Biden to Pick Country at Random to Remove US Troops to Show Russia How to Do It

 

In an effort to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Biden is taking the unprecedented foreign policy step of leading by example and pulling troops out of a country the US has invaded.  

As an added show of good faith, he will choose that country at random by covering his eyes and pointing at a map randomly.

When asked by reporters if any countries will be exempt, he said, "Of course!  We're not going to give up countries that grow our bananas or cocaine, make our clothes for pennies a day, or have natural resources our extraction companies can profit from.  That would just be stupid."

The puzzled press corps asked which countries that left.

"Wherever those Barbery pirates came from, and some of our troops just ran out of gas in Lichtenstein and decided to stay for the Licht festival.

Another reporter asked what would happen if he accidentally pointed to part of the United States.

"Come on, man!  We're not going to give up all that stuff we won from Mexico!  If we did that, where the hell would we go for vacation? Florida? Jesus, it's too damn humid and the alligators would eat my grandkids.

Speaking of Florida, if I happen to land on that, I will return it to the Queen of Spain, but she's gotta take Trump and that Rick DeMentos or whatever the hell his name it. That's non-negotiable."

T. Boone Pickens confirms Iraq War for OIL

Straight from the horse's mouth:

Financier T. Boone Pickens speaks during the World Business Forum in New York October 6, 2009. (REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)

Published on Thursday, October 22, 2009 by Reuters

Pickens says US Firms 'Entitled' to Iraqi Oil

by Tom Doggett

WASHINGTON - Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens told Congress on Wednesday that U.S. energy companies are "entitled" to some of Iraq's crude because of the large number of American troops that lost their lives fighting in the country and the U.S. taxpayer money spent in Iraq. Boone, speaking to the newly formed Congressional Natural Gas Caucus, complained that the Iraqi government has awarded contracts to foreign companies, particularly Chinese firms, to develop Iraq's vast reserves while American companies have mostly been shut out.

"They're opening them (oil fields) up to other companies all over the world ... We're entitled to it," Pickens said of Iraq's oil. "Heck, we even lost 5,000 of our people, 65,000 injured and a trillion, five hundred billion dollars."

President Barack Obama has pledged to withdraw U.S. troops in Iraq.

"We leave there with the Chinese getting the oil," Pickens said.

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Essentially, Pickens is saying America can only get a piece of Iraq's oil if we have a gun in their face.

There are a couple of problems with that calculus though.

First, even if American oil companies get oil concessions in Iraq, there is no guarantee that means they will sell it to American citizens for less, or reward us for the sacrifices of tax dollars and our troops lives that it took to get those contracts.

And while we are rightly focused on the thousands of our troops who have died, the Iraqis might be thinking more about the over one million Iraqis killed, with every other family having lost at least one member.

The other thing to note is that China and other countries were somehow able to negotiate contracts with Iraq without invading or occupying the country. Could it be that one way to negotiate is to offer more favorable terms than you competitors instead putting a gun in the face of the people you're negotiating with?

That might be hard to grasp if you are used to calling up Washington and getting the CIA or Pentagon to remove leaders who don't agree to your terms. Military action is a form of welfare for oil companies.

That certainly seemed to be the case in Iraq since as soon as Dick Cheney came into office, he formed a secretive energy task force, and the only revealing document anyone could pry out of it was a map of Iraq's oil fields divided up and a list of foreign suitors for those fields.

And if you think taking care of the oil companies also meant getting cheap gas for the rest of us, think again. BBC journalist Greg Palast was told by a top CIA oil analyst that the war was to prevent the price of oil from going down. The industry's own journal said in 2002 that once sanctions came off Saddam, he could pump too much oil and drive the price DOWN. President Bush even seemed to confirm this when he sent Russia's Putin reassurances that an Iraq War would NOT result in lower oil prices.

The other thing the awarding of contracts to other countries proves is that the oil companies are lying, and getting politicians in DC to lie for them, about Iraqis demanding unreasonable terms that make it impossible for them to drill there and make a profit. Somehow those other countries think Iraq's terms are manageable.

