The continuing violence in Iraq

[JihadJane]

Again with the oil claim here. Could you please provide the numbers for the oil we have profited from in iraq?

Your focus is too narrow.

 

[bikerdruid]

Again with the oil claim here. Could you please provide the numbers for the oil we have profited from in iraq?

since tax-payers pay for the war, `and corporations profit from the booty, the tax-payers are not likely to realize any profit.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...rom-iraqs-most-precious-commodity-431119.html

quotes from the article:

And Iraq's oil reserves, the third largest in the world, with an estimated 115 billion barrels waiting to be extracted, are a prize worth having. As Vice-President Dick Cheney noted in 1999, when he was still running Halliburton, an oil services company, the Middle East is the key to preventing the world running out of oil.
......................
The document adds that oil companies will enjoy contracts to extract Iraqi oil for up to 30 years, and stresses that Iraq needs foreign investment for the "quick and substantial funding of reconstruction and modernisation projects".
.....................
The largest beneficiary of reconstruction work in Iraq has been KBR (Kellogg, Brown & Root), a division of US giant Halliburton, which to date has secured contracts in Iraq worth $13bn (£7bn), including an uncontested $7bn contract to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure. Other companies benefiting from Iraq contracts include Bechtel, the giant US conglomerate, BearingPoint, the consultant group that advised on the drawing up of Iraq's new oil legislation, and General Electric. According to the US-based Centre for Public Integrity, 150-plus US companies have won contracts in Iraq worth over $50bn.
......................
Paul Wolfowitz; Deputy Defense Secretary, March 2003

"By 2010 we will need [a further] 50 million barrels a day. The Middle East, with two-thirds of the oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize lies"

 

[Quad4_72]

since tax-payers pay for the war, `and corporations profit from the booty, the tax-payers are not likely to realize any profit.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...rom-iraqs-most-precious-commodity-431119.html

quotes from the article:

And Iraq's oil reserves, the third largest in the world, with an estimated 115 billion barrels waiting to be extracted, are a prize worth having. As Vice-President Dick Cheney noted in 1999, when he was still running Halliburton, an oil services company, the Middle East is the key to preventing the world running out of oil.
......................
The document adds that oil companies will enjoy contracts to extract Iraqi oil for up to 30 years, and stresses that Iraq needs foreign investment for the "quick and substantial funding of reconstruction and modernisation projects".
.....................
The largest beneficiary of reconstruction work in Iraq has been KBR (Kellogg, Brown & Root), a division of US giant Halliburton, which to date has secured contracts in Iraq worth $13bn (£7bn), including an uncontested $7bn contract to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure. Other companies benefiting from Iraq contracts include Bechtel, the giant US conglomerate, BearingPoint, the consultant group that advised on the drawing up of Iraq's new oil legislation, and General Electric. According to the US-based Centre for Public Integrity, 150-plus US companies have won contracts in Iraq worth over $50bn.
......................
Paul Wolfowitz; Deputy Defense Secretary, March 2003

"By 2010 we will need [a further] 50 million barrels a day. The Middle East, with two-thirds of the oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize lies"

Interesting. So what oil companies have signed contracts between the Iraqi government and American oil companies? That article was published in 2007.

And I thought this part was funny in the article:

Despite US and British denials that oil was a war aim, American troops were detailed to secure oil facilities as they fought their way to Baghdad in 2003. And while former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld shrugged off the orgy of looting after the fall of Saddam's statue in Baghdad, the Oil Ministry - alone of all the seats of power in the Iraqi capital - was under American guard.

Seeing as how oil wells were torched in the first Gulf war, and are an essential part of the countries income, wouldn't that be pretty damn irresponsible not to secure the oil wells?

 

[bikerdruid]

China reaps benefits of Iraq war

Interesting. So what oil companies have signed contracts between the Iraqi government and American oil companies? That article was published in 2007.

And I thought this part was funny in the article:


Seeing as how oil wells were torched in the first Gulf war, and are an essential part of the countries income, wouldn't that be pretty damn irresponsible not to secure the oil wells?

america has also been placating the chinese by awarding them some of iraq's prime oilfields.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37577656/

From among the most outspoken of critics of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, China has emerged as one of the biggest economic beneficiaries of the war, snagging five lucrative deals. While Western firms were largely subdued in their interest in Iraq's recent oil auctions, China snapped up three contracts, shrugging off the security risks and the country's political instability for the promise of oil.

 

[Virus]

It's the left's favorite lie and they'll never get around to updating it. The US did not "plunder Iraq's oil". Nobody got free oil. Iraq negotiated its own contracts, mostly with Chinese firms and the oil companies are not getting generous deals. Most US oil companies refused the poor returns the Iraq government was offering.

 

[Virus]

america has also been placating the chinese by awarding them some of iraq's prime oilfields.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37577656/

From among the most outspoken of critics of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, China has emerged as one of the biggest economic beneficiaries of the war, snagging five lucrative deals. While Western firms were largely subdued in their interest in Iraq's recent oil auctions, China snapped up three contracts, shrugging off the security risks and the country's political instability for the promise of oil.

Taking all their oil. Not taking enough oil. Make your mind up.

 

[bikerdruid]

It's the left's favorite lie and they'll never get around to updating it. The US did not "plunder Iraq's oil". Nobody got free oil. Iraq negotiated its own contracts, mostly with Chinese firms and the oil companies are not getting generous deals. Most US oil companies refused the poor returns the Iraq government was offering.

american companies pay pennies on the dollar for oil from alberta.
you can be pretty sure that they are paying even less for iraqi oil.

