What Congress Really Approved: Benchmark No. 1: Privatizing Iraq's
Oil for US Companies
By Ann Wright
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor Saturday 26 May 2007
On Thursday, May 24, the US Congress voted to continue the war in Iraq. The members called it "supporting the troops." I call it stealing Iraq's oil - the second largest reserves in the world.
The "benchmark," or goal, the Bush administration has been working on furiously since the US invaded Iraq is privatization of Iraq's oil.
Now they have Congress blackmailing the Iraqi Parliament and the Iraqi people: no privatization of Iraqi oil, no reconstruction funds.
This threat could not be clearer. If the Iraqi Parliament refuses to pass the privatization legislation, Congress will withhold US reconstruction funds that were promised to the Iraqis to rebuild what the United States has destroyed there. The privatization law, written by American oil company consultants hired by the Bush administration, would leave control with the Iraq National Oil Company for only 17 of the 80 known oil fields. The remainder (two-thirds) of known oil fields, and all yet undiscovered ones, would be up for grabs by the private oil companies of the world (but guess how many would go to United States firms - given to them by the compliant Iraqi government.)
No other nation in the Middle East has privatized its oil. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Iran give only limited usage contracts to international oil companies for one or two years. The $12 billion dollar "Support the Troops" legislation passed by Congress requires Iraq, in order to get reconstruction funds from the United States, to privatize its oil resources and put them up for long term (20- to 30-year) contracts.
What does this "Support the Troops" legislation mean for the United States military? Supporting our troops has nothing to do with this bill, other than keeping them there for another 30 years to protect US oil interests. It means that every military service member will need Arabic language training. It means that every soldier and Marine would spend most of his or her career in Iraq. It means that the fourteen permanent bases will get new Taco Bells and Burger Kings! Why? Because the US military will be protecting the US corporate oilfields leased to US companies by the compliant Iraqi government. Our troops will be the guardians of US corporate interests in Iraq for the life of the contracts - for the next thirty years.
With the Bush administration's "Support the Troops" bill and its benchmarks, primarily Benchmark No. 1, we finally have the reason for the US invasion of Iraq: to get easily accessible, cheap, high-grade Iraq oil for US corporations.
Now the choice is for US military personnel and their families to decide whether they want their loved ones to be physically and emotionally injured to protect not our national security, but the financial security of the biggest corporate barons left in our country - the oil companies.
It's a choice for only our military families, because most non-military Americans do not really care whether our volunteer military spends its time protecting corporate oil to fuel our one-person cars. Of course, when a tornado, hurricane, flood or other natural disaster hits in our hometown, we want our National Guard unit back. But on a normal day, who remembers the 180,000 US military or the 150,000 US private contractors in Iraq?
Since the "Surge" began in January, over 500 Americans and 15,000 Iraqis have been killed. By the time September 2007 rolls around for the administration's review of the "surge" plan, another 400 Americans will be dead, as well as another 12,000 Iraqis.
How much more can our military and their families take?
Ann Wright served 29 years in the US Army and US Army Reserves and retired as a colonel. She served 16 years in the US diplomatic corps in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Micronesia and Mongolia. She resigned from the US Department of State in March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq.
=====================
WMD?
Saddam-WTC?
Saddam-Al-Qaida?
Saddam-threat to USA?
Aluminum tubes?
Mobile bio-weapons labs?
Yellowcake?
Smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud!
Every single one a dubya/ head/Repug lie, a pretext to invade a sanctions-weakened, impotent, non-threatening Iraq so US/UK oilcos could grab Iraqi oil.
dubya and head have used the US military to try to burgle Iraq, wasting 3500 US mlitary lives, 30K US injured, a few 100K dead Iraqis.
Last edited by boutons_; 06-09-2007 at 08:27 PM.
croutons, you realize it's the Democrats running Congress, right? So are you saying that this whole time, going back to W. deciding to go into Iraq, he was conspiring with the Democratic Congressmen to pull this off all along?
