Iraq oil law NOT theft for big oil says Bushie Khalilzad, former big oil consultant

Zalmay Khalizad, Bush's former ambassador to Iraq who was a consultant to Unocal on the trans-Afghanistan pipeline claims a Washington Post article about Iraq's Hydrocarbon Law was wrong to say Iraqis oppose it or that it is designed to give Iraq's TENS OF TRILLIONS in oil income to Bush's big oil cronies who are also his former employers.

Khalizad wrote this in a letter to the Washington Post to protest an article that, rather just repeating the White House talking points about the law dividing Iraq's oil profits between various ethnic groups, had the gall to cite Iraqis who opposed it because it gives away the bulk of their oil income to transnational oil companies like Exxon, Chevron, ConnocoPhillips, BP, and Shell.

Khalizad reminds us that neocons really went to Iraq to do charity work and spread democracy not kill people and pry the fillings from their teeth like they do everywhere else, saying:

...the article did not critically examine misplaced accusations that the oil law was designed to enable Americans to take control of these resources. Iraqi leaders themselves sought to enable international investment in this sector because they understood the inefficiency of Iraq's past statist and overcentralized policies.

CONTEXT

See? Isn't it nice how concerned they are for the business efficiency of Iraq? Isn't that what business people do? Spend half a trillion dollars to show someone else how to run their business more efficiently with no thought of profit for themselves?

I guess that's why Bush had to threaten to throw Iraq's Prime Minister Maliki over the wall of the Green Zone if the Hydrocarbon Law didn't pass, why oil workers have threatened to mutiny if it does, and five Nobel laureates have banded together to oppose the law. They all just don't know what is good for Iraq.

EXCERPTS THAT PROBABLY PISSED KHALIZAD OFF IN THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

Missteps and Mistrust Mark the Push for Legislation

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 5, 2007; A12

excerpts

"This was a very bad move by the Americans to push for this law," said Issam al-Chalabi, a former oil minister. "Now it looks like . . . the Americans are after oil -- they will bring their Exxons and Chevrons and they will control our oil again."

snip

Meanwhile, bitterness was rising from many factions -- unions in the oil-rich port city of Basra, petroleum industry experts, Sunni politicians and those loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr -- that the law would allow foreign companies to make off with Iraq's oil wealth. A group of 419 Iraqi academics, engineers and oil industry experts would later sign an open letter to parliament stating that "it is clear that the government is trying to implement one of the demands of the American occupation."

The draft oil law, the letter stated, "lays the foundation for a fresh plundering of Iraq's strategic wealth and its squandering by foreigners, backed by those coveting power in the regions, and by gangs of thieves and pillagers."

MORE ON IRAQI OPPOSITION TO OIL LAW

Obviously, the Washington Post article put the neocons in a panic because if they had been thinking clearly they would have realized Khalizad's protest drew MORE attention to their lies and machinations about Iraq's oil not less.

If the Democrats were serious about ending the war and representing the people who voted for them, they would stop talking about the lies that got us into Iraq and whether or not we are succeeding at creating a stable, Democratic Iraq, a propaganda frame which no one in DC gives a crap about, and few outside of DC are fooled into believing they do.

Instead, they should start talking about whether wrestling the oil profits from Iraqis only to give them to transnational corporations will increase hatred of and terrorism toward the US, and what exactly average Americans get in return for our investment of tax dollars and blood to give Iraq's oil to those companies.

If consistently and repeatedly talked about that instead of the embarrassing, patronizing, childish way they and the Bushies talk to us about Iraq now, the war would be over in short order, and Bush, Cheney, and a lot of oil execs would be doing research on how to remove tar and feathers.

OIL THEFT MOTIVE FOR IRAQ WAR