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More than five years after the invasion of Iraq — just in case you were still waiting, the oil giants finally hit the front page...
Last Thursday, the New York Times led with this headline: “Deals with Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back.” (Subhead: “Rare No-bid Contracts, A Foothold for Western Companies Seeking Future Rewards.”) And who were these four giants? Exxon Mobil, Shell, the French company Total and BP (formerly British Petroleum). What these firms got were mere “service contracts” as in servicing Iraq’s oil fields not the sort of “production sharing agreements” that President Bush’s representatives in Baghdad once dreamed of, and that would have left them in charge of those fields. Still, it was clearly a start. The Times reporter, Andrew E. Kramer, added this little detail: “[The contracts] include a provision that could allow the companies to reap large profits at today’s prices: the [Iraqi oil] ministry and companies are negotiating payment in oil rather than cash.” And here’s the curious thing, exactly these four giants “lost their concessions in Iraq” back in 1972 when that country’s oil was nationalized. Hmmmm
I mean, remember when the mainstream media seconded the idea that Bush’s invasion, whatever it was about weapons of mass destruction or terrorism or liberation or democracy or bad dictators no matter, you could be sure of one thing: it wasn’t about oil. “Oil” wasn’t a word worth including in serious reporting on the invasion and its aftermath, not even after it turned out that American troops entering Baghdad guarded only the Oil and Interior Ministries,while the rest of the city was looted. Even then and ever after the idea that the Bush administration might have the slightest urge to control Iraqi oil (or the flow of Middle Eastern oil via a well- garrisoned Iraq) wasn’t worth spending a few paragraphs of valuable newsprint on.
After all, with global demand for energy on the rise, why would anybody want to invade, conquer, occupy, and garrison a country that, as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz once observed, “floats on a sea of oil”? And let’s be fair. At the time of the impending invasion, reasonable people couldn’t possibly have imagined that it had anything to do with oil, not while George W. Bush was politely ignoring the subject, except when referring obliquely to Iraq’s “patrimony” of “natural resources.” Forget that our President had an 11-year career in the energy business (and had been Arbustoed; or that his Vice President had been the CEO of a giant energy services corporation, Halliburton retiring during the presidential campaign of 2000 with a $34 million severance package. Hear the Vice President in a conference in 1999 “By 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from?” Where indeed? He then answered his own question: “While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East, with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies.”
After all, the only people who thought that oil might have something to do with the invasion of Iraq weren’t on the Times staff. They weren’t, in fact, in the mainstream at all. And, to put things into context, there were only somewhere between 11 million and 30 million of them marching around in the streets of cities and towns all over the planet before the invasion, carrying signs that said ludicrous, easily dismissible things like: “No Blood for Oil,” “How did USA’s oil get under Iraq’s sand?” and “Don’t trade lives for oil!”
Now, with a barrel of crude selling at more than quadruple its prewar price, more than double its price a mere year ago, the oil majors are finally moving in for the... well, let’s not say “kill,” let’s just say that tasty little sip of the oil patrimony.
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but the bad thing is that everyone is so jaded that nobody really wants to talk about it... nobody is concerned and nobody is holding US accountable for it...
2000 Americans died in 9/11 and they killed 20,000+ Afghans for it... nobody is holding them accountable still...
i dont believe the US figures and I’m damn sure they’ve killed over a million Iraqis already... and just for oil... I’m not a muslim...
but if I were, trust me it wouldnt take a lot of persuasion for to wanna blow up a couple of hundred Americans myself!!!!
They are digging graves for themselves and the repercussions for it are going to be disastrous!!!
That is why John McCain has outlines the 3R plan to create a new tax base of new businesses... So we can dump oil usage all together. This is about the economy and the world’s welfare.
McCain has it going on!
JOHN McCAIN’S 3R ECONOMIC PLAN 2008
Abbreviated version
Progressive Republican Candidate John McCain comes through for America with his 3R economic plan. In the persona of Theodore Roosevelt, McCain’s plan just makes sense.
1. RETHINK: America must see globally on what America is capable of in our current state of technology, engineering and meet the demands that face the world.
“RE-Think” the basic job goals involve the dwindling retirement, health care and social security plans that are failing Americans. With a strong base and a higher Gross Domestic Product (GDP) America has a new bargaining chip in the way we live and the ways we retire.
Private Sector framework is in place and current laws allow the 3R to happen. The Progressive attitude of John McCain to get things done by crossing party lines will resurrect America.
2. REFORM: The American people must demand higher quality products and less restricted trade routes for Made in USA components. We will lead the way of MFG again!
The USA will reform its dead manufacturing base to create the most innovative and green-engineered products possible. We will compete in a world market along with other high quality products. Our Private Sector teams are making this reality now.
3. REINVENT: America and Americans must reinvent themselves to reach and maintain these standards and by sheer American ingenuity, control the world’s marketplace in the competitive manner, as the USA has always been proud to be #1.
Americans are going back to McCain’s 3R-schooling program where they are paid to reinvent their skills and learn new skills to design and lead their personal LLC, Corporation or joint venture company. That’s easy enough to comprehend and just as easy to implement.
The 3R plan is designed as a six-month rapid advancement system. Graduates may return for additional skill enhancements from time to time, or step up after new advanced training in executive management.
NUTS AND BOLTS of the plan are simple.
Green Engineering firms with actual answers to viable fossil fuel free transportation and climate control for homes and office have products that will save end users billions per year have finally realized why these ideas have always been avoided. Billions of savings equates to millions of lost tax revenue from energy companies. The US needs a separate tax revenue source before we can move away from fossil fuels.
Here is the John McCain 3R solution.
McCain’s 3R is about technical, closely monitored and rapid hands on training from pros to create new pros. Thousands of currently-job-displaced “once leaders in the manufacturing arena” will be asked to train and play instructor rolls in the 3R plan. Paid, of course, as these new leaders will help create a whole new style of prosperous America. A massive restructure providing thousands New American MFG means millions of new jobs for infrastructure alone.
New jobs is the mainstay for Creating a new guard for Social Security.
While manufacturing is a very important part of this plan, thousands of other new businesses must to be created to meet the new surge of 3R manufacturing industries to create a new era of prosperous Americans.
Initial estimates of 1 in 5 students will begin his or her own company and drive even more Americans into a viable lifestyle with real jobs, real benefits and a retirement to look forward to.
This 3R plan will be done without costing taxpayers (or the government) additional funds. America has the means to follow through with John McCain’s 3R plan, ready and in place across the USA. The buildings we need sit vacant for the most part. By assuming leases on abandoned stores and factories across America with MC-3R schools and mini-manufacturing training centers, the USA made products can be sold and support the stores. Building owners write off the loss in taxes over a few years if they donate the space!
This is the new place for financial speculators to invest!
The speculators who first drove the economy with mortgage investments and most recently with crude oil investments have a better arena for their investments. America as nation of industrious individuals who want to work and want to succeed will make them huge profits. The supply of eager Americans with ideas and dreams to prosper is limitless.
Although the thousands of new businesses manufacturing USA Made products is exciting enough, the real excitement comes from the massive amount of additional jobs that will be created to provide the new housing, new buildings, new parks, shopping, grocery stores, schools, government outlets and so much more.
McCain’s Progressive nature embodies Theodore Roosevelt more than any US presidential candidate in history since the original Rough Rider blazed the greatest era of growth in America.
We need John McCain to lead our nation with the same type of change.
