The Origins of Bush's Oil War

We've all heard about the Benchmarks that Bush has been pushing so hard for Al-Maliki's government to complete before we leave.

How many of us have heard all 18? So I went looking for them, and when I found them, found some interesting stuff. Combined with information from AlterNet, NY Times and Iraq PowerNet, even more light is shed on Bush's Oil War.

I'm not going to list all the Benchmarks; but here's the URL where you can find them:
http://frankwarner.typepad.com/free_fran k_warner/2007/05/i_think_i_found.html

There are only 2 I'm concerned with right now. But first, a small history lesson regarding US policy concerning Iraq.

First, it's important to realize something about the sectarian violence in Iraq. It's not just about religion, and the media and government have been doing us a grave disservice by portraying it as such. This is not a religious civil war.

The Iraqis are fighting over the form of government it will have, how soon the occupation will end, and who will control Iraq's oil.

There are two main forms of political thought; separatists and nationalists. Separatists favor 3 regional zones with strong governments; they will tolerate, for now, foreign influence in their affairs, and favor privatization of oil reserves, with control of that region's oil to the regional authorities.

Nationalists reject any foreign influence; they want a strong central government that will not be based on sectarian blocs, and they oppose the privatization and proposals of the Bush administration's terms of distribution, believing Iraq's oil and gas reserves should be controlled by the central government.

When Paul Bremer first rolled into town and helped set up the provisional government, and then the elections were held, the tensions were almost wholly sectarian. But as the occupation drags on, and Bush's intentions regarding Iraq becomes clearer, the divisions between nationalists and separatists have grown more to the forefront of Iraqi politics, and Iraqi violence.

In August, five parties representing Sunni, Shiite Arabs and Kurds, signed a "unity accord". Al-Maliki said that was a major sign that things were moving towards reconciliation. The White House strongly "approved".

What we haven't been told about this group who signed the accord is that they had long been allied since 2000, and were all allies in the London Conference.

The London Conference? What is that, you ask? Ah, I am so glad you asked.

The London Conference was one more meeting in a plot to sectarianize and divide Iraq. This policy stretched back to 1991, during the presidency of George H W Bush, who began funding and supporting and organizing sectarian groups. He then encouraged the Kurds and Shiites to rebel against the central government (read: "Saddam Hussein") I remember hearing on TV that Bush was encouraging and aiding the Kurds and Shiites in rebelling against Hussein and his "supporters" (the idea then spreading that the Sunnis were in power over and oppressing the Kurds and Shiites under Hussein's direction). The rebellion failed, and many of the rebels fled the country; the Kurds suffered particularly from Hussein's retaliation.

The US continued to promote the idea of sectarian competition within Iraq, and then began funding and those sectarians' militias. The US sponsored an opposition conference illegally on Iraqi soil, beginning to solidify their ideas of a replacement for the Baath Party (Saddam Hussein's party), and set up sectarian quotas for the new government. For nearly a decade, the US tried to unify opposition to its plans to divide Iraq. Coincidentally, when Paul Bremer took control, he immediately outlawed the Baath party, firing all Baathists in the government. He later relented and allowed back some lower-echelon officials when he believed the increasing violence was based in part on this purge. However, one of the "benchmarks" reads:
(ii) Enacting and implementing legislation on de-Baathification.

Literally, the administration is single-handedly responsible for almost completely destroying an entire political party, simply because it was Saddam Hussein's party.

In 1998, Representative Benjamin A Gilman introduced a bill called the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. Based on several findings, including Saddam's invasion of Iran and Kuwait, his attacks on Iraqi Kurds and an unsuccessfulattempt on the life of George H W Bush, the bill states in Sec. 3: It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime. At that point, the official US Policy toward Iraq was one of "regime change".

Less than 2 months after signing HR 4655, Clinton, using the justification of Saddam's non-compliance with UNSCOM, bombed several targets in Iraq.

Fast-forward to 2001; George W Bush has been elected to office, and now bends to completing the task his father began. We know from the testimony of Richard Clarke, and from the memoirs of Paul O'Neill, that from day one, George W Bush and Dick Cheney were obsessed with invading Iraq.

Now, 6 years later, George W. is very close to completion of the mission began almost 15 years ago.

There's just this little problem getting in the way...those pesky Nationalists in Iraq are interfering. And not just by shooting up the streets of Baghdad. Nationalist partisans are actively resisting several of George W's "benchmarks", including:
(iv) Enacting and implementing legislation on procedures to form semi-autonomous regions.
(iii) Enacting and implementing legislation to ensure the equitable distribution of hydrocarbon resources of the people of Iraq without regard to the sect or ethnicity of recipients, and enacting and implementing legislation to ensure that the energy resources of Iraq benefit Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, Kurds, and other Iraqi citizens in an equitable manner.
As you may recall, these are two of the main points of dissent among the Nationalists; they want a strong central government, and they want THAT government to control their resources. (iii) is deliberately vague; Al-Maliki has probably been given very detailed instructions on what constitutes "equitable".

Another LARGE obstacle to the completion of (iii) is that those pesky, independently-minded Kurds have gone off and decided they're already semi-autonomous and signed contracts with at least 2 foreign oil companies; Hunt Oil of Dallas, and Dana Gas of the United Arab Emirates. The Nationalists are crying foul, and there is a good deal of tug-rope back and forth over the issue. Some feel this could be seen as a Kurdish "Declaration of Independence", which would really screw things up for the Nationalists. In fact, Dana Gas' press release identifies the Kurds as the "Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq".

Bush should be happy with the Hunt contract; after all, he is good buddies with the owner, Ray Hunt. And it goes a bit towards establishing the "Regional" form of government which Bush wants, that will allow him to control the allocation of Iraq's resources. Really, this development works beautifully for him; he probably had Hunt waiting in the wings since 3/2003, and the UAE ready to pounce on the gas fields as well.

So now we see a bit more of the real story of Bush's Oil War. This war has been in the making since 1991, and will continue until the entire country's oil reserves are conquered and claimed for the US and its allies. The information and motives that continue to emerge into the public domain make the Bush dynasty's actions more and more heinous. Our government is exploiting an entire nation, slaughtering their leaders, killing tens of thousands of them, displacing hundreds of thousands, wiping out or marginalizing entire political parties or ideological sects, using a puppet government of their own countrymen, to further their own gain. Al-Maliki is no better than Bush; willing to watch his people be slaughtered for Bush's Oil War.

Every last one of you; Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rove, Al-Maliki; all of you should be mortified and aghast at what you've allowed yourselves to become; dictators and perpetrators of colonialism.
Whatever it takes, whatever needs to be done, I swear to make it my duty and my work to perpetuate this information, spread it throughout the World Wide Web, until EVERYONE knows what despicable people are running our country.
Peace
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/ getdoc.cgi?dbname=105_cong_public_laws&a mp;docid=f:publ338.105
http://iraq.powerfoundation.org/2007/07/ 10/notes-on-genocide-in-iraq-part-ii-the -destruction-of-the-iraqi-state-and-nati onal-identity/
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/13/world/ middleeast/13baghdad.html
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1 998/12/16/transcripts/clinton.html
http://www.emarat.ae/about/fullstory.php ?id=284&currentItem=true
http://www.danagas.ae/press/kurdistanAgr eement-en.html
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/62042/