It seems a little shortsighted to call it a Republican plot, considering Democrats are in charge now, don't you think?
Ah, who am I kidding, don't let the facts get in the way of your diarrhea of the mouth.
This plan was made when Republicans had control and they don't care about who is in control as long as they got the president they are getting away with their plan made many years ago. Read dip .
Dip ? croutons lame ass article talks about Congress blackmailing the Iraqis? Do you mean to tell me that Bush is running Congress now too?
Give me a ing break.
The Repugs have been pushing for oil revenue sharing contracts (rather than oil leases) since Paul Bremer's disatrous time.
Oil is the ONLY reason the Repugs went after Iraq.
Yes, the Dems approved the extortionate benchmarking, but Iraq is still 100% a Repug quagmire and fiasco.
Don't change the topic, this thread was about the Democratic Congress blackmailing Iraq over oil.
And what if it democratically elected Iraqi legislature votes to kick out the USA?
And what if Iraqi unions don't want to give away their country's oil wealth to US/UK oilcos?
==========
Iraq's Workers Strike to Keep Their Oil
By David Bacon
t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Saturday 09 June 2007
The Bush administration has no love for unions anywhere, but in Iraq it has a special reason for hating them. They are the main opposition to the occupation's economic agenda, and the biggest obstacle to that agenda's centerpiece - the privatization of Iraq's oil. At the same time, unions have become the only force in Iraq trying to maintain at least a survival living standard for the millions of Iraqis who still have to go to work every day, in the middle of the war.
This week, Iraqi anger over starvation incomes and oil ripoffs boiled over. On Monday, June 4, the biggest and strongest of the Iraqi unions, the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, launched a limited strike to underline its call for keeping oil in public hands, and to force the government to live up to its economic promises. Workers on the pipelines carrying oil from the rigs in the south to Baghdad's big refinery stopped work. It was a very limited job action, which still allowed the Iraqi economy to function.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki responded by calling out the army and surrounding the strikers at Sheiba, near Basra. Then he issued arrest warrants for the union's leaders. On Wednesday, June 6, the union postponed the strike until June 11. Labor unrest could not only resume at that point, but could easily escalate into shutdowns on the rigs themselves, or even the cutoff of oil exports. That would shut down the income stream that keeps the Maliki regime in power in Baghdad.
Some of the oil workers' demands reflect the desperate situation of workers under the occupation. They want their employer - the government's oil ministry - to pay for wage increases and promised vacations, and give permanent status to thousands of temporary employees. In a country where housing has been destroyed on a massive scale, and workers often live in dilapidated and primitive conditions, the union wants the government to turn over land for building homes. Every year, the oil ins ute has miraculously continued holding classes and training technicians, yet the ministry won't give work to graduates, despite the war-torn industry's desperate need for skilled labor. The union demands jobs and a future for these young people.
But one demand overshadows even these basic needs - renegotiation of the oil law that would turn the industry itself over to foreign corporations. And it is this demand that has brought out even the US fighter jets, which have circled and buzzed over the strikers' demonstrations. In Iraq, the hostile maneuvering of military aircraft is not an idle threat to the people below. This standoff reflects a long history of actions in Iraq, by both the Iraqi government and the US occupation administration, to suppress union activity.
( very ing cool! US fighter jets employed as strike busters against impoverished Iraqi oil workers! America, Home of Chicken Bullies and Plutocratic, Imperialistic Thieves!! )
Iraq has a long labor history. Union activists, banned and jailed under the British and its puppet monarchy, organized a labor movement that was the admiration of the Arab world when Iraq became independent after 1958. Saddam Hussein later drove its leaders underground, killing and jailing the ones he could catch.
( Very cool! dubya and head continue Saddam's repression and murdering of Iraqis )
When Saddam fell, Iraqi unionists came out of prison, up from underground and back from exile, determined to rebuild its labor movement. Miraculously, in the midst of war and bombings, they did. The oil workers union in the south is now one of the largest organizations in Iraq, with thousands of members on the rigs, pipelines and refineries. The electrical workers union is the first national labor organization headed by a woman, Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein.
