EYES ON THE PRIZE - THE SOFT SELL

March 5, 2007 by PT Rothschild.

OLD ROMAN STRATEGY YIELDS IRAQI OIL TO CHENEY AND BUSH
 

Although barely reported on MSNBC by being buried in a paragraph down in the story ‘Six Sunnis Slain After Talking To Shiites’, the paragraph titled:               U.S. envoy: Oil control is key
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad wrote in a commentary published Saturday in the Washington Post that “resolving concerns about control of oil is central to overcoming internal divisions in Iraq.” Iraq’s new oil law would “serve as a vehicle to unify” the country, Khalilzad wrote. “The goal of Iraq’s leaders was to draft a law that ensured that all Iraqis could be confident they would receive their fair share of the benefits of developing the country’s resources,” he wrote.
Though this may sound rather innocuous, source Pepe Escobar tales the spin off by revealing the master plan from its inception and planner, Dick Cheney, who said in 1999 while then still Halliburton CEO, “By 2010 we will need 50 million (more) barrels a day (of oil.). The Middle East, with two-thirds of the oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize lies.” – London, autumn
On Monday 2/26/07, three years ahead of schedule, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s cabinet in Baghdad approved the draft of the new Iraqi oil law, written in English originally rather than Arabic because it is virtually a U.S. law. This law was drafted behind closed doors by a U.S. consulting firm hired by the Bush Administration and then carefully retouched by Big Oil, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Paul Wolfowitz’ World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development. The key point of the ‘oil law’ is that Iraq’s immense oil wealth (115 billion barrels of proven reserves – 3^rd in the world after Saudi Arabia and Iran – ) will be under the iron rule of the Federal Oil and Gas Council, a panel of oil experts from inside and outside Iraq consisting of predominantly US Big Oil execs. Sixty-five of Iraq’s approximately 80 oil fields will be offered to big oil to exploit, with profits of up to 75% for US Big Oil. For all practical purposes Iraq will be split into three states with oil wealth distributed, in theory, directly to Kurds in the north, Shiites in the south and Sunnis in the center. Big Oil (ExxonMobil, ConnocoPhillips, Chevron, BP, Shell, TotlaFinaElf, Lukoil (Russia) and the Chinese Majors are ecstatic as this law will usher in the institutionalized rape and pillaging of Iraq’s oil wealth. 
The approval of the draft law by the fractious 275 member Iraqi Parliament in March is a mere formality. Scandalously, Iraqi public opinion had almost no knowledge of the new law because in real life, Iraq’s vital national interests lie in the hands of a small bunch of technocrats. Ministries are no more than political party feuds where the national interest is never considered, only private, ethnic, or sectarian interests. Corruption and theft are endemic as is the violence that has divided the country now conquered by oily robber barons. All it took was a half a trillion dollars, half a million Iraqi men, women, and children, and about 3100 American Soldiers’ lives.
The old Roman philosophy of ‘divide and conquer’ was executed perfectly under the guise of ‘freeing the oppressed people and spreading democracy’. Installation of pro-West ‘leaders’ into an Iraqi governing system of our devising just sealed the deal. Hummers, anyone?

(source: Asia Times, The Roving Eye)

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