This New York Times article suggests that Gulf War II isn’t about oil as an end–it’s just a means to an end: to enrich American construction firms like, oh, Halliburton (Dick Cheney’s employer (note that I intentionally left out the word “former”)).
Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. We (for the purposes of this entry, “we” means “they”) declare war on a country and bomb it back to the Stone Age. In a vast ($25 bn+) humanitarian undertaking, we rebuild the country, using Iraq’s oil money to pay for it. Sort of a roundabout way to transfer Iraqi wealth to corporate America.
Some thoughts:
- Iraq has the world’s second-largest proven oil reserves. I can imagine a scenario where the USA keeps the forthcoming client regime on a short leash, forcing it to keep oil prices low. That will depress oil prices throughout the world (Good for SUV drivers!), and keep Iraq in debt to the USA (or more accurately, corporate American interests) indefinitely, since it won’t be able to pay down its boggling debt quickly.
- It would have been nice if we could have just concentrated on rebuilding (or building) Afghanistan instead, but they don’t have the oil reserves
- I sure am glad the bidding process has received all the public scrutiny it deserves.