Bush Trip to Iraq

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Damn good move by the Bush administration :tu

No night landing in Baghdad with all the lights turned off at the airport, coming in at day, over Baghdad, Air Force One might as well have been the proverbial middle finger to all the insurgents who think we're scared of their chickenshit IEDs.

[01Snake]

I'm wouldn't be suprised if a few people on here wished his plane was shot down.

[boutons_]

The insurgents will blow up 100 people tomorrow, returning dubya's the finger with both hands.

dubya's good at running his mouth, and padded-crotch "Mission Accomplished" bullshit theatre, but he can't back up his bullshit, and he can't stop the worsening insurgency and all out civil war in Iraq.

The only finger dubya gives is to himself, up his own dumb asshole.

[jochhejaam]

dubya's good at running his mouth...
Pot/Kettle/Black

[boutons_]

dubya says he looked el Maliki "in the eyes" and has confidence in him.

dubya's confidence counts for shit in Iraq.

Do the Iraqi police and army have enough confidence that the govt can pay their salaries? enough confidence in Malikie to die for him?

Very probably not, since even US red-staters don't have enough confidence in dubya to sign-up and go die for dubya in the bullshit Repub wars.

dubya did the same with Putin. That worked out great. Russia is now a dictatorship, corrupt even worse than the US congress and corps. but dubya has confidence in Putin.

dubya, and this in New News, is a fucking dunce, a simpleton in deep shit so far over his head his air bubbles don't break the surface.

[xrayzebra]

dubya says he looked el Maliki "in the eyes" and has confidence in him.

dubya's confidence counts for shit in Iraq.

Do the Iraqi police and army have enough confidence that the govt can pay their salaries? enough confidence in Malikie to die for him?

Very probably not, since even US red-staters don't have enough confidence in dubya to sign-up and go die for dubya in the bullshit Repub wars.

dubya did the same with Putin. That worked out great. Russia is now a dictatorship, corrupt even worse than the US congress and corps. but dubya has confidence in Putin.

dubya, and this in New News, is a fucking dunce, a simpleton in deep shit so far over his head his air bubbles don't break the surface.

Must make you even dumber. Since he keeps outsmarting all of you
regressive liberals. He owns you lock, stock and barrel.
:lol

[atxrocker]

Must make you even dumber. Since he keeps outsmarting all of you
regressive liberals. He owns you lock, stock and barrel.
:lol

dubya outsmarting ANYBODY?? :rolleyes certainly not the public according to the latest opinion polls

[ChumpDumper]

Feh. I'll be impressed when he can actually announce a trip to Iraq.

[boutons_]

http://www.uclick.com/feature/06/06/13/ta060613.gif


http://www.uclick.com/feature/06/06/14/tt060614.gif

[Trainwreck2100]

Damn good move by the Bush administration :tu

No night landing in Baghdad with all the lights turned off at the airport, coming in at day, over Baghdad, Air Force One might as well have been the proverbial middle finger to all the insurgents who think we're scared of their chickenshit IEDs.


If it was the finger, why do it in secret?

[jochhejaam]

How can you not love the partisanship in Politics? :spin


Democrats in disarray as Bush basks in glow of Iraq trip
Jun 14 9:54 AM US/Eastern


US President George W. Bush's triumphant return from his unannounced visit in Iraq found opposition Democrats more divided than ever on US policy in the wartorn country, and how best to capitalize on administration missteps there.

Republicans basked in the afterglow of the president's dramatic lightning visit Tuesday to meet with Iraq's new Prime Minister Nuri Maliki -- an event likely to figure prominently in a daylong debate Thursday in the House of Representatives on Iraq and the US "war on terror."



Bush's trip Tuesday followed last week's successes in Iraq, with the formation of the country's new unity government and the killing of Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

But Democrats -- who have disagreed about the war since the invasion more than three years ago -- continued to be riven <split> by internal dissent, particularly on the critical question of an exit strategy from Iraq.

One of the party's most prominent figures, Senator John Kerry, is expected to introduce a resolution this week calling for a pullout of American forces by the end of the year. <wow!>


"No matter how brave our soldiers are, no matter how valiant, no matter what their caring ... our soldiers cannot bring democracy to Iraq at the barrel of a gun," Kerry said Tuesday at a gathering of progressive Democrats.

