Republicans Behaving Badly

You know your country's in trouble when:

- The Attorney General has to be subpoenaed in order to force him to cooperate in an investigation.

- White House officials are using secret e-mail accounts to hide what, exactly?

- The Theater of the Imperially Absurd runs your country's affairs (badly) while Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are still considered your friends. (Forget the fact that they're literally letting terrorists get away with murder.)

- 61% of your countrymen believe their safety at home does not depend on the outcome of the Iraq war, 51% want the troops to come home gradually within one year (poll link) while your president is busy pushing the Democrats to get their war funding bill to him as quickly as possible so he can just veto it and keep whining while people keep dying.

- Hunger-strikers are being force-fed at Gitmo, again.

- Cheney's former gold mine, Halliburton, is finally pulling out of Iran. Yes, Iran.

- Fill-in WH press sockpuppet Dana Perino tries to invoke 9/11 (video), spars with Helen Thomas and loses, predictably.

- The Bush administration is interrogating so-called terrorism suspects in Ethiopia (including at least one Canadian) while no one is really paying attention. (Keep an eye on AFRICOM developments. The Middle East isn't the only region that the Bush administration is trying to manipulate and control.)

One American intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, said that the interviews in Ethiopia had produced "valuable information." It would have been "irresponsible" for the United States to give up the opportunity to interrogate suspects who could have information about Al Qaeda in the Horn of Africa, the official added.

Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, declined to give details about the agency's activities in the region, but said that the "CIA acts boldly yet legally, alone and with partners, just as our government and people expect us to."

And people might actually believe that if congress hadn't given CIA agents immunity from prosecution for torture last year.

- This is indicative of "celebrating" the fall of Baghdad 4 years ago:



- The Republicans just can't admit they've completely run out of ideas.

Robert Fisk:

Faced with an ever-more ruthless insurgency in Baghdad - despite President George Bush's "surge" in troops - US forces in the city are now planning a massive and highly controversial counter-insurgency operation that will seal off vast areas of the city, enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter.

The campaign of "gated communities" - whose genesis was in the Vietnam War - will involve up to 30 of the city's 89 official districts and will be the most ambitious counter-insurgency programme yet mounted by the US in Iraq.

The system has been used - and has spectacularly failed - in the past, and its inauguration in Iraq is as much a sign of American desperation at the country's continued descent into civil conflict as it is of US determination to "win" the war against an Iraqi insurgency that has cost the lives of more than 3,200 American troops. The system of "gating" areas under foreign occupation failed during the French war against FLN insurgents in Algeria and again during the American war in Vietnam. Israel has employed similar practices during its occupation of Palestinian territory - again, with little success.

Any questions? Surge on.
 

Yes, it IS all about Iraq's oil

Alas, there you have it. The Guardian reports that the Iraqi government is under pressure from the US and UK to hand over oil contracts to multinational companies.

It's no longer just a rumour or conspiracy theory: the invasion of Iraq was all about the oil.

Iraqi trades unions have called for the country's oil reserves - the second-largest in the world - to be kept in public hands. But a leaked draft of the oil law, seen by The Observer, would see the government sign away the right to exploit its untapped fields in so-called exploration contracts, which could then be extended for more than 30 years.
[...]
Foreign Office minister Kim Howells has admitted that the government has discussed the wording of the Iraqi law with Britain's oil giants.

In a written answer to a parliamentary question, from Labour's Alan Simpson, Howells said: 'These exchanges have included discussion of Iraq's evolving hydrocarbons legislation where British international oil companies have valuable perspectives to offer based on their experience in other countries.' The talks had covered 'the range of contract types which Iraq is considering'.

It's colonialization and exploitation all over again.

The law, which is being discussed by the Iraqi cabinet before being put to the parliament, says the untapped oil would remain state-owned but that contracts would be drawn up giving private sector firms the exclusive right to extract it.

'There is this fine line, that the wording is seeking to draw, that allows companies to claim that the oil is still Iraqi oil, whereas the extraction rights belong to the oil companies,' says Kamil Mahdi, an Iraqi economist at Exeter University. He criticised the US and Britain, saying: 'The whole idea of the law is due to external pressure. The law is no protection against corruption, or against weakness of government. It's not a recipe for stability.'

And neither was the war to begin with.

This oil grab has been planned for a very long time.

...the need to dominate oil from Iraq is also deeply intertwined with the defense of the dollar. Its current strength is supported by OPEC's requirement (secured by a secret agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia) that all OPEC oil sales be denominated in dollars. This requirement is currently threatened by the desire of some OPEC countries to allow OPEC oil sales to be paid in euros.

The Internally Stated US Goal of Securing the Flow of Oil from the Middle East

As early as April 1997, a report from the James A. Baker Institute of Public Policy at Rice University addressed the problem of "energy security" for the United States, and noted that the US was increasingly threatened by oil shortages in the face of the inability of oil supplies to keep up with world demand. In particular the report addressed "The Threat of Iraq and Iran" to the free flow of oil out of the Middle East. It concluded that Saddam Hussein was still a threat to Middle Eastern security and still had the military capability to exercise force beyond Iraq's borders.

The Bush Administration returned to this theme as soon as it took office in 2001, by following the lead of a second report from the same Institute. <2> This Task Force Report was co-sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, another group historically concerned about US access to overseas oil resources. The Report represented a consensus of thinking among energy experts of both political parties, and was signed by Democrats as well as Republicans. <3>

The report, Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century, [.pdf file] concluded: "The United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a de-stabilizing influence to ... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets. Therefore the US should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/ diplomatic assessments."

Yes, that's the same James Baker (R) of the Iraq Study Group, the recommendations of which were largely rejected by the Bush administration and which some viewed as simply providing damage control for Bush's disastrous policies - an offer he seems to have refused as he sticks with the more familiar course of militarism and threats.

War is good for business, especially those connected to Bush's inner circle. The longer the war rages on, the more money contractors like Halliburton soak up. However, there is also a need to provide increased security to Iraq's oil fields so the multinational oil companies can swoop in and grab their slice of the pie as well. Who is Bush's so-called surge supposed to benefit then? The Iraqi people or the energy companies?

When Cheney held his secretive energy task force meeting in early 2001, he had good reason to refuse to disclose the participants as it was later revealed in 2005 that Cheney was courting big oil. The wheels had been set in motion years before that to take control of the Middle East oil reserves. They already had the Saudis on side. Iraq and Iran were proving to be non-compliant and 9/11 gave the administration the excuse it needed to pump up the war sentiments towards Iraq.

The neocons and those who wanted this war may be disillusioned that it's taken this long to finally see their oil dreams come true but all they have to do now is to convince al-Maliki that it's in his government's best interests to play ball. He can easily be replaced if he doesn't cooperate and the Bush administration has a vested interest in making this deal happen before al-Maliki cozies up even more with Iran's government to form a Shi'ite bloc in the Middle East - which would defy more US intervention. The stakes are very high.

So here we are, five years later. Hundreds of thousands dead. A raging civil war. Two million displaced people. A humanitarian crisis. And for what? Just as many of us have said all along, "It's the oil, stupid".