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Endgame for Iraqi Oil?
« on: 2007-10-25 03:12:43 » |
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[Blunderov] The chess metaphor continues to suggest itself to those who write and speak on The Rape of Iraq. More so in this war than any since WW2, or so it seems to me. Even if only subconsciously, the realpolitiek (or robbery) of the situation is broadly recognised. Yes, it's the oil Jemima.
It is very, very worrying that, if push came to shove, Bush would go nuclear on Iran. There is no way that the USA could withstand oil prices of as much as, perhaps, $200 per barrel for very long. Ergo, a completely decisive and very fast victory would be required. To a cornered rat, the nuclear option might look completely justifiable. (Of course Pelosi and Co will simply bring their own vaseline to the party. Dennis Kucinich and some others excepted, a pox upon their houses. Especially that Pelosi prostitute. Apparently she and Ann Coulter were seperated at birth if their unswerving dedication to the president is any evidence but I digress.)
This is where the rubber meets the road.
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=11808
Endgame for Iraqi Oil?
by Jack Miles and Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch
Before the invasion of Iraq, while millions demonstrated in the streets, often waving homemade placards with "No Blood for Oil" – or equivalents like "Don't Trade Lives for Oil" and like "How Did USA's Oil Get Under Iraq's Sand?" – the Bush administration said remarkably little about the vast quantities of petroleum on which Saddam Hussein's regime was perched. The President did, however, speak reverently about preserving not Iraq's "energy reserves" but its "patrimony," as he so euphemistically put it. The American mainstream media followed suit, dismissing arguments about the significance of Iraqi and Middle Eastern oil as the refuge of, if not scoundrels, then at least truly simpleminded dissidents who knew not whereof they spoke. Generally, in our news pages and on the TV news, with Iraq at the edge of a shock-and-awe invasion, Iraqi energy reserves were dealt with as if no more than a passing thought, as if the Middle East's main export was hummus.
Little has changed. When former Fed chief Alan Greenspan recently indicated in passing in his memoir that the war was "about oil," there was a brief firestorm of scorn in Washington; an administration spokesperson termed it "Georgetown cocktail party analysis" ("A refill of crude, please, straight up…") and Greenspan quickly began to backtrack under the pressure. Oil? Who us? The Bush administration's plans to protect the Oil Ministry in Baghdad and Iraq's major oil fields amid otherwise unchecked chaos in April 2003 were certainly noted in the news, but went largely uncommented upon (unless you were an Internet news jockey).
Here's the strange thing about the Iraq oil "debate" in our media world. Call me crazy, but if you were going to invade Iraq and oil wasn't right at the forefront of your brain, you would be truly derelict, even if you hadn't run a major energy services corporation or hadn't had a double-hulled oil tanker named after you. Jack Miles, author of the Pulitzer-Prize-winning book God: A Biography and the first writer to consider Iraqi casualties at Tomdispatch (or probably much of anywhere else) back in July 2003, now takes up the oil endgame – of which, except in the Web world, there has largely been neither a beginning game nor a middle game. Tom
Endgame for Iraqi Oil?
The Sovereignty Showdown in Iraq
By Jack Miles
The oil game in Iraq may be almost up. On September 29th, like a landlord serving notice, the government of Iraq announced that the next annual renewal of the United Nations Security Council mandate for a multinational force in Iraq – the only legal basis for a continuation of the American occupation – will be the last. That was, it seems, the first shoe to fall. The second may be an announcement terminating the little-noticed, but crucial companion Security Council mandate governing the disposition of Iraq's oil revenues.
By December 31, 2008, according to Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the government of Iraq intends to have replaced the existing mandate for a multinational security force with a conventional bilateral security agreement with the United States, an agreement of the sort that Washington has with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and several other countries in the Middle East. The Security Council has always paired the annual renewal of its mandate for the multinational force with the renewal of a second mandate for the management of Iraqi oil revenues. This happens through the "Development Fund for Iraq," a kind of escrow account set up by the occupying powers after the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime and recognized in 2003 by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1483. The oil game will be up if and when Iraq announces that this mandate, too, will be terminated at a date certain in favor of resource-development agreements that – like the envisioned security agreement – match those of other states in the region.
The game will be up because, as Antonia Juhasz pointed out last March in a New York Times op-ed, "Whose Oil Is It, Anyway?":
"Iraq's neighbors Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia… have outlawed foreign control over oil development. They all hire international oil companies as contractors to provide specific services as needed, for a limited duration, and without giving the foreign company any direct interest in the oil produced."
By contrast, the oil legislation now pending in the Iraqi parliament awards foreign oil companies coveted, long-term, 20-35 year contracts of just the sort that neighboring oil-producers have rejected for decades. It also places the Iraqi oil industry under the control of an appointed body that would include representatives of international oil companies as full voting members.
The news that the duly elected government of Iraq is exercising its limited sovereignty to set a date for termination of the American occupation radically undercuts all discussion in Congress or by American presidential candidates of how soon the U.S. occupation of Iraq may "safely" end. Yet if, by the same route, Iraq were to resume full and independent control over the world's third-largest proven oil reserves – 200 to 300 million barrels of light crude worth as much as $30 trillion at today's prices – a politically incorrect question might break rudely out of the Internet universe and into the mainstream media world, into, that is, the open: Has the Iraq war been an oil war from the outset?
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan evidently thought so or so he indicated in a single sentence in his recent memoir: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." When asked, Gen. John Abizaid, former CENTCOM commander who oversaw three and a half years of the American occupation of Iraq, agreed. "Of course it's about oil, we can't really deny that," he said during a roundtable discussion at Stanford University. These confessions validated the suspicions of foreign observers too numerous to count. Veteran security analyst Thomas Powers observed in the New York Review of Books recently:
"What it was only feared the Russians might do [by invading Afghanistan in the 1980s] the Americans have actually done – they have planted themselves squarely astride the world's largest pool of oil, in a position potentially to control its movement and to coerce all the governments who depend on that oil. Americans naturally do not suspect their own motives but others do. The reaction of the Russians, the Germans, and the French in the months leading up to the war suggests that none of them wished to give Americans the power which [former National Security Adviser Zbigniew] Brzezinski had feared was the goal of the Soviets."
Apologists for the war point out lamely that the United States imports only a small fraction of its oil from Iraq, but what matters, rather obviously, is not Iraq's current exports but its reserves.
Before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, media mogul Rupert Murdoch said, "The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil." In the twenty-first century's version of the "Great Game" of nineteenth century imperialism, the Bush administration made a colossal gamble that Iraq could become a kind of West Germany or South Korea on the Persian Gulf – a federal republic with a robust, oil-exporting economy, a rising standard of living, and a set of U.S. bases that would guarantee lasting American domination of the most resource-strategic region on the planet. The political half of that gamble has already been lost, but the Bush administration has proven adamantly unwilling to accept the loss of the economic half, the oil half, without a desperate fight. Perhaps the five super-bases that the U.S. has been constructing in Iraq for as many as 20,000 troops each, plus the ill-built super-embassy (the largest on the planet) it has been constructing inside the Green Zone, will suffice to maintain American control over the oil reserves, even in defiance of international law and the officially stated wishes of the Iraqi people – but perhaps not.
