I’m posting from my phone. so please excuse some of my syntax. Also, it is very difficult to post a link, but if you go to google news you can easily find the various articles.
So the oil companies are buying favor with the Iraqi government, preparing to return to the country after a 36 year Saddam imposedhiatus.
Could this have worked out any better for the oil companies? They now have access to vast oil supplies, prices are trippled, and all they have to do is grease the palms of some fledgling beurocrats.
Hello America. You sent your kids to kill and die for the oil companies. It’s the blood of your sons that fills your SUV.
Why shouldn’t oil companies do business with Iraq? Are you suggesting they boycott Iraq on some moral ground? I’ve no great love for oil companies or the Iraq war, but I’m not sure what point you’re making.
I think **newcrasher **is simply lamenting the final step in a completely fabricated yet one hundred percent successful process of plundering a sovereign nation’s natural resources by a few well-connected, venal individuals, who happen to include in their number the two men at the top of the government of the United States of America, and their detestable cadre of cronies.
Story here. Yes, this is very, very good for the U.S. oil companies. OTOH, it’s not so bad for Iraq under the circumstances. They can only make money off their oil by shipping it abroad, and the oil companies are best positioned to do that.
I wish the Iraq war really was about oil. At least that makes a certain venal sense, and might have curtailed some of the dumber decisions we made at the beginning of the occupation.
Our problem states: Iraq, Iran. Venezuela ,Sudan . It is purely coincidental that they all have oil.We just wanted to spend 3 trillion dollars to get Saddam out. We made a great sacrifice. It was a gesture the world just does not appreciate. A selfless move that Bush and Cheney in their infinite wisdom made for our benefit.
It actually was about the oil (among other things :mad: ), but even WRT to the oil there were several incompatible agendas on the American side. That’s why the result was such an incomprehensible mess. See Greg Palast’s Armed Madhouse, excerpted in the OP of thread linked in post #4.
When you use the term “plunder,” I would take that to mean theft, as in, Iraq is being robbed of all this oil and not getting any benefit.
Quite the contrary. Iraq is sitting on a $70 billion budget surplus this year due to the high price of its oil exports. Iraq isn’t being robbed by oil companies, it seems they are partners in making large profits.
A bit fuzzy on this whole “no bid” thingy. First glance, would seem to mean “without competition”, but that can’t be right, American business is all *about * the competition, makes things more efficient and better for everybody, and stuff…
Frankly, as horrible as the Saddam Hussein government was for Iraq, and it was, it was at the very least the country’s own leadership [sic] with say as to their nation’s oil production, trading partners, etc.
The oil companies’ being red-carpeted to the business table thanks to the strongest of strong-arm tactics, aggressive invasion, is not cricket, and I stand behind my choice of words.
Why don’t you show that Iraqis don’t currently control their nation’s oil production or trading partners.
Nobody here – so far as I can tell – is supporting the invasion. But you’re making extraordinary claims and all you’re backing them up with is fancy rhetoric.
The fact remains that the government of Iraq is reaping in oil revenue and oil production is increasing, even despite the serious problem of corruption. Once again, how is it possible that Iraqis are being robbed of their oil when the Iraqi government budget – which is almost entirely financed by oil sales – has roughly twice as much in revenue as it does in expenditures? Seriously, it’d be like us having a $2.5 trillion surplus.
So just provide some evidence that it is actually oil companies who are stealing oil, as I asked for in my last post. Innuendo and suppositions aren’t evidence.
Regretably, the possibility that it is oil companies doing the stealing is possibly the least ghastly of a set of wretched possibilities.
Who gets the money that we have sloshed around so generously? That money that disappears, where do you imagine it goes? My guess is it gets into the hands of people who have guns in their hands. One step up from that, it goes to the greedy and corrupt, who spirit it away. Even that is better than it ending up in the hands of the various sectarian militia.
Get right down to it, that money being stolen by oil companies is quite possibly the best of the available alternatives, if you think in terms of picking smallpox over leprosy.
Besides, you’re the one who brought up corruption, don’t know what you’re pissed at me about…
I’m not pissed at you, but I do wonder how you went from one post essentially arguing that oil companies are stealing oil (because of corruption) to thinking it was probably insurgents.
But I do believe that Enfant Terrible ought to put up some evidence of what he’s claiming.
What an unusual definition of theft. I must be stealing from my bank, because part of their profits are paid to me in the form of interest on my deposits. Please, don’t anyone tell the FBI.