LOVE ME TENDER: Harvesting the Blood Fruits of Terror | Print | E-mail
Friday, 15 July 2005
Original version published July 15, 2005, in The Moscow Times.
They were still scraping body parts out of the blasted carriages in the London Underground last week when the terrorists brazenly announced a harvest of blood fruits from their murderous campaign. The declaration – bone-chilling in its moral nullity, its brutal cynicism – was made in the fearsome name of Jihad.
That would be Asim Jihad, of course, spokesman for the Iraqi Oil Ministry. Yes, just one day after London's agony, the state terrorists who perpetrated the ongoing mass atrocity of aggressive war in Iraq celebrated an important victory in their campaign of violence and fear: 11 juicy oil fields are being put up for tender to international investors, Italian news agency AdnKronos International reports.
The corporate cornucopia of these fertile fields in oil-laden southern Iraq – 3 million barrels a day, said Jihad – will surpass the nation's entire current output of 2.2 million bpd: rich pickings indeed for the oil barons whose branch office in the White House has done such outstanding advance work for them. With oil prices soaring past $60 a barrel – on their way to the $100 mark in the near future, some experts say – the $25 billion ante that the Iraqis are seeking will be a small price to pay for a seat at this game.
But goodness gracious me – as Pentagon pump-jockey Don Rumsfeld would say, in that prim spinster patois he likes to affect when wiping blood off his hands – nobody in their right mind believes all that money will actually go to the Oil Ministry, which will maintain ostensible control of the sold-off fields for the alleged benefit of the Iraqi people. Heavens to Betsy, no!
Some of the loot will be skimmed by Bushist-favored bagmen in the new Baghdad regime. Some will be siphoned off to fund the death-dealing, torture-happy goon squads now operating on behalf of various factions in the government. Some will be kicked back to the oil barons. And some will be smuggled into slush funds for covert ops, mercenaries, campaign hijinks in the Homeland and "retirement packages" for good and faithful servants of the Bush war machine.
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