AlterNet just ran a really great article which gets to the heart of what's going on in Iraq, and these "benchmarks" that keep getting touted as a way to have peace and an end to the violence in Iraq. From the article:
Your guide to the ongoing dance between Bush, the Congress, and the Iraqi government; an update on the current status of the proposed oil laws; and some steps you can take to stop the hijacking of Iraq's oil.
Here is a link to the article from AlterNet: Benchmark Boogie: A Guide to the Struggle Over Iraq's Oil.
What does a war for oil look like? American troops going into battle with tanks waving "Exxon Mobil" and "Chevron" flags right behind? Are the flags then planted squarely in the ground and the oil beneath officially declared war bounty? Well, some members of the Bush administration and U.S. oil companies may have favored such an approach. But the device ultimately chosen to win this war for oil is only slightly more subtle: a law, to be passed by the Iraqis themselves, which would turn Iraq's oil over to foreign oil companies.
The president's benchmark
The U.S. State Department Iraq Study Group began laying the foundations for the new law prior to the invasion of Iraq. Its recommendations, released only after the invasion, were quickly enshrined in a draft oil law introduced to the interim Iraqi government by the U.S.-appointed interim prime minister of Iraq, Ayad Allawi (a former CIA operative).
The Bush administration has spent four years trying to force successive Iraqi governments to pass the law, referred to as either the "hydrocarbons" or "oil" law. While it has gone through several permutations, the basics have remained the same and have followed the original prescriptions set out by the State Department.
The law would change Iraq's oil system from a nationalized model -- all but closed to U.S. oil companies -- to a privatized model open to foreign corporate control. At least two-thirds of Iraq's oil would be open to foreign oil companies under terms that they usually only dream about, including 30-year-long contracts. (For details of the law, see my March 2007 New York Times Op-Ed, "Whose Oil Is It, Anyway?")
The article goes on to say that the benchmarks are laid out in a
White House Fact Sheet. They managed to pressure the Iraqi government enough to get the oil law through Iraq's cabinet, but since then it has stalled in the parliament. The Kurdistan Regional Government posted a copy of the
Oil Law on its web site but the text has little to actually say about revenue sharing among the Iraqis and how that would actually be done.
The article goes on to talk about how the Democrats in the Congress have adopted Bush's rhetoric on the "benchmarks" and how that is supposed to be a sign of progress and that they included that language in the Iraq Supplemental War Spending Bill. The Congress has said that if the benchmarks are not met by September that the funding for the war could be cut off.
I'm sorry but when the hell did the Democratic Party decide it was alright to go along with Bush and basically blackmail the Iraqi people into giving up 84% of their oil revenues to big oil or you're on your own? I want us out of Iraq, but handing over that country's natural resources to big oil should not be a sign of "progress". The truth of the matter is that the fact that we are pressuring the Iraqi government to go along with this is precisely why the violence there is getting worse.
We've put people out of work, and we're not allowing the oil industry to get back up and running again which could aid in Iraq's reconstruction, and instead playing a game with these people where it's hand over the oil, or else. The other issue that is addressed in the article is the current draft of the revenue law:
....[which] seems more concerned with overcoming the resistance of the Kurdistan Regional Government to the oil law and to demonstrating movement towards its passage than to actually achieving the goal of equitable and fair distribution of oil revenues.
The draft guarantees that after Iraq's federal government's expenses and "strategic projects of benefit to all" are paid for, the Kurdistan Regional Government will receive a set 17 percent of all oil revenues "until a population census is held by the state." There is no mention of how the rest of the country will fare other than that a newly established commission will "confirm the accuracy and fairness of distribution of revenues ..." There is no standard establish for what a "fair" distribution means.
The article ends with What Must Be Done:
On June 19, five Nobel Peace Prize recipients released a statement publicly denouncing not only the Iraq oil law, but also the pressure being applied by the U.S. Congress and the Bush adminstration on the Iraqi government to pass it.
The laureates' statement, which has been circulated by Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., to every member of the U.S. Congress, declares that "the U.S. government should leave the matter of how Iraq will address the future of its oil system to the Iraqi people to be dealt with at a time when they are free from occupation and more able to engage in truly democratic decision making. It is immoral and illegal to use war and invasion as mechanisms for robbing a people of their vital natural resources." (You too can sign on to this statement. See below for details).
The debate in the U.S. Congress has finally shifted from "whether" to "how" to end the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But the devil may yet be in the details. We must be vigilant and demand not only that the occupation end, but as the details of withdrawal are worked out, that the requirement that Iraqis change their oil system is taken off of the table.
Reflecting the widespread opposition to the oil law among not only Iraq's people in general, but Iraq's oil workers in particular, Faleh Abood Umara, general secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, explained, "We reject this kind of agreement absolutely. The law will rob Iraq of its main resource -- its oil. It will undermine the sovereignty of Iraq and our people."
For more information on the Iraq oil law and for activist steps you can take, visit http://www.PriceOfOil.org and http://www.HandsOffIraqiOil.org.
To sign the Nobel Laureate Statement, please send your name, country of residence, and organizational affiliation (if any) to Kelek Stevenson with Oil Change International at kkelekk@gmail.com. You can also sign an online petition signed by several prominent Iraqi and American activists at http://www.petitiononline.com/...
Everyone needs to be sending a copy of this article to your representatives in Washington DC and asking them why they're supporting the theft of Iraq's natural resources as a benchmark for progress in this "war", or rather, occupation. It's time for the lies to stop and the dialog to move towards the truth about what we're doing there. Things are never going to improve in the region as long as the basic dialog about what we're doing is dishonest at its core.