Ask Dems: We gave big oil Iraq, what did we get back?

I addressed this to Sam Husseini, because he has gotten in the face of top Democrats and Republicans and asked them about things like what they think of letting Big Oil write the law that gives them most of the profits from Iraq's oil.

You can see the video's here:
http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2007/01/sen-reid-...

Sam,

Your videos asking Democrats about Iraq's oil is the best "speaking truth to power" journalism I've seen. Even some very progressive radio people who will talk about the oil issue don't bring it up with Democrats unless they mention it first.

Since Democrats refuse to answer your question on screwing Iraqis out of their oil money, maybe you need to turn it around to an issue they will feel more uncomfortable avoiding:

How does canceling Iraq's oil contracts with foreign companies and giving them to American ones benefit the average American? Was that worth the upwards of half a trillion dollars the war will cost, and the Iraqi and American lives?

If they give you anything like an adult answer it will be something like "strategic access to oil"

The follow up then is why would a country with one product not want to sell it to the consumer who uses 25% of it? Why don't we see China invading other countries to get strategic access, but using contracts and negotiations instead?

As always, these would be good questions for Republicans too, but the chances of getting an honest answer are even slimmer.

The answer to "what did Americans get" is of course demands from big oil for more tax cuts and subsidies, higher prices at the pump, and clearly their boy Bush is still angling to take on another top oil producing country, Iran. Any chance he wants to force terms on them favorable to our oil companies?


iraq war privatization jim mcdermott oil psa production sharing agreement president george w bush oil companies shell bpExxonMobil ChevronTexaco ConocoPhillips republican antonia juhasz greg palast GOP conservative corruption occupation colonialism hydrocarbon law grover norquist jay garner professor smartass iraq peak oil propaganda corporation democracy war on terror public relations worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news 30 year war thirty year war

Senate will investigate Iraq OIL deals Jan. 23! tell them screwing Iraqis = more terrorism

I almost missed this at the very end of her article on the oil machinations in Iraq:

On January 23, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations will hold a hearing to investigate "oil and reconstruction strategy in Iraq." This offers a critical opportunity to demand a cessation of all U.S. government and corporate influence over Iraqis as to the future of their oil.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/01/19/its_still_a...

One way to partially atone for the harm the Bushies have done Iraq is to ensure that have an oil law that no Iraqi or any of their neighbors could claim exploits Iraq for the benefit of the oil companies. PSAs would tell the whole Arab world that we really did go in there to steal the oil and despite any protest from Democrats or our future pullout, it will appear our government was fully behind it if they are allowed to go into effect.

While most Americans are unaware of what's going on in Iraq on this issue (and know even less about how little we get for our own oil) people in the Arab world and other oil producing countries do. In the 1950s, the elected president of Iran was overthrown for driving too hard a bargain and closer to home, one of the reasons the Bushies backed a coup against Hugo Chavez was because he wouldn't take a deal that gave just 1% of the profits from oil to Venezuela.

If our elected officials were at all concerned about their "War on Terrorism," they would realize this would inflame hatred against the US for decades to come.

It is imperative that you tell your senators this and senate foreign relations committee:

Find your senators:

http://senate.gov /

And as many of these guys you have time for:

http://foreign.senate.gov/about.html


OIL MOTIVE for Iraq War resources
http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2006/09/iraq-oil-war-resources.html


iraq war privatization jim mcdermott oil psa production sharing agreement president george w bush oil companies shell bpExxonMobil ChevronTexaco ConocoPhillips republican antonia juhasz greg palast GOP conservative corruption occupation colonialism hydrocarbon law grover norquist jay garner professor smartass iraq peak oil propaganda corporation democracy war on terror public relations worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news

pending legalization of OIL profits theft angers Iraqis

Do you think the Iraqis will notice that Bush is forcing their parliament to pass a law that will give 75% of their oil wealth to big oil corporations?

Blood and oil: How the West will profit from Iraq's most precious commodity

Published: 07 January 2007

Mr Muttitt echoed warnings that unfavourable deals done now could unravel a few years down the line, just when Iraq might become peaceful enough for development of its oil resources to become attractive. The seeds could be sown for a future struggle over natural resources which has led to decades of suspicion of Western motives in countries such as Iran.

Iraqi trade union leaders who met recently in Jordan suggested that the legislation would cause uproar once its terms became known among ordinary Iraqis.

"The Iraqi people refuse to allow the future of their oil to be decided behind closed doors," their statement said. "The occupier seeks and wishes to secure... energy resources at a time when the Iraqi people are seeking to determine their own future, while still under conditions of occupation."

The resentment implied in their words is ominous, and not only for oil company executives in London or Houston. The perception that Iraq's wealth is being carved up among foreigners can only add further fuel to the flames of the insurgency, defeating the purpose of sending more American troops to a country already described in a US intelligence report as a cause célèbre for terrorism.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article...

iraq war privatization jim mcdermott oil psa production sharing agreement president george w bush oil companies shell bpExxonMobil ChevronTexaco ConocoPhillips republican antonia juhasz greg palast GOP conservative corruption occupation colonialism hydrocarbon law grover norquist jay garner professor smartass iraq peak oil propaganda corporation democracy war on terror public relations worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news 30 year war thirty year war

Iraq Insurgents locals NOT al Qaeda said 2003 National Intelligence Estimate

If you just relied on the Bush administration and Fox, talk radio, and even mainstream network news, you would think we are fighting primarily foreign al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq.

