Article 140 of the 2005 constitution calls for a referendum in which voters in Kirkuk and others of the disputed territories in the north will decide whether to join Iraqi Kurdistan. The vote itself is controversial, and many experts attribute an increase in violence in Kirkuk to the debate over its future.

United Press International sat down with the Kirkuk Gov. Abdul Rahman Mustafa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on the sidelines of the Iraq Development Program's Iraq Oil, Gas, Petrochemical and Electricity Summit. He spoke of the need for investment and the needs of his citizens and all Iraqis, especially facing violence and lack of fuels and electricity.

UPI: What was your goal of the conference, what did you hope to get out of the conference?

Mustafa: After issuance of the investment law and the coming approval of the oil and gas law, this conference is held to invite companies and people interested in the oil and gas business, to give them an idea about these laws and about the investment in Iraq and to introduce the business opportunities to the intended or prospective investors. Also, to show the current status of oil and gas in Iraq and to point out the requirements of the country in these fields.

Q: What about for Kirkuk specifically?

A: Kirkuk is a governorate well-known for oil. It has destroyed infrastructure. The oil facilities and upstream facilities in Kirkuk are old and there is aged equipment. It is supposed to have integrated equipment of refineries and gas equipment, gas facilities, and petrochemicals, all should be integrated systems. But all these things are unavailable now. I presented the requirements for such facilities and our demand for power plants in this conference and in previous conferences. I pointed out the investment opportunities in Kirkuk.

Q: Let's talk about specifically the fuels problem. What is the extent of the fuel shortage for Kirkuk residents and what would you like to see to address that?

A: Our problem in fuel shortages, we are facing a very big crisis. It's in the all of Iraq, not just our province. This came from we don't have any refineries, because there is an old refinery and small refinery but it is not enough for us and is not suitable for our needs for this issue. There is a big refinery in Baiji. We send them the crude oil by the pipelines and they send to us the products oil from the refinery to Kirkuk. These pipes are attacked by terrorists and caused it to stop. We haven't another source for the products. For that we are facing this problem.

In addition to that there is increasing numbers of vehicles, cars, in Kirkuk, after the liberation of Iraq. They need the fuels. We need the kerosene, we need the gas oil, we need to cover our needs or our peoples needs for these issues.

Q: When do you think this will be resolved?

A: There is a decision from the minister of oil in Baghdad and he promised us; he invited 15 experienced companies to build refineries in Kirkuk and in Karbala and he promised us in the near future they would come to Kirkuk to put the foundations to build this project.

Q: How much electricity are your residents and your businesses and citizens receiving each day?

A: There is nothing the same every day. On average, maybe between 10 and 12 hours a day. But there are days that decrease to six or seven hours. Sometime less than that.

Q: For Iraq, you're one of the highest.

A: As I told you, it is not always. At such times it is not very hot or very cold. But in the summer or in the winter when it is very cold and very hot, maybe four hours or five hours.

Q: Do you want to get a power plant?

A: There is a plan, yes.

Q: How important is the security issue and what would you suggest needs to be focused on in terms of security?

A: The security is a very important issue. Without security no one will be able to work and to invest in Kirkuk or anywhere else. Our security situation is not very bad. Reality is we have some problems and we're suffering from some problems where sometimes, but this doesn't mean our situation in security is bad. Maybe 80 percent of Kirkuk's area is safe. Maybe 20 percent is not secure.

Q: There is an expectation that violence will increase as the referendum grows closer, the referendum for Kirkuk and the disputed territories. What are you doing to prepare for that?

A: I don't think there is any relationship between the referendum, between the implementation of Article 140 and terrorist actions. Terrorists implement their criminal actions in all of Iraq and all the world. In Baghdad there is no article 140, in Basra there is no article 140, but there are terrorist actions.

Q: Do you support the referendum being held?

A: Yes.

Q: How are you going to vote? Do you want to join the KRG?

A: Myself, I represent all Kirkuk people. I follow the majority. Whatever they decide, I follow them.

Q: Sure, but you as a member of a democracy, you get to vote ��

A: I haven't any comment about this issue, (smiling, chuckling).

Q: A very serious issue is the fact that there have been a lot of attacks, kidnapping and attacks on prominent members of the government. A number of governors have been murdered recently. Are you worried about that? What are your thoughts as a governor as well?

A: I am a responsible person and in assuming government responsibility, I will not be afraid. I was subjected to many assassination attacks but I was not afraid. Since I've accepted to assume responsibility, I should be able to cope with such responsibility and I'm never afraid and I'll never be afraid. This is a motive for me to work harder and harder to make things more secure and stable.

