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."

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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.


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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."

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OIL THEFT motive for IRAQ WAR resources