Rob from the mercenaries and give to the troops

I teach writing at community college, and had a conservative student who was a Marine who had served in Iraq, and he seemed to hate Blackwater and the rest of the mercenaries as much as any lefty does.

Their presence is seriously demoralizing to our troops.

It occurred to me that even conservatives would support eliminating mercenaries from a ''support the troops'' angle.

Simply pledge to take the money from the mercenaries and give it to the troops.

And if we canceled the mercenary contracts and used every penny that had gone to them to raise the pay of our troops, especially those most at risk of being poached by mercenary companies, we would still end up saving money.

How?

Every former special forces, pilot, or other badass who leaves the military early to join a mercenary outfit cost a lot to train, and training their replacement will cost a lot. We would prevent that loss by retaining them in the regular military. (We would also cut off the gift of that taxpayer funded training to those companies).

Save money, support the troops, look like the good guys on the international stage...that would be tough for even the corrupt politicians who set up the contracts and get the kickbacks to argue against.

Prosecuting Bush administration not politics, but matter of national security

After ignoring the grassroots movement to impeach Bush, which had twice as much support as impeaching Clinton and about as much as impeaching Nixon the night before he resigned, the mainstream media is now pooh-poohing the idea of prosecuting Bush administration officials for their domestic and war crimes.
If restoring Constitutional checks and balances and showing that the rich and powerful aren't above the law, especially laws of basic human decency like the Geneva Convention, isn't reason enough, there are some very immediate national security reasons to do so, related to 9/11 and the Iraq War.

In the case of 9/11, that day George W. Bush said,

I have directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.

LINK

The Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 found that the Saudi government helped the hijackers, and declassified FBI documents show a Saudi agent picked up two of the hijackers at LAX, set them up in an apartment in his own building, and funneled checks to them from the Saudi ambassador's wife.

Did the Bush administration use this information to punish Saudi Arabia or change the nature of our relationship with them in any way?

No.

He even protected them by classifying the Saudi pages of the Joint Congressional Inquiry's report and tried to smooth over uproar caused by the sketchy details that did leak out.

He likewise said little to nothing about Saudi terrorists entering Iraq even though more came from there than any other country according to Israel, our Pentagon, and even the Saudis themselves.

Why didn't Bush do anything about this? Even if you don't believe the Bush administration was involved in 9/11, covering up the Saudi role is at least a bigger crime than Richard Nixon covering up a second rate burglary.

Worse, it means that we may be vulnerable to another terrorist attack because for all the Patriot Act bluster and trampling of our civil rights, the Bush administration did nothing punish or restrain the real perpetrators.

There is a similar issue with how we became involved in the Iraq War. What was once considered a conspiracy theory, that the Bush administration intentionally lied to get us into the war, is more or less accepted as fact by the mainstream media now.

However, if we don't prosecute those responsible, they are free to return to government at a later date, and do the same thing. That is exactly what Cheney and Rumsfeld did after lying about the nature of the Soviet threat in the 70s.

While the lies and liars from within the administration are pretty well documented, their helpers outside the administration, like those who forged the Niger document claiming that Saddam had tried to buy yellowcake, have not been outed and put out of business.

Perhaps most importantly, we have not had a public airing of WHY Bush bothered to trump up a war against Iraq and who it was meant to benefit. There are some clear clues like Cheney's secrecy about the energy task force he led that was pouring over maps Iraq's oilfields, and the Bush commissioned Hydrocarbon Law that would have given 88% of Iraq's oil income to foreign oil companies, a law that Iraqi legislators refused to pass even after being offered millions in bribes each by the oil companies. But those are just clues.

Without a definitive record of who lobbied for the war, who listened to them, and how they got their way, we are vulnerable to being misled into a war again in the future. If those who planned to profit from the war were punished, we would be even less likely to see it happen again.

It is a matter of public record that Bush diverted our attention from those responsible for 9/11 and fabricated a case for war, leaving us vulnerable to terrorist attacks from those he protected and squandering military resources we should have saved for real threats.

We are less safe because of it, and without the complete investigation and prosecution of those responsible, we will continue to be at risk.

If it does not happen, it would be because our government is looking after the interests of the very wealthy at the expense of the rest of us.

