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It’s eerie and uncomfortable and inappropriate that there isn’t much notice that six years ago today the U.S. invaded Iraq. Maybe that’s natural now that the Obama administration is ending the war. Maybe it’s an indication of a cultural exhaustion with Iraq. We who don’t live in Iraq or serve in it should not take this anniversary without reflection.
At least the oil companies don’t. The New York Times reports that they’re going to get a present: as much as a 75 percent stake in Iraq’s oil and gas fields:
Under a formal process created last year, companies have been asked to bid openly for the right to take part in expanding Iraq’s oil production. But many companies have been skeptical of the country’s terms, saying they lacked enough incentives. At the same time, Iraq’s improved security has meant that foreign companies are eager to invest in the country after decades of wars and sanctions kept them out.
Iraq’s oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, addressing a conference hosted by OPEC in Vienna on Wednesday, also suggested for the first time that Iraq would consider allowing foreign companies to share directly in the profits from oil production, rather than the fixed fees in the joint ventures that are now offered.
So the Iraqi government is offering a fire sale on its oil sector to multinational oil companies. Transparency International’s 2008 corruption index ranked Iraq as 178 out of 180, indicating Iraq’s severe corruption environment. Obviously Iraq needs a healthy economy and obviously a healthy economy requires investment. But is it too cynical to ask what Shahristani and others might get out of this deal?
Six years ago today the U.S. invaded Iraq.
Crossposted to The Streak.
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“What if they gave a war and nobody came?”
While today may represent the sixth anniversary of the official start of invasion it had actually been underway for at least a week.
Is this also the sixth anniversary of no one from the Bush family serving in a war started by a Bush family member?
Or put it this way there were over a million Iraqis alive six years ago, that no longer reside on planet earth thanks to us ,though some tried to stop the slaughter,we didn’t do enough apparently.
How many more will be laid to waste till 12/31/11???
Tillman knew and they knew TILLMAN knew, that it’s really just bullshit through and through.
If you want to get technical you know it was way before that.
Ungrateful wretches … after being bombed for 6 years and sanctioned for many more, they should have given over 100% control of their resources to BigCorp™
G’Morning Sir !
Sir! Did an officer walk in?
Which of Iraq’s factions control the awarding of petroleum contracts?
LOL … how ya doin’ ?
Years ago Saddam nationalized the oil fields, taking them away from the Western oil companies, and I’ve often wondered, Bush and Cheney being oil guys and all, if the war wasn’t really about getting the oil fields back to the original owners.
I think it is a huge mistake to allow the West back in the game. Iraq should keep all its revenue and divvy it up among all the Iraqis. Sort of like a social security check every month to every adult. Imagine: Everyone would have some sort of income; there would be a reason to not overthrow the government since you might lose your check; people with money don’t want to fight; money spent means more jobs, improving the economy; a better economy means less fighting; the Sunnis won’t feel left out of the economic pie; less reason to attack the oil fields and pipelines if it will hurt your individual income situation. If we let the
Western oil companies back in then we should expect the same history to repeat someday in the future and all the deaths will be for nothing.
Nation’s newspapers ignore anniversary.
Arise, Sir Loin of Beef!
TPM does photo gallery of the last 6 years wrt Iraq.
LOL … timeless !
Thank goodness they included the purple finger bit … /s
That takes me back… when Bush merely looked clueless, as opposed to grizzled and clueless.
That is about when my son’s sp. ops units went in
The divvying up the money idea, while certainly good and worthwhile, sometimes runs into difficulty as some folks aren’t always agreeable so to what constitutes their fair share.
I have heard that the oil companies that Saddam kicked out of Iraq were, Total-French, BP-British,Shell-Dutch and Standard Oil-US.(or could be Exon-Mobil, my memory isn’t that great anymore) So we went to war with Iraq so the these 4 oil companies could (attempt to)take over the oil fields once more? And 3 out of 4 of the companies are not even american.
I read someplace not to long ago, I think The Economist, or else I saw it on Chinese TV(I get Chinese,Korean and Japanese TV at home, we watch the news on these channels to get a different POV, and yes, I can speak Chinese, while my wife, a Korean/Japanese speaks both of those languages)that the Chinese Oil company got the contracts with Iraq to run their oil fields and that the 4 companies mentioned above were once more kicked out of the oil fields(KBR and Halliburton also had something going on here, got that from reading the book Halliburtons Army-a good book for raising your BP, it made me so damn mad that I put it down until I really calm down) The puppet govt thing failed, even alMaliki wants us out, the invasion failed-no reason for invading ever really clear other than the neocons drooling every time invade Iraq was mentioned, the oil companies failed-they will never get back what they lost when Saddam kicked them out, the Iraq govt is much smarter than the big oil perception of them all being “wogs”. We the people lost-over $2Trillion US and counting, over 4,000KIA and well over 20,000WIA. Altho the battlefield injury survival rate has gone up in every war, the increase from the Vietnam era is nothing less than fantastic. More than 98% of those wounded, survive, if they make it to a battlefield hospital(remember MASH? It really existed)the survival rate is over 99%. Simply amazing. And the only good thing to come out of Iraq
OK, high holy days for me, march madness just started!
Yea, I’m sure there we spooks on the ground well prior. . .
It was really hard to accept that Obama was not going to end the wars. It was very, very hard to see the erosion of civil liberties in the protests at the DNC and RNC in 2008. I accept some of the powerlessness feelings but many of my peacenik colleagues do not.
Here are the peace vigil paintings online (Click on the Photo #s and wait for the paintings to download)
Http://web.mac.com/ctb3
Oil compainies get 75% sooo…what does one have to do or where does one go over the line for it to be considered a ‘conflict of interest’? Guess we don’t use that standard anymore. Looks like we lost 100 years of law just because some people wanted it or maybe too lazy to vote against it?
