Iraqis may have had role in attack on Navy ships

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/headline/world/3318290

AQABA, JORDAN - A rocket attack Friday morning missed two U.S. Navy vessels docked at this Red Sea port city, killing one Jordanian soldier and hitting the nearby Israeli town of Eilat. The assault raised fears that militants tied to Iraq's insurgency were operating in Jordan.

Three Katyusha rockets were fired from an industrial zone on the outskirts of town, authorities said, apparently targeting U.S. warships that docked here last week, the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge and the landing ship USS Ashland.

The first rocket sailed over the bow of the Ashland at 8:44 a.m. and hit a warehouse near the Kearsarge, killing a Jordanian soldier, said Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet in Bahrain. The vessels left port shortly after the attack, the first against U.S. warships since the bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen five years ago.

Another rocket exploded near an airport in neighboring Eilat, about 10 miles away, hitting a stretch of road and wounding a taxi driver. A third rocket landed in an open lot at a nearby military hospital, causing little damage.

[Missy M]

1. Now this is the reason we invaded Iraq but we just didn't know it...

yet!!! Will this be the new theme?

[maddezmom]

3. So now that Jordan is harboring terrorists...

will they be under attack from the US? :shrug:

[Missy M]

7. How much oil does Jordan have?

[maddezmom]

9. not much, but they are a great importer from Saudi and Iraq

Jordan
Oil and Gas
By the late 1980s, a twenty-year-long period of exploration had resulted in the discovery and exploitation of three oil wells in the Hamzah field in the Wadi al Azraq region west of Amman that yielded only a small fraction of domestic energy requirements. Jordan also had just discovered oil from what appeared to be a field in the eastern panhandle near the Iraqi-Saudi Arabian border. Jordan remained almost entirely dependent on oil imported from Saudi Arabia and Iraq to meet its energy needs. Jordan refined the imported crude petroleum at its Az Zarqa refinery. In 1985 the Az Zarqa refinery processed about 2.6 million tons of petroleum. Of this total, about 1.8 million tons came from Saudi Arabia, 700,000 tons from Iraq, and 2,800 tons from Jordan's Hamzah field. An additional 400,000 tons of fuel were imported from Iraq. The Saudi Arabian oil was transported to Jordan via the Trans-Arabian Pipeline (Tapline). Oil from Iraq was transported by tanker truck. About 40 percent of oil imports were used by the transport sector, 25 percent to generate electricity, 16 percent by industry, and the remainder for domestic use.

Jordan's oil bill was difficult to calculate and was subject to fluctuation as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) changed its posted price for crude. Since 1985, barter agreements with Iraq to trade goods for crude oil have removed some of Jordan's oil bill from the balance sheet. Jordan also varied its imports of crude oil and other, more expensive fuels, depending on its immediate fuel demand and its refinery capacity, and cut consumption through conservation measures and price increases.

The oil bill remained very large, however. A major irony of Jordan's energy dependence was that despite--or because of--its proximity to its main oil suppliers, it was sometimes obliged to pay extremely inflated prices for its oil. In mid-1986, for example, Saudi Arabia charged Jordan the official OPEC price of US$28 per barrel at a time when oil was selling on the international spot market for US$10 per barrel. Saudi Arabia's motives were perhaps as much political as economic, in that it wanted to maintain the integrity of the OPEC floor price for oil. Dependent on Saudi financial aid, Jordan could not alienate its patron by shopping on the world market. In 1985 estimates of Jordan's oil import bill ranged between US$500 million and US$650 million. At that time, imported oil constituted approximately 20 percent of total imports and offset 80 percent of the value of commodity exports. In 1986 and 1987, Jordan's estimated fuel bill declined considerably, to less than US$300 million. The drop resulted from barter with Iraq, decreased fuel imports, and OPEC's reduction of its official price of crude oil to bring it into line with world market prices. As prices dropped, the Jordanian government--which had subsidized domestic fuel prices--was able to cut the subsidy from US$70 million to US$14 million instead of passing on savings to consumers.

Since 1984 Saudi Arabia has forced Jordan to underwrite the entire cost of operating the Tapline. This has added more than US$25 million per year to Jordan's oil bill. During the Iran-Iraq War, therefore, Jordan tried to persuade Iraq to obtain an alternative oil outlet by building a pipeline across Jordan to Al Aqabah. The project foundered because of Iraqi concern that the line was vulnerable to Israeli attack and embarrassment over disclosure of Jordanian attempts to obtain a secret Israeli pledge not to attack the line.

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+jo0088)

So it looks like they are safe for now.

[Missy M]

10. Very interesting, I didn't know this about Jordan...

it seems like Saudi Arabia is really giving Jordan the shaft. I wonder why that is?

[Igel]

20. Here's a suggestion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashemite

[Missy M]

22. "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive"

in the Middle East. Who can keep up with it all! England has had her hands in the Middle East for a long time.

[Igel]

23. It is a mess, isn't it.

But if tradition and historical memory is as important as people say it is, and one must preserve honor, well ... the idea of a Hashemite king must not sit well with the House of Sa'udi.

Or maybe I'm not being cynical enough. It's late.

[Palladin]

16. Jordan's role in the oil business

After Gulf War I, Jordan's port of Aqaba served as a major outlet for smuggling Iraq's oil, while the country was under the Oil-for-Food sanctions, and under the eyes of the American and British air forces in the "no-fly" zones. Oil truck tankers were loaded at Kirkuk, passed through Baghdad, and took the long desert road from Baghdad to the Jordanian border, past al-Azraq, which was Lawrence of Arabia's headquarters in his campaigns with the Arabs in WW I. The oil trucks then passed down through Jordan to the seaport of Aqaba, and the oil was loaded onto third-party tankers controlled by American and European multinational oil companies.