In reality, it is our oil companies who are making unreasonable demands on the Iraqis. After the invasion, President Bush hired an American consulting firm to write an oil law for the Iraqis that gave 88% of their oil income to big oil companies, a deal none of Iraq's oil rich neighbors wouldn't take without a gun to their head, and a provision rarely discussed in the American press, who instead focus on the ethnic division of oil income. The Bush administration pushed so hard for this law that at one point Iraq's prime minister said Bush would fire him if it wasn't passed, and while the Iraqi cabinet approved the law, the full parliament wouldn't vote for it even when the big oil companies offered them bribes of millions of dollars each.

If the war was not about oil, then US politicians would not be browbeating the Iraqis to accept American oil company terms as Joe Biden recently did--they would be twisting the arms of the oil companies to make them give Iraqis the best possible deal so it wouldn't look like oil was why we invaded and to reduce animosity toward the US in the region.

The fact that the likes of T. Boone Pickens are complaining about the Iraqi government shows that we might have done the Iraqis one favor--given them a government that actually looks out for their interests instead of politicians simply lining their own pockets. Now if we could just do ourselves the same favor.

MORE IRAQ OIL THEFT SOURCES

Letter to Bill Moyer's on Iraq, Oil, & Democrats

Bill Moyers did a commentary on the oil motive for the Iraq War that hit most of the bases that the mainstream media and certainly the right wing avoid like a spider: the link between the Cheney Energy Task Force as soon as Bush came into office and the Iraq War, and the various statements of administration insiders that point to the oil motive.

He left a couple out, which I have included in the letter to him below. The one that I do not have an answer for myself is why Democrats are largely silent or complicit on this issue. I understand why the Republicans obey the oil companies; they are bought and paid for. The Democrats aren't as can be seen in various hearing when they nip at the heels of big oil for price fixing or wanting to drill in ANWR or off-shore.

But the Democrats criticisms of big oil are like kicking a pit bull instead of going for the jugular, their role in lobbying for the Iraq War and demanding an oil law that can only inflame Iraqi attacks on our troops. The dog gets mad, and the kicker gets bitten. or worse.

My letter to Moyers:

Dear Mr. Moyers,

Why are the Democrats silent on the oil motive for the Iraq War? In most cases, they talk in the same propaganda framework laid down by the Republicans, and either say they could do it better or that we should get out because we failed at those false goals. When someone does go after the oil motive like Dennis Kucinich and handful of others, they are either ignored or marginalized by the congressional leadership.

When Democratic leaders are asked in person about how the terms of Iraq's Bush-backed Hydrocarbon Law gives most of the country's oil wealth to big oil, they either feign ignorance or run away. It's on video:

Feinstein

Biden & Kennedy on video, text of Reid


The Iraqis who know what's in the law oppose it, and those who don't oppose the concept of privatizing their oil.

Scholars, oil workers, and oil bureaucrats

Poll of Iraqis on oil

Greg Palast, Antonia Juhasz, and Naomi Klein have all done good work on this, but no one has dug into why the Democrats have been silent or complicit.

I agree with your statement that the actions our government has taken on behalf of oil companies amount to crimes against humanity. The only way to stop more from happening is to have at least one party that opposes it, and openly calls it by it's right name.

If they did this correctly, they would not be standing alone, but could call all other businesses, large and small, to stand with them and against a corporate thug that demands a bigger and bigger taste of their business.

Given your high public profile, you would be the most likely to get access to those with power in the Democratic Party, and if you couldn't, if you publicly questioned their complicity, they would be more likely to respond.

Sincerely,

OIL THEFT MOTIVE FOR IRAQ WAR resources

Biden's pathetically small nod to reality won't end the war

Many anti-war blogs and websites are praising Sen. Joe Biden for asking the ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, whether there was more al Qaeda in Iraq or Afghanistan, and therefore which location is it more important to eliminate them. Crocker was forced to acknowledge that 2+2=4, that al Qaeda is more concentrated on the Afghan Pakistan border.

Big fucking deal.

What a pathetic, pyrrhic victory.

Until he and other Democratic "leaders" in Congress hits big oil’s role in pushing for war & Iraq Oil Theft Law, he is just another worthless hack, pointing out an internal flaw in the Bush propaganda that any fifth grader with decent short term memory could have identified.

Biden is pushing for the division of Iraq on ethnic lines, something the vast majority of Iraqis don’t want, and when given a chance to attack the hydrocarbon law Bush is forcing on the Iraqis that gives 88% of their oil income to big oil companies, Biden either feigned ignorance or actually believed the talking points of the Bushies about the oil law that he mindlessly repeated, about the oil law dividing revenue between ethnic groups, which in reality is only a scant few lines in a document tens of pages long.

