Kucinich on Supplemental: It's About Oil

[babylonsister]

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/22362

Kucinich on Supplemental: It's About Oil
Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2007-05-11 00:32. Congress

From the office of Congressman Dennis Kucinich

WASHINGTON, D.C. (May 10) - Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) released the following statement after the passage of the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act of 2007:

"There has been a broad deception about the content of the hydrocarbon law, a deception which has taken in members of Congress and the media. Misdescribed tactically as a revenue sharing plan, it is in fact a radical plan to privatize Iraq's oil.

"The law before the Iraq Parliament contains 3 vague lines about revenue sharing and 33 solid pages of a complex legal restructuring, facilitating the privatization of Iraq's oil resources. The sharing will not be 1/3 of 100%. The sharing is more likely to be 1/3 of 20% at most, after private oil interests take their cut. The stage is being set for theft on a historic scale.

"Iraq may have as much as 300 billion barrels of oil to be tapped. At a market value of $70 a barrel, the value of its oil may approach $21 trillion.

"In the past twenty four hours the Vice President made an extraordinary trip to Baghdad to urge the Iraqi Parliament to stay in session to pass a "hydrocarbon law" which provides for "revenue sharing." Today, President Bush explicitly mentioned that he could come to an agreement if it included a benchmark for "sharing oil reserves." This is the tone of the legislation which the House passed tonight.

"The legislative debate between the Congressional Democrats and the Republicans misses the point of the key issue regarding the invasion, occupation and long term US presence in Iraq - - oil.

"The attempted theft of the oil assets of Iraq under the guise of a plan to end the war will keep the war going long into the future.

"This is the time to be taking steps to end the U.S. occupation, stabilize Iraq, and give Iraqis full control of their oil assets."

[Monkeyman]

1. K&R

[pocoloco]

2. Right again Dennis!

But the plans were never secret or hidden.

[primative1]

3. I had a rough idea ...

but its realy something to read it so starkly layed out. I admit I havent been following much of the Iraq story latly, fatigue maybe .... But this is pathetic.

[truedelphi]

33. You'd be un-bearably mad if you had the misfortune

To see how the MSM has been spinning this

Accoridng to the MSM: The US oil companies would get one third and then the Iraq government would get one third, and then the Iraqi people would get one third.

How bogus.

Jsut once I 'd like to know that something, anything, that the MSM says was valid.

[rodeodance]

4. REC.

[dweller]

5. It's ALWAYS been about the oil .

and always Kucinich to point out the obvious.

:kick: and R!
dp

[Ninja Jordan]

6. it's about the neocon pnac agenda, not oil.

[babylonsister]

7. You don't think they're connected? World domination requires money. nt

[Ninja Jordan]

8. saying it's "about oil," oversimplifies it

[babylonsister]

9. Our 'soundbite' world makes any long-winded explanations

ignorable, sadly.

[Ninja Jordan]

10. It's an inffective soundbyte for that matter

Many non-political americans who hear "it's about oil!" automatically assume the declarant is part of the far left fringe.

[babylonsister]

11. So would world globalization sound too far-fetched, I'm thinking.

Non-political Americans wouldn't believe that either. And then try to explain that to them. If they only knew...

[Zorra]

35. Many "non-political Americans" automatically assumed that those of us

that were speaking out against invading Iraq were part of the "far left fringe". Why should we kow-tow to the ignorance deliberately fostered by a corrupt administration and an MSM largely controlled by special interest groups with deceitful intentions?

It seems that being correct, and speaking the truth, has become the province of the "far left fringe", and should therefore be categorically dismissed. Should we stop speaking the truth in opposition to corrupt, destructive RW policies when they are proposed and/or undertaken?

Obviously Oil
By Rep. Dennis Kucinich, AlterNet. Posted March 11, 2003.

Is President Bush's war in Iraq about oil? Of course it is. Sometimes, the obvious answer is the right one: Oil is a major factor in the President's march to war, just as oil is a major factor in every aspect of U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf.
snip---
Meanwhile, the justifications the Administration has made for this war can be rather easily dismissed. Contrary to Administration assertions, a war against Iraq will not be in self-defense: Iraq does not pose an imminent threat to the United States. It doesn't have the ability, nor has it ever had the ability, to shoot a missile or send a bomber to harm America. Iraq does not possess nuclear weapons. Furthermore, there is no credible evidence that Iraq had anything to do with the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
snip---
Contrary to their denials that this war has anything to do with oil, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle wanted to go to war in Iraq long before they became Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Defense Policy Board. In a 1998 letter they sent to then-President Clinton, they stated "it hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction ... a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard... The only acceptable strategy is ... to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy."

