By Libby
Crooks and Liars reached the same conclusion I did just the other day. Damn if the invasion of Iraq wasn't really about the oil the whole time. C&L note the latest reports on the little discussed legislation that's been bogging down the unity in the fabled new unity government of Iraq, a proposal to give Western oil mega-corporations like Exxon and BP 30 years worth of openly stealing oil profits from the Iraqis.
Sure, the benignly named production-sharing agreements will be legal, but it's virtually unprecendented for the oil corps to get such a good deal and the only reason it's possible for the Iraqis to be coerced into such an ill-advised arrangement is that Bush's "liberation" and ongoing occupation of the country has left them in such a mess that they're in no position to bargain in order to exploit their own resources for Iraq's benefit.
Meanwhile, in a related development, via Raw Story, we find that "somewhere between $5 and $15 million dollars in Iraqi oil goes missing every day." That translates to 100,000 and 300,000 barrels every single day for the last four years. Hardly an amount that could be attributed to forgetting to log in a tanker truck or two and it could surely explain why Iraqi oil funds aren't paying for the non-existent reconstruction, as we were promised early on in this folly.
US officials suggest that this may simply be a result of the Iraqis overstating their production in reponse to US pressure for them to deliver more oil but one can't fail to remember that email from a tugboat sailor that claimed thousands of barges of unloaded fuel are parked off our coastline in order to drive up the price of gasoline. Even Snopes hasn't managed to debunk that one in the last year.
Urban legend or odd coinicidence?
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