G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
Missing the Benchmark: The Iraqis' Failure to Pass the U.S.-Authored Oil Law
By Gary Leupp
Created Jul 27 2007 - 9:46am
When it became apparent as of mid-2003 that there were no weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq, the mendacious Bush administration found a scapegoat:
the CIA and its "intelligence failures." No matter that the lies about Iraq
originated in the circle around the Vice President, rather than the
intelligence community; the CIA (powerless to protest by its very role in
the system) was faulted and "reorganized" in an embarrassingly public way to
make it friendlier to the Straussian/neocon concept of intelligence based on
deception. The real disseminators of disinformation were meanwhile left off
the hook. Anyway, arch-neocon lie-peddler Paul Wolfowitz told reporters
after returning from an Iraq visit in July 2003, Americans shouldn't be
"fussing so much about this [merely] historical issue" when there are so
many practical issues to attend to in Iraq, like fighting the Baathists and
building democracy.
The reconstruction and democratization of Iraq became the new rationale for
the invasion and occupation. But it's become apparent that these are as much
chimeras as the missing WMDs. The real prospect of failure looms - the
failure of the U.S. to implant a government perceived by the people as
legitimate; the failure to obtain adequate international cover for
occupation; the failure to sufficiently persuade the American people that
their youth aren't dying for an Iraqi regime weak, doomed, paralyzed by
factional division, dominated by various forms of Islamic fundamentalism.
(One has to emphasize that this Islamist empowerment followed the wholesale
purging of the secular Baathists accomplished in 2003. Bush now wants to
undo that last deed, declaring January 10, 2007 that "to allow more Iraqis
to re-enter their nation's political life, the government [of Iraq] will
reform de-Baathification laws - and establish a fair process for considering
amendments to Iraq's constitution." Washington worked well enough with the
Baathists all through the Cold War, favoring them as a mainstream secular
alternative to Islamists, and also anticommunist. Now bringing back secular
Baathists is a benchmark for the Iraqis to meet. The problem is the U.S. has
placed in most of the top positions people who don't want to do that.)
If the U.S. must withdraw, those responsible for the war will need to
deflect liability for the failure from themselves. The "sovereign" Iraqi
regime - which was in fact created in response to massive demonstrations
beginning in late 2003, created as window-dressing for ongoing occupation -
has been targeted as the scapegoat for some time, threatened repeatedly with
the withdrawal of U.S. support if it doesn't meet Washington's demands.
Democrats and Republicans, Congress and the administration, all take part in
the scapegoating and thus (wittingly or not) protect the neocons responsible
for the unfolding crime of occupation. They are blaming the victims: the
Iraqi people who never asked to be invaded and have responded with a mix of
violent resistance, militant protest, militia organizing, and sectarian
fighting. The sectarian fighting would not be taking place had a secular
government that had provided order, firmly separated mosque and state and
kept the lid on political Islam not been destroyed by the invaders. But in
U.S. political discourse it is attributed to Iraqis' arcane centuries-old
religious disputes, while attacks on U.S. troops are chalked up to fanatical
anti-Americanism. "These are the same people who attacked us on 9-11,"
insists Bush.
Of course the U.S. has few friends in Iraq. Polls have shown for a long time
that the vast majority of Iraqis want the U.S. out! Such friends as it has
are in the client regime headed by Nouri al-Maliki, a man highly
uncomfortable in his position. He said in January, "I wish I could be done
with it even before the end of this term. I didn't want to take this
position. I only agreed because I thought it would serve the national
interest, and I will not accept it again." Contradictions have developed
between his administration (one divided within itself) and new Parliament on
the one hand, and the U.S. government on the other. A majority of Iraqi
legislators have recently called for the U.S. to withdraw. If you can't get
better cooperation than that from people risking their lives and reputations
to work with you and give your imperialist project some cloak of legitimacy,
you're in big trouble.