Blackwater and the Sovereignty Showdown
In any case, a kind of slow-motion showdown may lie not so far ahead; and, during the past weeks, we may have been given a clue as to how it could unfold. Recall that after the gunning down of at least 17 Iraqis in a Baghdad square, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki demanded that the State Department dismiss and punish the trigger-happy private security firm, Blackwater USA, which was responsible for the safety of American diplomatic personnel in Iraq. He further demanded that the immunity former occupation head L. Paul Bremer III had granted, in 2004, to all such private security firms be revoked. Startled, the Bush administration briefly grounded its diplomatic operations, then defiantly resumed them – with security still provided by Blackwater. Within days, though, Bush found himself face-to-face in New York with Maliki for discussions whose topic National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley revealingly named as "Iraqi sovereignty." Who would blink first?
We're still waiting to see, but in the wake of an Iraqi investigation ended with a demand for $8 million compensation for each of the 17 murdered Baghdadis, Blackwater is reportedly "on its way out" of security responsibility in Iraq, probably by the six-month deadline that Maliki has demanded. Despite its disgrace, the well-connected private security company continues to win lucrative State Department security contracts. Blackwater expert Jeremy Scahill told Bill Moyers that losing the Iraq gig would only slightly affect Blackwater's bottom line, but could grievously inconvenience U.S. diplomatic operations in Iraq. In forcing such a crisis on the State Department, the Maliki government, whose powerlessness has been an assumption unchallenged from left or right (in or out of Iraq), suddenly looks a good deal stronger.
But oil matters more to Washington than Blackwater does. In September, when the effort to enact U.S.-favored oil legislation – a much-announced "benchmark" of both the White House and Congress – collapsed in Iraq's legislature, the coup de grace seemed to be delivered by a wildcat agreement between the Kurdistan Regional Government and Hunt Oil of Dallas, Texas, headed by Ray L. Hunt, a longtime Bush ally and a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. This agreement, undertaken against the stated wishes of the central government, provides for the separate development of Kurdistan's oil resources and puts the Kurds in blatant, preemptive violation of the pending legislation. It makes, in fact, such a mockery of that legislation that the prospect of its passage before the Development Fund mandate expires is now vanishingly small.
Endgame for Iraqi Oil?
If the mandate expires and the law is not passed, then what? Then others in Iraq may well seek to follow the Kurdish example and cut comparable deals with whomever they wish. The central government, even if it has lost effective control of the Kurdish north and the Sunni west, could well ratify resource-separatism by contracting for the development of the oil resources in the territory generally remaining under its control. Thus, a new, Iran-allied, oil-rich, nine-province Shi'ite Iraq could match Kurdistan's deal with one of its own, perhaps even with ready-and-willing China. Will any combination of American military and diplomatic pressure suffice to stop such an untoward outcome?
Clearly, some in Washington still think so. Shortly before the collapse of the Iraqi oil legislation effort, Bush's Commerce Department began quietly advertising for an Arabic-speaking legal advisor to help it in "providing technical assistance to Iraq to create a legal and tax environment conducive to domestic and foreign investment in Iraq's key economic sectors, starting with the mineral resources sector." (Read: starting with oil.) As it happens, the job description overlaps heavily with that of the Development Fund for Iraq's existing International Advisory and Monitoring Board, whose responsibility, according to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1483, has been to see to it "that all export sales of petroleum, petroleum products, and natural gas from Iraq…. shall be made consistent with prevailing international marketing best practices." Is the Commerce Department already planning for the demise of this board? Like the super-embassy and the super-bases, this bit of Commerce Department staffing-up bespeaks the urge to continue an invasive American presence in Iraq, including Iraq's energy sector, long after December 31, 2008.
But if the occupation is shut down legally after that date and if Iraqi control over Iraqi oil reverts – legally, at least – to something close to pre-war status, that Commerce Department expert may find him or herself playing a less-than-major role in Baghdad. Instead, expect a new role for Iraq's hitherto excluded pool of domestic expertise. The Iraq National Oil Company began operations back in 1961; its legacy includes a skilled work force of trained oil workers. Notable, in fact, among those opposed to the failed oil legislation is the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions. Its members object to provisions in the legislation that permit the hiring of foreign oil workers rather than Iraqis and – in classic Bush Administration fashion – exclude the union from any participation in contract negotiations. The Federation's protests have attracted a letter of support signed by six Nobel Peace Prize laureates.
Even with Iraqi expertise duly factored in, oil remains a complicated business, and foreign expertise and capital will remain indispensable in Iraq. Still, for the Shi'ite-dominated central government, the most trusted foreign supplier of supplementary expertise, manpower, and even capital would seem to be Iran. For now, the United States is paying many of the salaries in Baghdad; but Iran's president, predicting an American withdrawal, has lately declared his readiness to "fill the [regional power] gap, with the help of neighbors and regional friends like Saudi Arabia, and with the help of the Iraqi nation." This invitation to regional collaboration will surely strike the less populous, militarily more vulnerable Saudis as disingenuous in the extreme, but Iran may be hard to stop. As former ambassador Peter Galbraith has explained: "Since 2005, Iraq's Shi'ite-led government has concluded numerous economic, political, and military agreements with Iran. The most important would link the two countries' strategic oil reserves by building a pipeline from southern Iraq to Iran, while another commits Iran to providing extensive military assistance to the Iraq government." On Oct. 17, the Maliki regime flexed its supposedly non-existent muscle yet again by awarding $1.1 billion in contracts to Iran and China to build enormous power plants in Baghdad's Shi'ite Sadr City and between the two Shi'ite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.
The prospect that, in the endgame for Iraqi oil, the victor might be Shi'ite Iran (and indirectly Communist China) may help explain recent American calls for the replacement of the devoutly Shi'ite Prime Minister Maliki. Yet, even if American pressure leads to Maliki's ouster, the Iraqi parliament cannot be ousted with him. The prime minister's announcement that the next renewal of the multi-force mandate would be the last came, in fact, in response to a binding resolution in parliament that the next renewal, unlike previous ones, may not be at the request of the prime minister alone, but only with the advice and consent of parliament. It has voted once already, in a non-binding resolution, to require the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal.
Fragile as it is, the government of Iraq enjoys international legal recognition, and the underestimated Maliki is evidently not without resources when it comes to asserting Iraqi sovereignty over American autonomy within Iraq's borders. In "Blackwatergate," he found a remarkable pressure point, declaring that no new law would be passed in Iraq until the Blackwater matter was resolved to his satisfaction. Nor was Maliki necessarily whistling in the dark when he warned his American critics, "We can find friends elsewhere."