Together with other unions in railroads, hotels, ports, schools and factories, they've gone on strike, held elections, won wage increases and made democracy a living reality. Yet the Bush administration, and the Baghdad government it controls, has outlawed collective bargaining, impounded union funds and turned its back (or worse) on a wave of assassinations of Iraqi union leaders.
President Bush says he wants democracy, yet he will not accept the one political demand that unites Iraqis above all others. They want the country's oil (and its electrical power stations, ports and other key facilities) to remain in public hands.
The fact that Iraqi unions are the strongest voice demanding this makes them anathema. Selling the oil off to large corporations is far more important to the Bush administration than a paper commitment to the democratic process.
( "Selling the oil off to large corporations is far more important to the Bush administration than" the lives, bodies, and minds of the 30K US military killed and maimed in the Repug oil grab war )
Iraq's oil was nationalized in the 1960s, like that of every other country in the Middle East. The Iraqi oil union became, and still is, the industry's most zealous guardian.
Holding a no-bid, sweetheart contract with occupation authorities, Halliburton Corporation came into Iraq in the wake of the troops in 2003. The company tried to seize control of the wells and rigs, withholding reconstruction aid to force workers to submit. The oil union struck for three days that August, stopping exports and cutting off government revenue. Halliburton left.
( AKA Halliburton as mercenary hired by dubya/ head to grab Iraqi oil, which is the ONLY reason dubya/ head/PNAC/AEI/neo- s invaded Iraq, which had NOTHING to do with US security, the war on terror, WMD, etc. )
The oil and port unions then forced foreign corporations to give up similar sweetheart agreements in Iraq's deepwater shipping facilities. Muhsin's electrical union is still battling to stop subcontracting in the power stations - a prelude to corporate control.
The occupation has always had an economic agenda. Occupation czar Paul Bremer published lists in Baghdad newspapers of the public enterprises he intended to auction off. Arab labor leader Hacene Djemam bitterly observed, "War makes privatization easy: first you destroy society; then you let the corporations rebuild it."
The Bush administration won't leave Iraq in part because that economic agenda is still insecure. Under Washington's guidance, the Iraqi government wrote a new oil law in secret. The Iraq study commission, headed by oilman James Baker, called it the key to ending the occupation.
That law is touted in the US press as ensuring an equitable division of oil wealth. Iraqi unions say it will ensure that foreign corporations control future exploration and development, in one of the world's largest reserves.
Hassan Juma'a Awad, president of the IFOU, wrote a letter to the US Congress on May 13. "Everyone knows the oil law doesn't serve the Iraqi people," he warned. The union was banned from the secret negotiations. According to Juma'a, the result "serves Bush, his supporters and foreign companies at the expense of the Iraqi people." The union has threatened to strike if the law is implemented.
Like all Iraqi unionists, Juma'a says the occupation should end without demanding Iraq's oil as a price. "The USA claimed that it came here as a liberator, not to control our resources," he reminded Congress. Congressional opponents of the war can only win Iraqis' respect if they disavow the oil law.
Whatever government holds power in Baghdad at the occupation's end will need control of the oil wealth to rebuild the devastated country. That gives Iraq's working people a big reason to fight to ensure that happens.
"Democratic Congress blackmailing Iraq over oil."
you, twerp. Congress is barely Democratic, and the Dems can do very little without the Repugs voting the same way.
dubya/ head/neo-cnts and their 5-years of rubber-stamp Repug Congress started the Iraqi war-for-oil, so quit trying blame the Dems for the Repug hole.
The ODF, Oil Defense Force, begins to take shape.
===================
Military Envisions Longer Stay in Iraq
Officers Anticipate Small 'Post-Occupation' Force
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 10, 2007; A01
BAGHDAD -- U.S. military officials here are increasingly envisioning a "post-occupation" troop presence in Iraq that neither maintains current levels nor leads to a complete pullout, but aims for a smaller, longer-term force that would remain in the country for years.
