So, its unofficially official. Numerous administration moles have leaked to the media that George W Bush will go on television Wednesday night to announce another 20,000 troops are to be sent to Iraq.
Surprise, surprise!
Against the wishes of many top military personnel, most of Congress, and the vast majority of the American people (not to mention the rest of the world, who matter even less to George W Bush) this president will have his way.
It seems that once again he has only listened to advisors who dance to his tune, ignoring the far greater number urging he do exactly the opposite and begin bringing troops home. Such single-minded tunnel vision is a true mark of the alcoholic personality.
His ears were open to advisors like retired General Jack Keane, and Frederick W. Kagan who, along with his brother Robert and their father Donald, are signatories to the neoconservative Project for the New American Century manifesto of 2000 entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”.
Keane and Kagan recently set out their strategy for Iraq in this Washington Post article before attending a meeting on January 6th of what has become known as the “real Iraq Study Group”, a conglomeration of neoconservative hawks with their own agenda for Iraq, that have found more favor with the presidential ears than any members of the official ISG.
Notable by their presence at this American Enterprise Institute meeting were Independent Senator Joe Lieberman, and presidential hopeful – the master of two-facedness – Republican Senator John McCain.
One example of the bombastic arrogance of which these peope are capable came today from retired General Jack Keane in an interview on the BBC World News. Introduced as a “Bush policy advisor” Keane said:
“We have the military capability and the prowess to secure Baghdad. Look, you telling me that there’s a capital city in the world that the foremost military in the world when it applies itself cannot secure the population in a given city? That’s just rubbish. Of course we can do this.”
Retired General Jack Keene is right militarily, if not grammatically. The American military can secure Baghdad. Germany had the “foremost military in the world” when it secured Paris in 1940. But it failed to win over the hearts and minds of the French people who fought a continuous and deadly resistance against Nazi occupation until the Allies eventually liberated Paris four years later.
This is the fate awaiting American soldiers if Keane and his colleagues get their way. No occupying force in history has ever won the hearts and minds of the nation it conquered. Do Kagan and Keane and George W Bush really think they’ll have a first?
Or……maybe they don’t really care.
Not noticeable in the American media as yet, but in yesterday’s Independent Newspaper was a report that stated:
“Iraq’s massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.”
This law, which the US government has been involved in drafting, will according to the Independent:
“…..give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.”
It would seem this law is selling ordinary Iraqis down the river. The contracts allow the oil companies to keep 75% of the revenue until they have recouped initial drilling costs, and after that they would retain 20% of all profits. That’s twice the industry standard for such deals. A colossal amount of money that will not be going where it rightly belongs – into the Iraqi treasury.
It’s what this war was all about from the start.
As the Independent notes:
“Several major oil companies are said to have sent teams into the country in recent months to lobby for deals ahead of the law, though the big names are considered unlikely to invest until the violence in Iraq abates.”
If George W Bush and his cronies are going to win the battle for oil in Iraq, Baghdad has to be tamed sufficiently for “the big names to invest”.
As Jack Keane says, the American military can secure Baghdad, but when news of this underhand deal between Maliki, Bush, and the western oil magnates reaches that city’s streets it will pour oil on the furnace of discontent already raging. Little wonder Nouri al-Maliki has no backbone for American withdrawal. He will need protection from the wrath of Iraqis when his involvement is known, or he will likely follow Saddam Hussein to the gallows, or perhaps just a knife in his back.
Arizona Senator John McCain, an ardent supporter of the neocon plan, has prophesied that things will get a lot worse in Iraq before they get better. He doesn’t often speak wisely, not even for the wrong reasons, but on this occasion he is right.
The heavy price of George W Bush’s oil will be paid in American lives.
Filed under: Price of oil