http://alternet.org/story/15359/

[dweller]

12. The US military oil consumption

by Sohbet Karbuz

The US Department of Defense (DoD) is the largest oil consuming government body in the US and in the world

“Military fuel consumption makes the Department of Defense the single largest consumer of petroleum in the U.S” <1>

“Military fuel consumption for aircraft, ships, ground vehicles and facilities makes the DoD the single largest consumer of petroleum in the U.S” <2>

According to the US Defense Energy Support Center Fact Book 2004, in Fiscal Year 2004, the US military fuel consumption increased to 144 million barrels. This is about 40 million barrels more than the average peacetime military usage.

http://www.energybulletin.net/13199.html

while you're comment is correct, Kucinich has just clarified it.
dp

[Bjorn Against]

32. The neocon pnac agenda IS oil.

Don't think the neocons chose to focus their efforts on the middle east based off of random chance, they chose to focus on the middle east because the middle east has a lot of oil. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that when you put an oil man in the White House much of his policy will be influenced by oil.

[bonito]

13. K&R n/t

[Forkboy]

14. He's probably right.

Dick must be due for an oil change...from Saudi Arabian oil to Iraqi oil.

Oil is what this has been about all along.I can't believe anyone would think otherwise with this crew running the show.

[loudsue]

18. Saudi Arabia has already shunned the smirk & darth, so Iraqi oil

is what the neocons are counting on. And this time, they want to have full control of it. They NEVER intend to let Iraq stand on its own.

Kucinich is GREAT! I hope DUers are sending more & more $$ to his campaign. He's really the only candidate that "gets it".

:kick:

[chknltl]

15. The truth comes out

So bush will renegotiate IF the redistribution of Iraqi oil is included. Not that I ever thought his fiasco was about ANYTHING else but I amazed by this boldness.

I see the whole war thing as a VERY DELIBERATE way to keep the people of Iraq AND the people of America distracted from the theft of Iraq's oil. The Big Oil companies do NOT want anyone other than the Big Oil Companies selling (and profiting) from that oil. If for instance, Iraq had stabilized 3 years ago and actually had access to using it's resources to repair the country, if they could have sold their own oil to do this that is, then they would have added that oil to the market thereby causing the per barrel price to drop. (Supply and Demand: Increase supply but not demand and price goes down). Big Oil was not about to allow THAT to happen. By keeping the chaos going on in Iraq, her oil is not getting out like it could be.

Now bush is saying: Let us implement our plan to control the oil and we'll bring the troops home.
(Well that is how I read this). Pretty BOLD move on bush's part...he acts like: "I don't care what you think, we have a goal and we will accomplish that goal and those who die here...well f**k 'em for being born. We are taking that oil and we don't care who knows!"

[global1]

16. What Is Somebody Going To Do With $21 Trillion Dollars?.....

I mean how much is too much? I wish Ian Fleming was still around. This *Co administration and everything that they've done since the SCOTUS put them in power reads like a James Bond novel. If we read about all this in an Ian Fleming novel - we'd say that it is too far fetched to be real and that Ian Fleming was just pushing the envelope of believeablity.

But folks - we've lived this - it's happening - it's still playing out.

I just hope 007 saves us - and soon.

[DLnyc]

17. K&R. Anybody have a link to the actual bill?

As some posted above, when people hear "it's about the oil" they think of that as an abstraction. A copy of the actual bill might be a really good thing to spread around the internet; perhaps people will start to see things more clearly when they see, in black and white, that we have literally donated the lives of over 3300 American kids and around 60,000 Iraqis--as well as several hundred billion dollars and what good name our country had in the world--to the operating budgets of two or three very large oil companies, so that those companies could get a sickenly sweet (sweet to the corporations--a little bitter to the Iraqi people) deal at absolutely no cost to their corporate bottom lines.

(edit typo and add a little)

[slipslidingaway]

20. Some information at link below including a copy of the draft

Iraq oil and gas law.

http://priceofoil.org/thepriceofoil/war-terror/iraqi-oil-law/


The terms in HR 2206 passed yesterday uses the language that the oil bill is "broadly accepted" although the oil union workers may strike on Monday protesting the law???


http://www.basraoilunion.org/index.html

"Iraqi Oil Union Postpones Strike Until Monday

Breaking News: The Union has postponed the strike until Monday May 14th in order to engage in further negotiations with the authorities and employers. The Union is taking the neogitiation offers in good faith.
More news to follow.

