Evidently, the clowns at Fox Noise believe the Iraqis owe us oil, and we should take it

[ProSense]

Fox Analyst: Iraqis ‘Owe Us’ 100-Year Leases On Their Oil, ‘We Ought To Take It’

Last week, the New York Times reported that four Western oil companies — Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, and BP — are in the final stages of negotiating no-bid oil contracts “to service Iraq’s largest fields.” These contracts would run for one to two years, and give the oil companies a “foothold” in bidding on future contracts.

But one-to-two year service contracts aren’t enough for analyst Bob Beckel, a Fox News liberal. On the O’Reilly Factor last night, Beckel said that “what we ought to do is get Iraq to give us a 100 year lease” for exploring their oil fields:

BECKEL: OK, now, what we ought to do is get Iraq to give us 100 year lease on their unexplored — they’re the second largest source of oil in the world. Known reserves. Give the United States oil companies 100 year leases. Let us explore. We can get it quickly. It’s through sand. It’s the fastest way to get oil.

Beckel justified giving U.S. oil companies a century of business in Iraq by claiming, “The Iraqis owe us, Bill. We ought to take it.” Watch it:

As the New York Times notes, such no-bid contracts play into the suspicions of those who believe that the U.S. invaded Iraq “precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract.” It’s uncertain what role the U.S. played in negotiating the four no-bid contracts.

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But this isn't about the jerks at Fox, the Bush appears to believe the same thing.

Senators seek to block Iraq oil contracts

Sens. Schumer and Kerry appeal to Bush administration to stop no-bid deals with big companies until equal royalty distribution is guaranteed.

By Aaron Smith, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: June 24, 2008: 12:07 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Two U.S. senators asked the Bush administration Tuesday to stop the Iraqi government from signing imminent no-bid contracts with several U.S. and European oil companies, expressing concern about the distribution of royalties from the deal.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressing concerns about a contract that the Iraqi government is preparing to sign with Exxon Mobil Corp., (XOM, Fortune 500) Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA), Total SA (TOT), Chevron Corp (CVX, Fortune 500)., BP (BP) and other companies. The contract would let those companies develop Iraq's largest oil fields.

The senators, who released the letter, said they are worried that unfair distribution of oil revenue could inflame the violence between the warring religious and political groups of Iraq.

"We urge you to persuade the to refrain from signing contracts with multinational oil companies until a hydrocarbon law is in effect in Iraq," read the letter from Schumer and Kerry.

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[WinkyDink]

1. "No Blood for Oil": Carried the sign through Manhattan pre-Illegal Invasion.

This was so clearly the raison d'etre.

[Waya]

2. Absolutely.......

....time to pay up. After all, we went to the trouble of invading, killing a bunch of their civilians, trashed the infrastructure, installed a puppet government - it's the grateful thing to do - give us the oil. We earned it!

[ProSense]

23. Exact and concise. n/t

[DevonRex]

3. Wow. How about that's what we went there to get and by God

Dubya is gonna make sure his buddies get it? Fox is so sickening.

Thanks for posting this. K&R

[Clark2008]

4. What the heck is a Fox News Liberal?

Is that someone who's only a pace or two left of Sean InSannity?

[mrreowwr_kittty]

18. Or a pliant little doormat like Colmes. nt

[iamahaingttta]

5. Then maybe those clowns from Fox "News"...

... should march right over there and take it!

[anonymous171]

6. Whatever happened to the "free" market, Mr. Bush?

:rofl:

[thewiseguy]

7. Sorry but they do owe us for the money we spend there in terms of reconstruction

and developing their oil fields.

[ProSense]

8. Are you serious?

Bush bombs the shit out of their country, resulting directly in hundreds of thousand of fatalities on top of hundreds of thousands more from civil war, then he funnels money to a bunch of thieving, war criminal contractors for a half-assed reconstruction effort, and you say the Iraqis owe us.


WTF?

[thewiseguy]

12. Where are you getting these numbers?

Hundreds of thousands of fatalities as a result of our bombings? And hundreds of thousands of more during the civil war? :wtf:

FYI Iraq was a dump before we went there. They were at war for 8 years with Iran. After the Iran war they were so broke they could not even pay off the Arab countries that let them borrow millions. Their oil export was a mess. Their infrastructure was non existent.

If we are going to do reconstruction there and develop their oil fields then they do owe us money. Are you suggesting that these projects should be done for free?

[TBF]

15. So you are serious. Unbelievable. We pick a country that has oil,

bomb them and kill their leader, kill millions of their people, and THEY owe us oil? Are you in the Bush administration by any chance?

[thewiseguy]

17. Killed millions of their people?

:wtf:

Killed their leader?

:wtf:

I never said they owe us oil for invading their country. But if we do intend to spend money on reconstruction and developing their oil fields then yes they do owe us money.

[TBF]

20. Reconstruction we owe them. If Chalabi hadn't been there for Bush to use they

would've found someone else. The goal was always the oil.

[ProSense]

21. Yes, nearly a million people. Is more than a half a million a better number for you?

There are devastatingly poor areas in this country, would you believe them lucky to lose dozens of family members and friends for a nicer house?

Idiotic, American superiority BS.




edited extra word.

[ProSense]

19. "FYI Iraq was a dump before we went there." What kind of fucking racist shit is that?