The expiration date that Iraq has now set for the operation of a multinational force on its territory coincides almost exactly with the end of the Bush administration. As that date nears, the endgame question may become: How far can the administration go in repudiating its own erstwhile agenda and returning Iraq to its pre-war status – that is, to U.S.-backed Sunni domination of Iraqi domestic politics. That would, of course, result in armed Iraqi hostility to the administration's enemy of enemies in the region, Iran, and a resigned return to collaboration with the Saudi-dominated Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in the management of the world oil market, all under a largely offshore U.S. military umbrella. Will the fallback dream now be the one the President's father entertained after Gulf War I – the creation in Baghdad of a kinder, gentler Saddam Hussein with whom, to use the classic phrase, the U.S. can "do business"?
Time will tell, but not too much time. The eerie silence of the Bush administration about oil grows all the more deafening as the price of crude climbs toward $100 a barrel. Blood for oil may never have been a good deal, but so much blood for no oil at all may seem a far worse one.
Jack Miles is senior fellow for religious affairs with the Pacific Council on International Policy and professor of English and religious studies at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning God: A Biography, among other works.
Copyright 2007 Jack Miles
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Blunderov
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Re:Endgame for Iraqi Oil?
« Reply #1 on: 2007-10-31 14:36:15 » |
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[Blunderov] Read 'em and weep. As comprehensive, and damning, a summary as I have seen so far.
http://www.countercurrents.org/scb.htm
Why Did We Invade Iraq Anyway?
By Michael Schwartz
31 October, 2007
Tomdispatch.com
Lately, even Democratic candidates for president have been weighing in on why the U.S. must maintain a long-term, powerful military presence in Iraq. Hillary Clinton, for example, used phrases like protecting our "vital national security interests" and preventing Iraq from becoming a "petri dish for insurgents," in a major policy statement. Barack Obama, in his most important speech on the subject, talked of "maintaining our influence" and allowing "our troops to strike directly at al Qaeda." These arguments, like the constantly migrating justifications for invading Iraq, serially articulated by the Bush administration, manage to be vaguely plausible (with an emphasis on the "vaguely") and also strangely inconsistent (with an emphasis on the "inconsistent").
That these justifications for invading, or remaining, are unsatisfying is hardly surprising, given the reluctance of American politicians to mention the approximately $10-$30 trillion of oil lurking just beneath the surface of the Iraq "debate" -- and not much further beneath the surface of Iraqi soil. Obama, for example, did not mention oil at all in his speech, while Clinton mentioned it twice in passing. President Bush and his top officials and spokespeople have been just as reticent on the subject.
Why then did the U.S. invade Iraq? Why is occupying Iraq so "vital" to those "national security interests" of ours? None of this makes sense if you don't have the patience to drill a little beneath the surface – and into the past; if you don't take into account that, as former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz once put it, Iraq "floats on a sea of oil"; and if you don't consider the decades-long U.S. campaign to control, in some fashion, Middle East energy reservoirs. If not, then you can't understand the incredible tenaciousness with which George W. Bush and his top officials have pursued their Iraqi dreams or why -- now that those dreams are clearly so many nightmares -- even the Democrats can't give up the ghost.
The Rise of OPEC
The United States viewed Middle Eastern oil as a precious prize long before the Iraq war. During World War II, that interest had already sprung to life: When British officials declared Middle Eastern oil "a vital prize for any power interested in world influence or domination," American officials agreed, calling it "a stupendous source of strategic power and one of the greatest material prizes in world history."
This led to a scramble for access during which the United States established itself as the preeminent power of the future. Crucially, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt successfully negotiated an "oil for protection" agreement with King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. That was 1945. From then on, the U.S. found itself actively (if often secretly) engaged in the region. American agents were deeply involved in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government in 1953 (to reverse the nationalization of Iran's oil fields), as well as in the fateful establishment of a Baathist Party dictatorship in Iraq in the early 1960s (to prevent the ascendancy of leftists who, it was feared, would align the country with the Soviet Union, putting the country's oil in hock to the Soviet bloc).
U.S. influence in the Middle East began to wane in the 1970s, when the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was first formed to coordinate the production and pricing of oil on a worldwide basis. OPEC's power was consolidated as various countries created their own oil companies, nationalized their oil holdings, and wrested decision-making away from the "Seven Sisters," the Western oil giants -- among them Shell, Texaco, and Standard Oil of New Jersey -- that had previously dominated exploration, extraction, and sales of black gold.
With all the key oil exporters on board, OPEC began deciding just how much oil would be extracted and sold onto international markets. Once the group established that all members would follow collective decisions -- because even a single major dissenter might fatally undermine the ability to turn the energy "spigot" on or off -- it could use the threat of production restrictions, or the promise of expansion, to bargain with its most powerful trading partners. In effect, a new power bloc had emerged on the international scene that could -- in some circumstances -- exact tangible concessions even from the United States and the Soviet Union, the two superpowers of the time.
Though the United States was largely self-sufficient in oil when OPEC was first formed, the American economy was still dependent on trading partners, particularly Japan and Europe, which themselves were dependent on Middle Eastern oil. The oil crises of the early 1970s, including the sometimes endless gas lines in the U.S., demonstrated OPEC's potential.
It was in this context that the American alliance with the Saudi royal family first became so crucial. With the largest petroleum reserves on the planet and the largest production capacity among OPEC members, Saudi Arabia was usually able to shape the cartel's policies to conform to its wishes. In response to this simple but essential fact, successive American presidents strengthened the Rooseveltian alliance, deepening economic and military relationships between the two countries. The Saudis, in turn, could normally be depended upon to use their leverage within OPEC to fit the group's actions into the broader aims of U.S. policy. In other words, Washington gained favorable OPEC policies mainly by arming, and propping up a Saudi regime that was chronically fragile.
Backed by a tiny elite that used immense oil revenues to service its own narrow interests, the Saudi royals subjected their impoverished population to an oppressively authoritarian regime. Not surprisingly, then, the "alliance" required increasing infusions of American military aid as well political support in situations that were often uncomfortable, sometimes untenable, for Washington. On its part, in an era of growing nationalism, the Saudis found overt pro-American policies difficult to sustain, given the pressures and proclivities of its OPEC partners and its own population.
The Neocons Seize the Unipolar Moment
The key year in the Middle East would be 1979, when Iranians, who had lost their government to an American and British inspired coup in 1953, poured into the streets. The American-backed Shah's brutal regime fell to a popular revolution; American diplomats were taken hostage by Iranian student demonstrators; and Ayatollah Khomeini and the mullahs took power. The Iranian revolution added a combustible new element to an already complex and unstable equation. It was, in a sense, the match lit near the pipeline. A regime hostile to Washington, and not particularly amenable to Saudi pressure, had now become an active member of OPEC, aspiring to use the organization to challenge American economic hegemony.