For Immediate Release Tuesday May 8th 2007

Iraqi Oil Workers to Strike Over Privatisation Law"

[DLnyc]

23. Great link. Thanks. n/t

[slipslidingaway]

19. K&R. Section 1330 of HR 2206

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&docid=f:h2206ih.txt.pdf

from pages 41 and 43.

SEC. 1330. The President shall transmit to the Congress a report in classified and unclassified form, on or 25 before July 13, 2007, detailing—

(1) the progress the Government of Iraq has made in—................

(2) whether the Government of Iraq has—

(A) enacted a broadly accepted hydro-carbon law that equitably shares oil revenues among all Iraqis;

[mike_c]

21. Congress is complicit in the rape of Iraq....

eom

[harlinchi]

22. This is a freedom for which we are hated!

PSA's and revenue sharing agreements tilted to this degree in the favor of foreign companies must generate more ill will toward this country than three Cheney visits!

Around 5-2-07, the Kurds expressed dissatisfaction with the proposed Oil law. On 5-9-07, the first so-called terrorist attack in the Kurdish region occurred, causing many deaths and injuries.
I submit the dissatisfaction expressed by the Kurds and the explosion they experienced are directly related. I'll go further and suggest that one caused the other.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=3259049&mesg_id=3259049

[slipslidingaway]

30. Yes! We'll find out in 10, 20 or 30 years why they hate us if the

corporations have their way.

[Uncle Joe]

24. Thanks for the thread babylonsister

Kicked and recommended

[L. Coyote]

25. "...attempted theft of the oil ... will keep the war going long into the future."

"...attempted theft of the oil ... will keep the war going long into the future."

I would add, "As if the pumps are not pumping as we speak."
And, whose pockets are the petro-dollars going into at this time.
Is the current oil pumping why the conflict is being prolonged?

[L. Coyote]

27. K&R. I voted for impeachment by sending $3.33 to Kucinich?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x715123

Will Stolen Iraq Oil Funds and Deals For Cronies Force Cheney Impeachment?

This article appears in the July 15, 2005 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

And, what has the Justive Department done about it?


Will Stolen Iraq Oil Funds and Deals For Cronies Force Cheney Impeachment?
by Michele Steinberg

On June 27, a scandal large enough to lead to the impeachment of Vice President Richard Cheney, emerged when it was revealed at a hearing called by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, that the latest figures in questionable and unsupported charges to the Department of Defense by the Halliburton Corporation, had reached over $1.4 billion. .....

.............

According to evidence presented on June 21 at the House Subcommittee on National Security hearing, and on June 27, by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, the following has been established:

* There are billions of dollars unaccounted for, taken in cash from the $19.6 billion Development Fund for Iraq account, created by UN Security Council resolution 1483 in May 2003, and administered solely by the U.S. occupation authority.

.........

* Halliburton's contracts were handled outside of the professional, competitive bidding process that is standard procedure in the Defense Department. Instead, according to Ms. Bunatine Greenhouse, the top civilian contracting official at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Halliburton contracts were given special handling directly from "the OSD," the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

..........

[pberq]

26. Kick & Nominated

[freedomfries]

28. good thread babylonsister!

so much for "fair" "sharing"!
What sharing? Fair to whom?

May 7, 2007
Preserving Iraq's 'Patrimony'
by Michael Schwartz and Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=10925
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2002-2003, oil was seldom mentioned. Yes, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz did describe the country as afloat "on a sea of oil" (which might fund any American war and reconstruction program there); and, yes, on rare occasions, the president did speak reverentially of preserving "the patrimony of the people of Iraq" – by which he meant not cuneiform tablets or ancient statues in the National Museum in Baghdad, but the country's vast oil reserves, known and suspected. And yes, oil did make it prominently onto the signs of war protesters at home and abroad.

Everybody who was anybody in Washington and the media, not to speak of the punditocracy and think-tank-ocracy of our nation knew, however, that those bobbing signs among the millions of antiwar demonstrators that said "No Blood for Oil" were just so simplistic, if not utterly simpleminded. Oil news, as was only proper, was generally relegated to the business pages of our papers, or even more properly – since it was at best but one modest factor among so very many in Bush administration calculations – roundly ignored. Admittedly, the first "reconstruction" contract the administration issued was to Halliburton to rescue that country's "patrimony," its oil fields, from potential self-destruction during the invasion, and the key instructions – possibly just about the only instructions – issued to U.S. troops after taking Baghdad were to guard the Oil Ministry. Then again, everyone knew this crew had their idiosyncrasies.