Iraqis democracy has beaten Bush & represented Americans better than our own Congress

While lately the news has mostly been about nothing and maybe some trivia about the boring establishment types Obama has picked for his cabinet, Bush has quietly been finishing up losing the war in Iraq.

Ironically, he is losing the real agenda, installing a regime obedient to the US and international oil companies, because he succeeded at what he thought was a purely propaganda goal, establishing a democracy.

The cabinet of the Iraqi government has been sufficiently compliant to Bush's wishes, approving a hydrocarbon law that would have given 88% of Iraq's oil income to international oil companies and leaving just 12% for Iraqis. However, the parliament as a whole refused to approve it even after they were offered millions in bribes each by the oil companies.

As a consequence of that law not passing, when Iraqi opened up bidding on some oil concessions recently they set the floor for bids at 49% royalties for Iraqis, which means they will likely get significantly more than that, and closer to what their neighbors with easily accessible oil like theirs get. The closer Iraq's royalties get to their neighbors, the more it looks like oil companies could have gotten to the same place in Iraq without us spending three-quarters of a trillion dollars invading and occupying Iraq, killing a million Iraqis, and wasting the lives of thousands of our troops who thought they enlisted to protect their country not expand oil company profit margins.

Now the cabinet has negotiated a withdrawal treaty with Bush that would pull US troops out of Iraqi cities by this summer, and out of Iraq altogether by 2011. It is unclear whether the Iraqi parliament will pass it since there is tremendous public pressure on them to end the occupation as soon as possible. If this agreement does not pass, a UN resolution allowing US forces to stay in Iraq will expire December 31, making the mere presence of our troops there a war crime, and requiring a quick withdrawal.

Even if the treaty is passed, it will be a crushing defeat for Bush. It allows no permanent bases in Iraq, Iraq may not be used as a base to invade neighboring countries, and US forces may no longer kick in doors in the middle of the night and take Iraqis prisoner indefinitely. Best of all, Bush's Blackwater and other mercenary army will no longer be immune from Iraqi law, which destroys the only argument for continuing to use them since they cost far more than regular US military and are far more hated by Iraqis because they commit atrocities with impunity.

Either way, the Iraqis win, Bush loses, and the Iraqi parliament will have done for America what our own elected representatives have refused to do in spite of overwhelming public support: end the war in Iraq.

KEY EXCERPTS:

This is no sop. It is a vote to end the occupation of Iraq
The total defeat of the US plan to install a supine ally in the Middle East is likely to be confirmed today in Baghdad

Jonathan Steele
guardian.co.uk, Thursday November 27 2008 00.01 GMT

The agreement stipulates that "all US forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31 2011". More remarkably, all combat troops will leave Iraqi towns and villages and go back to base by the end of June next year. Pause for a moment and take that in. Six years and three months after the invasion, Iraqi streets will be a US-free zone again.

Iraq will have a veto over all US military operations. A clause added at the last minute after pressure from Iran says that Iraqi land, sea and air may not be used as a launch pad or transit point for attacks on other countries. The Iraqi government eagerly took up the point after US helicopters flew into Syria and attacked a compound there last month, claiming it was a base from which foreign fighters entered Iraq. Iraq joined Syria in protesting against the raid.

Under the withdrawal agreement, no Iraqi can be arrested by US forces except with permission from Iraqi authorities, and every Iraqi who is arrested in these circumstances must be handed to Iraqi forces within 24 hours. The tens of thousands of detainees in US custody must either be released or turned over to the Iraqis immediately. US troops may not enter or search any Iraqi house without an Iraqi judge's warrant, except if they are conducting a joint combat operation with the Iraqi military.

US contractors - the armed mercenaries in their SUVs whom Iraqis hate even more than the American military - will lose their immunity and be subject to Iraqi law, a development that is already prompting many security firms to start pulling out. US troops who rape Iraqi women or commit any other crime while off duty and off base will have to stand trial in Iraqi courts.