You might want to check out bmaz’s march madness trash talk thread
Six years ago today we watched the war begin in a cancer center…round one for Mr. Sunshine. We’re still survivors, still knowing that that war was oh-so-wrong.
Never forget. Never forgive the true axis of evil–Bush, Cheney, Rummy.
Now the war is for economic survival and the axis of evil still comes back to Bush and Cheney and their contempt for regulations and reward for cronies. Did you guys hear the latest? Two of the big companies that got bailout funds are $100 million behind on their taxes.
This is economic terrorism these vampire “capitalists” have dealt.
Six years? I think a couple million dead Iraqi’s (who died under American fire prior to Jr. Cheney’s reign) might disagree with that number if they were alive to remind you of desert storm… on Jan. 16th, 1991.
I never thought he would end the wars. I really learned well to distrust pols in the last 8 years.
The revised revision of previous revisions of the rational for the invasion. Condi now says no one was saying that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11.
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/19/rice-911-iraq/
You can go as far back in history as you want. How about U.S. helping Saddam in the Iraq-Iran war? That killed a lot of people in both countries.
A couple of million Iraqis dead from American fire in Desert Storm?
Jane’s new post upstairs at the Mothership!
Is Anyone Planning on Doing Anything About $1 Billion More in AIG Bonuses?
The PNAC gang had Iraq in mind back in mid 1990’s and getting Dick Cheney into WH in 2001 surely was decisive to completing PNAC visions and goals.
Iraq had been under sanctions/no fly zones since American War For Kuwait Oil back in early 1990’s yet the oil fields were still out of reach.
9/11/2001 was the game changer and allowed full American militarism ramp up for taking out Saddam,gaining Iraq oil fields access to Western energy interests and putting Iran on notice it should be very afraid of being next all based on ginned up GWOT scare and war mongering.
The ‘Shock and Awe’ unleashed on Iraq was not a great American military victory as Iraq’s armed forces had been declawed and defanged by the sanctions as were the Iraqi people.Americans came into Iraq more like overt agents of colonialism and Iraq was ripe for being made over into American run colony. Or so it seemed perhaps to Bush/Cheney regime.
It became plainly evident however Pentagon was way wrong on followup to the shock and awe part of invading Iraq. We know now Bush and Cheney fixed pre attack intel and had put the fix in to attack Iraq and be rid of Saddam and his regime to clear way to the oil fields.
Six years later the Americans have not perfected the long stay details for remaining in Iraq and may well not be able to do so given the current SOFA.
However Iraq’s oil fields must still be at the middle of WashingtonDC’s intent to keep those super-bases in Iraq one way or another.To keep ongoing USAF control of Iraq’s airspace. To train and equip on cost plus basis a new Iraqi military. To very likely have a hand in who will become Iraq’s next strongman/dictator given Iraq’s historical politics/corruption.
Iraq is a smoldering pile of ruination to be sure six years after March 2003–now G.W.Bush plans for his new “library” are said to be void of his Iraq Attack debacle history–that’s really stand up tall on his part.
Israel is still scheming on doing a Lebanon/Gaza on/in Iran.Netanyahu is just the guy to do it too as is that maniac Israeli maniac Lieberman.
This ain’t over yet.
WashingtonDC has no plans to control Iraq’s oil fields. It just that we’ve been ordered to keep our troops there so that the Israelis can come in at night and use the oil to refuel their planes as they go off to bomb Yemen.
mac q man-
You are correct about WashingtonDC having no plans to control Iraq’s oil fields.
Pentagon put in super bases and provides USAF control of Iraqi air space to clear way for western energy interests to gain access to Iraq’s oil. Also to menace Iran with possible shock and awe swoop ins or garrison Iraq to keep Iraq from attacking Israel with newly provided American arms and armed forces training. Can’t have that now after what IDF/IAF did to Gaza.
Hell-Israel would come in broad daylight to refuel their planes if only bombing Yemen.
IAF run ins on Iran however may come in during the night due to need to mix in with USAF warplanes during the sortie.
Who ordered to keep our troops there?
Who could order WashingtonDC around?
Let me guess.
Could it be….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..re=related
Idiot, the oil industry is their whole economy and they NEED western oil companies to develop it because they cannot. The alternative you talk about is called “economic suicide”.
Surely the part where you are told this is about Iraq offering terms and oil companies walking away for many years should clue you up as to what the situation is.
I think it’s a huge mistake for you to write things like this on a computer powered by a chip made in Malaysia. Why have you chosen to do that ? Why haven’t you instead used a CPU made in Ohio and supported Americans ? Yes, that’s right.
“Maybe that’s natural now that the Obama administration is ending the war.”
BZZZT. Wrong. Obama administration is not ‘ending the war.’ The war is already over. Obama administration is continuing the occupation.
Can you make that noise anytime, or do you have to eat something special?
U don’t read too good do you? The lead article said that Iraq was going to let the oil companies in on the profits rather than just a fee deal. Which means they were going to hire the expertise originally. Now they are talking about sharing the profits. Which means less for the Iraqi people. I said that Iraq should keep all its revenue, that does not preclude hiring expertise. I’m not sure about your claim that Iraq can’t develop its own oil without hiring an outside company. What’s wrong with hiring engineers and consultants and putting them on the payroll. It’s a big world out there, I’ll bet there are lots of qualified people who would love to make some big bucks working for Iraq. Unless we killed all the people in Iraq that have been running the oil fields all these years there is the basis for them to do it on their own with some outside help. I don’t know where my CPU was made, how do you? All my cars are and have always been American made; I always buy American when it is available and I know about it. Including my tennis shoes. I am a union member and proud of it. Notice no ad hominem attacks on you. Insults don’t make your case.