Last September, Hunt Oil of Dallas quietly revealed it had signed an oil production-sharing agreement with the grand poobahs of Iraq's Kurdistan region, in defiance of the central government in Baghdad, the one America created.
The Bush administration briefly feigned mild concern and then went out for cocktails.
The issue: The Kurds claim the Iraqi constitution gives them power over resources within their region, while Baghdad insists it has sole constitutional authority over all of Iraq's oil.
It's surprising the news media was never all over this story, and virtually nothing has been said or written in the nine months following the deal's announcement. Until now, and it comes from the horse's mouth.
Hunt Oil honcho and longtime Bush family contributor/crony Ray Hunt was honored this week at a Dallas business dinner, and the online blog of D Magazine quotes him during the Q&A as saying his play for oil is "going very well." He waxed on:
"I went to sign the contract myself....They also have their version of the Texas Rangers there, who are able to keep the terrorists out of the area....So, we went in and negotiated the contracts we have....We've completed all the pre-work, and we're ready to drill a well right now. Now other people are saying, 'Maybe we should take a second look at this.' So, our company in some small way might be causing other companies to take a second look at a part of Iraq."I think that, in the end, you'll end up with a soft partition of Iraq, a very decentralized government, with authority granted to three provinces. The Kurds I think will end up being an example....and people will say, 'This is happening in Kurdistan; we want it to happen in Iraq [as a whole].' American democracy is not one-size-fits-all, but, as an example of what freedom can do, it's remarkable that this can happen."
What's this about "American democracy" and "freedom?" What do Jefferson and Madison have to do with this mess?
Granted, autonomous provinces make it easier to grab a piece of the Iraqi oil patch pie without going through Baghdad. Yet how does this fit with the main goal Bush famously promoted when he announced "the surge" in January 2007: giving the central government time to devise a fair and equitable oil agreement between all three stakeholder groups in Iraq (Shiite, Sunni and Kurd). That agreement still doesn't exist, by the way.
In the interim, outfits like Hunt ink side deals with the Kurds, while Iraq's Oil Ministry is letting other companies "pre-qualify" for investment opportunities as it waits on the parliament to produce a nationwide agreement. None of this business gets serious press coverage here at home, even though it has propelled the entire war from the beginning.
Are oil interests now Iraq's fourth stakeholder group, and wasn't that always the objective?
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan certainly thinks so. As he bluntly wrote in his 2007 memoir The Age of Turbulence: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."
Desert Storm in 1990 was also about oil. The difference is that Bush the Elder sent signals, and most inherently knew the motivation was to protect Kuwait's oil fields, even if Washington wouldn't openly admit it. That's why much of the world (including Arab neighbors) approved of the limited military action to stabilize the region by forcing the Iraqi army back across its own border. The addition of "no-fly" zones (continued by the Clinton administration) ultimately turned Saddam Hussein into a paper tiger.
Ah, but the son also rises.
Immediately after 9/11, Bush the Lesser held a megaphone at Ground Zero, promising that "the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon." That should have meant al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden, but it morphed into Saddam's mythical mushroom clouds and WMDs. Then it became freeing the Iraqi people from tyranny, and finally it arrived at the fantastical notion of remaking the Middle East, at all cost and with our blood.
Remaking it for whom, exactly? Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon-Mobil, our Chevron shining bright?
:-)
We're supposed to be talking about lapel pins and "winning."
This kind of talk just distracts us from our "crusade."
However, We hope you do not think like that if you do not want to be a slave for them..
The criminals in our government at work.
Another reason that charges of fraud and misleading the givernment should be filed against this administration, making all treaties, agreements and contracts null and void upon further review once we get these criminals, God help us, out of the White House.
They will need to be void so these agreements do not hold us hostage to situations that although they may be great for the businesses involved, can very possibly work against the best interest of the majority of the American People.
Heh, Between 3 and 7 trillion dollars wasted in Iraq so Ray Hunt can be tens of billions of dollars richer. Great ROI there, rethugs.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-issues-threat-to-iraqs-50bn-foreign-reserves-in-military-deal-841407.html?
BULLSHIT!
Think for a second, if the breakup of Yugoslavia had a U.S. Military force there insisting on a national government to include Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Boz/Hersogovs, Montenegrans, and Macedonians (not to mention Kosovian Albanians) into one federal government... where do you think that piece of U.S. Military "art-work" would be today?