it's "plan b" for iraq's oil--- america has decided...but who voted ?

*apparently this blogger's recent claim that the bush administration was planning to auction off iraq's oil reserves is no longer correct .

according to bbc investigative journalist greg palast , in light of what happened in russia when oil privatization took place ,the neo-cons have been persuaded to scrap their first plan for iraq's oil and have switched to plan "b" --creation of a state oil corporation in iraq --but state owned or privatized , watch in which direction the oil profits flow -- "west" , i'd bet . the bushites didn't spend 300 billion taxpayer dollars on this iraq-war for nothing...

again i must ask why this question of whether to privatize the oil and sell off the reserves to "investors" , or keep control of the reserves under a central state corporation , or whether to pursue some other alternative course was not a proposition on the ballot in the recent "democratic elections" that took place in iraq ?

isn't listening to the voice of the people what DEMOCRACY is all about ? isn't this an issue that every iraqi would naturally hold a VITAL interest in ?

saddam was no doubt a pure sonuvabitch , but rotten bastard that he was , he DID invest considerable national oil revenues into building drinking water treatment and sewage treatment facilities that made clean drinking water accessible to most iraqis -- that is until the first gulf war when the Us and allies violated the geneva accords by targeting iraq's water treatment infrastructure .

the sanctions for 12 years after the war prevented chlorine and the materials needed to purify water or rebuild the water treatment plants from getting in and many of the 1,500,000 iraqis who died as a result of sanctions , were believed to have died from water borne diseases from drinking dirty water...most of the dying was done by children and the elderly ...

also under saddam basic education for iraqis and medical care was paid for with oil revenues .

as i understand it , iraqi and the palestinians have the highest literacy rate in the arab world , and iraq had a significantly better ratio of doctors per 100 citizens than the Us --all due to the oil revenues filtering down to benefit the people .

as rotten a rat bastard as saddam was and despite the fact that it seems that everything he built in the nation ,he named after himself, SOME of the oil money benefited average iraqis .

in many respects ,until the wars they were involved in , iraq was a very modern nation even by non-regional standards. we hope that even more of the oil money in the future goes to raise the standard of living of the ordinary iraqis ...the natural resource wealth of a nation should be used to serve and benefit its citizenry and not to fatten the pockets of already wealthy international big oil--but unfortunately we know how often HOPE misses the bull's eye ...






Secret US Plans For Iraq's Oil
By Greg Palast
Reporting for BBC Newsnight
3-17-5

The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed.

Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protestors claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.

In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists."

"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.

Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks" of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US.

An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant Falah Aljibury says he took part in the secret meetings in California, Washington and the Middle East. He described a State Department plan for a forced coup d'etat.

Mr Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed potential successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration.

Secret Sell-Off Plan

The industry-favored plan was pushed aside by yet another secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan, crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas.

The sell-off was given the green light in a secret meeting in London headed by Ahmed Chalabi shortly after the US entered Baghdad, according to Robert Ebel. Mr. Ebel, a former Energy and CIA oil analyst, now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, flew to the London meeting, he told Newsnight, at the request of the State Department.

Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's "back-channel" to Saddam, claims that plans to sell off Iraq's oil, pushed by the US-installed Governing Council in 2003, helped instigate the insurgency and attacks on US and British occupying forces.

"Insurgents used this, saying, 'Look, you're losing your country, your losing your resources to a bunch of wealthy billionaires who want to take you over and make your life miserable," said Mr Aljibury from his home near San Francisco.

"We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, pipelines, built on the premise that privatization is coming."

Privatization Blocked By Industry

Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US Government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme.

Mr Carroll told us he made it clear to Paul Bremer, the US occupation chief who arrived in Iraq in May 2003, that: "There was to be no privatization of Iraqi oil resources or facilities while I was involved."

The chosen successor to Mr Carroll, a Conoco Oil executive, ordered up a new plan for a state oil company preferred by the industry.

Ari Cohen, of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation, told Newsnight that an opportunity had been missed to privatize Iraq's oil fields. He advocated the plan as a means to help the US defeat Opec, and said America should have gone ahead with what he called a "no-brainer" decision.

Mr Carroll hit back, telling Newsnight, "I would agree with that statement. To privatize would be a no-brainer. It would only be thought about by someone with no brain."

New plans, obtained from the State Department by Newsnight and Harper's Magazine under the US Freedom of Information Act, called for creation of a state-owned oil company favored by the US oil industry. It was completed in January 2004, Harper's discovered, under the guidance of Amy Jaffe of the James Baker Institute in Texas. Former US Secretary of State Baker is now an attorney. His law firm, Baker Botts, is representing ExxonMobil and the Saudi Arabian government.

View segments of Iraq oil plans at
www.GregPalast.com/opeconthemarch.html

Questioned by Newsnight, Ms Jaffe said the oil industry prefers state control of Iraq's oil over a sell-off because it fears a repeat of Russia's energy privatization. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, US oil companies were barred from bidding for the reserves.

Jaffe said "There is no question that an American oil company ... would not be enthusiastic about a plan that would privatize all the assets with Iraq companies and they (US companies) might be left out of the transaction."

In addition, Ms. Jaffe says US oil companies are not warm to any plan that would undermine Opec, "They [oil companies] have to worry about the price of oil.

"I'm not sure that if I'm the chair of an American company, and you put me on a lie detector test, I would say high oil prices are bad for me or my company."

The former Shell oil boss agrees. In Houston, he told Newsnight, "Many neo-conservatives are people who have certain ideological beliefs about markets, about democracy, about this that and the other. International oil companies without exception are very pragmatic commercial organizations. They don't have a theology."

Greg Palast's film - the result of a joint investigation by BBC Newsnight and Harper's Magazine - will broadcast on Thursday, 17 March, 2005.

You can watch the program online - available Thursday, March 17 after 7pm EST for 24hrs - from the Newsnight website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm

You can also read the story in greater detail in the latest issue of Harper's magazine - now available at your local newsstand.