Read on after Greg Palast for a second revealing piece on the Iraq Study group’s radical recommendation to privatize Iraq’s oil. Are we hearing about this stuff on the corporate media (including NPR)? If not, how can we citizens know what’s goin on! (unless we are on Greg Palast and Amy Goodman’s email list or listen to Democracy Now….)
The Baker Boys: Stay Half the Course
Iraq Study Group or Saudi Protection League?
by Greg Palast
They’re kidding, right?
James Baker III and the seven dwarfs of the “Iraq Study Group” have come up with some simply brilliant recommendations. Not.
Baker’s Two Big Ideas are:
1. Stay half the course. Keeping 140,000 troops in Iraq is a disaster getting more disastrous. The Baker Boys’ idea: cut the disaster in half — leave 70,000 troops there.
But here’s where dumb gets dumber: the Bakerites want to “embed” US forces in Iraqi Army units. Question one, Mr. Baker: What Iraqi Army? This so-called “army” is a rough confederation of Shia death squads. We can tell our troops to get “embedded” with them, but the Americans won’t get much sleep.
2. “Engage” Iran. This is a good one. How can we get engaged when George Bush hasn’t even asked them out for a date? What will induce the shy mullahs of Iran to accept our engagement proposal? Answer: The Bomb.
Let me explain. To get the Iranians to end their subsidizing the Mahdi Army and other Shia cut-throats, the Baker bunch suggest we let the permanent members of the UN Security Council — plus, Germany — decide the issue of Iran’s nukes. Attaching Germany is the signal. These signers of the Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT) agree that Iran should be allowed a “peaceful” nuclear power program.
More… Now, I am absolutely wary of neo-con nuts who want to blow Iran to Kingdom-come over its nuclear ambitions. But that doesn’t mean we should kid ourselves. Iran has zero need of “peaceful” nuclear-generated electricity. It has the second-largest untapped reserve of natural gas on the planet, a clean, safe, cheap source of power. There’s only one reason for a “nuclear” program, and it’s not to light Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s bedside lamp.
Here’s the problem with Baker’s weird combo of embedding our boys with Iraq’s scary army while sucking up to the Iranians: it won’t work. The mayhem will continue, with Americans in the middle, because the Baker brigade dares not mention two words: “Saudi” and “Arabia.”
Saudi Arabia is the elephant in the room (camel in the tent?) that can’t be acknowledged — and the reason Baker is so desperately anxious to sell America on keeping half our soldiers in harm’s way.
James III wants to seduce or bully Iran into stopping their funding of the murderous Shia militias. But the Shias only shifted into mass killing mode in response to the murder spree by Sunni “insurgents.”
Where do the Sunnis get their money for mayhem? According to a seething memo by the National Security Agency (November 8, 2006), the Saudis control the, “public or private funding provided to the insurgents or death squads.” Nice.
Baker wants us to bribe or blackmail Iran into stopping one side in Iraq’s uncivil war, the Shia. Yet we close our eyes to the Saudis acting as a piggy bank for the other side, the Sunni berserkers. (The House of Saud follows Wahabi Islam, a harsh, fundamentalist sect of Sunnism.)
Why is Baker, ordinarily such a tough guy, so coy with the Saudis? Baker Botts, the law firm he founded, became a wealthy powerhouse by representing Saudi Arabia. But don’t worry, the Iraq Study Group is balanced by Democrats including Vernon Jordan of the law firm of Akin, Gump which represents … Saudi royals.
Of course, the connections between Baker, the Bush Family and the Saudis go way beyond a few legal bills. (See, “The Best Little Legal Whorehouse in Texas” from my book Armed Madhouse.
Baker is more than aware that, two weeks ago, Dick Cheney dropped his Thanksgiving turkey to fly to Riyadh at the demand of the Saudis for a dressing down by King Abdullah. The Saudis have made it clear that they will crank up their payments to warriors in Iraq to protect their Sunni brothers if America pulls out our troops.
