Progressive Ponderings: Oil, war and corporate welfare

by Joe Mayer

It's nitty-gritty time in Iraq. The true reason for our invasion is about to be exposed.

The most monumental theft in modern history is about to be unveiled. If the Iraq Parliament, under extreme pressure from a U.S. administration backed by approximately 140,000 occupying troops, passes the United States proposed Hydrocarbon Law (also referred to as the Iraq Petroleum Law), most of Iraq's oil will be plucked from Iraqi public ownership and awarded to multinational corporate oil control.

The winners: big oil corporations; the neocons who first proposed it; the lie as accepted policy.

The losers: the Iraqi people whose oil ownership provided them with the majority of revenue to lead a comfortable modern life; the American people who sacrificed life and treasure for lies; the American nation over its loss of integrity; humankind with its step backward in the cause of human rights; democracy as this theft defies democratic principles.

Today this theft is being marketed as "revenue sharing" for the Iraqi people. The Iraqis will share a sliver of the oil pie, while corporate oil will swallow the majority of it.

Should this theft succeed, expect it to be called a triumph of democracy, an advance for the free market economy, a victory for the Iraqi people (nobody will ask them), and as progress in the occupation of Iraq. The opposite is true. Another almost guaranteed result will be the confirmation of Cheney's "fifty years of war" remark. Iraqis, loyal to their country, will fight this theft until the oil is returned to them or it runs out.

Similar to the growing corporate /lobby /money theft of democracy in the United States, the administration's "democracy" goal in Iraq is a stand-in for U.S. corporate ownership in Iraq. When a government is elected and then governs based on deception, the singular way to determine its true objectives is to scout its actions and ignore its rhetoric. Its actions:

• In the late 1990s the neocons, through the newly formed Project for a New American Century, urged Pres. Clinton to attack Iraq. Many of the signers hold influential positions in the Bush administration.
• March 2001, the secretive Cheney Energy Task Force began to meet. One if its outcomes: "The Gulf will be a primary focus of U.S. energy policy."
• (9/11, the Pearl Harbor for pre-emptive war)
• 2002, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy Secretary of Defense, proposed taking possession of Iraqi oil fields, which would have to be done in a cryptic manner.
• 2002, the State Department developed the "Future of Iraq" project designed to study what post-war Iraq should be. (pre-war)
• 2002, the "Oil and Energy Working Group" of the State Dept. began designing a scheme to disguise the seizure of Iraq oil so that it would appear the Iraqi people would benefit. (pre-war)
• Fall of 2002, Halliburton was awarded a contract to quell oil fires in Iraq should Saddam set them afire after our attack. (Again, before the war.)
• March 2003, "shock and awe" war as TV entertainment.
• 2004, The U.S. appointed Paul Bremer dictator of Iraq to replace dictator Saddam. Bremer under the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) issues 100 orders regarding Iraq rules for governing and the economy. CPA privatized (stole) Iraq publicly-owned industries – utilities, schools, hospitals, some factories, newspapers, TV stations, airlines, etc.; and rewrote laws to allow foreign control of Iraqi oil fields.
• Aug. 2004, U.S. appointed interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who issued guidelines for a new Iraq Petroleum Law
• Dec. 2006, James Baker, co-chair of the Iraq study Group, with a background of corporate oil connections, insists that Iraq's passing of the Petroleum Law is a necessary step toward the Iraqi solution. Bush, Cheney and Rice used this as an Iraq talking point in 2007. The Iraq Study group recommends U.S. "help" in writing the new oil law and the privatization of the Iraqi National Oil Industry for foreign investment.

This theft, should it occur, would transfer hundreds of billions of dollars from the Iraqi people to international oil corporations. And the Iraqi people say, "Some ask what we are fighting for?"

The U.S. House of Representatives recently spent a good part of a day debating the fate of Iraqi oil prior to passing the Iraq War funding bill. It includes a "benchmark" requiring the Iraqi Parliament to pass legislation establishing an Iraq Petroleum Law that includes "revenue sharing." This is the "out of context" jargon that the deceivers are pushing today.

And the mass media stays embedded in silence. Let the media and Congress know that the American people will no longer accept war as a corporate enrichment program.