It was at this moment, not surprisingly, that the militarization of American Middle Eastern policy came out of the shadows. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter -- before his Habitat for Humanity days -- enunciated what would become known as the "Carter Doctrine": that Persian Gulf oil was "vital" to American national interests and that the U.S. would use "any means necessary, including military force" to sustain access to it. To assure that "access," he announced the creation of a Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, a new military command structure that would be able to deliver personnel from all the armed services, together with state-of-the-art military equipment, to any location in the Middle East at top speed.
Nurtured and expanded by succeeding presidents, this evolved into the United States Central Command (Centcom), which ended up in charge of all U.S. military activity in the Middle East and surrounding regions. It would prove the military foundation for the Gulf War of 1990, which rolled back Saddam Hussein's occupation of Kuwait, and therefore prevented him from gaining control of that country's oil reserves. Though it was not emphasized at the time, that first Gulf War was a crystalline application of the Carter Doctrine -- that "any means necessary, including military force," should be used to guarantee American access to Middle Eastern oil. That war, in turn, convinced a shaky Saudi royal family -- that saw Iraqi troops reach its border – to accept an ongoing American military presence within the country, a development meant to facilitate future applications of the Carter Doctrine, but which would have devastating unintended consequences.
The peaceful disintegration of the Soviet Union at almost the same moment seemed to signal that Washington now had uncontested global military supremacy, triggering a debate within American policy circles about how to utilize and preserve what Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer first called the "unipolar moment." Future members of the administration of Bush the younger were especially fierce advocates for making aggressive use of this military superiority to enhance U.S. power everywhere, but especially in the Middle East. They eventually formed a policy advocacy group, The Project for a New American Century, to develop, and lobby for, their views. The group, whose membership included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and dozens of other key individuals who would hold important positions in the executive branch after George W. Bush took office, wrote an open letter to President Clinton in 1998 urging him to turn his "administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power." They cited both the Iraqi dictator's military belligerence and his control over "a significant portion of the world's supply of oil."
Two years later, the group issued a ringing policy statement that would be the guiding text for the new administration. Entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses, it advocated what would become known as a Rumsfeldian-style transformation of the Pentagon. U.S. military preeminence was to be utilized to "secure and expand'' American influence globally and possibly, in the cases of North Korea and Iraq, used "to remove these regimes from power and conduct post-combat stability operations." (The document even commented on the problem of defusing American domestic resistance to such an aggressive stance, noting ominously that public approval could not be obtained without "some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor.")
Saddam's Iraq and Oil on the Brain
The second Bush administration ascended to the presidency just as American influence in the Middle East looked to be on the decline. Despite victory in the first Gulf War and the fall of the Soviet Union, American influence over OPEC and oil policies seemed under threat. That sucking sound everyone suddenly heard was a tremendous increase in the global demand for oil. With fears rising that, in the very near future, such demand could put a strain on OPEC's resources, member states began negotiating ever more vigorously for a range of concessions and expanded political power in exchange for expanded energy production. By this time, of course, the United States had joined the ranks of the energy deficient and dependent, as imported oil surged past the 50% mark.
In the meantime, key ally Saudi Arabia was further weakened by the rise of al-Qaeda, which took as its main goal the overthrow of the royal family, and its key target -- think of those unintended consequences -- the American troops triumphantly stationed at permanent bases in the country after Gulf War I. They seemed to confirm the accusations of Osama bin Laden and other Saudi dissidents that the royal family had indeed become little but a tool of American imperialism. This, in turn, made the Saudi royals increasingly reluctant hosts for those troops and ever more hesitant supporters of pro-American policies within OPEC.
The situation was complicated further by what was obvious to any observer: The potential future leverage that both Iraq and Iran might wield in OPEC. With the second and third largest oil reserves on the planet -- Iran also had the second largest reserves of natural gas -- their influence seemed bound to rise. Iraq's, in particular, would be amplified substantially as soon as Saddam Hussein's regime was freed from severe limitations imposed by post-war UN sanctions, which prevented it from either developing new oil fields or upgrading its deteriorating energy infrastructure. Though the leaders of the two countries were enemies, having fought a bitter war in the 1980s, they could agree, at least, on energy policies aimed at thwarting American desires or demands -- a position only strengthened in 1998 when the citizens of Venezuela, the most important OPEC member outside the Middle East, elected the decidedly anti-American Hugo Chavez as president. In other words, in January 2001, the new administration in Washington could look forward to negotiating oil policy not only with a reluctant Saudi royal family, but also a coterie of hostile powers in a strengthened OPEC.
It is hardly surprising, then, that the new administration, bent on unipolarity anyway and dreaming of a global Pax Americana, wasted no time implementing the aggressive policies advocated in the PNAC manifesto. According to then Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill in his memoir The Price of Loyalty, Iraq was much on the mind of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the first meeting of the National Security Council on January 30, 2001, seven months before the 9/11 attacks. At that meeting, Rumsfeld argued that the Clinton administration's Middle Eastern focus on Israel-Palestine should be unceremoniously dumped. "[W]hat we really want to think about," he reportedly said, "is going after Saddam." Regime change in Iraq, he argued, would allow the U.S. to enhance the situation of the pro-American Kurds, redirect Iraq toward a market economy, and guarantee a favorable oil policy.
The adjudication of Rumsfeld's recommendation was shuffled off to the mysterious National Energy Policy Development Group that Vice President Cheney convened as soon as Bush took occupancy of the Oval Office. This task force quickly decided that enhanced American influence over the production and sale of Middle East oil should be "a primary focus of U.S. international energy policy," relegating both the development of alternative energy sources and domestic energy conservation measures to secondary, or even tertiary, status. A central goal of the administration's Middle East focus would be to convince, or coerce, states in that region "to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment"; that is, to replace government control of the oil spigot -- the linchpin of OPEC power -- with decision-making by multinational oil companies headquartered in the West and responsive to U.S. policy needs. If such a program could be extended even to a substantial minority of Middle Eastern oil fields, it would prevent coordinated decision-making and constrain, if not break, the power of OPEC. This was a theoretically enticing way to staunch the loss of American power in the region and truly turn the Bush years into a new unipolar moment in the Middle East.
Having determined its goals, the Task Force began laying out a more detailed strategy. According to Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, the most significant innovation was to be a close collaboration between Cheney's energy crew and the National Security Council (NSC). The NSC evidently agreed "to cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the 'melding' of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy: 'the review of operational policies towards rogue states,' such as Iraq, and 'actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.'"
Though all these deliberations were secret, enough of what was going on has emerged in these last years to demonstrate that the "melding" process was successful. By March of 2001, according to O'Neill, who was a member of both the NSC and the task force:
"Actual plans.... were already being discussed to take over Iraq and occupy it -- complete with disposition of oil fields, peacekeeping forces, and war crimes tribunals -- carrying forward an unspoken doctrine of preemptive war."