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Outside View: After Iraq
Nations and their leaders tend to learn by experience, which means they often discover the right way forward only when it is too late. America, alas, is no exception to this rule.

Unable to directly challenge U.S. military dominance, Islamist terror groups exploited America's open borders and poor internal security to evade the U.S. military and strike directly at the American people on Sept. 11, 2001.

But the Islamist threat that revealed did not suggest the need to garrison Iraq or the Persian Gulf with U.S. and allied ground forces any more than Muslim terrorist attacks on British citizens in the years since 2001 would justify a British military occupation of Pakistan.

Worse, the Bush administration allowed ideology and wishful thinking to define military objectives in Iraq -- and the military went along.

Whenever political ideology trumps military strategy, the resulting military action defies strategic logic because its aim is to fulfill an ideological purpose, not a valid military mission.

In 2000 Condoleezza Rice told Foreign Affairs, "American values are universal."

That four-word sentence summarizes the problem. American values are not universal. They are Western, primarily English-speaking values rooted in English common law, including respect for private property and minority rights. These values are not exportable at gunpoint as demonstrated repeatedly in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Faced with opposition in Iraq, they did not understand the generals' solution to the chaos and hostility was to apply more and more force, branding any Iraqi who actively opposed the foreign military occupation of their homeland as an "al-Qaida terrorist."

This rigidity of mind paralyzed American generalship, not simply because it obstructed adaptation in tactics and organization, but because it meant they were measuring the wrong kind of success.

In the end, American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines killed many who didn't deserve to die, inadvertently jailed or failed to protect many of those we were supposed to be helping, and -- above all -- failed to meet the unrealistic expectations of impoverished Muslim Arabs who expected occupying U.S. forces to make them rich and comfortable like Americans on TV in a matter of months.

The huge failure of leadership that represents should make everyone wary of the recent testimony from Gen. David Petraeus.

Petraeus, like his peers, is a product of an Army in which confronting contentious issues has always been risky. It is no accident that President Roosevelt was forced to promote a one-star general named George Marshall to four stars on the eve of World War II. Normally, when anything new or different from the status quo is proposed inside the Army, officers learn to avoid taking a definitive stand. Until the four-stars in charge reach a consensus, signing up is risky.

This culture diverts valuable time and resources into endless studies or planning activities while the generals wait to see if current operations or initiatives, though failing, still manage to produce something positive. Moreover, officers who want to be generals learn to modify the truth when important information is passed upward. Even when there is no progress in a critical area, ambitious officers are quick to modify the truth, saying, "We are making slow, but effective progress."

After 1991 this ingrained, dysfunctional culture worsened with each passing year. The Army generals insisted on reliving the defeat of Iraq's large, but ineffective army in years of sterile, Cold War simulations designed to reward the commitment of masses of men and firepower in what the generals lovingly called "overwhelming force."

Though lip service was paid to change, substantive proposals for new directions in ground force modernization, organization, tactics and thinking about warfare were rejected and their proponents in uniform marginalized.

"After all," a succession of Army four-star generals told everyone, "We won Desert Storm!"

The generals who brought us the Iraq debacle -- Abizaid, Casey, Sanchez and Petraeus -- flourished in the professionally and intellectually oppressive climate of the 1990s where the only deliverable of importance was conformity with whatever the four-stars wanted.

Now, knocked off balance by the dead-ended campaign to secularize and democratize Muslim Arab Iraq, the Bush administration leaves behind an American military leadership mired in confusion about its future strategic purpose together with armed services that remain expensive tributes to the past.

Thanks to a president who behaved as though he possessed unlimited military and political power and the unconditional support of a job- and pork-hungry Congress, instead of meeting our security needs the senior military leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces successfully resisted pressure to shift their thinking and organizations away from the war mobilization paradigms of the Cold War.

The time for new thinking is at hand. The strategic choice for American political and military leaders is whether we will continue to use American military power in attempts to transform other peoples' societies and cultures into reflections of our own, or whether we will employ our military power to maintain our highly successful market-oriented English-speaking republic, a republic that respects the cultures and traditions of people different from ourselves and trades freely with other nations but vigorously protects its global security interests, its commerce and its citizens.

Given the combined impact of our experience in Iraq and the constraining influence of runaway deficit spending on future defense budgets, the next president, regardless of party affiliation, will have to set aside the blinding influence of uncompromising ideology, the secular variant of religion, and seek a new mix of American military leadership, means and strategy.

Douglas Macgregor is a former Army colonel and a decorated Gulf War combat veteran, now writing for the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information in Washington. He has authored three books on modern warfare and military reform, including "Transformation Under Fire: Revolutionizing the Way America Fights."

United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.