This goal, drawn from recent interviews with more than 20 U.S. military officers and other officials here, including senior commanders, strategists and analysts, remains in the early planning stages. It is based on officials' assessment that a sharp drawdown of troops is likely to begin by the middle of next year, with roughly two-thirds of the current force of 150,000 moving out by late 2008 or early 2009. The questions officials are grappling with are not whether the U.S. presence will be cut, but how quickly, to what level and to what purpose.
( purpose? enforcing the oil-revenue-sharing "agreement", if it ever get implemented )
One of the guiding principles, according to two officials here, is that the United States should leave Iraq more intelligently than it entered.
( no !
Military officials, many of whom would be interviewed only on the condition of anonymity, say they are now assessing conditions more realistically, rejecting the "steady progress" mantra of their predecessors and recognizing that short-term political reconciliation in Iraq is unlikely. A reduction of troops, some officials argue, would demonstrate to anti-American factions that the occupation will not last forever while reassuring Iraqi allies that the United States does not intend to abandon the country.
The planning is shaped in part by logistical realities in Iraq. The immediate all-or-nothing debate in Washington over troop levels represents a false dilemma, some military officials said. Even if a total pullout is the goal, it could take a year to execute a full withdrawal. One official estimated that with only one major route from the country -- through southern Iraq to Kuwait -- it would take at least 3,000 large convoys some 10 months to remove U.S. military gear and personnel alone, not including the several thousand combat vehicles that would be needed to protect such an operation.
"We're not going to go from where we're at now to zero overnight," said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the U.S. commander for day-to-day operations in Iraq.
U.S. officials also calculate that underneath the anti-American rhetoric, even Shiite radicals such as cleric Moqtada al-Sadr don't really want to see a total U.S. pullout, especially while they feel threatened by Sunni insurgents. Also, officials think any Iraqi government will prefer to keep a small U.S. combat force to deter foreign intervention.
( al Quaida has already intervened in Iraq at dubya's gracious invitation and ain't leaving with 130K, or 30K, US troops present)
Such a long-term presence would have four major components.
The centerpiece would be a reinforced mechanized infantry division of around 20,000 soldiers assigned to guarantee the security of the Iraqi government and to assist Iraqi forces or their U.S. advisers if they get into fights they can't handle.
Second, a training and advisory force of close to 10,000 troops would work with Iraqi military and police units. "I think it would be very helpful to have a force here for a period of time to continue to help the Iraqis train and continue to build their capabilities," Odierno said.
In addition, officials envision a small but significant Special Operations unit focused on fighting the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq. "I think you'll retain a very robust counterterror capability in this country for a long, long time," a Pentagon official in Iraq said.
Finally, the headquarters and logistical elements to command and supply such a force would total more than 10,000 troops, plus some civilian contractors.
The thinking behind this "post-occupation" force, as one official called it, echoes the core conclusion of a Joint Chiefs of Staff planning group that last fall secretly considered three possible courses in Iraq, which it categorized as "go big," "go home" and "go long." The group's recommendation to reshape the U.S. presence in order to "go long" -- to remain in Iraq for years with a smaller force -- appears to carry weight in Baghdad, where some of the colonels who led that planning group have been working for Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq since February.
Despite the significant differences in the way the war has been discussed in Washington and in Baghdad, this plan is emerging as a point of convergence between the two capitals. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and White House spokesman Tony Snow both recently made comments indicating that the administration is thinking along the same lines as military officials here. Snow has likened the possible long-term mission of U.S. troops in Iraq to the protective role American forces have played in South Korea since the end of the Korean War 54 years ago. And Gates said recently that is he considering a "protracted" U.S. presence in Iraq rather than a complete withdrawal.
This is hardly the first time officials have considered troop reductions. The original U.S. war plan called for the Army to have only 30,000 troops in Iraq by fall 2003; later, top commanders planned for a drawdown in the summer of 2004. Neither option came to pass, as the military found itself engaged in a tougher and longer war in Iraq than it or the Bush administration had expected.
