Now that the war is supposedly over, the volume of the Iraq story has dropped considerably. As a result, discordant notes have been few.
In this sound vaccum, however, it seems a lot of strange things are going almost completely unamplified. For example, the Financial Times (citing Reuters) published a story on May 25th stating that the Iraq Oil Ministry had cancelled or frozen their oil production contracts with Russia and China. Most of the story consisted of comments from Phillip Carroll, the U.S. "advisor" to the ministry who is a former top executive at Shell Oil. According to Carroll, the contracts were simply deemed "incomplete," "flawed" or "unfair" and were thus set aside. He also suggested Iraq might not maintain OPEC its membership. Of course, he added: It's not something I have an interest in, it is a decision of a sovereign government of Iraq."
The most interesting thing, though, is that, besides the Financial Times, this story did not seem to get coverage anywhere.