***

The deal gives Iraq's national resistance almost everything it fought for. How did Nouri al-Maliki's government achieve it? The main reason is that Iraqi nationalism and the occupation's unpopularity have become overwhelming. Opinion polls have long shown that a majority of Iraqis wanted the occupation to end. They found it humiliating and oppressive. Al-Qaida's infiltration, and the sectarian conflict which its supporters and recruits successfully provoked in 2006 and 2007, distracted many Iraqis for a time. Some saw the US as the lesser enemy. But al-Qaida's power has waned thanks to the Awakening movement of Sunni tribal leaders; and the primary issue, the US intervention, has returned to centre stage. Nationalist sentiment, articulated from the first weeks of the occupation by Sunni insurgents (many of whom later joined the Awakening movement) as well as Moqtada al-Sadr's Shia militia, has spread through the country's ruling elite. This summer Prime Minister Maliki began to realise that he had more to gain by posing as the man who achieved a US withdrawal than by trying to block it. It is a triumph for Iraq.

***

From the American point of view, the main thing the pact does is to allow the US to withdraw with dignity. No hasty Vietnam-style humiliation, but an orderly retreat from an adventure which was illegal, unnecessary, and a disaster from the moment of conception. Like most Iraqis, I am content with that. American neoconservatives will declare victory, as Frederick Kagan, one of the architects of the "surge", did this week. But the fact is that Bush and his ideologues wanted to make Iraq a protectorate and stay indefinitely so as to intimidate Iran and Syria. Now they have been forced to give up, and a newly confident Tehran has been helping its neighbouring Shia-led government in Baghdad to show them the door.

FULL TEXT

Iraq's China Oil deal neuters Bush's thuggery for American big oil

Iraq just signed a 22 year oil service contract with China without the profit sharing that American companies have been been demanding with the help of the Bush administration.

This is a stunning setback for the Bush administration in Iraq.

One of the goals of the war was to set up contract's for drilling Iraq's oil on terms American oil companies dictated. The first draft of the Iraqi Hydrocarbon Law, written at the Bush administration's direction by an American consulting firm, Bearing Point, gave 88% of the oil profits for new fields to the oil companies.

In stark contrast, Iraq has just signed an oil service contract with China that includes NO profit sharing, just a set service fee--less generous terms than China got under Saddam.

American companies have signed similar deals, but on short term contracts of one to two years, not 22 like China's, in hopes that Bush would do through coercion what would be impossible through fair negotiations.

This China deal is probably meant as a message to the American oil companies and the Bush administration, who are continuing to pressure the Iraqis for an oil law that gives away most of their oil income, and contracts that do the same.

The message is that no Iraqi government will betray their country by giving their wealth to foreigners, not even with a gun to their head.

This also undercuts the key argument for giving oil companies the bulk of the oil profits, which is that it is not worth the effort unless oil companies get most of the profits. China thinks those billions of dollars of service fees are worth the effort.

By succeeding at his stated but insincere goal of establishing a democracy (Bush once threatened to fire the Iraqi prime minister if the oil law wasn't passed), Bush has frustrated his real one: giving Iraq's oil reserves, the second largest in the world and worth tens of trillions of dollars, to friends at ExxonMobil, Chevron, & BP.

This also shows that the Iraq War had nothing to do with securing access to oil supplies to run our economy. If that had been the goal, Bush would have pushed the oil companies to accept terms the IRAQIS wanted to insure friendly long term relations and access to their oil. Instead, he risked that to put more money in the pockets of his friends.

This is the problem with having a petulant, spoiled, dim-witted rich child for a president. He thinks if he stamps his feet, raises his voice, and slaps some people around, he will get what he wants because of course it always worked on his families butlers and maids.

MORE ON OIL THEFT MOTIVE FOR IRAQ WAR

KEY EXCERPTS:


The 22-year contract is a renegotiated version of a 1997 agreement between China and Iraq under Saddam Hussein. The original contract included production-sharing rights, but under the new contract China will be paid for its services but will not share in profits.

Before 2003, Iraq had oil agreements with China, Russia, Indonesia, India and Vietnam, three of them production sharing. Iraqi officials have said that they are reconsidering the terms of these agreements because of the increased price of oil, a new government and other changes since the fall of Mr. Hussein’s government. Iraq says that the contract with the Russian oil giant Lukoil for one of Iraq’s largest oil fields was canceled by Mr. Hussein.