Iraqis are not fooled by this bullshit. Even the Bush-approved Iraqi parliament is afraid to pass the Hydrocarbon Law because they know they could never walk freely among Iraqis if they did. Big oil has gone to the extent of trying to BRIBE Iraqi PMs to pass the law and they still won't do it.

Despite the news blackout of how big oil lobbied for and plans to profit from the Iraq war, most Americans know the war is about oil. Our elected representatives insult our intelligence when they keep debating the war in terms of fighting terrorism and spreading democracy, neither of which are helped by killing a million Iraqis and thousands of our troops.

To their credit, the British parliament has had an open debate about the role big oil has played and is playing in the Iraq War.

It is a stain on our democracy that no such debate has occurred here, and that we are left applauding when a piece of moral filth like Joe Biden points out a mistake the equivalent of saying Santa Claus lives at the South Pole instead of the North.

By making token efforts at criticizing the war without pulling the pants down on the true motives, Democrats allow the war costing so many of our tax dollars and lives will continue.

Why does Washington want to partition Iraq against Iraqis will?

I'm deeply disappointed that my generally progressive senator, Barbara Boxer, is shilling for carving up Iraq, a neocon wet dream also advocated by corporate tool Joe Biden, despite polls consistently showing Iraqis oppose the idea (see below).






She doesn't bother to ask what Iraqis themselves actually want:

September 2007 poll:



BCC STORY ON SEPTEMBER POLL


March 2007 poll:



BBC STORY ON MARCH POLL

If Boxer, Biden, and flat-earther Brownback really want to stabilize Iraq, they might demand that Bush pressure Saudi to stop sending 45% of the foreign fighters into Iraq who likely are fomenting ethnic violence to make partition look attractive.

Early on when mosques were bombed, Sunni and Shia clerics got together to condemn the attacks. Despite several years of ethnic violence since Bush invaded most Iraqis (with the exception of the Kurds) want to remain one country.

How would we be teaching them democracy by dividing their country against their will?

Another congressman condemns Bush's Iraq OIL THEFT law

I can count on one hand the number of Democrats who have spoken honestly about the oil theft law Bush is forcing on Iraqis, but unfortunately, I can think of just as many who lied, evaded, or literally ran away from questions about it.

At least there is one more now, Rep. Joe Sestak from Pennsylvania.

Americans need to understand that invading another country to steal their natural resources is a clearcut war crime that will earn us even more hatred from Iraqis and those in the Persian Gulf than we already have.


Via Thinkprogress:

Sesktak Warns Iraqi Oil Law Contains ‘Undue Ability Of U.S. Oil Companies To Control Iraqi Profits’

Alternet’s Joshua Holland reported recently, “If passed, the Bush administration’s long-sought ‘hydrocarbons framework’ law would give Big Oil access to Iraq’s vast energy reserves on the most advantageous terms and with virtually no regulation.” The framework law proposes to hand over effective control of as much as 80 percent of the country’s oil wealth.

A recent poll showed that all Iraqi ethnic and sectarian groups across the political spectrum oppose the principles enshrined in the oil law, and 419 Iraqi oil experts, economists and intellectuals recently signed their names to a statement expressing grave concern over the bill. The head of the Iraqi Federation of Union Councils said recently, “If the Iraqi Parliament approves this law, we will resort to mutiny.”

While the Bush administration has prodded the Iraqi government to pass the oil-sharing agreement, few members of Congress have voiced alarms over the details in the current bill. Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) recently told ThinkProgress that more attention needs to be paid to the oil legislation. “Who knows what’s in that,” he said. Sestak continued:

The indications from a draft of several months ago that the Kurds were using, is that…there is an undue ability of our oil companies to control the Iraqi profits by controlling the infrastructure and the wells that are there.

I mean they [U.S. oil companies] are going to get much more, if the draft is correct, of profits than we would under a normal oil sharing agreement, of these oil companies to a country like Saudi Arabia or others. Heaven forbid that at the end of this time, after all this, if we find out that there’s undue advantage given to our oil companies.

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Send a note of thanks to Sestak and contact your representative and senators and tell them stop Bush from giving Iraq's oil to his cronies.

CONTACT SESTAK

FIND & CONTACT YOUR REP & SENATORS

OIL THEFT motive for IRAQ WAR resources