"The Iraqis themselves must build democracy. And it will never be done if Iraqis' leaders are unwilling to make the compromises necessary that that requires," the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate told hundreds of activists at a convention entitled "Campaign for America's Future: Take Back America."

But at the same forum, another top Senate Democrat, Hillary Clinton, insisted that it would not be a "smart strategy" to create a timeline to leave Iraq.

Both Kerry and Clinton are also leading presidential contenders in 2008, an election in which Iraq is due to figure prominently.

The divisions over Iraq also come with Democrats fighting to reclaim the House and Senate from Republicans in midterm elections in November.

Kerry, whom Bush defeated in the 2004 presidential election, said at Tuesday's rally that the president's presence in Iraq did not change his view that the US military venture there is counter-productive.

The Massachusetts Democrat derided the president's "quick, and now not-so-secret trip to Iraq," saying the military role there increasingly resembles the US military debacle in Vietnam.

"For a long time, we've been told that Iraq and Vietnam were different. But in telling and very tragic ways now, they are converging," he said.

He added: "We need a deadline now for the Iraqis to understand they must stand up and fight for their own country."


Clinton on Tuesday made a plea for party unity, urging Democrats to coalesce around their opposition to the Bush administration, rather than being fractured over Iraq and other internal party disagreements.

"If we're going to win in November then we have to be smarter, tougher and better prepared than our opponents," she said.

"One thing they do know how to do is win and we have to reach out to people who may not be able to agree with us."

Some Democrats, like Senator Charles Schumer, conceded that the administration has had a relatively good few days in Iraq, but said, without calling for a specific timetable for pulling out, that the successes are not enough to warrant a prolonged stay for troops.

"The president today went to Iraq, I'm glad he went to Iraq. He got a first hand look. Maybe he'll come out finally with a plan that will show us a way out of this quagmire," Schumer told a news conference.

The US Senate on Wednesday was to hold a vote on emergency funding for US military operations in Iraq, after the House on Tuesday passed the 94.5 billion dollar measure, which included 66 billion dollars for US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[jochhejaam]

If it was the finger, why do it in secret?

http://www.army-technology.com/contractor_images/avibras/avibras3.jpg

Just a thought. :lol

[boutons_]

"chickenshit IEDs"

yeah, right, tough talk from bad-ass wannabe. Non-serving bad-ass, of course.

"IEDs can't hurt us, er, uh, them. Bring 'em on."

[Ocotillo]

Democrats in disarray as Bush basks in glow of Iraq trip


With friends like the "liberal media", who needs enemies? How does a story like this get through the liberal cabal that secretly runs the media behind the scenes?

Doris Kearns Goodwin was on Imus this morning and stated that while there has been no "bump" for Bush in the polls the latest round of happenings is good for Bush as the media is looking for that bump and spinning the stories as if Bush were in a rebound. The so called liberal media waits breathlessly to run to the presses (or their keyboards) to spread the word that Bush is on his way back.

Thing is, the stenographers that take their marching orders from the Bush administration have missed something rather significant. While they buy into most every talking point Rove, Mehlman, et al spew at them the American public see this publicity stunt for what it is. Another rubber turkey moment to try and persuade American opinion.

The goons of the right wing spin machine are furiously spinning the canard that anyone against the war is with the terrorists and framing the Bush trip as a major victory for this administration. The compliant "liberal media" wonders why the American public is not suckered into jumping back on the Bush Express of 'stay the course'.

When is this turkey going to get Osama Bin Laden? Oh yeah, he doesn't spend that much time worrying or thinking about him. Wouldn't want waste precious time that could be spent on devising photo ops and other techniques to try and move up the old approval rating.

Actions speak louder than words. For a guy who supposedly doesn't care about polls, this turkey sure does lots of things meant to impact those polls. Anyone wonder why there hasn't been a terror alert since the '04 election?

[spurster]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/opinion/l15iraq.html



President Bush's surprise visit to Baghdad - a trip that was kept a secret even from Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki until the last possible moment - was an unwitting demonstration of United States domination in Iraq.

In what other country could an American president land his plane without the knowledge of that country's leader?