King Abdullah’s wish is Cheney’s command — and Baker’s too. The Saudis want 70,000 US troops baby-sitting the Shia killers in Iraq’s Army — and so we will stay.
What gives King Abdullah the power to ghost-write the Iraq Study Group recommendations? It’s not because the Saudis sell us broccoli.
And therein lies the danger. Behind the fratricidal fracas in Iraq is something even more dangerous than bullets in Baghdad: a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia to control Iraq’s place in OPEC, the oil cartel. What is painted by Baker’s Iraq Study Group as an ancient local clash between Shia and Sunni over the Kingdom of God, is, in fact, a remote control proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia over the Kingdom of Oil.
*******
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, “Armed Madhouse” which includes Palast’s investigation, conducted for Harper’s Magazine, of the secret role of James Baker III and Saudi Arabia in the forming of US plans for Iraq’s oil.
————
Democracy Now
Thursday, December 7th, 2006
Oil for Sale: Why the Iraq Study Group is Calling for the Privatization of
Iraq’s Oil Industry
Among its recommendations, the Iraq Study Group advised that Iraq
privatize its oil industry and to open it up to international companies.
Author and activist Antonia Juhasz writes “Put simply, the oil companies
are trying to get what they were denied before the war or at anytime in
modern Iraqi history: access to Iraq’s oil under the ground.” [includes
rush transcript]
a.. Antonia Juhasz, author and activist. Her latest book is “The Bush
Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time,”
————————————————————————–
—— RUSH TRANSCRIPT This transcript is available free of charge.
However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard
of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate – $25, $50, $100, more…
AMY GOODMAN: The Iraq Study Group also recommended for Iraq to privatize
its oil industry and to open it up to international companies. The author
and activist, Antonia Juhasz, has been closely watching this aspect of the
Iraq reconstruction process. She’s author of The Bush Agenda: Invading the
World, One Economy at a Time. Antonia Juhasz, thanks for joining us in
studio in San Francisco. Your response to the report, not talked about
almost at all, the issue of privatization?
ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah, absolutely. And good morning, Amy. It’s a completely
radical proposal made straightforward in the Iraq Study Group report that
the Iraqi national oil industry should be reorganized as a commercial
enterprise. The proposal also says that, as you say, Iraq’s oil should be
opened up to private foreign energy and companies. Also, another radical
proposal: that all of Iraq’s oil revenues should be centralized in the
central government. And the report calls for a US advisor to ensure that a
new national oil law is passed in Iraq to make all of this possible and
that the constitution of Iraq is amended to ensure that the central
government gains control of Iraq’s oil revenues.
All told, the report calls for privatization of Iraq’s oil, turning it
over to private foreign corporate hands, putting all of the oil in the
hands of the central government, and essentially, I would argue, extending
the war in Iraq to ensure that US oil companies get what the Bush
administration went in there for: control and greater access to Iraq’s
oil.
AMY GOODMAN: Antonia Juhasz, let’s talk about the members of this Iraq
Study Group. That might explain what their approach has been, particularly
James Baker, the former Secretary of State, and also Lawrence Eagleburger.
Talk about the two of them.
ANTONIA JUHASZ: Both Baker and Eagleburger have spent their careers doing
one of two things: working for the federal government or working in
private enterprise taking advantage of the work that they did for the
federal government. So, in particular, in this case, both Baker and
Eagleburger were key participants throughout the ’80s and early 1990s of
radically expanding US economic engagement with Saddam Hussein, with a
very clear objective of gaining greater access for US corporations,
particularly oil corporations, to Iraq’s oil, and doing everything that
they could to expand that access.
Baker has his own private interest. His family is heavily invested in the
oil industry, and also Baker Botts, his law firm, is one of the key law
firms representing oil companies across the United States and their
activities in the Middle East. And Lawrence Eagleburger was president of
Kissinger Associates, which was one of the leading multinational advising
firms for advising US companies who were trying to get contracts with
Saddam Hussein and get work in Iraq.
