War in Iraq: America Loses
War in Iraq:
America Loses
Corporations Win
By DW Foreign-policy Editor, Dusty Schoch
It’s all over – all except for 16 more months of “face saving” inevitably to flow from Bush, using his military patsy (Petreus) to betray us into believing it’s not all over.
The saving “surge” is clearly a failure. More Americans and Iraqi’s are dying on all fronts. So how can I contend the corporations are “winning”? Just look at the numbers—that is the dollars and sense:
Ever asked yourself why there is virtually no news coverage on the issue of Iraq’s only source of revenue…oil? Regardless of the question, the answer is NOBODY KNOWS…for sure. For everybody’s information, although Bush promised us that laws would be enacted in Iraq whereby oil revenues would be shared by all citizens of Iraq, this has not happened and is never likely to ever happen. The question is…what has been happening for the 6 years we have occupied Iraq? Where have the billions in oil revenues gone and where will they go in the future?
The only SURE thing is that as America’s armed forces and so-called “insurgents” continue to die as the war continues to wind down, we all know it’s just a matter of time before American troops are withdrawn, and hell will break loose in this land of warring Islamic tribes.
And in the meantime, American dollars (ours) will continue to flow into Iraq, where the only ones profiting from our presence there are the American and British oil companies (and Halliburton-type “reconstruction” enterprises, and “Blackwater USA-type paramilitary corporations…all on our taxpayer payrolls.)
How big are those numbers? You might think we’re paying just for the 170,000 military troops we presently have over there. But we’re really paying for nearly twice that. There are now 137,000 “contractors” (Blackwater type paramilitary) we’re also paying….such that our total military occupation (civil and military) numbers 307,000…and that, my friends is one out of every thousand Americans. Do the math. One out of every thousand of us are now in Iraq, making war.
What is that war costing us on a per-capita basis? Well, figuring only what Bush has just asked Congress for the next year ($190 Billion of our money) it amounts to $633 from every American for next year alone. Money we’re spending on a war we’re losing.
But not the Corporations. Halliburton and Blackwater are still raking it in, and will continue raking it in until the bitter end of our inevitable withdrawal, upon which Bush will certainly declare that our soldiers had victory in their grasp but are “stabbed in the back by the peacemakers back home, yadayadaydada” echoing the same lame lines the politicians handed us when we withdrew from our equally ill-advised war in Viet Nam.
But, as much as the Corporations are successfully war-bucking in Iraq, we can also look to their cash flow for the very signs that, while they are “winning” the dollars, we are losing the war. Most salient in the “dollar signs” out there is the story of Hunt Oil.
Ray L. Hunt, C.E.O. and President of Hunt Oil Company (of Dallas Texas…surprise, surprise!!), just last month (August, 2007) signed an oil-sharing production deal with Kurdistan. Think about what that means. Do you think maybe Hunt Oil has some “inside intel”…and that maybe that “inside intel” is that there will be no Iraq Government, per se, when we leave…and we are certainly in the process of leaving. Even Bush is comparing Iraq to Viet Nam now, though he scoffed at such parallels for each of the first 5 years we were at war in Iraq.
Is it just a “coincidence” that this same owner of Hunt Oil in Texas is a member of Bush’s “Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board” (and therefore, clearly a friend and crony, because everyone knows Bush hires only cronies)?
The fact that Bush cronies are now transacting oil business with provisional governments in Iraq OTHER THAN THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT WE ESTABLISHED, clearly shows the war to establish and empower that “democratic regime” is LOST.
But not “lost” in terms of corporate profits and ultimate bottom-line “out-come”.
At this moment (2:20 PM, Sept. 27, 2007), Halliburton, Blackwater and Hunt Oil are raking in huge profits…in the billions, while you and I are paying billions ($633 apiece for the coming year alone) to enable these war criminals to continue their blood-for-oil profiteering.
Before writing this piece, I looked and looked for more exact information on who’s been making money from Iraq oil since the American armed forces seized possession of it and the Islamic country in which it is located. For those interested in digging further into this slimy corporate oil trade…for those of you who remember, as I do, that Halliburton was still doing business with Iran long after Bush declared it part of the “Axis of Evil”, you can look at a few sources of information that corroborate what I’m here contending. Click here.
This is an article written by one Sarah Meyer entitled “Iraq Oil Reality vs the NY Times”. Sarah Meyer is a researcher living in the UK. She is on the BRussels Tribunal Advisory Committee. This article can also be read on the BRussels Tribunal
I have no prediction to make regarding the future “success” of the corporate quest for oil and other war profits in Iraq when we finally withdraw American troops. One thing to consider is that if 170,000 of our military troops were withdrawn today, 130,000 American paramilitary troops would remain. Wouldn’t this be sufficient to secure Hunt Oil’s oil deal with Kurdistan? At present, neither President Bush nor General Petreus have any control over what the paramilitaries do, although they claim they are “working on it”, since recently reported cases show that wholesale murder is part and parcel of their general corporate modus operandum in Iraq.
There’s little doubt that Bush and the corporate-driven Neo-cons planned to enter Iraq and commandeer their oil in perpetuity. The diplomatic conclave American Forces constructed in Iraq is the largest and most secure of its kind in the world. It was not built at the war’s inception because Bush was that determined to democratize Iraq and save its abused women and poor from a tyrant.
Let’s celebrate what Hunt Oil has shown us has occurred in Iraq: The war to establish a democratic government is lost. Let’s celebrate the loss because it means there will soon be an end to American occupation of a foreign country, invaded on false pretenses and with fascistic brutality, a war killing over 4,000 American soldiers and over 600,000 non-militant Iraqi’s.
While we celebrate, lets mourn, and then condemn the corporations who are still, even as I write….winning.
Dusty
9 27 07
