NY Times, June 19, 2008
BAGHDAD — Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.
'An empire of military bases and control of oil fields.'And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the battle plan for the theft of the 2000 election from The People of the United States.
From the
Asia Times, June 20, 2008:
.....
An empire of military bases and control of oil fields. These two crucial "benchmarks", applied to Iraq, are what's left of that alliance between the neo-cons and the Christian Right which took over the US government with an imperial project of military rule over global oil resources. Now it's twilight time; and no wonder the Bush administration has come out with all guns blazing. Without a new, US Big Oil-friendly Iraqi oil law, and without a SOFA, US$3 trillion - according to Joseph Stiglitz's and Linda Bilmes' book - will have been spent for nothing.
However, on Thursday, the
New York Times reported that Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP were in the final stages of negotiations on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization by Saddam Hussein.
They are reportedly in negotiations with the Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq's largest fields. Should the deals go through, they would lay the foundation for the first commercial work for major Western companies in Iraq since the American invasion in 2003. It is expected that Iraq's output could increase to about 3 million barrels a day from its current 2.5 million.
Initially, the Bush administration wanted no less than 58 permanent US bases in Iraq. There are already 30 in place. It doesn't matter that on April 8, US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker had said the US "will not establish permanent bases in Iraq and we anticipate that it will expressly foreswear them".
The Bush administration's ploy essentially amounts to turning over legal control of US bases to a client regime. Heavy pressure is the name of the game. To convince the Iraqis, the Bush administration is holding no less than $50 billion of Iraqi money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Other "subtle" forms of pressure also apply. The Iraqis wanted to sell oil in euros as well as in dollars. The Bush administration issued its fatwa - and it's a "no".
This shady deal the Bush administration wants so badly is a SOFA only in theory. In fact, it's a smokescreen. Under US law, it would have to be submitted to the senate. The Bush administration wants to totally bypass the senate.
And the deal is not about Iraq either. It's essentially about Iran - as in the neo-con 2003 mantra "real men go to Tehran". That's the meaning of the Bush administration demand, according to Iraqi lawmakers, of "the right ... to strike, from within Iraqi territory, any country it considers a threat to its national security."
The Bush administration wants to totally control Iraqi airspace. The Bush administration wants to employ US firepower without approval from the "sovereign" Iraqi government. The Bush administration wants immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts for all American troops and even dozens of thousands of contractors - most of them Blackwater-style mercenaries. The US Army simply cannot function properly without these privatized warriors.
Were a deal to be reached under the current terms - the deadline remains July 31 - nothing would be easier for the Bush administration than to accuse Iran of interfering in Iraq - as it is already doing non stop - and then attack Iran under the "legal" cover of this SOFA.
The Bush administration also would have a hard time getting the US Congress to explicitly approve an attack on Iran. So why not use the Iraqi Parliament instead? No wonder scores of Iraqi parliamentarians, Sunni and Shi'ite alike, fear the deal is basically a cover to use Iraq as a base to attack Iran. Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, went to Tehran and solemnly promised that Iraq would not be used as a US base for an attack on Iran.
Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Maliki that Iraqis have to "think of a solution to free" themselves from US power. Not surprisingly, Khamenei advised Maliki not to sign the deal. Maliki, for his part, reassured the Iranians in no uncertain terms Iraq is not an arena for a deadly US-Iran Armageddon.
.....
So, how is Bush's plan going down among the Iraqis?
.....
The consensus now in Baghdad seems to be that no deal will be reached before the US presidential election in November. Anyway the Bush administration will not give up without a fierce fight. The State Department's top Iraq adviser, David Satterfield, insists the deal "can be achieved, and by the end of the July deadline".
How? Well, the Bush administration has invested in a little rewriting - they are now on a fourth draft. Some "concessions" have been made in terms of immunity of contractors to Iraqi law. But the deal still has no timetable for a definitive draw down of US troops. And Defense, Interior and National Security ministries, as well as weapons contracts, are still meant to be under US control for 10 years.
Under these circumstances how can you convince people like Iman al-Asadi, a Shi'ite member of the committee on legal affairs in Baghdad? According to her, "what happens to our dignity? What happens to our sovereignty? ... If the US controls the air, the ground and the sea, this means no sovereignty."
Democratic Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign has demanded that the deal be submitted to the US Congress - and that Iraqis should be told in no uncertain terms that the US does not want permanent bases in Iraq. Republican John McCain's campaign ... has had nothing to say.
In fact, it had. McCain - with a huge help from Bush - attacked Obama because Obama said he would meet with the "evil" Iranian leadership. That's exactly what Bush's man in Baghdad, Maliki, did only a few days ago.
The only man who can stop the deal dead in its tracks is Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. True, he fears that without critical US support the Shi'ite parties in government will be much more fragile. But Sistani also fears the street power of Muqtada al-Sadr - who called the Sadrists to demonstrate every Friday against the deal, until it is scrapped. It's fair to say the majority of Iraqis - the Kurds, Vice President Dick Cheney's "base", are the exception - want to know who they'll be dealing with, Obama or McCain, before they embark on the highly sensitive negotiation of the long-term role of the US in Iraq.