O'Neill also reported that, by the time of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the plan for conquering Iraq had been developed and that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld indeed urged just such an attack at the first National Security Council meeting convened to discuss how the U.S. should react to the disaster. After several days of discussion, an attack on Iraq was postponed until after al-Qaeda had been wiped out and the Taliban driven from power in Afghanistan. It took only until January 2002 -- three months of largely successful fighting in Afghanistan -- before the "administration focus was returning to Iraq." It wasn't until November 2002, though, that O'Neill heard the President himself endorse the invasion plans, which took place the following March 20th.
The Logic of Regime Change
With this background, it's easier to understand the recent brief, but highly significant, flurry of controversy over a single sentence in The Age of Turbulence, the bestselling, over-500-page memoir by longtime Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. He wrote simply, as if this were utterly self-evident: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." As the first major government official to make such a statement, he was asked repeatedly to explain his thinking, particularly since his comment was immediately repudiated by various government officials, including White House spokesman Tony Fratto, who labeled it "Georgetown cocktail party analysis."
His subsequent comments elaborated on a brief explanation in the memoir: "It should be obvious that as long as the United States is beholden to potentially unfriendly sources of oil and gas, we are vulnerable to economic crises over which we have little control." Since former ally Saddam Hussein was, by then, unremittingly unfriendly, Greenspan felt that (as he told Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward) "taking Saddam out was essential" in order to make "certain that the existing system [of oil markets] continues to work." In an interview at Democracy Now! he elaborated on this point, explaining that his support for ousting Hussein had "nothing to do with the weapons of mass destruction," but rather with the economic "threat he could create to the rest of the world" through his control over key oil reserves in the Persian Gulf region.
Greenspan's argument echoes the logic expressed by the Project for a New American Century and other advocates of aggressive military solutions to the threat of OPEC power. He was concerned that Saddam Hussein, once an ally, but by then a sworn enemy of U.S. interests in the Middle East, would control key oil flows. That, in turn, might allow him to exercise economic, and so political, leverage over the United States and its allies.
The former Fed chief then elaborated further, arguing that the threat of Saddam could be eliminated "by one means or another" -- either by "getting him out of office or getting him out of the control position he was in." Replacing Saddam with a friendly, pro-American government seemed, of course, like such a no-brainer. Why have a guy like that in a "control position" over oil, after all? (And think of the possibility of taking those embarrassing troops out of Saudi Arabia and stationing them at large permanent bases in nearby, well-situated, oil-rich Iraq.) Better by far, as the Cheney Energy Task put it, "to open up areas of [Iraq's] energy sectors to foreign investment." Like the Task Force members, Greenspan believed that removing oil -- not just from Saddam's control, but from the control of any Iraqi government -- would permanently remove the threat that it or a broken OPEC could continue to wield economic leverage over the United States.
Revealingly enough, Greenspan saw the invasion of Iraq as a generically conservative action -- a return, if anything, to the status quo ante that would preserve unencumbered American access to sufficient Middle Eastern oil. With whole new energy-devouring economies coming on line in Asia, continued American access seemed to require stripping key Middle Eastern nations of the economic and political power that scarcity had already begun to confer. In other words, Greenspan's conservative urge implied exactly the revolutionary changes in the political and economic equation that the Bush administration would begin to test out so disastrously in Iraq in March 2003. It's also worth remembering that Iraq was only considered a first pit stop, an easy mark for invasion and occupation. PNAC-nurtured eyes were already turning to Iran by then as indicated by the classic prewar neocon quip, "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran."
And beyond this set of radical changes in the Middle East lay another set for the rest of the world. In the twenty-first century, expanding energy demand will, sooner or later (probably sooner), outdistance production. The goal of unfettered American access to sufficient Middle Eastern oil would, if achieved and sustained, deprive other countries of sufficient oil, or require them to satisfy U.S. demands in order to access it. In other words, Greenspan's conservative effort to preserve American access implied a dramatic increase in American leverage over all countries that depended on oil for their economic welfare; that is, a radical transformation of the global balance of power.
Notice that these ambitions, and the actions taken to implement them, rested on a vision of an imperial America that should, could, and would play a uniquely dominant, problem-solving role in world affairs. All other countries would, of course, continue to be "vulnerable to economic crises" over which they would have "little control." Only the United States had the essential right to threaten, or simply apply, overwhelming military power to the "problem" of energy; only it had the right to subdue any country that attempted to create -- or exploit -- an energy crisis, or that simply had the potential and animus to do so.
None of this was lost on the unipolar-minded officials who made the decision to invade Iraq -- and were more ready than any previous administration to spell out, shock-and-awe style, a new stronger version of the Carter Doctrine for the planet. According to Treasury Secretary O'Neill, Rumsfeld offered a vision of the grandiosity of these goals at the first Bush administration National Security Council meeting:
"Imagine what the region would look like without Saddam and with a regime that's aligned with U.S. interests. It would change everything in the region and beyond."
An even more grandiose vision was offered to the New York Times by presidential speech writer David Frum a few days later:
"An American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and the replacement of the radical Baathist dictatorship with a new government more closely aligned with the United States, would put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe even the Romans."
As worldwide demand for hydrocarbons soared, the United States was left with three policy choices: It could try to combine alternative energy sources with rigorous conservation to reduce or eliminate a significant portion of energy imports; it could accept the leverage conferred on OPEC by the energy crunch and attempt to negotiate for an adequate share of what might soon enough become an inadequate supply; or it could use its military power in an effort to coerce Middle East suppliers into satisfying American requirements at the expense of everyone else. Beginning with Jimmy Carter, five U.S. presidents chose the coercive strategy, with George W. Bush finally deciding that violent, preemptive regime change was needed to make it work. The other options remain unexplored.
[Note: This commentary -- and most of the useful work on the role of oil in Middle East and world politics -- rests on the remarkable evidential and analytic foundation provided by Michael Klare's indispensable book, Blood and Oil,The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum. Readers who seek a full understanding of these issues should start with that text.]
Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on American business and government dynamics. His books include Radical Protest and Social Structure and Social Policy and The Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo). His work on Iraq has appeared on numerous Internet sites, including Tomdispatch, Asia Times, Mother Jones, and ZNET; and in print in Cities, Contexts, Against the Current, and Z Magazine. His email address is Ms42@optonline.net.
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Blunderov
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Re:Endgame for Iraqi Oil?
« Reply #2 on: 2008-06-25 03:29:59 » |
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http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/24/beckel-oil-iraq/
Fox Analyst: Iraqis ‘Owe Us’ 100-Year Leases On Their Oil, ‘We Ought To Take It’»
Last week, the New York Times reported that four Western oil companies — Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, and BP — are in the final stages of negotiating no-bid oil contracts “to service Iraq’s largest fields.” These contracts would run for one to two years, and give the oil companies a “foothold” in bidding on future contracts.