The government is also negotiating service contracts with ExxonMobil, Shell, Total, BP, Chevron and some smaller oil companies. The length of the agreements was reduced to one year from two after Iraq drew wide criticism for not putting the contracts out for competitive bidding.

The Ahdab oil field represents only a modest fraction of Iraq’s oil wealth — the field is expected to produce 90,000 barrels of oil a day. Iraq’s overall oil production is 2.5 million barrels a day, but the government wants to increase that to 4.5 million a day over the next five years. Mr. Ulum said that the size of the renegotiated deal with China — the previous contract was worth just under $700,000 — could influence the financial terms of future contracts.

FULL TEXT

Iraqis say NO to profit sharing with big oil

The Iraqi oil ministry says big oil companies are dragging their feet about finalizing short term contracts because they want part of the profits of the oil, not just service contracts. It's a little like your gardener demanding you put his name on the deed to your house in exchange for mowing your lawn.

The Iraqis aren't stupid about this and said no.

Profit sharing is what the big oil companies demanded in the Hydrocarbon Law too, but the Iraqis are unlikely to ratify it with that in, given their hard line here.

It would be ironic if after a three trillion dollar war, over four thousand US soldiers dead, and over a million Iraqis dead, the oil companies got the same deal they would likely have gotten before the war.

Ironically, it is likely that the Iraqis are more eager to ramp up production than the major big oil companies. Before the war, Oil & Gas Journal said they were concerned that once the sanctions came off Iraq, they would pump too much and drive prices down. They would probably prefer to be in the driver's seat so they could set the pace to pad their profits rather than help out the Iraqis--or us.

KEY EXCERPTS:








Monday, June 30, 2008

Iraq offers oil contracts

Hussein al-Shahristani, the oil minister, told a news conference that the deals had not yet been concluded as the companies wanted a share of the profits.

"We did not finalise any agreement with them because they refused to offer consultancy based on fees as they wanted a share of the oil," he said.

Shahristani stressed that Iraq needed the services of experienced companies to realise the potential of its reserves but added that it was not ready to do so at any price.

"It is not possible for Iraq which has large oil reserves to stay at the current level of production. Iraq should be the second or the third source of oil exportation," the minister said.

"We went to these global companies and asked them to offer us consultancy but they will have no privileges or will not get a share of oil."

FULL TEXT

OIL THEFT MOTIVE FOR IRAQ WAR resources

UPDATE: Greg Muttitt at Hands Off Iraqi Oil has a less optimistic and more knowledge opinion of the current contract negotiations.

SEN. Kerry & Schumer want Iraq oil contracts stopped until Oil Theft Law is in place

Either these guys are retarded or they are corrupt with solid brass balls.

The Iraqis are holding up the Hydrocarbon Law not because of the division of income between Iraqi ethnic groups but because of the paltry share of their own oil revenue the US drafted law gives all Iraqis compared (12%) compared to the big oil companies. Other countries with easily accessible oil wouldn't accept terms like that unless they had a gun to their head. Iraq does, and their parliament still won't sign, knowing they could never walk among their own people and live if they did.

Iraqi oil workers, scholars, former bureaucrats, and even average Iraqis oppose the corporate domination model imposed by the law.

By contrast, the short term contracts recently awarded were service contracts which means they are doing a job for the Iraqis, not sharing in the profits. That is the way it should be. That is the way it should be HERE.

The oil companies are parasites, sucking the wealth from under our land as well, giving us next to nothing for it, and then demanding tax breaks and wars to seize more oil fields.

I agree with that climate scientist who said the oil company execs should be tried for crimes against humanity. What they have done to us and the Iraqis and are still trying to do to the Iraqis should be added to the indictment.

John Kerry and Chuck Schumer should either do their homework and stand up for the Iraqis against big oil, which might reduce resentment toward our troops and save some lives, or they should sit down down and shut the fuck up. They could even retire early and go collect their seven figure salaries sitting on boards of directors of oil companies like Sann Nunn, and others who leave ''public service'' which should more appropriately be called ''public servicing the rich.''