Now, these two members of the Iraq Study Group are joined by two
additional members who are representatives of the Heritage Foundation, and
the Heritage Foundation is one of the few US organizations that
point-blank called for full privatization of Iraq’s oil sector prior to
the invasion of Iraq, as a stated goal of the invasion. And to call
point-blank for full privatization, as I said, is truly radical. It’s
actually a shift for the Bush administration, which has for the past about
two years been working on a more sort of privatization-lite agenda,
putting forward what are called production-sharing agreements in Iraq that
would have the same outcome of privatization without calling it
privatization.
For the Iraq Study Group, which is supposed to be, you know, the meeting
of the pragmatists, the sort of middle-ground group that’s going to help
solve the war in Iraq, to put forward this incredibly radical proposal and
to have nobody talk about it, to me, is fairly shocking and makes clear
that still the Democrats, the Republicans, the media are afraid to talk
about oil, but that oil, in my mind, still remains the lynchpin for the
administration and for all those in the oil sector in the United States,
Baker and Eagleburger counted among them, for why US troops are being
committed and committed to stay. And the report says troops will stay
until at least 2008 — I think that is at a minimum — to guarantee this
oil access to US oil companies.
AMY GOODMAN: Former Secretary of State James Baker in 2003 went to Rome,
Moscow, London, first official trip since he joined the Bush
administration as a point person on issues around Iraq in 2003, but
remained a senior partner in the law firm, Baker Botts, which, among
others, represents Halliburton, as well as the Saudi government, in the
suit filed by family members who lost relatives in 9/11. Now, that’s the
family members who lost their loved ones versus the Saudi government, and
he was representing the Saudi government.
ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah, he’s definitely had his allegiance spread, and it
almost always, in the bottom line, has to do with oil. And as the public
has been very clear in saying in its reports on Baker — or rather, excuse
me, the media — that Baker is a pragmatist. He is a pragmatist. The Iraq
Study Group report, page 1, chapter one, says that the reason why Iraq is
a critical country in the Middle East, in the world and for the United
States, is because it has the second-largest reserves of oil in the world.
The report is very clear.
The report is also very clear, however, that this isn’t a report where the
recommendations can be picked and choosed. It says that all of the
recommendations should be applied together as one proposal, that they
shouldn’t be separated out. That means that the authors of the report are
saying that oil, privatization of oil, and foreign corporate access to oil
is as key as any other recommendation that they have made.
And the report also says that the US government will withhold military,
economic and political support of the Iraqi government, unless the
recommendations are met. That’s a pretty straightforward statement. The US
government will not provide any support to the al-Maliki government,
unless it advances the changes to the Iraqi constitution and changes to
Iraqi national law that essentially privatize Iraq’s oil.
That is something for us in the antiwar movement to be very, very clear
about, that this is their objective and that we have to, as I repeatedly
say, not just call for the end of troops in Iraq, but make clear that the
US corporate invasion cannot be progressed or continue, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Antonia Juhasz, I want to thank you very much for being with
us, author of The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time,
speaking to us from San Francisco.
To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for
our new online ordering or call 1 (888) 999-3877.
—
You are currently on Mha Atma’s Earth Action Network email list, option D (up to 3 emails/day). To be removed, or to switch options (option A – 1x/week, option B – 3/wk, option C – up to 1x/day, option D – up to 3x/day) please reply and let us know! If someone forwarded you this email and you want to be on our list, send an email to earthactionnetwork@earthlink.net and tell us which option you’d like.
“Our German forbearers in the 1930s sat around, blamed their rulers, said ‘maybe everything’s going to be alright.’ That is something we cannot do. I do not want my grandchildren asking me years from now, ‘why didn’t you do something to stop all this?” –Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst of 27 years, referring to the actions and crimes of the Bush Administration
After reading the article please share your thoughts in the comment section below.