-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: April 2, 2007 12:21:13 PM PDT
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Subject: The Mother of All "Benchmarks" for Iraqi Government
GEORGE BUSH’S Supplemental Funding LAND MINE:
IF THE IRAQI PEOPLE AGREE TO 'REVENUE SHARING,'
THEY LOSE THEIR OIL TO EXXON
by Richard Behan
CommonDreams, March 30, 2007
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/30/201/
George Bush has a land mine planted in the supplemental
appropriation legislation working its way through Congress.
The Iraq Accountability Act passed by the House and the companion
bill passed in the Senate contain deadlines for withdrawing our
troops from Iraq, in open defiance of the President’s repeated
objections.
He threatens a veto, but he might well be bluffing. Buried deep in
the legislation and intentionally obscured is a near-guarantee of
success for the Bush Administration’s true objective of the war-
capturing Iraq’s oil-and George Bush will not casually forego that.
This bizarre circumstance is the end-game of the brilliant, ever-
deceitful maneuvering by the Bush Administration in conducting the
entire scenario of the “global war on terror.”
The supplemental appropriation package requires the Iraqi
government to meet a series of “benchmarks” President Bush
established in his speech to the nation on January 10 (in which he
made his case for the “surge”). Most of Mr. Bush’s benchmarks are
designed to blame the victim, forcing the Iraqis to solve the
problems George Bush himself created.
One of the President’s benchmarks, however, stands apart. This is
how the President described it: “To give every Iraqi citizen a
stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share
oil revenues among all Iraqis.” A seemingly decent, even noble
concession. That’s all Mr. Bush said about that benchmark, but his
brevity was gravely misleading, and it had to be intentional.
The Iraqi Parliament has before it today, in fact, a bill called
the hydrocarbon law, and it does call for revenue sharing among
Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. For President Bush, this is a must-have
law, and it is the only “benchmark” that truly matters to his
Administration.
Yes, revenue sharing is there-essentially in fine print,
essentially trivial. The bill is long and complex, it has been
years in the making, and its primary purpose is transformational in
scope: a radical and wholesale reconstruction-virtual privatization-
of the currently nationalized Iraqi oil industry.
If passed, the law will make available to Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/
Texaco, BP/Amoco, and Royal Dutch/Shell about 4/5’s of the
stupendous petroleum reserves in Iraq. That is the wretched goal of
the Bush Administration, and in his speech setting the revenue-
sharing “benchmark” Mr. Bush consciously avoided any hint of it.
The legislation pending now in Washington requires the President to
certify to Congress by next October that the benchmarks have been
met-specifically that the Iraqi hydrocarbon law has been passed.
That’s the land mine: he will certify the American and British oil
companies have access to Iraqi oil. This is not likely what
Congress intended, but it is precisely what Mr. Bush has sought for
the better part of six years.
It is why we went to war.
For years President Bush has cloaked his intentions behind the
fabricated “Global War on Terrorism.” It has long been suspected
that oil drove the wars, but dozens of skilled and determined
writers have documented it. It is no longer a matter of suspicion,
nor is it speculation now: it is sordid fact. (See a brief summary
of the story at http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/47489/ . )
Planning for the two wars was underway almost immediately upon the
Bush Administration taking office–at least six months before
September 11, 2001. The wars had nothing to do with terrorism.
Terrorism was initially rejected by the new Administration as
unworthy of national concern and public policy, but 9/11 gave them
a conveniently timed and spectacular alibi to undertake the wars.
Quickly inventing a catchy “global war on terror” theme, the
Administration disguised the true nature of the wars very cleverly,
and with enduring success.
The “global war on terror” is bogus. The prime terrorist in
Afghanistan and the architect of 9/11, Osama bin Laden, was never
apprehended, and the President’s subsequent indifference is a
matter of record. And Iraq harbored no terrorists at all. But both
countries were invaded, both countries suffer military occupation
today, both are dotted with permanent U.S. military bases
protecting the hydrocarbon assets, and both have been provided with
puppet governments.
And a billion dollar embassy in Baghdad is under construction now.
It will be the largest U.S. embassy in the world by a factor of
ten. (To see it, go to http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?
context=viewArticle&code=20070124&articleId=4579 .) It consists of
21 buildings on 104 acres, six times larger than the United Nations
compound in New York city, larger than Vatican City. It will house
a delegation of more than five thousand people. It will have its
own water, electric, and sewage systems, and it is surrounded by a
fortress wall of concrete fifteen feet thick. For an Administration
committed to fighting terrorism with armies and bombs, that’s far
more anti-terror diplomacy than a tiny country needs. There must be
another purpose for it.
In the first two months of the Bush Administration two significant
events took place that preordained the Iraqi war. Vice President
Cheney’s Energy Task Force was created, composed of federal
officials and oil industry people. By March of 2001, half a year
before 9/11, the Task Force was poring secretly over maps of the
Iraqi oil fields, pipe lines, and tanker terminals. It studied a
listing of foreign oil company “suitors” for exploration and
development contracts, to be executed with Saddam Hussein’s oil
ministry. There was not a single American or British oil company
included, and to Mr. Cheney and his cohorts that was intolerable.
The final report of the Task Force was candid: “… Middle East oil
producers will remain central to world security. The Gulf will be a
primary focus of U.S. international energy policy.” The detailed
meaning of “focus” was left blank.
The other event was the first meeting of President Bush’s National
Security Council, and it filled in the blank. The Council abandoned
abruptly the decades-long attempt to resolve the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict, and set a new priority for Middle East
foreign policy instead: the invasion of Iraq. This, too, was six
months before 9/11. “Focus” would mean war.