The answer is that it could happen only in a state "occupied" by the United States military. Only in a state whose airspace we control. Only in a state without real government autonomy or authority - like Iraq.

[Trainwreck2100]

http://www.army-technology.com/contractor_images/avibras/avibras3.jpg

Just a thought. :lol


Yeah, but then it's not6 reallyu giving the finger is it?

[Nbadan]

With friends like the "liberal media", who needs enemies? How does a story like this get through the liberal cabal that secretly runs the media behind the scenes?

Doris Kearns Goodwin was on Imus this morning and stated that while there has been no "bump" for Bush in the polls the latest round of happenings is good for Bush as the media is looking for that bump and spinning the stories as if Bush were in a rebound. The so called liberal media waits breathlessly to run to the presses (or their keyboards) to spread the word that Bush is on his way back.

This is true. The Situation Room with Wolfe Biltzer is unwatchable because Blitzer is constantly licking the WH boots, it is disgusting, and for 'balance' CNN had 'Benjamen Netenyau' (Neocon extremis) to talk about the Palestinian situation.

Yeah that's balance.

:rolleyes

[jochhejaam]

Yeah, but then it's not6 reallyu giving the finger is it?
Check with Aggie. Maybe he's referring to the "secret" finger.

[boutons_]

http://www.uclick.com/feature/06/06/15/bs060615.gif


http://www.uclick.com/feature/06/06/16/jd060616.gif

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

dubya's good at running his mouth

Look in the mirror croutons :lol



and padded-crotch "Mission Accomplished" bullshit theatre, but he can't back up his bullshit, and he can't stop the worsening insurgency and all out civil war in Iraq.

Worsening insurgency? All out civil war? The documents on Zarqawi's computer they found seem to indicate him and other jihadist leaders in Iraq felt that the insurgency is weakening, and that they need to kill a lot more civilians to have any hope of triggering a civil war.

I guess you'll say Zarqawi's wrong, after all you obviously know more sitting in home room at summer school in HS than the fucker who was running the Iraqi insurgency. Good call, croutons.

[boutons_]

"Worsening insurgency? All out civil war?"

Even the dubya-sucking WSJ says violence in Iraq is probably being UNDER-reported due to the that very violence making reports extremely dangerous research. Some numbers:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/06/15/opinion/16opart.gif

You can see what said about getting Zarqawi. You can also read that everybody said getting Zarqawi would have probably have little or no effect on violence and security in Iraq.

===========================================

It's widely recognized that the Iraqi police and military are infiltrated with insurgents and militia, totally untrustable.

And now there's this little tidbit:

Shiite Militias Control Prisons, Official Says
By Jonathan Finer and Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 16, 2006; A01


BAGHDAD -- Iraq's prison system is overrun with Shiite Muslim militiamen who have freed fellow militia members convicted of major crimes and executed Sunni Arab inmates, the country's deputy justice minister said in an interview this week.

"We cannot control the prisons. It's as simple as that," said the deputy minister, Pusho Ibrahim Ali Daza Yei, an ethnic Kurd. "Our jails are infiltrated by the militias from top to bottom, from Basra to Baghdad."

As a result, Yei has asked U.S. authorities to suspend plans to transfer prisons and detainees from American to Iraqi control. "Our ministry is unprepared at this time to take over the facilities, especially those in areas where Shiite militias exist," he said in a letter to U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John D. Gardner, the official in charge of American detention facilities.

U.S. officials said months ago that they planned to turn over Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and three other American-run facilities to the Iraqi government, but the handoff has been repeatedly pushed back. Gardner has said he will not authorize the transfers until he is convinced that standards of inmate treatment and security match those maintained in U.S.-run facilities.

"We will not transfer the facilities and legal custody of the detainees until each respective facility and the Iraqi Corrections system have demonstrated the ability to maintain the required standards, especially in the areas of care and custody," Gardner said in a written response to questions. "We fully recognize that there are significant challenges that must be overcome but believe that we will be able to address these as we move through 2006 into 2007."

He said Abu Ghraib would be transferred to Iraqi control "in the next few months."