But one-to-two year service contracts aren’t enough for analyst Bob Beckel, a Fox News liberal. On the O’Reilly Factor last night, Beckel said that “what we ought to do is get Iraq to give us a 100 year lease” for exploring their oil fields:
BECKEL: OK, now, what we ought to do is get Iraq to give us 100 year lease on their unexplored — they’re the second largest source of oil in the world. Known reserves. Give the United States oil companies 100 year leases. Let us explore. We can get it quickly. It’s through sand. It’s the fastest way to get oil.
Beckel justified giving U.S. oil companies a century of business in Iraq by claiming, “The Iraqis owe us, Bill. We ought to take it.” Watch it:
As the New York Times notes, such no-bid contracts play into the suspicions of those who believe that the U.S. invaded Iraq “precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract.” It’s uncertain what role the U.S. played in negotiating the four no-bid contracts.
If U.S. companies were given 100-year leases like Beckel wants, more people would likely agree with former Centcom Commander John Abizaid’s 2007 claim about the war in Iraq: “Of course it’s about oil.”
– Pat Garofalo
"What, me worry?
http://www.topix.net/world/iraq/2008/06/bush-to-leave-iraqi-oil-deals-alone
Iraq
9 hrs ago
Bush To Leave Iraqi Oil Deals Alone
The Bush administration indicated Tuesday that it had no plans to interfere with negotiations between Iraq and several Western oil giants to boost crude production in that country, despite concerns by some Democrats that the deal could inflame anti-U.S. sentiments.
"Iraq is a sovereign country*, and it can make decisions based on how it feels that it wants to move forward in its development of its oil resources," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.
"And if that means that our companies here in the United States can compete and win business, then that's for them and the Iraqis to decide," Perino added. "But I don't think the federal government of the United States needs to get involved."
*[Bl.] This is big news. Can't think why it hasn't been more widely reported.
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Re:Endgame for Iraqi Oil?
« Reply #3 on: 2008-07-14 06:27:12 » |
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[Blunderov] The rape of Iraq (ctd.) There is a neologism abroad. The formerly incomplete notion of 'sovereignty' has been expanded, courtesy of Bush and the Coneheads, to include such concepts as, for instance, 'complete subjugation', 'with a gun held to the head', 'Morton's Fork' and 'highway robbery' to name but a few. Such munificence. Certainly American oil companies are much the richer for these semantic enhancements to the English language even if nobody else is. Especially not American taxpayers who not only have to stand the expense of the whole WOT fiasco but also now have to hand over all their few remaining monies to the profligate bankers of the oligarchy and their piggy little friends in high places.
Quote from: Blunderov on 2008-06-25 03:29:59
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20260.htm
It's the Oil, stupid!
By Noam Chomsky
08/07/08 "Khaleej Times" --- - The deal just taking shape between Iraq's Oil Ministry and four Western oil companies raises critical questions about the nature of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq — questions that should certainly be addressed by presidential candidates and seriously discussed in the United States, and of course in occupied Iraq, where it appears that the population has little if any role in determining the future of their country.
Negotiations are under way for Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners decades ago in the Iraq Petroleum Company, now joined by Chevron and other smaller oil companies — to renew the oil concession they lost to nationalisation during the years when the oil producers took over their own resources. The no-bid contracts, apparently written by the oil corporations with the help of U.S. officials, prevailed over offers from more than 40 other companies, including companies in China, India and Russia.
"There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract," Andrew E. Kramer wrote in The New York Times.
Kramer's reference to "suspicion" is an understatement. Furthermore, it is highly likely that the military occupation has taken the initiative in restoring the hated Iraq Petroleum Company, which, as Seamus Milne writes in the London Guardian, was imposed under British rule to "dine off Iraq's wealth in a famously exploitative deal."
Later reports speak of delays in the bidding. Much is happening in secrecy, and it would be no surprise if new scandals emerge.
The demand could hardly be more intense. Iraq contains perhaps the second largest oil reserves in the world, which are, furthermore, very cheap to extract: no permafrost or tar sands or deep sea drilling. For US planners, it is imperative that Iraq remain under U.S. control, to the extent possible, as an obedient client state that will also house major U.S. military bases, right at the heart of the world's major energy reserves.
That these were the primary goals of the invasion was always clear enough through the haze of successive pretexts: weapons of mass destruction, Saddam's links with Al-Qaeda, democracy promotion and the war against terrorism, which, as predicted, sharply increased as a result of the invasion.
Last November, the guiding concerns were made explicit when President Bush and Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki signed a "Declaration of Principles," ignoring the U.S. Congress and Iraqi parliament, and the populations of the two countries.
The Declaration left open the possibility of an indefinite long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq that would presumably include the huge air bases now being built around the country, and the "embassy" in Baghdad, a city within a city, unlike any embassy in the world. These are not being constructed to be abandoned.
The Declaration also had a remarkably brazen statement about exploiting the resources of Iraq. It said that the economy of Iraq, which means its oil resources, must be open to foreign investment, "especially American investments." That comes close to a pronouncement that we invaded you so that we can control your country and have privileged access to your resources.
The seriousness of this commitment was underscored in January, when President Bush issued a "signing statement" declaring that he would reject any congressional legislation that restricted funding "to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq" or "to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq."
Extensive resort to "signing statements" to expand executive power is yet another Bush innovation, condemned by the American Bar Association as "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers." To no avail.
Not surprisingly, the Declaration aroused immediate objections in Iraq, among others from Iraqi unions, which survive even under the harsh anti-labour laws that Saddam instituted and the occupation preserves.
In Washington propaganda, the spoiler to US domination in Iraq is Iran. U.S. problems in Iraq are blamed on Iran. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sees a simple solution: "foreign forces" and "foreign arms" should be withdrawn from Iraq — Iran's, not ours.
The confrontation over Iran's nuclear programme heightens the tensions. The Bush administration's "regime change" policy toward Iran comes with ominous threats of force (there Bush is joined by both US presidential candidates). The policy also is reported to include terrorism within Iran — again legitimate, for the world rulers. A majority of the American people favours diplomacy and oppose the use of force. But public opinion is largely irrelevant to policy formation, not just in this case.
An irony is that Iraq is turning into a US-Iranian condominium. The Maliki government is the sector of Iraqi society most supported by Iran. The so-called Iraqi army — just another militia — is largely based on the Badr brigade, which was trained in Iran, and fought on the Iranian side during the Iran-Iraq war.
Nir Rosen, one of the most astute and knowledgeable correspondents in the region, observes that the main target of the US-Maliki military operations, Moktada Al Sadr, is disliked by Iran as well: He's independent and has popular support, therefore dangerous.
Iran "clearly supported Prime Minister Maliki and the Iraqi government against what they described as 'illegal armed groups' (of Moktada's Mahdi army) in the recent conflict in Basra," Rosen writes, "which is not surprising given that their main proxy in Iraq, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council dominates the Iraqi state and is Maliki's main backer."