 

[Skeptic]

Taking all their oil. Not taking enough oil. Make your mind up.

If US companies got oil from Iraq, it was war for oil.
If US companies did not get oil from Iraq, it was a failed war for oil.

Simple logic, isn't it?

wow....and how many iraqi civilians died while you were 'freeing' them?

By Americans, not too many. By terrorists who goal is to kill as many Americans and Iraqis as possible, quite a lot.

Yet you blame the Americans.

I, for one, don't see much difference between blaming the USA for the deaths caused by terrorists and blaming the USA for, say, the massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane which was done by the SS during the Normandy invasion.

Perhaps you can argue that WWII justified these deaths, but you must, to be consistent, agree that it was the USA which was responsible for those deaths.

....there was a difference.
the real reason for that war was to fight hitler.

Oh, please.

You don't really believe that piece of imperialist propaganda, now do you?

Everybody knows the real reason for WWII was an imperialist plot to get Hitler and Stalin to fight each other so as to stop the glorious revolution of the people. Or at least in order to get tons of money from reconstruction of the damage after the war.

Had not the Americans not joined the war until after the USSR was invaded?
Had not the Americans, after the war, got many ex-Nazis to serve in the new government in Germany out of fear of Communism?
Had not SS-Oberst Werner von Braun and his people been smuggled to the imperialist west to build rockets to threaten the peace-loving USSR with?
Had not the "red scare" been a big thing only a few years after "uncle Joe" was the USA's best ally?

See?

It all fits together. These obvious inconsistencies in the official story prove WWII was all an imperialist plot.

And yet some stupid people, brainwashed by the imperialist propaganda directed by the capitalist plutocrats and the companies that make all the money and control everything, refuse to see the truth.

 

[Skeptic]

american companies pay pennies on the dollar for oil from alberta.

You mean they pay less for the oil than they sell it for? What a shocking, evil conspiracy.

you can be pretty sure that they are paying even less for iraqi oil.

That would be hard for them to do, since not a single US company secured a deal in the recent auction for Iraq's lucrative oil market. Russia and China, which opposed the invasion, did.

On the other hand, don't you remember? Saddam Hussein was really the US's buddy so the USA would get oil! I mean, all good Marxist sites say so:

The U.S. government and Saddam Hussein go way back, four decades, at least. In fact, Saddam Hussein got his real start working hand-in-hand with the American CIA in the early 1960s. The Iraqi regime then in power had relatively broad support in the Iraqi population, having overthrown the much-hated Iraqi monarchy, which had been put in place by Britain after World War I. The new Iraqi government expressed a nationalist defiance toward the almost complete domination of the country by the big oil companies. This was too much for the U.S. government, which decided to crush Iraqi insolence and defiance.

So why would the USA, who put Saddam Hussein in power just so he and those like him will supply them with cheap oil, which he did, suddenly invade the country and install a government which had openly preferred other countries' interests and left the USA holding the bag, getting not a single contract?

I'm sure you have some perfectly logical explanation.

 

[Quad4_72]

america has also been placating the chinese by awarding them some of iraq's prime oilfields.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37577656/

From among the most outspoken of critics of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, China has emerged as one of the biggest economic beneficiaries of the war, snagging five lucrative deals. While Western firms were largely subdued in their interest in Iraq's recent oil auctions, China snapped up three contracts, shrugging off the security risks and the country's political instability for the promise of oil.

Strange. I asked you for the names of the American oil companies which have secured oil contracts with the Iraqis, and you respond with an article that actually contradicts your point. So which is it? Have the Chinese secured the contracts or have the Americans? If its the Americans, which companies specifically did?

 

[Virus]

american companies pay pennies on the dollar for oil from alberta.
you can be pretty sure that they are paying even less for iraqi oil.

They aren't paying anything because most of the US firms balked at the paltry returns offered by the Iraqi government. Can you even be bothered doing five minutes of research?

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1948787,00.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BB18Q20091212

If America wanted oil all they had to do was lift the sanctions and buy it, or deal under the table like China, France and Russia were doing. Why would you steal oil by giving Iraq a democracy and an oil ministry? That doesn't make any sense. When countries go to war to take people's resources they rule it as a colony.

 

[WildCat]

a nice fringe benefit of this is, of course, that you get to plunder the oild reserves.
niiiice.

So how much oil has been plundered?

 

[Quad4_72]

So how much oil has been plundered?

If you would have read the thread wildcat, you would see I have already been up that alley, and of course no response was given. DUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Lol.

 

[Bikewer]

Of course, there's the "Neo-Con agenda" theory of the war, which I find reasonable...

Iraq was seen by the neo-cons as a "secular' society ripe for democracy. Topple Saddam, and after a brief period of dancing in the streets the grateful Iraqis would settle down into a nice, stable democracy which was also very friendly to the US.
A shining beacon of democracy in the Middle East, which might happily be exported further...
The fact that a steady supply of crude would remain on the market was just a side effect; the goal (admittedly rather laudable) was the eventual stabilization of the entire region.
Alas, no one in the Bush cabinet had an ear for the very large chorus of warnings that the plan might just run into problems.....

 

[Quad4_72]

I gues bikerdruid decided he was not goin to post any evidence for his claims. Typical

 

[Mycroft]

wow....and how many iraqi civilians died while you were 'freeing' them?

a nice fringe benefit of this is, of course, that you get to plunder the oild reserves.
niiiice.

Except that the easiest way to secure Iraqi oil for the US would have been to let Iraq have Kuwait back in 1991, stayed palls with Saddam and just buy the oil on the market. What we ended up doing took Iraqi oil off the market for 20 years and then sent the bulk of the profits to China.