Gardner said the eventual transfer of prisons to Iraqi control would proceed gradually, preceded by several weeks of training for Iraqi guards, conducted by U.S. corrections officers and military police. The Iraqis would then work under the supervision of American guards for at least six months. A U.S. transition team would then be left in place for an additional period before the prison was handed over.

While allegations of abuse at U.S.-run prisons have waned since the 2004 Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, Iraqi facilities have drawn increased scrutiny since a U.S. Army raid exposed torture of dozens of detainees -- most of them Sunnis -- at a secret Interior Ministry facility in the Baghdad neighborhood of Jadriyah.

The prison was widely alleged to have been operated by a special police unit staffed largely by members of the Badr Organization, a Shiite militia with ties to Iraq's largest Shiite political party. The government investigated the facility but never announced the results.

Yei said that because of mounting concern over detention centers run by Iraq's Interior and Defense ministries, where militias retain heavy influence, the police and army have agreed to turn over all their prisoners to the Justice Ministry by the end of the month.

As of early June, there were 7,426 inmates housed in Justice Ministry facilities, Yei said. The Interior Ministry had an additional 1,797 prisoners and the Defense Ministry a smaller number. More than 15,000 inmates were being held in five U.S. prisons in Iraq.

But while a U.N. human rights report issued last month stressed that the Defense and Interior ministries have legal authority to hold inmates only a brief time, Sunni Arabs charge that Sunnis are regularly imprisoned in the centers for months or even more than a year.

"The police are not supposed to be holding them beyond the time it takes to conduct an investigation," Yei said. "As long as the Interior Ministry doesn't hide anything, they will all be handed to us this month."

Already, the transfer plan is meeting resistance. The provincial council in Wasit province, south of Baghdad, ordered police there not to transfer detainees to a Justice Ministry facility, according to Muhammed Hasan al-Attabi, a provincial government spokesman.

A major general with Iraq's Interior Ministry, speaking on condition he not be named, said the transfer was already underway and would be completed on schedule. He denied that militias ran roughshod over the prisons. "All the detention centers in Baghdad and southern Iraq are under our control, except for some centers in Basra, maybe two or three there, which are run by militia officers," he said.

In an interview this week, Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zobaie, the top Sunni Arab in Iraq's new government, showed photographs taken from one recent inspection of an Interior Ministry detention center. An inmate in one of the photos held out his misshapen, limp hands for the camera. The man's hands had been broken in a beating, Zobaie said. Other inmates showed massive, dark bruises on their skin; one bore a large, open infected sore.

Inmates in another photo clustered around chains hung from the middle of one of the crowded cells. The chains were used to hoist prisoners by their bound hands, Zobaie said. The practice, noted frequently in inspection reports of Interior Ministry detention centers, often results in the dislocation of prisoners' shoulders.

Ninety percent of the men crowded into Interior Ministry detention centers are Sunni Arabs, Zobaie said. He called treatment in the Interior Ministry prisons "inhumane" and indicated it still was less than certain whether the Defense and Interior ministries would follow through on their agreement to turn over the inmates to the Justice Ministry. "Hopefully, they will," he said.

Yei gave several detailed accounts of abuses by militias, the names of which he declined to provide, saying only that "there are two, everyone knows them." U.S. officials recently said they consider the militias to be as grave a threat to Iraq's security as the Sunni-led insurgency.

On Aug. 13, 2004, he said, militia members freed 552 prisoners in the southern city of Hilla during a militia-led attack. A week later, 122 inmates escaped from the main prison in Amarah, also in the south, with the help of guards who were also militia members.

On Jan. 13, 2005, he said, 38 prisoners escaped during an attack on a convoy carrying them to Baghdad's Abu Ghraib. Eight were eventually rearrested. A month later, seven prisoners escaped while being transferred to the Badoush prison in the northern city of Mosul.

On June 14, 2005, seven prisoners escaped from Abu Ghraib in an incident still under investigation.

Last December, militia members entered the maximum-security prison in the Kadhimiyah section of Baghdad, a mostly Shiite neighborhood, freeing one militia member on death row and four others serving life sentences. At the same prison, on Feb. 28, guards and militia members freed two men who were to be executed that week.

