It's Still About Oil in Iraq (LA Times OpEd: ISG report advocates continued petro-colonialism)

[Kolesar]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-juhasz8dec08,0,4717508.story

It's still about oil in Iraq
A centerpiece of the Iraq Study Group's report is its advocacy for securing foreign companies' long-term access to Iraqi oil fields.

By Antonia Juhasz, ANTONIA JUHASZ is a visiting scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies
and author of "The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time."
December 8, 2006


WHILE THE Bush administration, the media and nearly all the Democrats still refuse to explain the war in Iraq in terms of oil, the ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such reticence.

Page 1, Chapter 1 of the Iraq Study Group report lays out Iraq's importance to its region, the U.S. and the world with this reminder: "It has the world's second-largest known oil reserves." The group then proceeds to give very specific and radical recommendations as to what the United States should do to secure those reserves. If the proposals are followed, Iraq's national oil industry will be commercialized and opened to foreign firms.

The report makes visible to everyone the elephant in the room: that we are fighting, killing and dying in a war for oil. It states in plain language that the U.S. government should use every tool at its disposal to ensure that American oil interests and those of its corporations are met.

It's spelled out in Recommendation No. 63, which calls on the U.S. to "assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise" and to "encourage investment in Iraq's oil sector by the international community and by international energy companies." This recommendation would turn Iraq's nationalized oil industry into a commercial entity that could be partly or fully privatized by foreign firms.

This is an echo of calls made before and immediately after the invasion of Iraq.

...snip...
Read on!

[VegasWolf]

1. "centerpiece of the Iraq Study Group's report is its advocacy for securing foreign companies'

long-term access to Iraqi oil fields."

Doh!

It has always been about oil.

If Bush the Occupier leaves, he loses the Iraqi oil. He knows that. Ergo, we stay in Iraq until the mission is completed.

If Bush the Simple had used those trillions of dollars to develop alternate energy, all of those
dead American boys and girls would still be alive and have all of their limbs.

It is a shame that there is no hell for some like Bush the Decider.

[yurbud]

4. we would have alternative energy, troops would have limbs & lives, but what would oil companies get?

Exactly what they deserve. Some empty holes in the ground and a place in the unemployment line.

[potone]

2. Yes, indeed.

I am disappointed that more journalists have not queried the Iraq Study Group members and the Bush administration about this. The Iraqi insurgency really took off after Bremer tried to establish privitization of their oil and to impose that on the provisional government. We cannot succeed in Iraq because they know what we are really there for.

:-(

[yurbud]

3. kudos to Antonia Juhasz. LA Times rarely runs oil motive stories and last one was hers too!

[Mythsaje]

5. Huh...how interesting.

I just posted something saying pretty much the same thing. Kinda funny how that works.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2890674&mesg_id=2890674

[OneBlueSky]

6. it's about the oil AND a permanent presence and base of operations . . .

in the region . . . thus the permanent bases and the world's largest embassy, neither of which would have been built if we had any intention of leaving . . .

[rman]

9. Permanent presence to is because of the oil

Oil in the region may last for another 50 years or so - be it at a diminishing production rate and progressively higher prices.

[enough]

7. k&r

[progressoid]

8. But but but...didn't the ISG say we should make a statement that we aren't after their oil?

So, I think that will clear up any mis-impressions the world will have about the oil thing.

Right?

[Imagevision]

10. Irag, when has it never been about the oil, stoopid, should have leveled with us...