Oil and
turmoil make an imperial mix in Iraq
By Ameen Izzadeen
07/06/07 "Daily
Mirror" -- --
When you are too good, you are too gullible. When you
are too good and intelligent, still you are gullible but not
for long. You will soon realise that you have been deceived.
But the American people — they are good and intelligent —
took more than five years to realise that they had been
misled. From September 11, 2001 — the day on which the
United States till the Republican Party's drubbing at the
2006 mid-term elections, US President George W. Bush, Vice
President Dick Cheney and a coterie of Bushites believed
that they could say anything to the people they govern and
get away.
But the election defeat, it appears, has not made the Bush
administration reform itself and dump its much disgraced
strategy of presenting its secret immoral agenda as moral
imperatives.
The Bush administration told the American people and the
world that it had to act fast to neutralize Saddam Hussein's
weapons of mass destruction. He told them that Saddam was a
threat to America's and the world's security. He said Saddam
had links with those terrorists who attacked the United
States on 9/11.
The then US Secretary of State, probably acting against his
own conscience, made a hi-tech presentation at the UN
Security Council, showing what he claimed to be hard
evidence.
The Bush administration with its spin doctoring skills made
a majority of the Americans believe that Saddam should be
stopped before he became unstoppable.
For the hardnuts, lefties, anti-capitalists and independent
thinkers, the spin doctoring was crude — and also crude oil
of Iraq.
The Iraq invasion had very little to do with disarming
Saddam. The war plan suited the agenda of the US
capitalists, especially the oil and military supply
industries, with which the Bushes and the Cheneys have much
connection. It suited Israel's strategic interest and it was
appealing to the Bushite Christians — the likes of Jerry
Farwell and Pat Robertson, who spread hatred against Islam.
While 600,000 Iraqis died and more than 3,500 Americans paid
with their lives for this capitalist-Zionist agenda,
Halliburton, the company which Cheney headed before he was
picked by Bush as his running mate in the 2000 election,
earned billions of dollars in profit from the Iraq war.
A recent report by the special inspector general for Iraq
reconstruction showed that Halliburton had earned 22 billion
blood-soaked dollars as profits. This is how the people who
authored and implemented the war earn the money. They ask
Congress for billions of dollars for the Iraq campaign,
which also includes rebuilding Iraq. Contracts are handed to
companies such as Halliburton and Bechtel — companies which
were close to the Bush administration. American companies
rebuild what the American military destroyed. Fair enough,
if the money comes only from the US. The US tax payers'
money goes into meet only part of the cost. The other part
of cost is met by Iraq's oil revenue — in other words, the
Iraqis also pay for the reconstruction of their
infrastructure which the Americans have destroyed. Mind you,
companies like Halliburton have shifted their headquarters
to Dubai and other tax havens. So they avoid paying taxes.
Both the American tax payers and the Iraqi people, one fifth
of whom live as refugees as a result of Bush's inhuman war,
are being robbed by heartless capitalists.
As mentioned above, the spin doctoring continues. President
Bush now says they are urging the Iraqi government to pass a
controversial oil bill so that Iraq's oil revenue could be
distributed equitably among all its people. What a kind soul
he is! Such kindness fails to come out when he hears daily
that scores of Iraqis are being ripped by roadside bombs.
His heart did not bleed even for the victims of Haditha and
Mahmoudiya massacre, for which his troops were responsible.
And now he is expressing concern about Iraqi Sunnis not
getting an equal share of Iraq's oil wealth. He cites that
the oil bill, which the puppet Iraq cabinet headed by Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki approved this week, will ensure
that even Sunnis who live in non-oil producing areas of the
country will get an equitable share of the oil wealth.
But the irony is that the Association of Muslim Scholars,
which is the most powerful political voice of Iraqi Sunnis,
itself has come out strongly against the oil bill and even
issued a fatwa.
"Whoever votes for the oil bill will earn God's rage," warns
the fatwa.
The law envisages oil deals with transnational companies —
deals that could last at least two to three decades.
Besides, the deals are of a profit-sharing nature. The bill
negates Iraq's pre-invasion oil contracts with countries
such as France and Russia. In other words, almost all the
contracts will go to US companies. This is the goal of the
invasion.
In September when the US Congress will hear a report from
Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, he may say
the presence of US troops in Iraq is necessary to protect
the American economic interests in that country. The troops
should be there to protect the world's second largest oil
reserve which the American companies jointly own with the
Iraqi government on long term contracts. This explains why
the US is showing undue interest in the bill.
According to oil industry experts, if the Iraq's oil fields
are exploited to its fullest capacity, they could pump 6
million barrels a day and generate annual revenues of more
than $130 billion.
The bill had an easy passage in the cabinet, because its
strongest opponents — the Sunnis and the Moqtada al-Sadr
group — have quit the government. Al-Maliki, who was
congratulated by President Bush for obtaining the unanimous
support of a truncated cabinet for the bill, hopes that the
Sunni and Sadrist boycott of parliament would continue so
that he could push the bill through parliament as well. The
Sunnis and the Sadrists insist that oil reserves should
remain as a national asset and all oil revenues should
belong to the central government instead of the regional
administration as envisaged in the oil bill. To placate the
Sunnis, the bill was modified in such a way that part of the
oil revenue will also go to the Sunni dominant central
regions where there exist no known oil reserves.
But the Sunnis have not fallen for the chocolate offered by
the US, the main architect of the oil bill.
The Sunnis and the Sadrists are not naïve to believe that
the US troops are in Iraq to help them to rebuild their
country, teach them about democracy, civilize them or
liberate them. They know that George Bush, Tony Blair and
John Howard sent their troops to Iraq to get a share in the
oil pie.
Yesterday, Australia's defence minister confirmed what many
Iraqis have been saying for long.
Yes, oil is the key factor keeping Australian troops in the
US-led war in Iraq, Defence Minister Brendan Nelson said. In
2003, Australian Prime Minister, a devout Bushite, parroted
what Bush had said: The invasion was aimed at eliminating
Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
A highly embarrassed Howard later in the day denied that
securing oil supply was a key factor behind his country's
contentious involvement in the war in Iraq.
"We're not there because of oil and we didn't go there
because of oil, we don't remain there because of oil," he
told commercial radio. "Oil is not the reason.
But analyst John Pilger says the Aussies have gone to East
Timor as peacekeepers with an eye on that country’s offshore
oil reserves.
Be that as it may. In Iraq, the coming days will decide the
fate of the controversial oil bill. Democracy has many
positives. But one of its negatives is it can also produce a
group of parliamentarians who could easily be bought over by
an outside force with inducements such as money and power. A
majority of the 24 million Iraqi people may oppose the bill,
but their opposition counts for naught when a majority of
MPs in the 275-member Iraqi assembly sell their souls to the
imperialists and global capitalists. Now you understand why
they introduced democracy to Iraq.
Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers Ltd
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