And in the once-tranquil southern city of Basra, where militia violence has surged in recent months to the point that the Iraqi government declared a state of emergency in late May, militia members in early March took 12 foreign-born prisoners -- Egyptian, Saudi and Sudanese -- from their cells and shot them dead them by the facilities' main gate.

Yei's account adds to a growing list of alleged abuses in Iraq's overburdened prison system, long criticized by Sunni leaders who say Sunni prisoners are commonly mistreated.

Visits to detention centers in southern Iraq in recent months indicated they are often badly overcrowded and unsanitary. At the Tesfirat prison in Najaf last October, 122 prisoners were packed into cells designed for a maximum of 60, according to Lt. Jassim Juwad, the prison officer in charge. A prison maintained by police commandos in Hilla and designed for 150 inmates housed 400 as recently as April. Inmates at both locations had been incarcerated for up to 18 months without trial.

On Saturday, a group of parliament members paid a surprise visit to a detention facility run by the Interior Ministry in Baqubah, north of Baghdad. "We have found terrible violations of the law," said Muhammed al-Dayni, a Sunni parliament member who said as many as 120 detainees were packed into a 35-by-20-foot cell. "They told us that they've been raped," Dayni said. "Their families were called in and tortured to force the detainees to testify against other people."

"The detention facilities of the ministries of Defense and Interior are places for the most brutal human rights abuse," he added.

Despite broad U.S. efforts to encourage the Iraqi government to improve conditions in prisons, the problem of militia control could prove particularly intractable. Shiite militias such as the Badr Organization and the Mahdi Army, loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, are backed by dozens of members of parliament whose political parties run the armed groups.

"You can't even talk to the militias, because they are the government," Yei said. "They have ministers on their side."


© 2006 The Washington Post Company


===============



Iraqi government is weak, still-born, and Iraq is a fucking hellhole that isn't improving. Only dubya-suckers could dream the glass is half full.

===================================

VIOLENCE RAGES

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, under pressure to rein in violence that has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis, launched a security sweep on Wednesday with 50,000 Iraqi troops backed by 7,000 U.S. troops to pile pressure on al Qaeda.

But the operation, mounted one day after President Bush made a surprise visit to Baghdad to bolster Maliki's month-old government, has failed to stop attacks.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-iraq.html

[boutons_]

Life in Iraq

From the Embassy, a Grim Report

From the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, a stark compendium of its local employees' daily hardships and pressing fears

Sunday, June 18, 2006; Page B01, Al Kamen, WP

Hours before President Bush left on a surprise trip last Monday to the Green Zone in Baghdad for an upbeat assessment of the situation there, the U.S. Embassy in Iraq painted a starkly different portrait of increasing danger and hardship faced by its Iraqi employees. This cable, marked "sensitive" and obtained by The Washington Post, outlines in spare prose the daily-worsening conditions for those who live outside the heavily guarded international zone: harassment, threats and the employees' constant fears that their neighbors will discover they work for the U.S. government.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/graphics/iraqdocs_061606.pdf

[Nbadan]

When the cold hand of reality meets government propaganda, it's never pretty...

Horror show reveals Iraq’s descent
A morgue’s grim scenes testify to a disintegrating nation, says Hala Jaber in Baghdad


THE morning rush had begun at the health ministry’s morgue in Baghdad, and by 9.30am last Thursday 36 coffins already lined the street outside. A muffled wailing came from the minibuses parked nearby where women shrouded in black waited to go inside and search for loved ones, knowing too well what they would find.

The single-storey Al-Tub al-Adli morgue, whose nondescript appearance belies the horrors within, has become synonymous with the seemingly unstoppable violence that has turned Baghdad into the most frightening city on earth.

It is here that bodies from the nightly slaughter are dumped each morning. The stench of decaying flesh, mingled with disinfectant, hits you at the checkpoint 100 yards away.

Each corpse tells a different story about the terrors of Iraq. Some bodies are pocked with holes inflicted by torturers with power drills. Some show signs of strangulation; others, with hands tied behind the back, bear bullet wounds. Many are charred and dismembered.

Times Online (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2230672,00.html)

...but, but, there's no dirty war in Iraq.

:rolleyes

[boutons_]

Holy Shit, "Who'll Stop the Rain" of bad Iraq news?

