has no equipment to test for radioactive material especially since we import all our cars from Japan

Foreigners Sell Second Largest Amount Of US Bonds or why the dollar is going to collapse!

This should scare the shit out of our dear leaders as I’m sure John Key already is what with most of his wealth parked in the collapsing BofA.

Two weeks ago when we reported that there had been a record consecutive week dump of US Treasury paper in the Fed’s custodial account, as reported by the weekly H.4.1, we made the assumption that this was China preemptively selling US paper. Well, that may or may not have been the case, but it was only part of the full story. We have now learned that Europe, and especially Germany has been just an active seller of sovereign bonds, most certainly including US paper, in recent weeks. As FAZ reports, the head of Commerzbank Martin Blessing has been dumping all bonds in his possession, primarily PIIGS paper, but also US and German ones. He does add the clarification that this has been a complicated project as there has been a buyer’s strike (and with the CDS extinction it will only get more difficult as there is no natural hedge remaining), and his dumping has certainly not made things easier. Now as we all know by now, when starting a panic exodus, one has to be first, be smarter, or cheat. Here we will add a fourth one: or sell US paper. After all the demand for this is nearly insatiable, or so the neo-Keynesians out there will have us believe. Well, in the last week, someone used our definition. According to today’s update in the H.4.1, the total amount of securities held in the custodial account for foreign official and international accounts just plunged by $20 billion, of which $19 billion was attributable solely to Treasurys: the second largest weekly dumb ever. And since this total number includes both Treasurys, which are used for political purposes, as well as Agency securities, which don’t really serve much in terms of a diplomatic statement but are great at shoring up liquidity, one can assume that the relentless selling in all types of US paper has had one purpose only: to generate capital. As the third chart shows, that amount is substantial: in the last 8 weeks foreigners have sold a unprecedented $93 billion across the custodial account bringing it to $3.392 trillion, the lowest since March 2011! So the next time someone asks where European banks are finding emergency liquidity now that commercial paper, money market and Libor Markets are all dead, you will have the answer.

Read more

Max and Stacey 202

Did Oakland Police Intentionally Shoot Marine Vet Scott Olsen In the Head?

The following photograph on videos show that Marine veteran Scott Olsen was peacefully standing at the Oakland protest when police fired a projectile at him:

Read more

The global financial crisis in three easy steps and why the Greek solution won’t work!

This is what is happening in three easy steps.

1. Gamble number 1: Banks (European) invested in bonds sold by individual countries to finance these countries in effect loaning those countries money expecting it to be paid back with profit.
2. Gamble number 2: They insured those bonds with other banks (American) in case the countries could not make good on the loans.
3. Gamble number 3: All these banks multiplied their money based on the fractional banking model.

That is in short what they did and that whole house of carts is now coming down due to the fat that the underlying paper is rendered valueless. The house marked collapsed, the countries economies are collapsing and no matter how much zeroes and ones the banking system is generating in their computers there is no stopping the collapse of this financial system. The banks lost their gabling bets and now expect us to make good on them with hard physical slog.

I know there is much more to be said about the cause of the collapse but basically keep this in mind when following the coming collapse of Europe and America.

Saif Gaddafi want to surrender to the Hague

I don’t give him much chance but I think he should be tried in the Hague as is his right and our duty

Solving the debt crisis with more debt? I don’t think so!

Update: Well that didn’t last long; First cracks appear in Greece bailout plan already!!!

Big slush fund, more powers for unelected bankers and trillions more debt to sort out the financial mess in Europe the entire global financial system and just to keep corrupt financial terrorists from bankruptcy? I don’t think so!

There is just no way out of this. See here why and watch the Crash course to educate yourself. Especially the  chapter on exponential growth!

Here is what Max Keiser has to say about the “Agreement” reached in Europe:

A good read by Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone: Wall street isn’t winning, It’s Cheating!

I was at an event on the Upper East Side last Friday night when I got to talking with a salesman in the media business. The subject turned to Zucotti Park and Occupy Wall Street, and he was chuckling about something he’d heard on the news.

“I hear [Occupy Wall Street] has a CFO,” he said. “I think that’s funny.”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” I said. “Why is that funny?”

“Well, I heard they’re trying to decide what bank to put their money in,” he said, munching on hors d’oeuvres. “It’s just kind of ironic.”

Oh, Christ, I thought. He’s saying the protesters are hypocrites because they’re using banks. I sighed.

“Listen,” I said, “where else are you going to put three hundred thousand dollars? A shopping bag?”

“Well,” he said, “it’s just, they’re protests are all about… You know…”

“Dude,” I said. “These people aren’t protesting money. They’re not protesting banking. They’re protesting corruption on Wall Street.”

