We've all been assured, time and again, that invading Iraq had nothing to do with oil. Very recently leaked internal (confidential) government documents indicate a production sharing agreement was just reached between private companies and the council appointed to head Iraq's oil reserves. Surprise, surprise. Read the original here, or the new version's translation here. Watch this from Jim Hightower.Well, more confirmation to confirm our most cynical suspicions:
The 'IoS' today reveals a draft for a new law that would give Western oil companies a massive share in the third largest reserves in the world. To the victors, the oil? That is how some experts view this unprecedented arrangement with a major Middle East oil producer that guarantees investors huge profits for the next 30 yearsC&L says:
So was this what the Iraq war was fought for, after all? As the number of US soldiers killed since the invasion rises past the 3,000 mark, and President George Bush gambles on sending in up to 30,000 more troops, The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the Iraqi government is about to push through a law giving Western oil companies the right to exploit the country's massive oil reserves.
And Iraq's oil reserves, the third largest in the world, with an estimated 115 billion barrels waiting to be extracted, are a prize worth having. As Vice-President Dick Cheney noted in 1999, when he was still running Halliburton, an oil services company, the Middle East is the key to preventing the world running out of oil.
Now, unnoticed by most amid the furore over civil war in Iraq and the hanging of Saddam Hussein, the new oil law has quietly been going through several drafts, and is now on the point of being presented to the cabinet and then the parliament in Baghdad. Its provisions are a radical departure from the norm for developing countries: under a system known as "production-sharing agreements", or PSAs, oil majors such as BP and Shell in Britain, and Exxon and Chevron in the US, would be able to sign deals of up to 30 years to extract Iraq's oil.
According to The Raw Story, in Saturday's New York Times it's revealed that somewhere between $5 and $15 million dollars in Iraqi oil goes missing every day. It's becoming clear why Dick Cheney's 2001 energy task force meetings were made classified and why attempts to gain access to records from those meetings met with such strong resistance and are still being kept from the public to this day.Indeed. Impeach these thugs, these liars, these crooks. They used the blood of American soldiers to purchase oil profits for their buddies back in Texas, at Halliburton and Blackwater. If it was only a scant 200 years ago, we'd definitely see them hang for this.
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