[Vision2020] Parking Garage Financing

[Tbertruss at aol.com]

All:

Another 80 billion dollars has been requested by Bush administration and 
Pentagon to continue the Iraq fiasco.

The Bush administration represents firm Christian moral values coupled with 
Bush's MBA savvy for fueling the free market system, right?  "Free" 
disappearing billions of dollars in Iraq, that is, "in flagrant breach of the UN Security 
Council resolution that gave control of Iraq’s oil revenues and other Iraqi 
funds to the Coalition Provisional Authority," according to a Christian church 
based aid organization:

http://www.christianaid.org.uk/indepth/406iraqoilupdate/index.htm

Maybe if we weren't rebuilding other nations at the end of a gun barrel more 
investment in our own country would be considered wise?  A few million dollars 
in a federal grant for urban restructuring would go a long way toward 
building a parking garage in downtown Moscow.  This would be chump change compared to 
the billions of dollars that have been earmarked for restructuring in Iraq 
that have been "disappearing." 

And now on to today's reality based discussion of one of the main reasons why 
we really are occupying Iraq:
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Of Oil And Elections

By Antonia Juhasz, AlterNet. Posted January 27, 2005.

If all goes according to the Bush plan, American investors and companies will 
soon begin to own chunks of Iraq’s national oil company. 
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Remember when we used to talk about how the war in Iraq was about oil? 
Remember the banners that read "No blood for oil?" Oil has fallen out of the 
discussion lately, but it's time to bring it back in light of the Iraqi elections 
scheduled for this Sunday. 

To refresh our collective memory, President Bush himself declared just before 
the invasion of Iraq that, "Our jobs, our way of life, our own freedom and 
the freedom of friendly countries around the world would all suffer if control 
of the world's great oil reserves fell into the hands of Saddam Hussein." 

This was Bush Sr., speaking in August 1990, on the eve of the first Persian 
Gulf War.

More precise are the words of Chevron CEO Kenneth T. Derr speaking in San 
Francisco in 1988: "Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas — reserves I'd 
love Chevron to have access to." After two wars and one occupation, Derr may 
finally get his wish.

On Dec. 22, 2004, Iraqi Finance Minister Abdel Mahdi told a handful of 
reporters and industry insiders at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. that 
Iraq wants to issue a new oil law that would open Iraq's national oil company 
to private foreign investment. As Mahdi explained: "So I think this is very 
promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil 
companies."

In other words, Mahdi is proposing to privatize Iraq's oil and put it into 
American corporate hands.

According to the finance minister, foreigners would gain access both to 
"downstream" and "maybe even upstream" oil investment. This means foreigners can 
sell Iraqi oil and own it under the ground — the very thing for which many argue 
the U.S. went to war in the first place.

As Vice President Dick Cheney's Defense Policy Guidance report explained back 
in 1992, "Our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in 
the [Middle East] region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's 
oil."

While few in the American media other than Emad Mckay of Inter Press Service 
reported on — or even attended — Mahdi’s press conference, the announcement 
was made with U.S. Undersecretary of State Alan Larson at Mahdi's side. It was 
intended to send a message — but to whom?

It turns out that Abdel Mahdi is running in the Jan. 30 elections on the 
ticket of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIR), the leading 
Shiite political party. While announcing the selling-off of the resource which 
provides 95 percent of all Iraqi revenue may not garner Mahdi many Iraqi votes, 
but it will unquestionably win him tremendous support from the U.S. government 
and U.S. corporations.

Mahdi's SCIR is far and away the front-runner in the upcoming elections, 
particularly as it becomes increasingly less possible for Sunnis to vote because 
the regions where they live are spiraling into deadly chaos. If Bush were to 
suggest to Iraq’s Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi that elections should be 
called off, Mahdi and the SCIR's ultimate chances of victory will likely 
decline.

Thus, one might argue that the Bush administration has made a deal with the 
SCIR: Iraq's oil for guaranteed political power. The Americans are able to put 
forward such a bargain because Bush still holds the strings in Iraq.

Regardless of what happens in the elections, for at least the next year 
during which the newly elected National Assembly writes a constitution and Iraqis 
vote for a new government, the Bush administration is going to control the 
largest pot of money available in Iraq (the $24 billion in U.S. taxpayer money 
allocated for the reconstruction), the largest military and the rules governing 
Iraq's economy. Both the money and the rules will, in turn, be overseen by 
U.S.-appointed auditors and inspector generals who sit in every Iraqi ministry 
with five-year terms and sweeping authority over contracts and regulations. 
However, the one thing which the administration has not been unable to confer upon 
itself is guaranteed access to Iraqi oil — that is, until now.

Based on all reports from both U.S. military and Iraqi officials, the 
elections this Sunday could be a blood bath for Iraqis and American troops alike. 
They are also certain to be far from representative. Democratic elections simply 
cannot be held under these conditions, nor conditions in which the U.S. 
government and its corporations exercise such dominant economic and political 
control.

The Bush administration cannot be permitted to declare a war for "Iraqi 
freedom" and respond with an economic invasion that turns Iraq into a U.S. 
corporate grab bag. "No blood for oil" rings as true today as it did 15 years ago. 

Antonia Juhasz is a Foreign Policy In Focus scholar based in San Francisco 
and working on a book about the economic invasion of Iraq.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/21100

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V2020 Post by Ted Moffett


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