Iraq's Oil

When people started saying that the war in Iraq was about oil, I always thought they were paranoid or stupid. After all, it's not as though the US were just going to march in and seize the oil like some colonial-era invaders. I'm still not sure what I think, but there were two articles published on AlterNet.org that do as well a job of explaining the conflicts of interest as I have ever seen.

Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil
Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil (Part Two)

I really encourage you to read at least the first article. It explains some of the history and what is going to happen to Iraq's oil. I've tried to list the main points of the article.

1. Iraq has a lot of oil.
2. That oil is easy to get to and cheap to process.
3. Because of sanctions, Iraqi oil hasn't been on the market as much as it could be.
4. Oil companies want to get into Iraq and get a share of the profits by providing Iraq with oil services and buying and selling that oil.
5. The oil companies lobbied hard for regime change throughout the 90s, hoping to get more access to Iraq under a more West-friendly government.
6. In 2000, they got two of their own elected to the top two jobs in America.
7. Two weeks after taking office, Cheney held secret meetings with top oil executives while he was drafting the administrations energy policy.
8. The Bush White House had plans was determined to attack Iraq even before they began building a case.
9. As part of debt relief for Iraq, the US and British big four oil companies are negotiating production service agreements (PSAs) for the extraction of Iraq's oil. Under these agreements, the Iraqis technically retain ownership of the oil reserves, but the terms are lucrative for the oil companies and give them much more control than is normal.

The article gives sources and details for these points and greatly expands on number 9. Part two goes into even greater detail and examines Jim Baker's "eye-popping conflict of interest" in his involvement. I would like to hear your thoughts after reading the article. To me, it seems like some pretty damning evidence. I wonder when we'll start to hear more about this in the news.

Welcome to my blog about Politics! It's an exciting time for those interested in Politics, especially since today is the day after an historic election in the United States that has restored many people's faith and belief in the American Political system and especially in the validity of American Elections.
Hundreds of years ago the term politics was unheard of,the word layed scrambled among the alphabet, and the power behind the undeveloped word lied still. Today, politics is a wellknown word to us all and the power behind it has governed us for many centuries. Differences of opinions in politics havecreated what we know as political parties. The political parties of the United States are the oldest in the world; amongDemocratic nations, they may also be the weakest. American voters attitudes and traditions are big factors in what makesour parties weak. A Political Party is a group that seeks to elect candidates to public office by giving them a party identification. Although there are more than two political parties, the Democratic and Republican Parties, they have dominated thepolitical system for hundreds of years. Other parties that exist but, are not very familiar are the Whig Party, LibertarianParty, Socialist Worker Party, Communist Party of the United States of America, National Hamiltonian Party, NationalProhibition Party, Peace and Freedom Party, and the Know-Nothing Party. In the United States, the labels of the two major political parties have always had a relatively strong appeal for thevoters. Because of that, third parties and independent candidates have rarely had much competitive success at thenational or even the state level. There has hardly, maybe never, been a strong national party organization in this country.Though there have, however, been long periods in which certain state, city, and county components of the Democratic andRepublican Parties have been organizationally powerful. Political Parties were developed because of differences in opinions on subjects; each party was comprised of individuals with similar views. The question that seems to come into mind often is, "How do the parties really differ?" The answer isvery complex, much depending on what aspect of the party we are looking at: their history, their policies and platforms,their leadership, their rank, and their level of government--national, state, or local. A lot of it also depends on our own view of how we see it from where we sit.