“Whatever,” he said, shrugging.

These nutty criticisms of the protests are spreading like cancer. Earlier that same day, I’d taped a TV segment on CNN with Will Cain from the National Review, and we got into an argument on the air. Cain and I agreed about a lot of the problems on Wall Street, but when it came to the protesters, we disagreed on one big thing.

Read more

John Key, Phill Goff to sides of the same coin or how both are catering to the Money Masters

With calling for a compulsory membership of Kiwi saver and raising the pensionable age to 67 in the next couple of years Phill Goff has shown his true allegiance: That of the financial terrorist scamming the world into indentured slavery!

John Key will do the same of course by selling of New Zealand’s assets leaving Kiwi’s as tenants in their own country but Goff by putting the onus of the debt repayment on the shoulders of the workers of New Zealand is doing excactly what it should not be doing if they were really on the side of the working class of New Zealand. Taking money out of the all ready diminished pay check even three years from now amounts to nothing more than another tax as it is by no means sure that money will be accessible in the future as out financial system continues to unravel and collapse and forcing people to work longer then 65 years as jobs will continue to disappear is a punishment and an act of enslavement.

What they should have said of course is that they would have a good hard look at the current financial system, Make kiwi bank into more powerful as a kiwi owned bank and limited the influence of the foreign owned banks. Another good suggestion would have been the reversal of the tax cuts to the rich and make tax cuts to the poor in order to get people to spend a little more. The reversal of GST on food and the the rates adapted to the reduced value of houses would be very opportune and while we’re at it the nixing of the Reserve act would be very much in order too so the government could extend social credit for small start ups getting our local economy going again.

Tying the NZ worker to a collapsing financial system is the one thing labour should not do and in doing so they have shown that either they have no idea about the real world out there or they are perpetuating the scam that is fractional banking and the Reserve banking system either way they don’t deserve our vote.

Libya asks Nato to stay until end of year while Hillary Clinton visits Libya again and yes, the wars in the middle east were all about the oil!

In a very convenient move the new Libyan regime has requested the NATO to remain in Libya until at least the end of the year as Hillary visited Libya again to offer $ 11 million more aid on top of the $120 million or so already spend.

While to many here in New Zealand the Libya mission still is about ousting Villain du jour Gaddafi here is an interesting analysis from prominent blogger Washintons post about how all the wars started all over the middle east are indeed all about the oil although in Libya’s case it could be argued that Gold and water were also greed inducing factors.

Did US/NATO betray a white flag truce in Libya?

For thousands of years the White flag was honoured as a sign of surrender and the effective end of battle. In fact respect for ther use of the white flag is a requirement and legal obligation in the Hague Conventions and breaking this legal requirement constitutes a grave war crime.

The last few days rumours have surfaced of white flags being a carried the convoy carrying members of the Gaddafi family as they drove to what they expected to be a save surrender to NATO forces. If these rumours are true both the US and the NATO are involved in what is arguably one of the most serious of war crimes and it’s leaders should be brought to the Hague for prosecution of these crimes.

So how serious are these rumours?

On 24 October I reported on this blog that the German intelligence service had known the whereabouts of Gaddafi weeks before the horrific death of the Libyan leader. I also pointed out that the GIS has a history of sharing it’s intelligence with NATO of which it is a member and with the US.

On the same day well respected reporter Wayne Madsen reported that he had heard from his Libyan contacts (He had visited Libya during NATO’s attack) that the convoy which as you may recall travelled during daylight into what unquestionably was a completely open and vulnerable area had been carrying white flags after white flags had appeared all over the City of Sirte, the city to which the Gaddafi clan had belonged.

On the 27th of October the Asian tribune reported that according to well respected blog Hillary Clinton had been told of the White flag truce by the Rebel government and that Gadaffi would be allowed to leave Libya alive.

In the post i mentioned earlier I also reported Hillary Clinton had visited Libya unexpected and that this probably was to arrange the propaganda around Gadaffi’s capture and subsequent illegal execution but if this is true it is very likely she was there to make sure that NATO had a drone ready to fire into the White flag convoy in order to deliver Gaddafi to the lynch mob awaiting him.

This is a very serious allegation and while I won’t hold my breath since the entire Libya war was illegal and therefore a war crime it is one that should be investigated thoroughly because as the result of the murder of Gaddafi quit a few people are able to walk away from their very shady deals with Gaddafi!

Japanese Journalist Accuses Israel Of Fukushima Sabotage

A leading Japanese journalist recently made two incredible claims about the Fukushima power plant that suffered a nuclear meltdown in March 2011, sending shockwaves around the world. First, the former editor of a national newspaper in Japan says the U.S. and Israel knew Fukushima had weapons-grade uranium and plutonium that were exposed to the atmosphere after a massive tsunami wave hit the reactor. Second, he  contends that Israeli intelligence sabotaged the reactor in retaliation for Japan’s support of an independent Palestinian state.

