It's unforgivable that both The New York Times and the Washington Post persist in misreporting the key Iraq oil law benchmark. These two leading print news sources, with the resources to have full-time reporters throughout Iraq and in Washington, continue to superficially describe the oil law benchmark as a law 'ensuring the equitable distribution of energy resources' (the New York Times today) (see pop-up chart, Iraqi Progress on Benchmarks) and "a law governing the distribution of oil revenue, an area of deep division among Iraqi factions" (The Washington Post today)
These descriptions are misleading and give us no indication as to why . . .
Iraqi resistance to the oil law is so strong.
In today's article, John Burns and David Stout of the NYT go on to say:
On the political front, none of the benchmarks that have been achieved include the high-profile legislation on which Congress asked to see progress. Debate has not yet begun in the Iraqi Parliament on the oil law or the revenue-sharing law, both of which are crucial to keeping Iraq united over the long term.
Sadly, it is true that both the Republicans and the Democrats in Congress have designated the oil law as a benchmark. But it is not at all true that the oil law is crucial to keeping Iraq united - unless they mean 'united against the US and multinational oil companies,' as Ben Lando of UPI explains here
The NYT's only redeeming grace? They published Antonia Juhasz' Op Ed on the Oil Law back in March, which explains that the law would give foreign oil companies control of 2/3rds of Iraq's known oil fields - and all of its yet-to-be-tapped oilfields.
Women Nobel Peace Prize laureates see the oil law for what it is - see this great diary from earlier today, which terms it the 'Oil Theft Law.'
Ascribing Iraqi resistance to the oil law as simply the inability of the Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites to share - as if they were quarrelsome three-year-olds - is at best offensive and at worst racist.
Simply describing the law fully and honestly would give us so much insight into 1) why the Iraqi Parliament refuses to debate it - and 2) why the Bush administration and the US government is so insistent on having it.
So why haven't the New York Times and the Washington Post described the oil law accurately yet?