Petroleum and Prevarication

It is a little more than a thousand days and nights since the beginning of the Iraqi invasion. During this period our own Scheherezade, George W. Bush has spun nearly as many fantastic tales about why we invaded and occupied Iraq. It began with mushroom clouds, WMD, roving chemical weapons labs, centrifuges, aluminum tubes and not so veiled references to 9/11. These concrete and fearsome reasons morphed into vague and noble sounding slogans of liberty, democracy and human rights when the weapons inspectors came back empty handed. For the next three years, we will hear more Arabian Nights Tales from our story teller in chief - very few of them will be accurate. Some time in late 2003 while driving in my neighborhood, I spotted a shiny truck festooned with flags and patriotic messages. Among the many bumper stickers was one that read, "Kick Their Ass and Take Their Gas". That Texan at least, was telling the truth about Iraq.

Today, in Leiter Reports is an account of a speech given by the head of Iraqi Oil Workers Union of Basra. Among other things, he had this to say:

" They [Iraqi Oil workers] have stood against occupation forces and confronted them, preventing them from getting to the oil installations, and have stood likewise against foreign companies. Oil workers were the first to stand against these companies by holding out against the monopolist firms that were brought in by America two months after the beginning of the occupation. These firms came under the protection of American tanks; however, our Union's first action was to expel KBR [Halliburton] from our oil sites.

As you know, brothers and sisters, Iraqi oil reserves are considered the world's second largest and that is why the war was launched against the land of the two rivers....We know, and everyone here knows, real American intentions. ... and its interests lie in exerting control over Iraqi oil and putting this wealth at its disposal.  [Military] occupation being but the first step to be followed by economic occupation."

Skeptics here and the rest of the world think so too.  As the mid-term elections of 2006 draw near, George Bush is adopting a new technique of narrating his fairy tales - no hard questions after the story session. Earlier this week, during a speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he said that while he  welcomes an honest debate on the Iraq war, mention of annoying words such as "oil" is forbidden during the discourse.

"President Bush issued a stark warning to Democrats on Tuesday about how to conduct the debate on Iraq as midterm elections approach, declaring that Americans know the difference between "honest critics" and those "who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people."

"There is a difference between responsible and irresponsible debate, and it's even more important to conduct this debate responsibly when American troops are risking their lives overseas," he said.In some of his most combative language yet directed at his critics, Mr. Bush said Americans should insist on a debate "that brings credit to our democracy, not comfort to our adversaries." (From NYT)

Extreme greed is difficult to overcome or abandon. The Iraqi union leader also said:

"America does not want to withdraw at this time, because it did not complete its operation; it has not yet accomplished the second phase of the occupation, the economic occupation of Iraq. That is why the U.S. administration is currently putting forward its economic plans which include privatization of the oil and manufacturing sectors, and the production sharing agreement [PSA] project."

Until the PSA goes into action, the surrogates of Bush - Cheney Inc., Halliburton (and KBR) are kept away from the Iraqi oil fields. But they can still find ways to maximize profits in other lucrative reconstruction projects. Rather than pay high wages to US citizens or moderate ones to Iraqis, they prefer employing workers from poorer nations in south Asia and Africa to whom they pay a pittance. Many are brought into Iraq illegally by unscrupulous labor contractors with the false lure of jobs elsewhere in the middle east, such as Jordan, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.  Read about their non-fairy tale experiences here and here.

Comments

[Joe]

I had no idea that was going on (KBR and its abuse of workers). That's horrifying. What makes it even more unpalatable is the nauseating level of dishonesty: the same people who claim we're there to "liberate" Iraqis and ostensibly to make their lives *better* are the ones who defend Halliburton/KBR, the same people who complain about illegal (Mexican) aliens in the United States because they're stealing jobs and working for ultra-low wages, even while KBR imports workers from Africa to work for $0.45 per day because hiring Iraqis would cut into profits!

The statement of the union leader of the Iraqi oil workers, that we haven't achieved our goal of the economic occupation of Iraq, calls to mind Newsweek's interview with Noam Chomsky. Asked where he sees Iraq heading right now, Chomsky responds:

"Well, it's extremely difficult to talk about this because of a very rigid doctrine that prevails in the United States and Britain which prevents us from looking at the situation realistically. The doctrine, to oversimplify, is that we have to believe the United States would have so-called liberated Iraq even if its main products were lettuce and pickles and [the] main energy resource of the world were in central Africa. Anyone who doesn't accept that is dismissed as a conspiracy theorist or a lunatic or something. But anyone with a functioning brain knows that that's not true—as all Iraqis do, for example. The United States invaded Iraq because its major resource is oil. And it gives the United States, to quote [Zbigniew] Brzezinski, "critical leverage" over its competitors, Europe and Japan. That's a policy that goes way back to the second world war. That's the fundamental reason for invading Iraq, not anything else.

Once we recognize that, we're able to begin talking about where Iraq is going. For example, there's a lot of talk about the United States bringing [about] a sovereign independent Iraq. That can't possibly be true."

Full interview available at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10682403/site/newsweek/

[Ruchira Paul]

Joe:
You have astutely put your finger on the parallel between cheap "illegal" immigrant labor in the US and the practice by KBR and Halliburton of smuggling cheap labor into Iraq. Both phenomena result from the same mindset - exploitative racism and greed. After all, the thinking goes, "they are miserable and desperate anyway, we are doing them a favor by paying them next to nothing for "dirty" jobs we won't do ourselves - and certainly not at that price."

I am glad you posted Chomsky's "lettuce" remark. I had considered linking to this interview myself but refrained from doing so in the end, so as to not overburden a single blog post with too many links.