=====================

http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/06/19/world/0619-for-subENVIROclr_838x487.jpg

June 19, 2006
The Environment
Waste Oil Dumps Threaten Towns in Northern Iraq
By JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 18 — An environmental disaster is brewing in the heartland of Iraq's northern Sunni-led insurgency, where Iraqi officials say that in a desperate move to dispose of millions of barrels of an oil refinery byproduct called "black oil," the government pumped it into open mountain valleys and leaky reservoirs next to the Tigris River and set it on fire.

The resulting huge black bogs are threatening the river and the precious groundwater in the region, which is dotted with villages and crisscrossed by itinerant sheep herders, but also contains Iraq's great northern refinery complex at Baiji.

The fires are no longer burning, but the suffocating plumes of smoke they created carried as far as 40 miles downwind to Tikrit, the provincial capital that formed Saddam Hussein's base of power.

An Iraqi environmental engineer who has visited the dumping area described it as a kind of black swampland of oil-saturated terrain and large standing pools of oil stretching across several mountain valleys. The clouds of smoke, said the engineer, Ayad Younis, "were so heavy that they obstructed breathing and visibility in the area and represent a serious environmental danger."

The area contains perhaps 30 villages on both sides of the Tigris River as well as a few shepherds with no fixed addresses, said Ahmed Mahmoud, an engineer who runs the assessment and monitoring department of the environmental office in Tikrit. Averaging a few hundred mud houses and perhaps 2,500 residents each, the villages have names like Zuwiya, Mesahag and Upper, Middle and Lower Halej.

Most of them depend on water from wells or the river, and about a dozen sit immediately between the river and the oozing bogs, which in places are no farther than 800 yards from the river's edge, Mr. Mahmoud said. He added that at least some of the black oil was already seeping into the river.

Exactly how far those pollutants will travel is unknown, but the Tigris passes through dozens of population centers from Baghdad to Basra. In the past, oil slicks created when insurgents struck oil pipelines in the Baiji area have traveled the entire length of the river.

As much as 40 percent of the petroleum processed at Iraq's damaged and outdated refineries pours forth as black oil, the heavy, viscous substance that used to be extensively exported to more efficient foreign operations for further refining. But the insurgency has stalled government-controlled exports by taking control of roadways and repeatedly hitting pipelines in the area, Iraqi and American officials have said.

So the backed-up black oil — known to the rest of the world as the lower grades of fuel oil — was sent along a short pipeline from Baiji and dumped in a mountainous area called Makhul.

A series of complaints handed up the Iraqi government chain were conveyed to oil industry officials, and as of last weekend the fires had at least temporarily stopped, but black oil was still being poured into the open valleys, according to Mr. Younis, who works in the province's Department of Environment and Health Safety.

The elected governor of the province that contains Baiji and Makhul said in an interview that he was outraged by what was happening there. "I call upon the United Nations and the United States administration to make haste in saving the people of Baiji and Tikrit from an environmental catastrophe," said the governor, Hamad Hmoud al-Qaisi.

But with few options for disposing of Baiji's current production of black oil and so much at stake for the Iraqi economy, it is unclear whether the government will even be able to hold the line on the burning at Makhul. A United States official in Baghdad, speaking anonymously according to official procedure, said earlier this month that Baiji was still turning out about 90,000 barrels a day of refined products, which would yield about 36,000 barrels a day of black oil.

Iraq's refineries will grind to a halt if the black oil does not go somewhere. "Unless we find a way of dealing with the fuel oil, our factories will not work," said Shamkhi H. Faraj, director of economics and marketing at the Iraqi Oil Ministry.

The dumping and burning has embarrassed ministry officials and exposed major gaps in the American-designed reconstruction program, even as President Bush appeals to the international community for much more rebuilding money in the wake of his visit to Baghdad.

Mussab H. al-Dujayli, a technical expert at the State Oil Marketing Organization, said the large-scale dumping defied sound engineering practice. "The consequences of it are dreadful," he said. "God forbid."

Still, the complaints that halted the burning, however temporarily, represent something virtually unheard of in a country that has long had few if any checks on pollution by government industries: a backlash by local political and environmental officials.

