----- Original Message ----- From: <kelley at pulpculture.org>
They want to privatize Iraqi oil so that investors in, say, France will become involved in Iraqi oil companies. As the neocons say they were planning to do with Saddam. The neocons believe that privatizing the oil market in the ME will prevent or mitigate the possibility that this sort of situation will arise. "The day could come, if it has not already, when Americans will no more heed the pronouncements of the EU than they do the pronouncements of ASEAN or the Andean Pact. <...>"
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"In a myopic sense, of course, the losers really are better off cooperating. Yet -and this is the important point- that is only because the winners have presented them with a fait accompli...Faced with a choice between joining the winners or being completely shut out, the losers enthusiastically submit their applications for membership. They do so, however, only because the winners' actions have had the effect of removing the status quo from their choice sets, leaving them with what they view as a bad option (cooperating with the winners) and an even worse alternative." [Lloyd Gruber, Ruling the World, U. of Chicago Press, p. 8]