So what do you do, if you're an official in the government of the
imperialist country responsible? While rabid American news commentators
complain about how ungrateful the Iraqi people are for all America's
sacrifice on their behalf, you express your disappointment at the failure of
the Iraqi "government" to meet U.S.-posted "benchmarks." If you're a
legislator urging gradual withdrawal you say, "Well, Maliki's government
isn't doing its job so we're not going to help him anymore." As though all
this slaughter of Iraqis has been a form of altruistic assistance requited
with incompetence. If on the other hand you're urging, "Stay the course,"
you can at some point proclaim some failing on the part of this sovereign
Iraqi government the last straw and join your colleagues in endorsing an end
to the war.
Reasons for blaming the victim vary. There are those who simply find it
politically useful to say, "We did our best at establishing a democracy, but
we should get out now and avoid involvement in their civil war." That means
not having to say you're sorry about the dead and all that, while still
satisfying the American masses' demand for withdrawal. Then there are those
mulling the replacement of Maliki by a military coup which might posture as
a regime better organized to meet the dictated benchmarks as the country
prepares for a "return to democracy." (The U.S. has historically had no
problem with military coups. The one in September last year in Thailand,
deposing the first democratically elected prime minister in Thai history,
met with a State Department statement of "disappointment," zero media
coverage and few cries of outrage. And have Americans been reminded lately
that in October 1999 the constitutional prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz
Sharif, sought to replace the man who is now Pakistan's president, Gen.
Pervez Musharraf, who then seized power? Musharraf was the Army Chief of
Staff, promoted to that post by Sharif a year earlier. When Sharif tried to
replace him, the army executed a coup d'etat. These days the State
Department hails Musharraf as a statesman and key ally in the War on
terror.)
What are these benchmarks Iraq is supposed to achieve? While administration
officials have used the term broadly and vaguely, there are actually 18
specified in the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery, and
Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, 2007. That's Public Law 110-28,
which mandated two reports from the president (one just released) indicating
his judgment about Iraq's progress in achieving the benchmarks. These
involve security, political reconciliation, diplomacy, economic changes,
etc., with the establishment of an effective Iraqi (puppet) army and
reintegration of reconcilable Baathists near the top of the list. But the
most important single benchmark to the neocons centered around Vice
President Cheney's office is the passing of the Hydrocarbon Act by the Iraqi
parliament. This would reverse the nationalization of Iraqi oil accomplished
by law in 1975.
As Rep. Dennis Kucinich recently explained in a long, detailed speech before
the House of Representatives, the law was drafted by BearingPoint (a McLean,
Virginia-based management consulting provider listed by the Center for
Corporate Policy as the number 2 top war profiteer of 2004) in February
2006. It was presented soon thereafter to the newly-appointed Iraqi Oil
Minister Dr. Hussein Al-Shahristani (a scientist in exile from 1991 who
returned with the invaders in 2003). Shahristani then met in Washington DC
with representatives of Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and
ConocoPhillips to get their comments on the draft. Shahristani promised
(optimistically, as it turns out) the International Monetary Fund that the
Iraqi parliament would pass the law by the end of 2006. But as Kucinich
noted, the Iraqi parliament bunkered in the Green Zone hadn't even seen the
draft law yet. (The 33-page text was only leaked to the press on Feb. 15 of
this year. One could say that like most products of Cheney's office it had
been marked "top secret.") Months earlier an Oil Ministry official had said
that Iraqi civil society and the general public would not be consulted at
all on this matter!
London-based Iraqi political analyst Munir Chalabi has written [1] that an
as yet, unrevealed appendix to the draft law "will decide which oil fields
will be allocated to the Iraqi National Oil Company (INOC) and which of the
existing fields will be allocated to the IOCs [international oil companies].
The appendices will determine if 10% or possibly up to 80% of these major
oil fields will be given to the IOCs." Six women recipients of the Nobel
Peace Prize recently wrote that the Hydrocarbon Act "would transform Iraq's
oil industry from a nationalized model to a commercial model that is much
more open to U.S. corporate control. Its provisions allow much (if not most)
of Iraq's oil revenues to flow out of Iraq and into the pockets of
international oil companies." These voices [2] are part of a rising chorus
challenging the oil law.