By now, summer of 2008, excess deaths from violence in Iraq since March of 2003 must be at least a million. This conclusion can be reached more than one way. There is not much controversy about it in the scientific community. Some 310,000 of those were probably killed by US troops or by the US Air Force, with the bulk dying in bombing raids by US fighter jets and helicopter gunships on densely populated city and town quarters.

link

Iraq street scenes (Before the invasion)

Iraq, Before the war.

Why you remind me of Barbara Bush after Katrina:

"'And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this is working very well for them.'"

[TBF]

14. Edited because it's obvious now he did not intend sarcasm.

[Waya]

9. While I wish that Iraq......

....would stand up and run their own Country, I would hardly say they owe us.
They didn't ask us to come in there and trash the place, did they? That was BushCo's idea.

[thewiseguy]

13. Have you forgotten that it was the Iraqi dissidents that were supplying us with the wrong info?

Have you forgotten that they were dancing in the streets of Michigan when we invaded Iraq? Do you remember Chalabi.

[ProSense]

22. Have you forgotten that the information was wrong, and Bush knew it?

So because Americans, who were lied to by their government, supported for the war justifies the war and in turn the logic that Iraqis owes us for destroying their country?

No wonder some people voted for Bush, you know, the ones now having buyers remorse.

Evidently, you're still harboring the 2004 mentality years after the truth has been revealed and long after most Americans realize they were wrong.

[TBF]

16. Of course it was BushCo's idea - and they did it for the oil.

It's amazing to me that fellow democrats don't see through his smokescreen. It's not like it's very thick.

[ProSense]

10. How much oil do they owe us for this:

[GarbagemanLB]

11. Beckel's the same moron who tried spreading the 'whitey' rumors.

[zulchzulu]

24. Mi$$ion Accompli$hed

It's funny how this story get buried while the MSMorans yak about Rove's Country Club riff on Obama.

OK...so some fat shit who committed treason gets to blubber his piehole about how a black guy at a country club (the story gets lost right there) is sipping martinis with some hottie and making fun of people stumbling into the veranda... sounds like Rove was fantasizing about how he wished one day that would happen to him...

So much for actual PROOF that it was ALL ABOUT BLOOD FOR OIL...

[Disturbed]

26. The Illegal Invasion of Iraq was & still is about the Oil.

The Illegal Invasion of Afghanistan was & still is about the Natural Gas & Pipelines.

[ieoeja]

25. Better deal than they offer Hoosiers!

Some oil company tried getting us to sign a perpetual lease. No way were we accepting that.

To top things off, my sister did a little research and found they were offering us about one-third the going rate.

I don't live in the area, so haven't spoken to any of the neighbors. But given that they vote Republican, I'd assume they were stupid enough to sign these leases.

[Barack_America]

27. At least they're starting to come clean on what "victory" means...

The question that the Bush administration has been evading for years.

We all knew this was the answer. Looks like the threat of an end of Republican rule is finally forcing them to show their hand.

[ProSense]

29. Expect the greedy rush to escalate. n/t

[ProSense]

28. Big Oil and the war in Iraq

Big Oil and the war in Iraq

By Derrick Z. Jackson
June 24, 2008

IT TOOK five years, the deaths of 4,100 US soldiers, and the wounding of 30,000 more to make Iraq safe for Exxon. It is the inescapable open question since the reasons given by President Bush for the invasion and occupation did not exist, neither the weapons of mass destruction nor Saddam Hussein's ties to Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

<...>

This of course blows a hole in another ancient Bush fallacy, the one in which former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld said "the oil wells belong to the Iraqi people" and former secretary of State Colin Powell seconded him by saying Iraqi oil "will be held in trust for the Iraqi people." Former Deputy Defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz once claimed there was so much oil in Iraq that "When it comes to reconstruction, before we turn to the American taxpayer, we will turn first to the resources of the Iraqi government."

<...>

KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary that provides food, shelter, and laundry services to soldiers, last year reported record profits and is about to share in a new 10-year, $150 billion contract. The controversial North Carolina-based private security firm Blackwater, whose guards shot and killed 17 Iraqis in one incident last year, has crossed the billion-dollar mark in government contracts, charging, according to the Raleigh News and Observer, $1,221 a day for security guards who are actually paid $500 a day.

This is despite repeated charges of waste, overcharging and recklessness, and a degree of patriotism that verges on betrayal. As many veterans were being treated amid appalling conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Halliburton CEO Dave Lesar last year moved from Texas to Dubai. The Globe last March reported on how KBR has avoided paying perhaps half a billion dollars in Social Security and Medicare taxes since the start of the invasion by hiring employees through shell companies in the Cayman Islands.

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[ProSense]

30. SCOTUS overturns $2.5 billion Exxon Valdez punitive damage

Exxon Valdez $2.5 billion oil spill ruling overturned

By James Vicini
2 hours, 30 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned the record $2.5 billion in punitive damages that Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) had been ordered to pay for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska.

The nation's highest court ruled that the punitive damages should be limited to an amount equal to the total relevant compensatory damages of $507.5 million.

<...>

It took the company just under two days to bring in $2.5 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2007.

<...>

The case was decided by eight Supreme Court members. The ninth, Justice Samuel Alito, who owns Exxon Mobil stock, recused himself from the case.

The dissenting justices were John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. Breyer wrote in his dissent that he would have upheld the $2.5 billion award.