The issue is not just access to the oil but having US oil companies extract profits by ownership or production contracts or even the sort of development contracts that were being auctioned off on Monday. Also the occupation gives the US some leverage in controlling other countries access to Iraqi oil. There is still no oil law because of concerns about US imperialist aims. Oil companies were nationalised under Saddam whereas the occupation has been trying to privatise everything all along. Kurdistan has passed its own oil law and some foreign oil companies are operating there already.
Cheers, k hanly
Blog: http://kenthink7.blogspot.com/index.html Blog: http://kencan7.blogspot.com/index.html
--- On Thu, 7/2/09, Marv Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> From: Marv Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] No oil for blood
> To: "LBO-Talk" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> Date: Thursday, July 2, 2009, 12:30 PM
> C.G. Estabrook writes:
>
> > Oil (and gas) was certainly part of the essential
> background of the war.
> > If the primary product of Iraq were asparagus, we
> wouldn't have half the
> > American military there. The control of what the
> US State Department, in
> > 1945, described as "a stupendous source of strategic
> power, and one of the
> > greatest material prizes in world history" -- Mideast
> energy resources --
> > has been the cornerstone of US policy in the region
> ever since.
> ==============================
> Did the US have to invade Iraq to have access to it's
> energy supplies? Was
> the cash-strapped Baathist government refusing to supply it
> with oil and
> gas? Who placed sanctions on whom?
>
> Recently declassifed FBI documents show Saddam was well
> ready to cooperate
> with the US, as he had in the past, rather than confront
> it. There's no
> reason to suppose such cooperation would not have included
> allowing US oil
> firms to bid on contracts to develop Iraqi fields.
>
> The New York Daily News last week reported:
>
> "Asked how he would have faced "fanatic" Iranian ayatollahs
> if Iraq had been
> proven toothless by UN weapons inspectors in 2003, Saddam
> said he would have
> cut a deal with Bush.
>
> "Hussein replied Iraq would have been extremely vulnerable
> to attack from
> Iran and would have sought a security agreement with the
> U.S. to protect it
> from threats in the region,' according to a 2004 FBI report
> among the
> declassified files."
>
> Full:
> http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/06/24/2009-06-24_former_iraqi_leader_saddam_hussein_feared_iran_more_than_us_secret_fbi_files_sho.html#ixzz0K7NzCMOk&C.
>
> Of course, the US seeks to control global energy supplies.
> But it does not
> do so through the direct exercise of control by US oil
> corporations, nor by
> invading and occupying oil producing countries which
> jealously guard their
> oil supplies.
>
> When the US has confronted "rogue" regimes, it has
> typically relied on
> economic pressure, political subversion, covert military
> operations, and, on
> occasion, selective air strikes to force them into line.
> The Bush
> administration's decision to put tens of thousands of US
> boots on the ground
> in Iraq aroused fierce controversy within the US defence
> and security
> establishment and general staff because it was such a
> radical departure from
> doctrine, and the forebodings of Brzezinski, Scowcroft,
> Zinni, Eagleburger,
> Kissinger, and others proved to be entirely justified.
>
> That's why, for example, the US has not invaded Venezuela
> or Iran, who are
> also not asparagus producers.
>
> While Iraq's oil supplies were an incentive, as I
> acknowledged, other
> geopolitical and domestic factors weighed more heavily,
> IMO, in the decision
> to invade, IMO.
>
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>