Ever since, oil has played a remarkably small part in the consideration of, coverage of, or retrospective assessments of the invasion, occupation, and war in Iraq (unless you lived on the Internet). To give but a single example, the index to Thomas E. Ricks' almost 500-page bestseller, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, has but a single relevant entry: "oil exports and postwar reconstruction, Wolfowitz on, 98." Yet today, every leading politician of either party is strangely convinced that the key "benchmark" the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki must pass to prove its mettle is the onerous oil law, now stalled in parliament, that has been forced upon it by the Bush administration. In the piece below, TomDispatch regular Michael Schwartz follows the oil slicks deep into the Gulf of Catastrophe in Iraq. He offers a sweeping view of the role oil, the prize of prizes in Iraq, has played in Bush administration considerations and what role the new oil law is likely to play in that country's future. Tom

The Struggle Over Iraqi Oil: Eyes eternally on the prize
by Michael Schwartz

The struggle over Iraqi oil has been going on for a long, long time. One could date it back to 1980 when President Jimmy Carter – before his Habitat for Humanity days – declared that Persian Gulf oil was "vital" to American national interests. So vital was it, he announced, that the U.S. would use "any means necessary, including military force" to sustain access to it. Soon afterwards, he announced the creation of a Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, a new military command structure that would eventually develop into United States Central Command (Centcom) and give future presidents the ability to intervene relatively quickly and massively in the region.
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=10925

[freedomfries]

29. good thread babylonsister!

so much for "fair" "sharing"!
What sharing? Fair to whom?

May 7, 2007
Preserving Iraq's 'Patrimony'
by Michael Schwartz and Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=10925
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2002-2003, oil was seldom mentioned. Yes, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz did describe the country as afloat "on a sea of oil" (which might fund any American war and reconstruction program there); and, yes, on rare occasions, the president did speak reverentially of preserving "the patrimony of the people of Iraq" – by which he meant not cuneiform tablets or ancient statues in the National Museum in Baghdad, but the country's vast oil reserves, known and suspected. And yes, oil did make it prominently onto the signs of war protesters at home and abroad.

Everybody who was anybody in Washington and the media, not to speak of the punditocracy and think-tank-ocracy of our nation knew, however, that those bobbing signs among the millions of antiwar demonstrators that said "No Blood for Oil" were just so simplistic, if not utterly simpleminded. Oil news, as was only proper, was generally relegated to the business pages of our papers, or even more properly – since it was at best but one modest factor among so very many in Bush administration calculations – roundly ignored. Admittedly, the first "reconstruction" contract the administration issued was to Halliburton to rescue that country's "patrimony," its oil fields, from potential self-destruction during the invasion, and the key instructions – possibly just about the only instructions – issued to U.S. troops after taking Baghdad were to guard the Oil Ministry. Then again, everyone knew this crew had their idiosyncrasies.

Ever since, oil has played a remarkably small part in the consideration of, coverage of, or retrospective assessments of the invasion, occupation, and war in Iraq (unless you lived on the Internet). To give but a single example, the index to Thomas E. Ricks' almost 500-page bestseller, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, has but a single relevant entry: "oil exports and postwar reconstruction, Wolfowitz on, 98." Yet today, every leading politician of either party is strangely convinced that the key "benchmark" the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki must pass to prove its mettle is the onerous oil law, now stalled in parliament, that has been forced upon it by the Bush administration. In the piece below, TomDispatch regular Michael Schwartz follows the oil slicks deep into the Gulf of Catastrophe in Iraq. He offers a sweeping view of the role oil, the prize of prizes in Iraq, has played in Bush administration considerations and what role the new oil law is likely to play in that country's future. Tom

The Struggle Over Iraqi Oil: Eyes eternally on the prize
by Michael Schwartz

The struggle over Iraqi oil has been going on for a long, long time. One could date it back to 1980 when President Jimmy Carter – before his Habitat for Humanity days – declared that Persian Gulf oil was "vital" to American national interests. So vital was it, he announced, that the U.S. would use "any means necessary, including military force" to sustain access to it. Soon afterwards, he announced the creation of a Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, a new military command structure that would eventually develop into United States Central Command (Centcom) and give future presidents the ability to intervene relatively quickly and massively in the region.
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=10925

[OzarkDem]

31. Is Obey and the Dem leadership ignorant?

or are they just ignoring it?

Why would they attack Kucinich so viciously for bringing it up? This is a cause for real concern.

[LWolf]

34. Nice that someone in Washington can say so. n/t