Last month, motivated by citizen complaints and whistle-blowing employees at Baiji, Mr. Qaisi, the governor, formed a technical committee that investigated and wrote a report warning of severe environmental consequences if the practice was not stopped.

"The wastes there are untreatable because the terrain is rocky and contains many caves that allow these wastes to slip through and eventually reach the groundwater where nearby towns depend on wells," Mr. Qaisi said.

The concerns quickly reached Narmin Othman Hasan, the minister of the environment, who said in an interview that she complained to oil officials. After that, the fires went out.

Adel al-Qazzaz, the manager of the state-owned North Oil Company, which has immediate responsibility for operations in the north, repeatedly declined to respond to questions on the black oil after he was reached by phone and e-mail in Kirkuk, where his offices are.

The United States official who discussed Baiji's level of oil production said that the black oil could be taken out by truck, and that one of the state-owned marketing companies had undertaken to do so.

But Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, who served two stints as oil minister from September 2003 to January 2006, said that plan probably had not been fully worked through. The roads in the Sunni badlands of the north are dangerous and sometimes impassable. And about 150 large tankers would have to leave Baiji fully loaded every day to remove the current production of black oil. Simply finding that number of working vehicles and loading them quickly enough would be challenging under the best of circumstances, Mr. Uloum said.

Aside from the dangers of the road, Iraqi officials have been saying for months that trucking companies are often controlled by local gangs, smugglers and insurgents.

Mr. Uloum said he had never allowed the black oil to be thrown on the open ground or burned during his tenures. "This is pollution, environmental problem," he said. "We should care about it, especially when you talk about the water, the river."

The lower grades of fuel oil are a byproduct of refineries the world over. But modern refineries can get far more gasoline, kerosene and other high grades of fuel out of crude than Iraq's decrepit installations, despite faltering American efforts to rebuild them.

Before the 1991 Persian Gulf war and the trade embargo that began the year before, Iraq had little trouble selling black oil abroad, either shipping it overland or mixing it with crude oil that was exported through pipelines.

The embargo made that impossible, and in 1992, Iraqi engineers began drilling deep holes into Makhul, said Adnan Sammaraie, an Iraqi engineer who was then an Oil Ministry official and worked on the plans for the project.

The idea was to pump black oil and other refinery byproducts inside the mountains, where countless miles of cracks, caves and fissures could in theory contain almost limitless volumes, Mr. Sammaraie said. But the system was improperly monitored and it malfunctioned almost immediately, coughing up black oil and other polluted wastes and pouring them over the mountain range.

Engineers shut Makhul down, not for environmental reasons per se, but rather out of fear that the seeping oil would reach the Tigris and flow downstream toward the town of Auja, Mr. Hussein's hometown, which sits on the riverbanks near Tikrit. "Everyone was scared to death," Mr. Sammaraie said.

Ultimately, the engineers began reinjecting the black oil into wells in the oil fields around Kirkuk, 60 miles northeast of Baiji. That practice, too, has been criticized by international oil experts, who call it wasteful and often damaging to the wells. "These are solutions that we were forced to do," said Thamir Ghadban, another former oil minister.

The country was much less compelled to use those solutions after the American-led invasion in 2003, when the trade embargo ended. The refineries are still not back to their full capacity, but the insurgency has made it difficult to export even the lessened levels of black oil again, and the pipeline carrying it to the Kirkuk oil fields was struck at least once by saboteurs, Mr. Uloum said.

So, gingerly at first, the government began sending black oil to Makhul again, intending to use the belly of the mountain range as a storage depot, just as envisioned in the original design. In 2004, about three million barrels of black oil, an average of 8,000 barrels a day, went to Makhul, Mr. Uloum said, adding that the rate remained steady through at least the first few months of 2005.

"I didn't have any problems with the idea itself," Mr. Uloum said.

But he said that as the area became increasingly dangerous, it was unlikely that the proper monitoring was taking place.

And by the spring of this year, several Iraqi officials said, they were receiving reports that Makhul had malfunctioned again and that refinery workers were spewing prodigious amounts of black oil into the mountain valleys and lighting it on fire.

"I'm sorry for the status of our oil industry," said Sabah Jumah, a former Oil Ministry official. "It was the best in the Middle East."

An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Kirkuk for this article.