According to Yoishi Shimatsu, a former editor of Japan Times Weekly, these nuclear materials were shipped to the plant in 2007 on the orders of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, with the connivance of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The shipment was in the form of warhead cores secretly removed from the U.S. nuclear warheads facility BWXT Plantex near Amarillo, Texas. While acting as the middleman, Israel transported warheads from the port of Houston, and in the process kept the best ones while giving the Japanese older warhead cores that had to be further enriched at Fukushima.

Shimatsu credits retired CIA agent and mercenary Roland Vincent Carnaby with learning the warheads were being transported from Houston. In a strange twist, Carnaby was mysteriously shot dead less than a year later by Houston police at a traffic stop. He was shot once in the back and once in the chest. He did not have a weapon in his hands. Intelligence sources said he had been tracking a Mossad unit that was smuggling U.S. plutonium out of Houston docks for an Israeli nuclear reactor.

Read more

The science of September 11

Does AIPAC Have Only Two Major Donors?

A large congressional delegation is heading for Israel. During three weeks of recess, 55 Republicans and 26 Democrats will enjoy “educational” trips funded by the American Israel Education Foundation, a tax-exempt nonprofit located in the same Washington, D.C., building as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Absent AIPAC’s influence on pro-Israel campaign contributors, members of Congress would probably skip international travel this year to meet the pressing needs of their districts or to venture to places of actual importance to the U.S., such as Europe, China, or Latin America. Instead, because AIPAC is always watching members of Congress, our representatives go to Israel. But this raises an important question: Who is really behind AIPAC?

AIPAC’s last IRS list of contributors claims the organization now has only two major donors [.pdf]. As a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) organization (a category intended for civic leagues, social welfare organizations, and local associations of employees) AIPAC files an IRS Form 990. AIPAC has long structured its fiscal year end in such a way that it languidly files 2-year-old data while other nonprofits are rushing to report their previous year. Therefore, the AIPAC Form 990 listed as “year 2010″ at Guidestar.org, the officially designated website to consult such data, is actually year 2009 data [.pdf]. It also lacks the most important data in Form 990 — donor contributions.

Read more

Hamilton to build a $ 30 million data base

What’s more it intends to spen hundreds of millions more on Data gathering. All to “save us money. Can I hear a “government spy program” here ?

Datacom will build a $30 million data centre in Hamilton after it was selected alongside fellow New Zealand-owned company Revera to supply computer infrastructure to government agencies over the next 10 years.

Chief operating officer Steve Matheson said Datacom had considered building in Wellington but had decided against that because of the earthquake risk. The Hamilton centre will open early in 2013 and will operate alongside Datacom’s Orbit data centre in Albany, Auckland, which opened in 2009 and in which it has now invested $40m.

Datacom and Revera are in line to win hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of business as a result of the government initiative to centralise and buy information technology infrastructure as a “service”.

Read more

The ‘flying Humvee’ gets off the ground as U.S. military plans first all-terrain, bullet-proof warcraft by next year

Will it happen? I don’t know but what a terrifying thought!

It might look like something out of a Marvel comic but this flying jeep is close to becoming a reality.

According to insiders at the military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the first model of this futuristic vehicle will be ready at the end of next year.

It is designed to be capable of driving across the roughest terrain like a jeep, sustain gun fire and take off and land at the flick of a switch.

Warcraft of the future: The military’s Transformer TX will look like a ‘flying Humvee’ and be able to take off and land vertically while being capable of all-terrain driving

Fukushima disaster caused world’s biggest nuclear sea spill

Can I get a Duh! here:

PARIS – France’s nuclear monitor said on Thursday that the amount of caesium 137 that leaked into the Pacific from the Fukushima disaster was the greatest single nuclear contamination of the sea ever seen.

But, confirming previous assessments, it said caesium levels had been hugely diluted by ocean currents and, except for near-shore species, posed no discernible threat.

From March 21 to mid-July, 27.1 peta becquerels of caesium 137 entered the sea, the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) said.

One peta becquerel is a million billion bequerels, or 10 to the power of 15.

Of the total, 82 percent entered the sea before April 8, through water that was pumped into the Fukushima’s damaged reactor units in a bid to cool them down, it said.

Read more

Here are some facts NATO does not want you to know about Libya and Gaddafi

Army Veteran and OWS activist in critical condition in hospital!

