March 20th, 2003 was invasion day at the start of the Iraq war. It was on that day that I lost my religion. I listened on NPR as the first American troops to landed in Iraq and instead of seizing WMDs the American forces made a beeline to secure the refineries of the Basra oil field. Basra, Iraq is the home of the second most productive oil field on the face of the earth. If imminent danger from WMD was the cause of the war,why did the U.S. military secure the oil fields first and wait several months to even begin any search for WMDs?
After March 20th, 2003 there was no doubt in my mind that Bush had begun a war to plunder the oil resources in Iraq. To this day nothing Bush has said or done has persuaded me to believe in the Bush's lame platitudes about democracy and freedom as the goal of the Iraq war. The thought that Bush is planning to call his presidential museum the Freedom Institute makes my skin crawl. The only monument Bush deserves is a Tower of Babel built from the debris and rubble from the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina.
The oil refineries of Basra were the one and the same refineries that Saddam put a torch to after the First Iraq War. Now in 2007 in Iraq War II: The Sequel the Basra oil fields are the same fields that Team Bush has worked so hard to privatize. The abandonment of Basra by the British military must have Bush and Cheney in a state of apoplexy. Basra was the crown jewel of the Team Bush plan to privatize the oil bounty of Iraq. It's a huge development in the Iraq war.
The Bush administration's long-sought "hydrocarbons framework" law would give Big Oil access to Iraq's vast energy reserves on the most advantageous terms and with virtually no regulation. Meanwhile, a parallel law carving up the country's oil revenues threatens to set off a fresh wave of conflict in the shell- shocked country.
Let talk about the oil revenue law which is the biggest stumbling block to reconciliation in Iraq. Everyone has a kind of sense that the Iraqi parliament has stalling on some kind of oil revenue sharing deal, but few people know the draconian dimensions for Bush sponsored law. As far as Bush is concerned the war ain't over until the Iraq parliament signs on the dotted line of his oil deal.
Joshua Holland writes:
As is the norm, nobody bothered to ask Iraqis what they thought of the controversy until recently, when a coalition of NGOs and other civil society groups commissioned a poll to gauge Iraqis' reaction to the proposed legislation. It found that Iraqis from all ethnic and sectarian groups and across the political spectrum oppose the principles enshrined in the laws. Considering the multiethnic bloodbath we've witnessed over the past four years, it's an impressive display of Iraqi solidarity.
A study by the Price of Oil website confirms that 81% of Iraqi citizens are not confident that the Bush privatization place will provide their children with future prosperity.
The reason for the gridlock in the Iraqi parliament is a result of Bush playing each sectarian party off of each other, in his single minded determination to secure over 80% of the oil leasing and drilling rights for British and American oil companies. The oil agreement is the closer to the Iraq reconciliation and parliament won't play ball with Team Bush and give away their most valuable resource to Big Oil cartels that planned the war in Iraq, long before any 9/11 attack or war on terror was on the radar.
Holland writes:
The law, after all, was not designed with Iraqis' prosperity in mind; plans for throwing the country's oil sector open to (almost) unregulated foreign investment were hashed out by a State Department working group that included major players from the oil industry long before the planning for the invasion itself. These plans were discussed in the White House (under the guidance of Dick Cheney) before that -- even before the attacks of 9/11.
The plan to divide up the oil was all part of that "top secret" energy advisory panel that Dick Cheney has refused to discuss with anyone, even under subpoena. The files related to Dick Cheney's energy policy group disclose all of the sordid details of the Cheney/Big Oil alliance to carve up the oil resources of Iraq. It also confirms that a war in Iraq was a forgone conclusion, long before 9/11 or the global war on terror. The 9/11 attack was simply the tail that Team Bush used to wag the dog and get us into a war for the oil in Iraq. Cheney has successfully gone to court to keep Congress from subpoenaing any witnesses or documents related to the Energy Policy Study Panel he convened early in 2001.
So Bush has proposed a oil policy of harsh free market capitalism as the accompanying remedy to the Iraqi law specifying the division of oil revenues in Iraq.
So while most oil-producing states are moving toward more state control of their energy sectors -- according to the Washington Post about 77 percent of the world's 1.1 trillion barrels in proven oil reserves is controlled by governments that significantly restrict access to international companies" -- Iraqi lawmakers are under enormous pressure to go in the opposite direction
For Team Bush looting the oil resources of Iraq represents the triumph of the free market ideology over public ownership and regulation of Iraq's most precious resource.
The fall of Basra throws a big monkey-wrench into Bush plan to occupy Iraq until the parliament knuckles under and signs over the oil rights to the Big Oil titans of the West. Perhaps some rowdy insurgents will get the wise idea to burn the refineries is Basra rather than handing the oil fields over to President George W. Arbusto.
In a great historical irony the hydrocarbons framework law that the Bush administration considers to be the prerequisite for a stable Iraq is the very thing that is tearing Iraq apart.