But as early as 2003, top analysts from various intelligence agencies agreed the insurgency was local and based on real grievances, including the presence of our troops and told the Bushies.

The Bushies chose to lie to us instead.

The same kind of information was why Nixon didn't want the Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War published. It wasn't that they revealed our intelligence methods or war plans, but that the presence of our troops was fueling the resistance.

It's possible that some portion of the 72% of our troops who want us to leave within the year have figured this out, that they are killing people who are doing the same thing they would be doing if America was occupied. These 18 to twenty-something year olds are going to carry that with them for a long time.



KEY EXCERPTS:

Intelligence agencies warned about growing local insurgency in late 2003
Posted on Tue, Feb. 28, 2006
By WARREN P. STROBEL and JONATHAN S. LANDAY
Knight Ridder Newspapers

***

Among the warnings, Knight Ridder has learned, was a major study, called a National Intelligence Estimate, completed in October 2003 that concluded that the insurgency was fueled by local conditions - not foreign terrorists- and drew strength from deep grievances, including the presence of U.S. troops.

***

Maples said that while Iraqi terrorists and foreign fighters conduct some of the most spectacular attacks, disaffected Iraqi Sunnis make up the insurgency's core. "So long as Sunni Arabs are denied access to resources and lack a meaningful presence in government, they will continue to resort to violence," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

That view contrasts with what the administration said as the insurgency began in the months following the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion and gained traction in the fall. Bush and his aides portrayed it as the work primarily of foreign terrorists crossing Iraq's borders, disenfranchised former officials of Saddam's deposed regime and criminals.

On Nov. 1, 2003, a day after the National Intelligence Estimate was distributed, Bush said in his weekly radio address: "Some of the killers behind these attacks are loyalists of the Saddam regime who seek to regain power and who resent Iraq's new freedoms. Others are foreigners who have traveled to Iraq to spread fear and chaos. ... The terrorists and the Baathists hope to weaken our will. Our will cannot be shaken."

FULL TEXT:

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/13984788.htm




2003 National Intelligence Estimate insurgents iraq war wmd terrorism oil president george w bush osama bin laden real reasons occupation colonialism white mans burden professor smartass lies corporationfascism democracy political opinion agent provocateur war on terror muslim public opinion opinion public relations foreign policy al qaeda false flag terrorist worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news rebel

Israel & Saudi Arabia AGREE: Iraq War creating not just attracting terrorists

Normally, about the only thing you could get Israel & Saudi to agree on is the weather.

But this analysis debunks the Bush argument that at least the Iraq War is attracting terrorists to Iraq instead of the US, as if there is a finite number, and we can kill enough to resolve the problem.

This study was done by examining interrogations of captured foreign fighters in Iraq, and background investigations of suicide bombers in Iraq.

The history of past insurgencies including our own failed war in Vietnam show that this is asinine. Every time to you kill someone, you inspire a brother, or cousin, or neighbor to take up arms. And if the war itself is obviously unjust it can attract sympathizers from outside even to the point of taking up arms, as the Israelis and Saudis are noting.

We had something similar happen with a terrorist here in the US about 150 years ago. John Brown was a well-known anti-slavery activist who raided slave-holding farms to liberate their slaves. When he tried to seize weapons from the Harper's Ferry armory, he was caught and hung. Rather than quell the anti-slavery movement, it galvanized it (the original lyrics of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" were about Brown's death). Within a few years, the Civil War followed because Lincoln said he would not allow slavery to spread into anymore new states.

The same thing happened to the French in Algeria. A French director made an extremely realistic movie, The Battle of Algiers, about the insurgency against the French. At the very end, the French capture the leader of the rebels hiding in a hole in a wall, and say "at last, we have broken the back of the rebellion." As the screen fades to black, the words that crawl up the screen say the rebellion continued, and a few years later, the French were forced to leave.

Just because people aren't white (or as white as us), don't speak English, and put up with a dictator for decades, doesn't mean they are stupid or less human than us.

KEY EXCERPTS:

The Boston Globe

Study cites seeds of terror in Iraq
War radicalized most, probes find

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | July 17, 2005


However, interrogations of nearly 300 Saudis captured while trying to sneak into Iraq and case studies of more than three dozen others who blew themselves up in suicide attacks show that most were heeding the calls from clerics and activists to drive infidels out of Arab land, according to a study by Saudi investigator Nawaf Obaid, a US-trained analyst who was commissioned by the Saudi government and given access to Saudi officials and intelligence.

A separate Israeli analysis of 154 foreign fighters compiled by a leading terrorism researcher found that despite the presence of some senior Al Qaeda operatives who are organizing the volunteers, ''the vast majority of [non-Iraqi] Arabs killed in Iraq have never taken part in any terrorist activity prior to their arrival in Iraq."

****

Obaid said in an interview from London that his Saudi study found that ''the largest group is young kids who saw the images [of the war] on TV and are reading the stuff on the Internet. Or they see the name of a cousin on the list or a guy who belongs to their tribe, and they feel a responsibility to go."

Other fighters, who are coming to Iraq from across the Middle East and North Africa, are older, in their late 20s or 30s, and have families, according to the two investigations. ''The vast majority of them had nothing to do with Al Qaeda before Sept. 11th and have nothing to do with Al Qaeda today," said Reuven Paz, author of the Israeli study. ''I am not sure the American public is really aware of the enormous influence of the war in Iraq, not just on Islamists but the entire Arab world."

FULL TEXT:

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/07/17/study_cites_seeds_of_terror_in_iraq/