Good enough to fight for the bankster scumbags in their illegal wars of aggression and looting but shot at home for doing his patriotic duty as a political activist. Scott Olsen, 24, of Daly City, California, served in Iraq in 2006 and 2007 and is a member of Veterans for Peace is in critical condition after having been shot with a tear gas cannister during police raids in Oakland. Please America wake up and smell the roses.  These psychopaths are not going to stop unless you take this fight real serious.

We pay fro the privilige to have currency or why our financial system is a scam!

Surplus ‘on track’ bar disaster!

That’s like saying “we’ll be sweet for the bbq tonight” when it’s already pounding down with rain and you can hear thunder in the far distance fast approaching and an eathquake hit your town this morning and a Tsunami of monstrous proportions is coming you way all at the same time!

I wonder what Don Brash will be coming back with?

Finance Minister Bill English indicated it would take another global meltdown or catastrophe to put the Government off its stride to return the books to surplus in the 2014-15 financial year.

But he also warned of much more belt-tightening ahead for the public sector over the next few years, with no increases except small ones in education and health.

Mr English repeatedly said yesterday at a media briefing on Treasury’s updated forecasts that the Government was committed to a return to surplus by 2014-15 – despite lower growth and forecasts than in the May Budget.

“Of course, if there is some kind of meltdown, then you would expect us to handle it in a similar way to 2008-09 – and that is to protect the vulnerable, maintain public services but stick to a longer-term view about lifting our economic prospects.

Read more

Al-Qaeda Commander Ordered Sharia Law In Libya

National Transitional Council leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil’s announcement that Libya would follow Sharia law was mandated by Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the former Al-Qaeda commander whose LIFG terrorist organization killed U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jalil promised to revoke Gaddafi’s ban on polygamy and return Libya to Islamic banking laws during a triumphant speech on Saturday, declaring, “Libyan laws in future would have Sharia, the Islamic code, as its basic source.”

Sharia law is viewed by many as an arcane and inherently brutal system of justice, with harsh punishments for those deemed to have broken its moral code, including torture and execution for sins such as adultery, homosexuality and robbery. The law also stifles free speech as it criminalizes criticism of Islam, the Quran, and the prophet Muhammad.

Read more

Kazakhstan hires Tony Blair as star consultant to attract investment

Not that I care but someone should warn President Nursultan Nazarbayev who is one of the most corrupt despots in the world. People around Tony Blair have a tendency to die in very public an gruesome ways

Kazakhstan said Monday it has hired Britain’s ex-prime minister Tony Blair as a consultant to attract new investment to the Central Asian state, on a contract reportedly worth millions of dollars.

The hire marks a major coup for strongman President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s bid to promote Kazakhstan as an economic powerhouse despite complaints from critics that the country pays little heed to Western democratic standards.

The Daily Telegraph earlier said Blair had signed a one-year contract worth eight million pounds ($12.7 million) with the government of Nazarbayev, who has ruled Kazakhstan since even before the Soviet collapse.

 The foreign ministry refused to confirm the figure but said Blair was one of several foreign officials contracted by the Kazakh state.

Fukushima and the Fall of the Nuclear Priesthood

Arnie Gundersen on the Corbett show just in case you had forgotten that there are still four nuclear reactors in full meltdown!

And here talking about the Tokyo hotspots:

Is the U.S. Really Leaving Iraq?

Of course not!

With his Oct. 21 statement on our withdrawal of troops from Iraq by year-end, President Barack Obama is keeping his promise to the American people for complete withdrawal of U.S. troops and satisfying the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government. Mr. Obama declared that the U.S. and Iraq would have a “relationship between sovereign states, an equal partnership based on mutual interests and mutual respect.”

Yet even with the withdrawal under way, Mr. Obama’s actions continue to undermine the sovereignty of Iraq.

Even without the presence of U.S. troops, America’s footprint in Iraq is immense. In addition to the fortress near the site of Saddam Hussein’s palace, two additional, $100 million buildings are slated to be built outside Baghdad as mini-embassies in the north and south of Iraq. Iraqis know that U.S. troops acting as trainers will still be in Iraq, both as a permanent presence of less than 200 and as an undetermined presence of U.S. troops permanently stationed in neighboring countries. In addition to these troops and embassy personnel, a large and robust force of CIA agents are presumed to be on the ground. As one of the largest contingencies of foreign personnel in any sovereign nation, it is no surprise that Iraqis refused to bargain away their right to enforce their own laws by giving our troops immunity from prosecution.

The use of a huge personnel force, with a large number of private contractors, has even stoked the ire of some Republicans. Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, in a recent letter to President Obama expressed his dismay at the drastic increase of contractors as a private army in Iraq. “The American people have a right to know the past, present and future status of private security contractors in these regions,” Mr. Issa wrote. Taken a step further, the American people have a right to know that our stated withdrawal is far from a true withdrawal of our presence from Iraq.

Read more