But officials here insist that they are now assessing the situation more soberly. For example, when Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, the commander of the 25th Infantry Division, briefed reporters last month, he expressed worries about the performance of Iraqi forces and called the Iraqi government in Diyala province "nonfunctional." He also said candidly that he did not have enough soldiers in Diyala. As one officer here put it, his comments were of the sort that generals in Iraq once discussed in private but avoided stating publicly.
"I think there's a greater appreciation for complexity,"
Officials now dismiss the 2004-06 years -- when Gen. George W. Casey Jr. was in command -- as a fruitless "rush to transition," as one senior defense official here put it. "The idea was, 'As they stand up, we'll stand down,' " he said. That phrase has been all but banished from the Green Zone, as has the notion of measuring U.S. progress in Iraq by the number of Iraqi troops trained or by changes in U.S. casualty counts.
"We had previously 'transitioned' ourselves into irrelevance,
( oh really? "some" here in the forum said the US military was kicking ass. )
and the whole thing was going to in a handbasket," a senior official commented in an e-mail.
( but dubya said "We are winning,absolutely". Was dubya lying?
Top military officials even say that Iraq's elections in December 2005 only deepened sectarian divides and contributed to the outbreak of a low-grade civil war in Baghdad last year. "We wanted an election in the worst way, and we got one in the worst way," one U.S. general here said.
Another major difference is that U.S. officials, both political and military, say they are more willing to take chances than before.
( which has meant a much higher number US military deaths and casualties, to no evident benefit. )
The clearest gamble was the decision in January to move U.S. troops off big, isolated bases and into 60 small, relatively vulnerable outposts across Baghdad. However, the risk-taking also includes reaching out to people once declared enemies of the United States, such as Sadr, the Shiite cleric. "Some people say he might be ready to negotiate behind the scenes," Odierno said in an interview.
In addition, commanders will be forced to lean heavily in coming months on Iraqi security forces, whose performance has been mixed at best. The U.S. strategy in Baghdad of "clear, hold and build" calls for clearing neighborhoods of enemy forces, then holding them with a sustained military presence while reconstruction efforts get underway. Yet by itself, the United States does not have enough troops to "hold," so that mission must be executed by Iraqis.
"My nightmare -- the thing that keeps me up at night -- is a failure of Iraqi security forces, somehow, catastrophically, mixed with a major Samarra-mosque-type catastrophe," Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, said last week, referring to the February 2006 bombing of a mosque in Samarra that sparked renewed civil strife.
Even as they focus on the realities in Iraq, officials here are also keeping an eye on Washington politics. Despite the talk in the U.S. capital that Petraeus has only until September to stabilize the situation in Iraq, some officers here are quietly suggesting that they really may have until Jan. 20, 2009 -- when President Bush leaves office -- to put the smaller, revised force in place. They doubt that Bush will pull the plug on the war or that Congress will ultimately force his hand.
Such timing matters because, despite some tactical success in making some Baghdad neighborhoods safer, officials here believe the real test of the U.S. troop increase will be its ability to create space over time for political accommodation among rival Iraqi factions. Officers agree that hasn't happened yet -- at least not significantly enough to make a difference in Washington.
=============
After 4 years of Sunni-Shiite ethnic cleansing and civil war, the dumb s are still waiting for "political accomodation"?
Last edited by boutons_; 06-10-2007 at 09:55 AM.
Finally, a politician admits the Iraq war is a grab for the high-quality, shallow Iraqi oil and reserves.
WMD? the war on terra? AEI/PNAC/neo- /oilco smokescreen hiding the oil grab.
And if head can, at the same time, enrich the MIC with $Bs in war profiteering, even better.
The rich and powerful get richer and more powerful standing in a pool of US military blood.
=======================
BBC NEWS
Australia 'has Iraq oil interest'
Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson has admitted that securing oil supplies is a key factor behind the presence of Australian troops in Iraq.
