You are just doing the government a favour by uncritically repeating them here and taking up valuable time and bandwidth.

By the title of this piece I would say this is a highly 'critical' article. Everyone is entitled to an opinion and I would say you are taking up more valuable time and bandwidth with your inane criticisms.

Look Auntie Beeb, I can see your concern here, but the point of the post (which I hope consumed negligable bandwidth) was to place massive inverted commas around TB's poisonous lies. I myself don't normally read the Telegraph so I only saw this "leaked" report on the web. I thought others might be in the same position

I think its interesting to watch how propaganda is leaked into the public mind through particular journalists and media organizations. It helps you spot future eruptions.

If we don't know the lies that are being told, its harder to fight against them

well posted, people outside of the UK don't get to see any brit shit newspapers, no one is twisting auntie beebs arm,
it takes all sorts ...

This lie that Iraq is behind Al-Qaeda does not stand up to basic scrutiny.

There are the two claims that the Iraqi dictatorship had trained Al-Qaeda operatives, although it is not clear when, and has been developing a nuclear arms programme. Let's take ourselves back to the 1980s, when the CIA trained, funded and armed jihadic groups within the mujahideen, with Osama Bin Laden effectively operating as a CIA agent. Indeed, US-sponsored Islamic terrorists have been operating in countries such as Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan with the purpose of undermining these countries' regimes for the benefit of US interests. In fact, there is little secret over the US's links with Libya's jihadic opposition, which supposedly has links with Al-Qaeda. Suerly, the claim that Iraq's involvement with Islamic terrorism opens the US (under the Reagan and Bush Snr administrations) up to similar charges. Perhaps this is why the US is so keen to scupper the International Criminal Court.

At the same time the US was using Islamicists as proxy armies in its war against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq was considered a key ally of the US, supplied with arms, aid and military training. The UK was also training Iraqi scientists in nuclear physics at British universities. A nuclear reactor built by the Iraqis with the help of scientists from Queen Mary College's (London University) nuclear physics department, with funding from the British government, was bombed and destroyed by the Israelis in 1982 - they feared the reactor was being used for military purposes. So, the US and the UK were aiding the Iraqi nuclear programme, knowing full well that this could result in the development of nuclear missiles that had the range to strike Tehran - and therefore Tel Aviv. They just didn't care.

Added to this is scandals such as the "super-gun" affair in which the British government helped British companies break an arms embargo.

So the culprits for the creation of terrorist structures and Iraq's development of nuclear missiles are the US and UK governments. Again, the British tax-payer is being asked to pay out possibly billions of pounds to help the government lurch from one self-inflicted crisis to another.

Al-Qaeda could do us a big favour and fly an Antonov into the Palace of Westminster.

any ideas for ripping these governments down. They are rather getting out of hand. While we muse on the Internet

A U.S.-led ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could open a bonanza for American oil companies long banished from Iraq, scuttling oil deals between Baghdad and Russia, France and other countries, and reshuffling world petroleum markets, according to industry officials and leaders of the Iraqi opposition.

Although senior Bush administration officials say they have not begun to focus on the issues involving oil and Iraq, American and foreign oil companies have already begun maneuvering for a stake in the country's huge proven reserves of 112 billion barrels of crude oil, the largest in the world outside Saudi Arabia.

The importance of Iraq's oil has made it potentially one of the administration's biggest bargaining chips in negotiations to win backing from the U.N. Security Council and Western allies for President Bush's call for tough international action against Hussein. All five permanent members of the Security Council -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- have international oil companies with major stakes in a change of leadership in Baghdad.

"It's pretty straightforward," said former CIA director R. James Woolsey, who has been one of the leading advocates of forcing Hussein from power. "France and Russia have oil companies and interests in Iraq. They should be told that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq toward decent government, we'll do the best we can to ensure that the new government and American companies work closely with them."

But he added: "If they throw in their lot with Saddam, it will be difficult to the point of impossible to persuade the new Iraqi government to work with them."

Indeed, the mere prospect of a new Iraqi government has fanned concerns by non-American oil companies that they will be excluded by the United States, which almost certainly would be the dominant foreign power in Iraq in the aftermath of Hussein's fall. Representatives of many foreign oil concerns have been meeting with leaders of the Iraqi opposition to make their case for a future stake and to sound them out about their intentions.

Since the Persian Gulf War in 1991, companies from more than a dozen nations, including France, Russia, China, India, Italy, Vietnam and Algeria, have either reached or sought to reach agreements in principle to develop Iraqi oil fields, refurbish existing facilities or explore undeveloped tracts. Most of the deals are on hold until the lifting of U.N. sanctions.

