America – your tax dollars have been well spent. What can you buy with one trillion dollars? No-bid contracts:
Nearly Four Decades Later, U.S. Oil Companies Return to Iraq
Four oil companies are in the final stage of contract negotiations to regain drilling rights in Iraq — thirty-six years after they lost them. Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — founding partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — are currently in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry “for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields.” Joining them are Chevron and several smaller oil companies. The deal is expected to be approved by the end of the month and “will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.” The no-bid process has frozen out 40 other oil companies, including Indian, Russian and Chinese competitors. A spokesperson for the Oil Ministry said that “the no-bid contracts were a stop-gap measure to bring modern skills into the fields while the oil law was pending in Parliament.” He added that the companies chosen already had a relationship with the government, “advising the ministry without charge for two years before being awarded the contracts.” While the current contracts are relatively small, they represent a foot in the door for much more lucrative future deals.
Source: New York Times, June 19, 2008 via Center for Media and Democracy
well, seems brendan nelson was right when he said this war was “about oil supply security”. there is always an economic reason to war… resources……..land, food, water, oil, etc . there is also the ideological… capitalism, communism,religious, etc. there is also strategical. i bet the US will have air and army bases in iraq for decades at least as this puts their forces in the centre of what they perceive to their “area of interest”. the US has a history of the manufactured reason to go to war to expand their control over “areas of interest”. wmd’s are just the latest version of the mexican war, the bay of petomkin, and more. probably not telling you anything new cameron.great stuff , keep it up and thankyou. mikej
Mike, yeah you’re totally correct. Nothing new to me but always good to hear someone else say it. The question for us as Aussies is – are we prepared to allow our country to kill the people of other countries in order to secure oil? Is that our moral compass as a nation? And when our leaders lie to us about their reasons for going to war (as Howard and Downer almost certainly did), what are we going to do about it? Where is the public outcry, the marching in the street to drive it home that we want them up on charges? Where is the Royal Commission? Why isn’t the current Government pushing ahead with a Royal Commission?
AND WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
http://www.electoral-vote.com/
Obama is probably going to be the next president of the United States.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/iraq/
And here his plan for Iraq:
“Barack Obama’s Plan
Judgment You Can Trust
As a candidate for the United States Senate in 2002, Obama put his political career on the line to oppose going to war in Iraq, and warned of “an occupation of undetermined length, with undetermined costs, and undetermined consequences.†Obama has been a consistent, principled and vocal opponent of the war in Iraq.
In 2003 and 2004, he spoke out against the war on the campaign trail;
In 2005, he called for a phased withdrawal of our troops;
In 2006, he called for a timetable to remove our troops, a political solution within Iraq, and aggressive diplomacy with all of Iraq’s neighbors;
In January 2007, he introduced legislation in the Senate to remove all of our combat troops from Iraq by March 2008.
In September 2007, he laid out a detailed plan for how he will end the war as president.
Bringing Our Troops Home
Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.”
On the way to the station this morning ABC radio Early AM program had a report on this. I was thinking why are they only reporting on this now when Cam mentioned it over a week ago?
Tony, probably because it takes the ABC a week to catch up with my RSS feed. 🙂