Blackwater and Oil Show Administration’s M.O. in Iraq

[marmar]

from The Progressive:



Blackwater and Oil Show Administration’s M.O. in Iraq
By Ruth Conniff, September 19, 2007


Jeremy Scahill, author of the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, was on CNN September 17 after the news broke that the military contractor had been kicked out of Iraq for its role in the deaths of 8 Iraqi civilians.

The story of Blackwater, Scahill explained, is the story of the Bush war in Iraq. “Bush failed to build a coalition of willing nations” at the beginning of the war, Scahill told CNN. So instead the President build a “coalition of willing corporations” or war profiteers, including Blackwater.

What Scahill calls the “mercenary component” of this corporate cabal is completely unaccountable—operating a shadow war in which the finances and even the body counts of private contractors go unreported to Congress or the press.

And if Bush has, as Scahill says, overseen “the greatest privatization of warfare in history,” he has also led us into a war in which profiteers—from thugs and looters to multinational corporations—are fighting over the spoils, to the detriment of American citizens and the Iraqi people.

A story in the Christian Science Monitor on September 19 describes the bleak situation in Basra as the British military withdraws and corrupt public officials, organized crime, and the Americans’ friends in the Baghdad government fight over oil production.

According to the Monitor, Iraq has about 20 percent of Middle East oil reserves, more than half of it exported from Basra. But production has taken a big hit since the war began. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.progressive.org/mag_ruth091907

[predfan]

1. it will be interesting

to follow the money on the building of the new embassy in Iraq. Outsourced to a Kuwati firm, if I'm not mistaken......would love to see the way those hundreds of millions are being distributed, plus, of couse, the necessity to keep thousands of troops there to guard it (and the oilfields, of course)