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd, talks like he's a State Department employee: he says the deal will be clinched. Grand Ayatollah Sistani forced Maliki to call for a parliament vote. And Muqtada wants a national referendum - that would be the Bush administration's bete noire.
For days this has been a top political story all over the Middle East - as well as in Western Europe. It has been broken by the London-based, Saudi-owned
al-Hayat newspaper and by Patrick Cockburn of the
London Independent.
What about US public opinion? It's been kept literally in the dark. Corporate media coverage has been virtually invisible. Maybe this is what corporate newsrooms call "mission accomplished" - not to explain to the American public how Iraq cannot possibly become South Korea.From an interview of Patrick Cockburn by Amy Goodman, June 12, 2008:
.....
AMY GOODMAN: Patrick Cockburn, if this is pushed through before this president leaves office, how does it bind a future president? And what is your assessment of what these presidential candidates in the United States are suggesting for the end of war in Iraq?
PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, you know, they’re describing it as a security agreement and saying, well, we have such agreements with eighty countries. But, I mean, this is frankly baloney. I mean, the other countries do not have an American army present which is under continual armed attack. It’s a very different type of agreement. And of course the reason they’re saying this is that they don’t want to submit it to Congress, and they also don’t want to submit it to a referendum in Iraq. In both cases, it might go down.
I think that the candidates—I mean, what strikes me, being in Washington, is the degree to which America is absorbed in the presidential election, and Iraq has been far too much on the margins of the news, as if nothing new was developing there or the situation might be bad but it’s not getting much worse, while these enormously important developments are taking place, which are laying the basis for future violence, for future wars, not exactly going through on the nod, but they’re being smuggled through. Their significance is being downplayed by the US ambassador in Baghdad, by the administration here in Washington. And this is taking place while the whole focus is on the presidential election here.
.....
Now, in the past two days, the Bush Administration carpet bombed our airways with threats of oil drilling in pristine American wildlands and off our coasts, while blaming Democrats, so we will be upset and distracted from his smash and grab he is committing against the Iraqis.
From
al-Hayat, June 13, 2008:
In the teeth of much local and regional opposition, Washington is pressuring Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to conclude a 'strategic alliance' with the United States, which would allow it to keep substantial military forces in Iraq for the foreseeable future.
Even at the cost of 4,100 of its soldiers killed, another 30,000 or more seriously wounded, its reputation sorely tarnished, and a trillion dollar hole in its public accounts, the United States has clearly not yet learned the lesson that occupation breeds insurrection.
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 - the smashing and near-dismemberment of the country, the killing and displacement of millions of its people - must surely be judged one of the great crimes of our time. To seek to stay on after this unmitigated catastrophe -- making nonsense of Iraq's independence and sovereignty -- not only perpetuates the crime, but is a grave strategic mistake for which both the U.S. and its Iraqi vassals are likely to pay dearly.
.....
What does Tehran want? It wants to protect itself against a U.S./Israel attack, the explicit threat of which it faces almost daily. This, no doubt, explains its attempt to acquire a deterrent capability. It has painful memories of the eight year Iran-Iraq war -- when the whole Arab world (with the exception of Syria) backed Iraq's aggression against it. It, therefore, wants to keep Iraq under Shia governance and in close coordination with itself. It wants a united Iraq, but not one so strong as again to threaten it with war.
Iran wants to ensure that Iraq and the Gulf States will not allow the United States to use their territory for an attack on it. In a word, it wants U.S. troops to go home.
Instead of pursuing the will o' the wisp of Miss Rice's 'solid geopolitical foundations', Washington would be far better advised to withdraw from Iraq, engage diplomatically with Iran and devote itself -- with will, fairness and consistency -- to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict before that suppurating sore, which has poisoned every relationship in the region, explodes in its face.
And from the
NY Times, June 19, 2008:
The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.
The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India.
.....
The no-bid deals are structured as service contracts. The companies will be paid for their work, rather than offered a license to the oil deposits. As such, they do not require the passage of an oil law setting out terms for competitive bidding. The legislation has been stalled by disputes among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties over revenue sharing and other conditions.
.....
“These are not actually service contracts,” Ms. Benali said. “They were designed to circumvent the legislative stalemate” and bring Western companies with experience managing large projects into Iraq before the passage of the oil law.
.....
And the coup de grace, from the last paragraph in the
Times piece:
Former chief executive of Exxon, Lee Raymond, in an interview with Newsweek last fall: “There is an enormous amount of oil in Iraq,” Mr. Raymond said. “We were part of the consortium, the four companies that were there when Saddam Hussein threw us out, and we basically had the whole country.”
Bush didn't attack Iraq because of the lie that Saddam 'kicked the
inspectors out'..... Bush attacked Iraq because Saddam kicked
the extractors out.
And this, dear fellow citizens, is the origin of the past eight years of horror that so many have suffered.
The United States invasion of Iraq then takes on an even broader meaning. Not only does it constitute an attempt to control the global oil spigot and hence the global economy though domination over the Middle East. It also constitutes a powerful US military bridgehead on the Eurasian land mass which ... yields it a powerful geostrategic position in Eurasia with at least the potentiality to disrupt any consolidation of an Eurasian power that could indeed be the next step in that endless accumulation of political power that must always accompany the equally endless accumulation of capital.
--- David Harvey, The New Imperialism, 2003
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