"There is no proxy war in Iraq," Rosen concludes, "because the U.S. and Iran share the same proxy."
Teheran is presumably pleased to see the United States institute and sustain a government in Iraq that's receptive to their influence. For the Iraqi people, however, that government continues to be a disaster, very likely with worse to come.
In Foreign Affairs, Steven Simon points out that current US counterinsurgency strategy is "stoking the three forces that have traditionally threatened the stability of Middle Eastern states: tribalism, warlordism and sectarianism." The outcome might be "a strong, centralised state ruled by a military junta that would resemble" Saddam's regime.
If Washington achieves its goals, then its actions are justified. Reactions are quite different when Vladimir Putin succeeds in pacifying Chechnya, to an extent well beyond what Gen. David Petraeus has achieved in Iraq. But that is THEM, and this is US. Criteria are therefore entirely different.
In the US, the Democrats are silenced now because of the supposed success of the US military surge in Iraq. Their silence reflects the fact that there are no principled criticisms of the war. In this way of regarding the world, if you're achieving your goals, the war and occupation are justified. The sweetheart oil deals come with the territory.
In fact, the whole invasion is a war crime — indeed the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes in that it encompasses all the evil that follows, in the terms of the Nuremberg judgment. This is among the topics that can't be discussed, in the presidential campaign or elsewhere. Why are we in Iraq? What do we owe Iraqis for destroying their country? The majority of the American people favour US withdrawal from Iraq. Do their voices matter?
Noam Chomsky's writings on linguistics and politics have just been collected in "The Essential Noam Chomsky," edited by Anthony Arnove, from the New Press. Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.
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Fritz
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Re:Endgame for Iraqi Oil?
« Reply #4 on: 2008-07-14 22:58:47 » |
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Great posts Blunderov, thank you .... it is all really amassing to a grim looking pile.
Question: Is Nigeria shaping up to be the slight of hand to distract the world view from Iraq. Reading up leads me to conclude that it is actually significant to the global Oil production and thereby worthing of US/UK axis of 'Good' invasion formula. Maybe a warm up / practice for Iran. Is the west still playing with the government there ?
Any thoughts from your 'AU' continental perspective Blunderov ?
Fritz
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Re:Endgame for Iraqi Oil?
« Reply #5 on: 2008-07-15 02:36:11 » |
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Quote from: Fritz on 2008-07-14 22:58:47
<snip>
Question: Is Nigeria shaping up to be the slight of hand to distract the world view from Iraq. Reading up leads me to conclude that it is actually significant to the global Oil production and thereby worthing of US/UK axis of 'Good' invasion formula. Maybe a warm up / practice for Iran. Is the west still playing with the government there ?
Any thoughts from your 'AU' continental perspective Blunderov ?</snip>
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[Blunderov] <rant>I haven't been following the Nigeria story with much more interest than I invest in the rest of African politics which, sad to to say, is close to 0. I despair of Africa and its politics. As far as I can tell the continent has made no advances on its 'traditional' (a very sacred notion in Africa) political culture of primitive monarchical structures combined with savage tribal jingoism. It has become very clear to me why Africa is so justifiably referred to as The Dark Continent. The Enlightenment has never reached this far. I don't believe it ever will.
There have been some brief moments of hope from time to time. Mandela was one but the recent xenophobic violence, South Africa's Altamont, has made it abundantly evident that that little honeymoon is SO over. Irony piles up on irony. Having made unctuous pronouncements on the greed which underlies the xenophobia, many of those self same politicians have now returned from the streets only to savage each other through parliament, the courts and the boardrooms - not about policy but about which cronies get to have the best plums.
Africa is a complete crock. Outrageously bad governance is par for the course. Corruption is completely rampant. Violent crime the primary industry. It has a lot of resources though. Consequently I expect matters to get much worse than they already are - if that is possible.
Bitter? You betcha.
This is what happened to a chess colleague of mine last week. (Of course this sort of incident is not confined to my part of the world. It is just far, far more common here than anywhere else on earth.)
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=15&art_id=vn20080710142252557C741202
Man dies in battle with robbers
July 10 2008 at 05:35PM
By Beauregard Tromp and Gill Gifford
Pia Bowman had just closed the gate to her Glenadrienne home and was busy deactivating the alarm when she heard the gunshots ring out... bang, bang, bang, bang!
Then she heard her husband Wim cry out that he had been shot.
The couple were returning from a dinner outing when the attack occurred at 8.30pm on Tuesday night.
Evidence at the scene indicated that Wim was able to fire at his attackers and was possibly even the first to shoot.
Unfortunately the 61-year-old stood little chance against his three assailants who were lurking in dark outside the house.
He died of a gun shot to the abdomen.
Wim's gun was found at the front door, facing his body.
Police recovered another firearm on the property, its serial number filed off.
It had been abandoned, presumably by the suspects, in the backyard near a neighbour's house which is situated behind on a pan handle.
According to Johannesburg metro police spokesperson Chief Superintendent Wayne Minnaar, a neighbour saw three suspicious-looking men approach the house shortly before the incident.
Another neighbour, Penny Steyn, said: "I heard about four or five very loud shots, then a pause, then four or five softer shots."
The couple had been victims of robberies a number of times before, with their cars being broken into.
Minnaar said metro police had received a call about the shooting at about 9pm on Tuesday night and had responded.
He had arrived on the scene soon after Bowman was declared dead.
"There appeared to have been some kind of shootout between Mr Bowman and the attackers because there were quite a few bullet holes in the yard and in a tree," he said.
Minaar added the assailants had possibly been disturbed while trying to break into the Bowman home when the couple arrived or else they had lain in wait, intent on hijacking them.
Steyn, who trains domestic workers in crime prevention and police officials in customer service, was on the scene on Wednesday night lending emotional support.
She said Pia Bowman had not stayed in the house, had not returned on Thursday morning and could not be reached.
Steyn said the security company ADT, which has worked extensively with her in the past, had indicated that they would step up security patrols in the suburb and would arrange trauma counselling for Pia.
Steyn, who said she herself felt very traumatised on Thursday morning, had spoken to other neighbours who all claimed to have heard the gunshots.
Parkview police spokesperson Captain Cynthia Magoai confirmed that a murder docket had been opened and the case was under investigation.
She said no arrests had yet been made.
[Bl.] En passant, the FIFA 2010 Soccer World Cup Tournament is scheduled to be held in South Africa*. It promises to be a feeding frenzy second only to the annual sardine run off the coast of Durban, where even the large pelagic predators come close into the shore to join in the carnage.
Please excuse me. I am overcome with nausea.
</rant>
*So far. Rumors abound that the privilege may be withdrawn anytime now. Good. Good.
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Hermit
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Re:Endgame for Iraqi Oil?
« Reply #6 on: 2008-07-15 12:03:31 » |
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Sorry about the friend.
