First in the War, Then in the Oil Grab

[Flabbergasted]

http://www.counterpunch.org/behan04052007.html


By RICHARD W. BEHAN


The US Congress has gone beyond compliance with George Bush's illegal war, and is now technically an accomplice-it is assisting with full knowledge in the perpetration of a crime. Congress has attained this status through two grave errors, one of omission and one of commission.


The Error of Commission

The Iraq Accountability Act passed the House as H.R. 1591 and slightly differently as S. 965 in the Senate. The versions await reconciliation in conference committee. Both bills set deadlines for troop withdrawal, both appropriate the money the President requested for prosecuting his war, and both require the Iraqi Parliament to pass its "hydrocarbon law," to enable the sharing of oil revenues among the Iraqi people.

Revenue sharing surfaced publicly when President Bush announced his troop surge initiative on January 10. It was one in a series of mandatory "benchmarks" he established for the Iraqi government to meet. "To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy," Mr. Bush said, "Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis." On the surface that is a benign, compassionate thing to do for a war-torn people.

As usual, it seems, Mr. Bush was consciously deceiving us. He failed to tell us the whole truth. The Iraqi hydrocarbon law also privatizes 81% of Iraq's currently nationalized petroleum resources, opening them to "investment" by Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, and two British oil companies, BP/Amoco and Royal Dutch/Shell. (For further details, see Joshua Holland, "Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil,") These companies expect to sign the rarely used and notoriously profitable contracts called "production sharing agreements" which guarantee them extraordinarily high profit margins: they might capture more than half of the oil revenues for the first 15-30 years of the contracts' lifespan, and deny Iraq any income at all until their infrastructure "investments" have been recovered.

So the Iraqi people will share among themselves all the revenue from 1/5th of their country's oil reserves. But they will get only a fraction from the remaining 4/5ths, where the American and British oil companies expect to generate immense profits. (Read more in Crude Designs, Greg Muttitt, ed., a report by the UK's Platform Group.)

This outcome has been on the Bush Administration's agenda since it took office in 2001, and it is the reason we went to war.

The broad contours of oilfield privatization and the use of production sharing agreements (PSA's ) were shaped five years ago in George Bush's State Department, part of a policy-development project called "The Future of Iraq." This was a year before the invasion. Afterward, Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority embedded privatization and PSA's into the emerging structures of Iraqi governance, aided by the intense lobbying in Baghdad by the four oil companies. The hydrocarbon law, written originally in English, was eventually translated into Arabic and formally confirmed by Prime Minister Maliki's cabinet early in 2007. It awaits passage now by the Iraqi Parliament, few members of which know much of its content and virtually none of whom were involved in writing it.

President Bush, then, is commanding the Iraqi Parliament to enact a law that was drafted first in President Bush's State Department. It requires Iraq to engineer the foreign capture of its own oil.

And Congress has agreed to this. That is complicity.

Was Congress ignorant of the consequences of the deceitful "benchmark?" No. Representative Dennis Kucinich offered an amendment to eliminate it from H.R. 1591. In a letter to his Democratic colleagues, Mr. Kucinich said, "Byrequiring the enactment of this law by the Iraqi government, Democrats will be instrumental in privatizing Iraqi oil."


Lots more...


Restitution


The Congress has three compelling and immediate opportunities to expiate its disappointing behavior. Striking the revenue-sharing "benchmark" entirely from the Iraq Accountability Act. Mandating immediately the early, prudent, and orderly withdrawal of American troops from a criminal and unwinnable war. Then impeachment.