Oil prices are rising because demand is outstripping supply. This has nothing to do with Iraq. OPEC (read: Saudi Arabia) has increased production, but this still cannot keep up with demand. Much of the increased demand comes from China, a nation that has developed into an economic giant and needs the petroleum to fuel its own industrial output, as does the US.
(D)o you think that the Iraqi people would be able to manufacture the materials needed to maintain their oil infrastructure? How about the expertise to maintain it? When our military got to the oil fields, it was reported by imbeded journalists that the machines which help run the oil fields were in disrepair.
Who do you think first pointed out to the Saudis that there was something of value beneath their sands? Who helped them to create the means by which that country has an economy? Without oil, Saudi Arabia and many of the Arab nations would have little to no economy. It's not like they're going to be planting corn and wheat any time soon.
I certainly believe that Iraqis have the expertise to run their own oil industry. Are you suggesting that they don't and need westerners to run it for them? You seem to have this idea that Iraqis, at least those who aren't Sunni (whom you seem to think are just vicious), a poor helpless innocent children who need benevolent Americans to run the show for them. These people are grown ups. We don't need to condescend them.
Iraq was in general disrepair at the time invasion as the result of a decade of crippling sanctions. Things have not gotten better as a result of the occupation.
According to Rod Nordland, bureau chief for
Newsweek in Baghdad:
Living and working in Iraq, it's hard not to succumb to despair. At last count America has pumped at least $7 billion into reconstruction projects, with little to show for it but the hostility of ordinary Iraqis, who still have an 18 percent unemployment rate. Most of the cash goes to U.S. contractors who spend much of it on personal security. Basic services like electricity, water and sewers still aren't up to prewar levels. Electricity is especially vital in a country where summer temperatures commonly reach 125 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet only 15 percent of Iraqis have reliable electrical service. In the capital, where it counts most, it's only 4 percent.
The most powerful army in human history can't even protect a two-mile stretch of road. The Airport Highway connects both the international airport and Baghdad's main American military base, Camp Victory, to the city center. At night U.S. troops secure the road for the use of dignitaries; they close it to traffic and shoot at any unauthorized vehicles. More troops and more helicopters could help make the whole country safer. Instead the Pentagon has been drawing down the number of helicopters. And America never deployed nearly enough soldiers. They couldn't stop the orgy of looting that followed Saddam's fall. Now their primary mission is self-defense at any cost—which only deepens Iraqis' resentment.
The four-square-mile Green Zone, the one place in Baghdad where foreigners are reasonably safe, could be a showcase of American values and abilities. Instead the American enclave is a trash-strewn wasteland of Mad Max-style fortifications. The traffic lights don't work because no one has bothered to fix them. The garbage rarely gets collected. Some of the worst ambassadors in U.S. history are the GIs at the Green Zone's checkpoints. They've repeatedly punched Iraqi ministers, accidentally shot at visiting dignitaries and behave (even on good days) with all the courtesy of nightclub bouncers—to Americans and Iraqis alike. Not that U.S. soldiers in Iraq have much to smile about. They're overworked, much ignored on the home front and widely despised in Iraq, with little to look forward to but the distant end of their tours—and in most cases, another tour soon to follow. Many are reservists who, when they get home, often face the wreckage of careers and family.
It sounds to me like the Americans trying to run Iraq need Iraqis to show them what to do. I'll bet they could keep traffic lights running and make women feel safe outdoors better than we are doing it for them. Perhaps they'd even make a better go of maintaining the road from downtown Baghdad to the airport.
You state that the colonists are . . . corporations . . . and that the resources of Iraq are/will be placed in (their) hands . . . .
. . . (D)oes that mean that any profits from the sale of oil will not go to the Iraqis, but rather to a transnational corporation? I have heard over and over that this was a war for oil. If this is true, then why are oil prices rising constantly and why are we not simply filling oil tanker after oil tanker and shipping all that oil back to the US? Surely, if we fought for the oil wouldn't we then take the oil?
The original plan was for the Iraqi oil industry to be privatized and sold. As
Ms. Klein reported even as US troops were making their way to Baghdad:
(T)here's oil. The Bush Administration knows it can't talk openly about selling off Iraq's oil resources to ExxonMobil and Shell. It leaves that to Fadhil Chalabi, a former Iraq petroleum ministry official. "We need to have a huge amount of money coming into the country," Chalabi says. "The only way is to partially privatize the industry."
He is part of a group of Iraqi exiles who have been advising the State Department on how to implement that privatization in such a way that it isn't seen to be coming from the United States. Helpfully, the group held a conference on April 4-5 in London, where it called on Iraq to open itself up to oil multinationals after the war. The Administration has shown its gratitude by promising there will be plenty of posts for Iraqi exiles in the interim government.
Some argue that it's too simplistic to say this war is about oil. They're right. It's about oil, water, roads, trains, phones, ports and drugs. And if this process isn't halted, "free Iraq" will be the most sold country on earth.
This is why the war was fought. It certainly wasn't a vast biochemical arsenal or Saddam's close working relationship with al Qaida. There wasn't any such arsenal and there was no real relationship with al Qaida. Only those naive enough to think that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz,
et al. believed their own pre-invasion rhetoric think otherwise.
As for why they don't just fill up tanker after tanker, part of the reason is in Ms. Klein's article from 2003 and part of the reason is in the passage form Mr. Nordland's article quoted above. If the Bush administration and large US corporations can't keep the road to the Baghdad airport secure, can't keep power running even at pre-invasion levels, can't get clean water to Iraqi homes and can't even keep the trash picked up in the Green Zone, they certainly shouldn't be expected to get Iraq's oil industry back on its feet even for their own benefit.
We can debate whether we should have gone into Iraq to begin with, but the reality is that we are there now. The real question is how do we proceed from here? Do we pull out right now, or do we stay (as the interim government has asked) and ensure that they will be able to protect themselves?
Once again, Iraqis are grown ups who can take care of themselves and, if the last two years of foreign occupation is any indication, do it better than Bush and his corporate cronies can do it for them. If the Sunnis can organize a resistance, what is stopping the Shia and Kurds from organizing security forces? Perhaps they're too dependent on Bush and his friends for security. They do security the same way they water and power. The Iraqis can do it themselves better.
Perhaps Iraqi security would even be provided by a government that governs by consent. As Ms. Klein points out in the piece that achors this thread, least we lose her point again, that is the kind of government which, unlike Saddam's and unlike the neoconservative occupation, doesn't need to resort to torture to remain in power.
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