01-08-2007, 05:11 PM
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#27 (permalink)
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Deja Moo
Location: Olympic Peninsula, WA
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From Post 13:
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I'm not sure that it is wise or even possible to separate the reason we are there and whether the "surge" is a sound military strategy.
If the reason is to bring democracy to the Middle East, a military surge would further inflame the region.
If the reason is to gain control of the oil fields, a military surge is our last remaining option for the short term and withdrawing is not an option.
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http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/01/08/iraq-oil.html
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The Iraqi government plans to introduce a law that will give control of the country's huge oil reserves to Western oil companies, a British newspaper says.
The government is drafting a law based on "production-sharing agreements (PSAs)," which will give major companies rights on Iraq's oil for up to 30 years, the Independent on Sunday reported.
It said it had been given a copy of the draft law from last July, and the draft has not been changed significantly since then.
Critics say the agreements will be bad news for Iraq because they guarantee profits to the companies while giving little to the country. With 112 billion barrels, Iraq has the second largest reserves in the world, the U.S. government says.
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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010807A.shtml
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The reason that George W. Bush insists that "victory" is achievable in Iraq is not that he is deluded or isolated or ignorant or detached from reality or ill-advised. No, it's that his definition of "victory" is different from those bruited about in his own rhetoric and in the ever-earnest disquisitions of the chattering classes in print and online. For Bush, victory is indeed at hand. It could come at any moment now, could already have been achieved by the time you read this. And the driving force behind his planned "surge" of American troops is the need to preserve those fruits of victory that are now ripening in his hand.
At any time within the next few days, the Iraqi Council of Ministers is expected to approve a new "hydrocarbon law" essentially drawn up by the Bush administration and its UK lackey, the Independent on Sunday reported. The new bill will "radically redraw the Iraqi oil industry and throw open the doors to the third-largest oil reserves in the world," says the paper, whose reporters have seen a draft of the new law. "It would allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil companies in the country since the industry was nationalized in 1972." If the government's parliamentary majority prevails, the law should take effect in March.
As the paper notes, the law will give Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell and other carbon cronies of the White House unprecedented sweetheart deals, allowing them to pump gargantuan profits from Iraq's nominally state-owned oilfields for decades to come. This law has been in the works since the very beginning of the invasion - indeed, since months before the invasion, when the Bush administration brought in Phillip Carroll, former CEO of both Shell and Fluor, the politically-wired oil servicing firm, to devise "contingency plans" for divvying up Iraq's oil after the attack. Once the deed was done, Carroll was made head of the American "advisory committee" overseeing the oil industry of the conquered land, as Joshua Holland of Alternet.com has chronicled in two remarkable reports on the backroom maneuvering over Iraq's oil: "Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil and "The US Takeover of Iraqi Oil."
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It has always been about the oil. The US dependence on foreign oil has been known since the '70's. Genuine efforts to reduce our dependence have been routinely undermined by Big Oil. It is inevitable that we will need to find alternative energy sources. I can't support another soldier's death for cheap gas to fill our SUV's. |
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