The Democrats are better than the Republicans, but only when graded on a curve, and not when they shamelessly pistol-whip Iraq like a robber mad at his victim for not getting the money out of his pockets fast enough.

KEY EXCERPTS:

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.


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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BACKGROUND ON THE OIL THEFT LAW

Iraq War to keep oil prices HIGH

US Gov't Peak Oil Report: we need to kill big oil before it kills us

I stumbled across this on wikipedia looking for something else on Peak Oil. I keep an eye out for oil stories, but this one slipped by me at the time.

Key findings: Peak oil will definitely happen if it hasn't already, and waiting until world oil production peaks before starting a crash program leaves the world with a major gas & diesel deficit for over 20 years. Since this report was done for the Bush admin, their policies of encouraging mass consumption & oil wars to maximize big oil profits are epically criminal.

This is just a reminder that we need to do more this November than kick out oil company stooges Bush & Cheney. We need to disconnect our government from energy industries that base their profits on creating scarcity, and therefore squeezing the economic life out of all but the very wealthiest of us.

Renewable energy is antithetical to the interests of those businesses and individuals. While switching to renewables will create jobs in the short term, once the hardware is in place, the ''fuel'' going into solar and wind is free, and the more that are built, the lower the price of the energy they produce. You only have to compare this to how our transportation economy works. Toyota, GM, and Daimler Benz are not the most profitable corporations in the history of the world, the companies that extract and process the fuel that go in their cars are. Renewable energy wipes out that most profitable sector, and replaces it with something more akin to making houses, cars,and refrigerators: profitable but not masters-of-the-universe, power-of life-and death-over-the-world profitable.

So long as oil companies and energy speculators have ANY place at the table, the rest of us will suffer.

Our government must do to big oil and energy traders what a farmer does to a bull or hog that gets too troublesome: get the sheepshears, snip off their balls, and feed them to the dogs.

KEY EXCERPTS:

The study envisions three scenarios for dealing with a peak oil reality: scenario one involves action not taken until peaking occurs, and scenarios two and three deal with action taken ten and twenty years prior thereto. The conclusions follow:

• Waiting until world oil production peaks before taking crash program action leaves the world with a significant liquid fuel deficit for more than two decades.
  
  
• Initiating a mitigation crash program 10 years before world oil peaking helps considerably but still leaves a liquid fuels shortfall roughly a decade after the time that oil would have peaked.
  
  
• Initiating a mitigation crash program 20 years before peaking appears to offer the possibility of avoiding a world liquid fuels shortfall for the forecast period.

FULL TEXT

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OIL THEFT MOTIVE FOR IRAQ WAR RESOURCES

Iraqis: US has no claim to our oil wealth

Iraqis are fed up with the US assuming they can tell Iraq what to do with their oil wealth, including using it to pay to reconstruct what Bush broke when he invaded the country and during the ongoing occupation. Congress has even suggested that Iraq subsidize their own occupation with low cost fuel for our military.

You don't do a home invasion robbery then hand the victim a bill for what you broke and stole, and tell them to bring you some sandwiches.

What the Iraqis are saying in this article actually doesn't complain about enough. Bush (and sadly even our Democratic Party majority Congress) have been pushing Iraq to pass a Hydrocarbon Law that gives up to 88% of Iraq's oil income to Bush's buddies at the big oil companies. Bush threatened to fire Maliki if he didn't get the law passed, and the oil companies have been trying to bride members of parliament with millions of dollars each for their votes.

The Iraqis won't do it because they know if they do, their own people would kill them. And they might have some sense of patriotism that keeps them from giving away the store to occupiers.

Not coincidentally, what Washington is trying to do with Iraq's oil money is a war crime under the Geneva and Hague Conventions.

KEY EXCERPTS:

Iraq: U.S. has no claim to oil boom

'America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq,' Baghdad official says

By Liz Sly

Tribune correspondent

12:42 AM CDT, May 1, 2008

BAGHDAD — As Congress gears up to debate the Bush administration's latest request for an additional $108 billion in war funding for Iraq and Afghanistan, Iraqis are fuming at suggestions being floated by lawmakers that Baghdad should start paying a share of the war's costs by providing cheap fuel to the U.S. military.