Thanks to the invasion and occupation, this desert route is no longer usable. The Iraqi resistance interdicts and controls all the roads in the Sunni center and leading to Syria and Jordan.

I would reckon that there's still oil activity at Aqaba, but the flow is incoming, to supply Jordan's needs. There is undoubtedly incoming activity at the Israeli port of Elath, which is literally next door.

The United States government has put itself in the position of guaranteeing oil to Jordan now, as a quid pro quo for Jordan's support for the occupation of Iraq, including the use of its port of Aqaba as a US naval base and Marine staging area.

Interestingly, these Marines may not be intended for Iraq, but Iran. They are self-contained on their amphibious assault ships, artillery, tanks, helicopters and all. If they were intended for Iraq they could be simply flown in.

[newyawker99]

24. Hi Palladin!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[tanyev]

17. Exactly.

Somebody in Bush's administration went forward in time and saw this attack and then recommended we invade Iraq in the present to prevent it.

Makes as much sense as any other reason they've given.

[mbperrin]

2. Gonna ask the same question agin:

How do we know what they targeted if they didn't tell somebody? How do we know they didn't just hit what they aimed at?

[mcscajun]

Excellent point! Does it *always* have to be about US?

All puns intended.

[HuffleClaw]

4. i think they got their propaganda wrong

shouldn't it be IRANIANS 'linked' to this ?

[uppityperson]

11. Dang, keep messing up "q" and "n" and spellchecker doesn't catch

"n" at bottom middle of keyboard, "q" top left, must practice more. nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn ok, now let me try it again

[Roland99]

13. And implying they are Iraqi is quite a stretch

[Imagevision]

14. The fact is, someone got those ships to move out of the harbor

The little ants got the giants to move!! The US. has the power and the so-called little guy's are merely using their brains which is more then can be said of this war president!

[asjr]

5. We have become sitting ducks anywhere

in the middle east. They are reaching us now from the sea, air and on the ground. The "insurgents" are not the only ones who do not like us.

[jobycom]

6. It's Reagan all over again

[jobycom]

8. GodDAMN them! We must invade Iraq and overthrow their corrupt leaders NOW!

Wait...

[VegasWolf]

12. Hell, time to quit screwing around, let's just invade the whole world!!nt

[MADem]

15. What a load of wet HORSESHIT!!!

That is some seriously lazy headline writing. If you don't read the whole article, you are left with the idea that Iraqi masterminds are at it, no doubt, full bore! I invite everyone's attention to this paragraph:

Within hours of the attack, the Jordanian army started an intensive search for four men, two Egyptians and two Iraqis who recently rented a workshop from which the rockets were fired, Jordanian television reported Friday afternoon. A fifth suspect, thought to be a Syrian who guarded the shop, was also said to be sought.

Of course, here we have FIVE guys, two Egyptians, a Syrian, and two guys who may have been Iraqis (how do we really know--it is a common enough accent, easy to put on, and hey, how hard is it to get an Iraqi passport, nowadays, really???? Everything is for sale in that country!!!). But the headline implies that the Iraqis are the ringleaders, the big cheeses...

Ahhh, but wait, there is more:

Katyusha rockets are crude rockets prone to poor accuracy, but they are capable of significant damage. They are a hallmark of insurgent groups in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. Although militants have been caught with weapons seeking to cross into the West Bank over the years, there has not been such an attack on Jordanian soil in recent memory.

Who has been all over Lebanon like a cheap suit? The Iranians! The Syrians too! Why not bag them in this? And of course, the Saudis are also major funders of the Palestinians, so why not accuse the Wahabbists over the border with misdeeds? Or, could this possibly be the work of EGYPTIANS, pissed off at Mubarak, demanding an Arab platform from which to articulate their demands, calling for greater democracy/Islamist governance ahead of elections, a warning to back away from all that defense cash coming from the US, and in the face of government crackdowns, in that country? Why, maybe it could!!!

A group calling itself the Brigades of the Martyr Abdullah Azzam claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks in an Internet posting, saying the United States had "corrupted the Earth" and that the Jordanian "devil" had to stop jailing Muslim scholars, according to the SITE Institute, a group based in Washington that tracks terrorist messages on the Internet.

However, the authenticity of the claim could not be confirmed. A group by the same name took credit for the bombings in Sharm el-Sheik in Egypt last month that left 68 people dead.

There are so many ways you can look at this event, it isn't even funny (nothing over there has been funny for eons). It could be a warning to King Abdullah, step aside from those Americans...it could be a big, poorly aimed F You to Israel. It could be the Egyptians, rented out to pan-Arabists who are trying to demonstrate how unhealthy it is for King Abdullah to cozy up to the US. It could be the Syrians, screwing with us in quiet fashion. It could be the Iranians, leaving no fingerprints, as usual. It could be anyone...

But hey, the agenda in America is Iraq, so that is how we will paint it without any further knowledge--judged, juried, and executed!

[IndianaGreen]

18. Those were fireworks shot by Iraqis jubilant about their liberation

Are we safer now than we were before Bush invaded Iraq? I think not!

[leesa]

19. Or, it could have been any one of the other players (SA, Israel, US, etc)

who would like to keep the mess in Iraq going on and on. The Neocons in these countries have the biggest interest in keeping this going.

[cal04]

21. Suspects held in Jordan hunt

Police in Jordan detained several suspects as the hunt widened for the militants who fired the rockets that narrowly missed a US Navy ship anchored off Aqaba.
Those arrested included Iraqis, Syrians, Egyptians and Jordanians, according to a Jordanian security official. In what he called a breakthrough, Interior Minister Awni Yirfas said that security forces had found the launcher used to fire the three rockets.

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1819522005