"US's Iraq oil grab is a done deal."

[milkyway]

"By 2010 we will need 50 million barrels a day. The Middle East, with two-thirds of the oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize lies." - US Vice President Dick Cheney, then Halliburton chief executive officer, London, autumn 1999

US President George W Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney might as well declare the Iraq war over and out. As far as they - and the humongous energy interests they defend - are concerned, only now is the mission really accomplished. More than half a trillion dollars spent and perhaps half a million Iraqis killed have come down to this.

On Monday, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's cabinet in Baghdad approved the draft of the new Iraqi oil law. The government regards it as "a major national project". The key point of the law is that Iraq's immense oil wealth (115 billion barrels of proven reserves, third in the world after Saudi Arabia and Iran) will be under the iron rule of a fuzzy "Federal Oil and Gas Council" boasting "a panel of oil experts from inside and outside Iraq". That is, nothing less than predominantly US Big Oil executives.

<snip>

But there was not much to be debated. The law was in essence drafted, behind locked doors, by a US consulting firm hired by the Bush administration and then carefully retouched by Big Oil, the International Monetary Fund, former US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz' World Bank, and the United States Agency for International Development. It's virtually a US law (its original language is English, not Arabic).

<snip>

A whole case can be made of SCIRI delivering Iraq's Holy Grail to Bush/Cheney and Big Oil - in exchange for not being chased out of power by the Pentagon. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the SCIRI's leader, is much more of a Bush ally than Maliki, who is from the Da'wa Party. No wonder SCIRI's Badr Organization and their death squads were never the target of Washington's wrath - unlike Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army (Muqtada is fiercely against the oil law). The SCIRI certainly listened to the White House, which has always made it very clear: any more funds to the Iraqi government are tied up with passing the oil law.

Bush and Cheney got their oily cake - and they will eat it, too (or be drenched in its glory). Mission accomplished: permanent, sprawling military bases on the eastern flank of the Arab nation and control of some of largest, untapped oil wealth on the planet - a key geostrategic goal of the New American Century. Now it's time to move east, bomb Iran, force regime change and - what else? - force PSAs down their Persian throats.


http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IB28Ak01.html


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Hat tip to juancole.com for the link to this article.

We've gone to war for oil, but not so the American consumers can have it, but so that Big Oil can be the ones that sell it to us. I'm unclear on this, but isn't the oil market a global market, and therefore weren't Americans already putting Saddam's oil in their SUVs? If this is true, then the Iraq war hasn't given us access to oil that consumers didn't already have access to. It just changed who would profit from selling it to us (Big Oil rather than Iraqis).

Note also that the price of oil has doubled since the Bush/Cheney junta seized power ($26.72 in 2000):
http://inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Rate/Historical_Oil_Prices_Table.asp

[underpants]

1. Bearing Point is the consulting firm-They are everywhere these days

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/8/172228/5720

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=bearingpoint

See footnote #19 here
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2005/crudedesigns.htm

[izzie]

2. Great another thing for bin Larden to talk about and the Middle East

to get even madder about. We sure must have bases to protect all that. I am starting to hate to look at the map of the Middle East and watching us roll over it with our power. It is going to make such a mess. We are sure to go broke just keeping our army over their and building new stuff to keep control. You can just feel the push on all side waiting for the big blow up. I have been reading to many history books I guess. And those people are fighting for a religious belief and they feel their land and we are going to fight for the TV set and cheap oil and forcing them to live as we think is best. God help us for sure we are going to need it. But Bush did get his pals in control of the oil.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

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[JetCityLiberal]

4. Tell it to the lying murdering deserter

occupying the Oval Office.