But Iraqi opposition officials made clear in interviews last week that they will not be bound by any of the deals.

"We will review all these agreements, definitely," said Faisal Qaragholi, a petroleum engineer who directs the London office of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an umbrella organization of opposition groups that is backed by the United States. "Our oil policies should be decided by a government in Iraq elected by the people."

Ahmed Chalabi, the INC leader, went even further, saying he favored the creation of a U.S.-led consortium to develop Iraq's oil fields, which have deteriorated under more than a decade of sanctions. "American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil," Chalabi said.

The INC, however, said it has not taken a formal position on the structure of Iraq's oil industry in event of a change of leadership.

While the Bush administration's campaign against Hussein is presenting vast possibilities for multinational oil giants, it poses major risks and uncertainties for the global oil market, according to industry analysts.

Access to Iraqi oil and profits will depend on the nature and intentions of a new government. Whether Iraq remains a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, for example, or seeks an independent role, free of the OPEC cartel's quotas, will have an impact on oil prices and the flow of investments to competitors such as Russia, Venezuela and Angola.

While Russian oil companies such as Lukoil have a major financial interest in developing Iraqi fields, the low prices that could result from a flood of Iraqi oil into world markets could set back Russian government efforts to attract foreign investment in its untapped domestic fields. That is because low world oil prices could make costly ventures to unlock Siberia's oil treasures far less appealing.

Bush and Vice President Cheney have worked in the oil business and have long-standing ties to the industry. But despite the buzz about the future of Iraqi oil among oil companies, the administration, preoccupied with military planning and making the case about Hussein's potential threat, has yet to take up the issue in a substantive way, according to U.S. officials.

The Future of Iraq Group, a task force set up at the State Department, does not have oil on its list of issues, a department spokesman said last week. An official with the National Security Council declined to say whether oil had been discussed during consultations on Iraq that Bush has had over the past several weeks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Western leaders.

On Friday, a State Department delegation concluded a three-day visit to Moscow in connection with Iraq. In early October, U.S. and Russian officials are to hold an energy summit in Houston, at which more than 100 Russian and American energy companies are expected.

Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) said Bush is keenly aware of Russia's economic interests in Iraq, stemming from a $7 billion to $8 billion debt that Iraq ran up with Moscow before the Gulf War. Weldon, who has cultivated close ties to Putin and Russian parliamentarians, said he believed the Russian leader will support U.S. action in Iraq if he can get private assurances from Bush that Russia "will be made whole" financially.

Officials of the Iraqi National Congress said last week that the INC's Washington director, Entifadh K. Qanbar, met with Russian Embassy officials here last month and urged Moscow to begin a dialogue with opponents of Hussein's government.

But even with such groundwork, the chances of a tidy transition in the oil sector appear highly problematic. Rival ethnic groups in Iraq's north are already squabbling over the the giant Kirkuk oil field, which Arabs, Kurds and minority Turkmen tribesmen are eyeing in the event of Hussein's fall.

Although the volumes have dwindled in recent months, the United States was importing nearly 1 million barrels of Iraqi oil a day at the start of the year. Even so, American oil companies have been banished from direct involvement in Iraq since the late 1980s, when relations soured between Washington and Baghdad.

Hussein in the 1990s turned to non-American companies to repair fields damaged in the Gulf War and Iraq's earlier war against Iran, and to tap undeveloped reserves, but U.S. government studies say the results have been disappointing.

While Russia's Lukoil negotiated a $4 billion deal in 1997 to develop the 15-billion-barrel West Qurna field in southern Iraq, Lukoil had not commenced work because of U.N. sanctions. Iraq has threatened to void the agreement unless work began immediately.

Last October, the Russian oil services company Slavneft reportedly signed a $52 million service contract to drill at the Tuba field, also in southern Iraq. A proposed $40 billion Iraqi-Russian economic agreement also reportedly includes opportunities for Russian companies to explore for oil in Iraq's western desert.

The French company Total Fina Elf has negotiated for rights to develop the huge Majnoon field, near the Iranian border, which may contain up to 30 billion barrels of oil. But in July 2001, Iraq announced it would no longer give French firms priority in the award of such contracts because of its decision to abide by the sanctions.

Officials of several major firms said they were taking care to avoiding playing any role in the debate in Washington over how to proceed on Iraq. "There's no real upside for American oil companies to take a very aggressive stance at this stage. There'll be plenty of time in the future," said James Lucier, an oil analyst with Prudential Securities.

But with the end of sanctions that likely would come with Hussein's ouster, companies such as ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco would almost assuredly play a role, industry officials said. "There's not an oil company out there that wouldn't be interested in Iraq," one analyst said.