"America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq," said Abdul Basit, the head of Iraq's Supreme Board of Audit, an independent body that oversees Iraqi government spending. "This is an immoral request because we didn't ask them to come to Iraq, and before they came in 2003 we didn't have all these needs."

***

Behind the controversy lies a giant muddle of misspending, waste, corruption and poor accounting on the part of both Iraq and the U.S. surrounding about $100 billion worth of spending on reconstruction and the Iraqi security forces that has barely dented Iraq's needs over the past five years.

Of this, $46.7 billion came from U.S. taxpayers and $50.3 billion from Iraqi oil revenues, including $23 billion in Iraqi money that was spent by the U.S. under the occupation administration of Paul Bremer, according to Bowen.


***

Figures like these contribute to the widespread perception among Iraqis that the U.S. invaded only to steal the nation's oil, making it difficult for Iraqi legislators to contemplate contributing to the costs of the U.S. military in Iraq, said Sunni lawmaker Dhafer al-Ani.

"It's illogical, illegal and immoral," he said of the U.S. proposal that Iraq give the U.S. military cheap oil. "Any additional commitments by the Iraqis to the Americans will make it less respected in the eyes of the Iraqi people, and that will make things even more complicated."

FULL TEXT

OIL THEFT motive for IRAQ WAR resources

Sen. Levin continues ugly ''blame the Iraqis'' meme

Carl Levin is like a landlord who goes to collect the rent and finds an apartment door open. In a barcolounger, he sees the husband stinking of alcohol, passed out drunk with a gun in his lap. On the floor, he sees the wife, dressed for her job as a waitress, but with swollen black eyes, bruised arms and legs, and blood trickling out of her nose and mouth, seemingly beaten unconscious.

After surveying the situation, he throws a glass of water in the wife's face to wake her up, then demands to know why the rent is late.

There is actually a couple of problems with my analogy. First, the landlord knows the woman is not his wife. The ''husband'' killed her real husband and her kids five years ago, threw her in his trunk, and took her home as his slave. The wife is Iraq.

Likewise, the landlord would more accurately be the owner of the neighborhood liquor store, who knows full well who is doing all the drinking, but rather than bothering the drunk and possibly losing his business, he picks on the ''wife'' because he knows she has hidden some money from the drunk, hoping that someday she can use it to escape his abuse. The drunk is of course Bush and his big oil and other corporate cronies.

I just got this email from Carl Levin saying he wants to investigate why more Iraqi oil money isn't going into reconstruction. At first glance that might seem reasonable, but then I wondered if by reconstruction Bechtel, Halliburton, and others who have done only token work and pocketed most of our tax dollars that were meant to help Iraqis.

Getting our money back from them and giving it directly to Iraqis should be a higher priority than brow-beating the Iraqis about how they spend their money (aren't they supposed to be sovereign, you simpering corporate boot-lick?)

Likewise, it is almost criminal to mention Iraq's oil income without mentioning that Bush is strong-arming them to sign an oil law that will give 88% of their oil income to big oil companies, a deal no other oil rich country in the Persian Gulf would take without a gun to their head. Levin has gone as far as demanding that the Iraqis hurry up and pass this bill that robs their country of its one source of wealth. You would think that if the war had anything to do with reducing terrorism, we would let the Iraqis pass an oil law that no one in the country could possibly find exploitive.

Levin has misdirected our attention before and even lied about Iraqis ''wanting'' us to stay.

These lies and misplaced priorities must be addressed because we cannot end the war in Iraq until our elected representatives are honest about the big oil and other corporate interests that are keeping us there. Iraq has tens of trillions of dollars worth of oil. Most politicians in Washington are pursuing business for past or future corporate employers, so them invading Iraq and saying it was to stop terrorism or spread democracy is like Homer Simpson breaking into a donut shop and saying he just wanted to do a health inspection.

People like Carl Levin must be asked:

Who the fuck do you work for?

Are you working for the American people or a handful of banks, corporations, and wealthy individuals even when it means impoverishing and endangering the rest of us, and even taking the lives of Americans and those in other countries?

Senator Levin, represent us and stop behaving like corporate moral filth.

IRAQ OIL THEFT RESOURCES