By the fall of 2002, the White House Iraq Group-a collection not of
foreign policy experts but of media and public relations people-was
cranking up the marketing campaign for the war. A contract was
signed with the Halliburton Corporation-even before military force
in Iraq had been authorized by Congress-to organize the suppression
of oil well fires, should Saddam torch the fields as he had done in
the first Gulf War. Little was left to chance.
The oil industry is the primary client and top-ranked beneficiary
of the Bush Administration. There can be no question the
Administration intended to secure for American oil corporations the
rich petroleum resources of Iraq: 115 billion barrels of proven
reserves, twice that in probable and possible resources,
potentially far more than Saudi Arabia. The Energy Task Force spoke
to this and the National Security Council answered.
A secret NSC memorandum in 2001 spoke candidly of “actions
regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields” in
Iraq. In 2002 Paul Wolfowitz suggested simply seizing the oil
fields. These words and suggestions were draconian, overt, and
reprehensible-morally, historically, politically and
diplomatically. The seizure of the oil would have to be oblique and
far more sophisticated.
”Oil and Energy Working Group” looked with dismay at the National
Iraqi Oil Company, the government agency that owned and operated
the Iraqi oil fields and marketed the products. 100% of the
revenues went directly to the central government, and constituted
about 90% of its income. Saddam Hussein benefited, certainly-his
lavish palaces-but the Iraqi people did so to a far greater extent,
in terms of the nation’s public services and physical
infrastructure. For this reason nationalized oil industries are the
norm throughout the world.
The Oil and Energy Working Group designed a scheme that was oblique
and sophisticated, indeed. The oil seizure would be less than
total. It would be obscured in complexity. The apparent
responsibility for it would be shifted, and it would be disguised
as benefiting, even necessary to Iraq’s well being. Their work was
supremely ingenious, undeniably brilliant.
The plan would keep the National Iraqi Oil Company in place, to
continue overseeing the currently producing fields. But those
fields represent only 19% of Iraq’s petroleum reserves. The other
81% would be flung open to “investment” by foreign oil interests,
and the companies in favored positions today-because of the war and
their political connections-are Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, BP/
Amoco, and Royal Dutch/Shell.
The nationalized industry would be 80% privatized.
The investment vehicle would be the “production sharing agreement,”
a long-term contract-up to 40 years-that grants to the company a
share of the oil produced; in exchange, the company underwrites the
development costs and oilfield infrastructure. Such “investment” is
touted by the Bush Administration and its puppets in Iraq as
necessary to the country’s recovery, and a huge benefit,
accordingly. But it is not unusual for these contracts to grant the
companies more than half the profits for the first 15-30 years, and
to deny the host country any revenue at all until the investment
costs have been recovered.
The Iraqi oil industry does very much need a great deal of
investment capital, to repair, replace, and upgrade its
infrastructure. But it does not need Exxon/Mobil or any other
foreign company to provide it. At a reduced level, Iraq is still
producing oil and hence revenue, and no country in the world,
perhaps, has better collateral against which to float bond issues
for public investment. Privatization of any sort and in any degree
is utterly unnecessary in Iraq today.
The features of the State Department plan were inserted by Paul
Bremer’s Provisional Coalition Authority into the developing
structures of Iraqi governance. American oil companies were
omnipresent in Baghdad then and have been since, shaping and
shepherding the plan through the several iterations of puppet
governments-the “democracy” said to be taking hold in Iraq.
The package today is in the form of draft legislation, the
hydrocarbon law. Only a handful of Iraqi officials know its
details. Virtually none of them had a hand in its construction. (It
was first written in English.) And its exclusive beneficiaries are
the American and British oil companies, whose profits will come
directly from the pockets of the Iraqi people.
The Iraqi people do, however, benefit to some degree. The seizure
is not total. The hydrocarbon law specifies the oil revenues-the
residue accruing to Iraq-will be shared equally among the Sunni,
Shiite, and Kurdish regions, on a basis of population. This is the
feature President Bush relies upon exclusively to justify, to
insist on the passage of the hydrocarbon law. His real reasons are
Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, BP/Amoco, and Royal Dutch/Shell.
No one can say at the moment how much the hydrocarbon law will cost
the Iraqi people, but it will be in the hundreds of billions. The
circumstances of its passage are mired in the country’s chaos, and
its final details are not yet settled. If and when it passes,
however, Iraq will orchestrate the foreign capture of its own oil.
The ingenious, brilliant seizure of Iraqi oil will be assured.
That outcome has been on the Bush Administration’s agenda since
early in 2001, long before terrorism struck in New York and
Washington. The Iraqi war has never been about terrorism.
It is blood for oil.
The blood has been spilled already, hugely, criminally. More than
3,200 American military men and women have died in Iraq. 26,500
more have been wounded. But the oil remains in play.
The game will end if the revenue-sharing “benchmark” is fully
enforced. The land mine will detonate.
Mission almost accomplished, Mr. President.
Author’s endnote:
This article was written assuming the members of Congress were
ignorant, when they passed the supplemental appropriation bills, of
the clever origin, the details, and the true beneficiaries of the
Iraqi hydrocarbon law. It was written assuming they did not know
President Bush’s stated “benchmark” of revenue-sharing was
fraudulently incomplete, intentionally obscuring the fully intended
seizure, by military force, of Iraqi oil assets.
The Bush Administration made every effort to mislead deliberately
both the Congress and the American people. Ignorance of the
circumstances was imposed.
If any members of Congress acted with full and complete knowledge,
however, then they have become complicit in a criminal war.
Richard W. Behan lives and writes on Lopez Island, off the northwest
coast of Washington state. He is working on his next book, To Provide
Against Invasions: Corporate Dominion and America’s Derelict
Democracy.
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