A well balanced martian looking at the African story might describe it as follows:On the one hand, one should not discount the ability for tribal conflicts to turn bloody, and the story of African politics and conflicts is a story of internecine tribal warfare (e.g. Congo, Angola, Zimbabwe). On another hand, one should not discount the USA's capacity and commitment to destabilizing emergent socialist (reasonably close to "natural" order for many tribal environments) and islamic (proven highly effective at propagating in primitive societies) social orders (e.g. Ethiopia, Etruria, Sudan, Nigeria). As has been demonstrated throughout West Africa. There is no question but that this is in fact why Darfur is as bad as it is. On the third hand, there is also the repeatedly seen tragedy of the use of tribalism to destabilize situations and then hang the tools out to dry or indeed to turn actively against them (e.g. Afghanistan, Iran, Kurds, Angola, Georgia/Abkhazia and S Ossetia).
With a little mental effort to accommodate the potential of three arms, I surely couldn't disagree with him.
Kind Regards
Hermit
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Re:Endgame for Iraqi Oil?
« Reply #7 on: 2008-07-15 13:49:27 » |
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thank you for the reply gentlemen and the insight.
Blunderov ... I very sorry for the loss of your friend; the despair in your post is palpable and a reminder that I should count my blessings and be thankful for the space and time serendipity has landed me.
A conference in April, I attended on aboriginal reconciliation globally, was attended by a number of the African country's embassies, including a key note speech from the Canadian ambassador from South Africa. What struck me was the subsequent conversations I overhead over coffee, each discrediting one another. Politics really is a mugs game.
Your posts certainly underscore the worst of it.
Take care and keep safe.
Fritz
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Re:Endgame for Iraqi Oil?
« Reply #8 on: 2008-07-15 15:03:32 » |
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[Blunderov] Thanks to Hermit and Fritz for condolences and kind wishes. Not to mention perspective. I suppose my rage had the better of me for a while back there.
All pure Malthus, really. Too many people. Too little planet.
Best Regards.
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Re:Endgame for Iraqi Oil?
« Reply #9 on: 2008-07-30 03:29:15 » |
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AT LAST, SOME TRUTH ABOUT IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN
[ Here one of the world's great experts on conflict and The Afghan/akistan/India region delivers his verdict. Eric here concludes that as I stated here before even the invasion of Afghanistan was launched, the war was not about oil, but rather about the control of oil. A subtle but significant difference that ultimately makes no difference. Like the oil itself, the control is at best temporary and not worth a single of the vast numbers of deaths pursuit of it by the unscrupulous criminals in Washington and their allies and supporters has caused. ]
Source: Foreign Correspondent
Authors: Eric Margolis
Dated: 2008-07-23
After a sea of lies and a tsunami of propaganda, the ugly truth behind the Iraq and Afghanistan wars finally emerged into full view this week.
Four major western oil companies, Exxon, Mobil, Shell, BP and Total, are about to sign US-brokered no-bid contracts with the US-installed Baghdad regime to begin exploiting Iraq’s oil fields. Saddam Hussein had kicked these firms out three decades ago when he nationalized Iraq’s foreign-owned oil industry for the benefit of Iraq’s national development. The Baghdad regime is turning back the clock.
This agreement comes as talks are continuing between the Washington and its Baghdad client regime over future US basing rights in Iraq. After some face-saving Iraqi objections, it is expected that Baghdad will sign a compact with Washington giving US forces control of Iraq and its air space in a manner very similar to Great Britain’s colonial arrangement with Iraq.
Interestingly, the same oil companies that used to exploit Iraq when it was a British colony are now returning. As former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recently admitted, the Iraq war was all about oil. VP Dick Cheney stated in 2003 that the invasion of Iraq was about oil, and for the sake of Israel.
Meanwhile, according to Pakistani and Indian sources, Afghanistan just signed a major deal to launch a long-planned, 1680 km long pipeline project expected to cost $ 8 billion. If completed, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (TAPI) will export gas and, later, oil from the Caspian Basin to Pakistan’s coast where tankers will transport it to the west.
The Caspian Basin located under the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakkstan, holds an estimated 300 trillion cubic feet of gas and 100-200 billion barrels of oil. Securing the world’s last remaining known energy Eldorado is strategic priority for the western powers. China can only look on with envy.
But there are only two practical ways to get gas and oil out of land-locked Central Asia to the sea: through Iran, or through Afghanistan to Pakistan. For Washington, Iran is tabu. That leaves Pakistan, but to get there, the planned pipeline must cross western Afghanistan, including the cities of Herat and Kandahar.
In 1998, the Afghan anti-Communist movement Taliban and a western oil consortium led by the US firm Unocal signed a major pipeline deal. Unocal lavished money and attention on Taliban, flew a senior delegation to Texas, and also hired an minor Afghan official, one Hamid Karzai.
Enter Osama bin Laden. He advised the unworldly Taliban leaders to reject the US deal and got them to accept a better offer from an Argentine consortium, Bridas. Washington was furious and, according to some accounts, threatened Taliban with war.
In early 2001, six or seven months before 9/11, Washington made the decision to invade Afghanistan, overthrow Taliban, and install a client regime that would build the energy pipelines. But Washington still kept up sending money to Taliban until four months before 9/11 in an effort to keep it `on side’ for possible use in a war or strikes against Iran.
The 9/11 attacks, about which Taliban knew nothing, supplied the pretext to invade Afghanistan. The initial US operation had the legitimate objective of wiping out Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida. But after its 300 members fled to Pakistan, the US stayed on, built bases – which just happened to be adjacent to the planned pipeline route – and installed former Unocal `consultant’ Hamid Karzai as leader.
Washington disguised its energy geopolitics by claiming the Afghan occupation was to fight `Islamic terrorism,’ liberate women, build schools, and promote democracy. Ironically, the Soviets made exactly the same claims when they occupied Afghanistan from 1979-1989. The cover story for Iraq was weapons of mass destruction, Saddam’s supposed links to 9/11, and promoting democracy.
Work will begin on the TAPI once Taliban forces are cleared from the pipeline route by US, Canadian and NATO forces. As American analyst Kevin Phillips writes, the US military and its allies have become an `energy protection force.’
From Washington’s viewpoint, the TAPI deal has the added benefit of scuttling another proposed pipeline project that would have delivered Iranian gas and oil to Pakistan and India.
India’s energy needs are expected to triple over the next decade to 8 billion barrels of oil and 80 million cubic meters of gas daily. Delhi, which has its own designs on Afghanistan and has been stirring the pot there, is cock-a-hoop over the new pipeline plan. Russia, by contrast, is grumpy, having hoped to monopolize Central Asian energy exports.
Energy is more important than blood in our modern world. The US is a great power with massive energy needs. Domination of oil is a pillar of America’s world power. Afghanistan and Iraq are all about control of oil.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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