He said maintaining "resource security" in the Middle East was a priority.
But PM John Howard has played down the comments, saying it was "stretching it a bit" to conclude that Australia's Iraq involvement was motivated by oil.
The remarks are causing heated debate as the US-led Iraq coalition has avoided linking the war and oil.
Oil concerns
Australia was involved in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and has about 1,500 military personnel still deployed in the region.
There are no immediate plans to bring them home.
In comments to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Mr Nelson admitted that the supply of oil had influenced Australia's strategic planning in the region.
"Obviously the Middle East itself, not only Iraq but the entire region, is an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world," he said.
"Australians and all of us need to think what would happen if there were a premature withdrawal from Iraq.
"It's in our interests, our security interests, to make sure that we leave the Middle East, and leave Iraq in particular, in a position of sustainable security."
This is thought to be the first time the Australian government has admitted any link between troop deployment in Iraq and securing energy resources.
But Prime Minister John Howard was quick to play down the significance of his defence minister's comments.
"We didn't go there because of oil and we don't remain there because of oil," he told a local radio station.
"A lot of oil comes from the Middle East - we all know that - but the reason we remain there is that we want to give the people of Iraq a possibility of embracing democracy," he added.
(of you and your lies. GMAFB )
Opposition criticism
Opposition politicians, though, have chastised Mr Howard's government over the comments.
"This government simply makes it up as it goes along on Iraq," Labor leader Kevin Rudd told reporters.
Anti-war protesters say the government's admission proves that the US-led invasion was more of a grab for oil rather than a genuine attempt to uncover weapons of mass destruction.
But ministers in Canberra have brushed aside the criticism, saying they remain committed to helping the US stabilise Iraq and combat terrorism.
They have also stressed that there will be no "premature withdrawal" of Australian forces from the region.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...ic/6272168.stm
Published: 2007/07/05 09:50:08 GMT
© BBC MMVII
Have you looked at the bill?
There are 3 mentions of oil in it, and one of them is in relation to Sudan, not Iraq.
The two mentions of oil relating to Iraq:
1) None of the funds appropriated could be used "To exercise United States control over any oil resource of Iraq."
2) The Presidents report will contain whether the Iraqi government has "enacted a broadly accepted hydro-carbon law that equitably shares oil revenues among all Iraqis;
"
Or at least that's all I could find related to it with action on May 24, 2007. Unless I missed something.
If you're curious, the bill also eliminates the ability to spend money on establishing a permanent US military presence in Iraq.
Never trust a source complaining about legislation if they don't supply the bill number.
"equitably shares oil revenues among all Iraqis;"
... AFTER the US/UK oilcos get their production/revenue sharing contracts, which they prefer to lease contracts, which are the norm in all other countries.
After the the Iraqis agree how to share their portion, then the US/UK will put enormous pressure (has been on since 2003) to write production-sharing contracts. The idea was that a grateful post-Saddam Iraqi govt would go along with the production/revenue sharing contracts, which give MUCH more $$$ to the foreign oilcos.
"the bill also eliminates the ability to spend money on establishing a permanent US military presence in Iraq."
The US is spending 10s of $Bs on permanent military bases of occupation, and $700M on the US embasssy, to protect the US/UK oilco access to the oil.
Last edited by boutons_; 07-05-2007 at 02:02 PM.
Uhh, technically the bill doesn't even say the oil sharing thing has to be done, just that the President has to report whether it has or not. It is also completely irrelevent to what the US wants to do, since the criteria is a law the Iraqi's widely accept. This entire section is all about the President's report that Congress will use when determining the next set of appropriations in September.
I won't say the US wouldn't like privatization, since it eliminates political motivations from contract dealings, but to claim that it is now a requirement is utter BS.
On the military presence: It's easy to justify that kind of spending by claiming it will be turned over to the Iraqi's upon withdrawal or that it's for long term but temporary presence. I was just stating the bill eliminates the ability to technically spend money on a permanent military presence from that particular appropriation.
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