Kucinich nicely documents U.S. efforts to shove this law down the Iraqi
people's throats and the smug assurance the law's authors felt about its
passage. But something happened - something the arrogant, sneaky, bullying,
greedy proponents of the law in this country somehow didn't anticipate.
Civil society rebelled against the Hydrocarbon Act. The Sunni bloc in
parliament rejected the law. So did the Shiite followers of Muqtada al-Sadr
who denounce the act as an attack on Iraqi sovereignty. Oil field workers
have staged protests and vowed "mutiny" if the law is passed. "This law
cancels the great achievements of the Iraq people," Subhi al-Badri, who
heads the Iraqi Federation of Union Councils, said in a televised interview
last week. "If the Iraqi Parliament approves this law, we will resort to
mutiny. This law is a bomb that may kill everyone. Iraqi oil. . belongs to
all future generations." Even the Iraqi minister of planning and
development, Ali Baban, has vowed to "resign one hour after [the] passing
[of the] oil and gas draft law."
Cheney, with one foot in the military-industrial complex and the other in
the neocon cabal, is upset about this. In his last trip to Iraq, he told the
Los Angeles Times, May 13, "I did make it clear that we believe it is very
important to move on the issues before us in a timely fashion and any undue
delay would be difficult to explain." (Explain to whom? Certainly not the
Iraqi people, who don't want "their" lawmakers to approve the law. Nor the
American people, who aren't well-informed about the issue and not very
well-disposed to the oil companies. Maybe Cheney means it would be hard to
explain to Congress, where so many have signed onto a demand for progress on
this benchmark as a condition for continued U.S. "support.") Secretary of
Defense Gates also, according to the Guardian, "rebuked politicians" during
an Iraq visit in June "for failing to reach consensus on sharing oil
revenues" - a euphemism for failing to provoke the Iraqi people by selling
off the precious natural resource that produces 90% of Iraq's revenue!
Yes, they are getting very upset at the Iraqi legislators' failure to pass
that act. No doubt angry too at the oil workers; the Sunni bloc in
parliament, the Sadrists and the foreign critics. So they try to depict
opposition as being ethnic-based (a squabble among these inscrutable
fractious people about who gets what quantity of the oil profits) rather
than acknowledging their own desire to claim a hefty share. They want to
depict the Iraqi politicians' delay in passing this law so crucial to their
own rapacious selves as a reflection of conflicting Sunni, Shiite, and
Kurdish claims to shares of oil revenue petty enough to resolve through a
few days of talks with some expert U.S. input. But as Kucinich notes, the
"fact is that except for three scant lines, the entire 33 page 'Hydrocarbon
Law,' is about creating a complex legal structure to facilitate the
privatization of Iraqi oil." The issue holding up passage isn't ethnic and
religious rivalries but Iraqi nationalism versus imperialist globalization.
The Iraqi parliament's plans for a long summer break have drawn strong
reaction in Washington. Maybe it's to escape the 130 degree heat, Bush
spokesman Tony Snow suggested. That drew reactions from legislators again
blaming Iraqis for this whole mess. "If they go off on vacation for two
months while our troops fight - that would be the outrage of outrages,"
declared Rep. Chris Shays ( R-Conn). (Snow was forced to apologize for his
remark and thus cave in to the bashing of the Iraqi lawmakers.) But maybe
the parliament, that has met rarely and often lacked a quorum [3], just
finds itself inclined to respond to overbearing U.S. pressure on this oil
issue and others by absenting itself for awhile. Sort of like going on
strike.
Thus the failure of Iraqis to meet this "benchmark" in a timely fashion, as
demanded by Dick Cheney, the International Monetary Fund, Shell, BP,
ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips, and the U.S. Congress is a
failure to say, "Yes, Boss, go ahead and rape my country. Even more than you
already have! You overthrew our dictator, so your deserve it! Thank you!"
Congress and the administration are almost united in demanding this
statement of abject submission in the form of the Hydrocarbon Law. Sen. John
Warner in particular has led efforts to pressure the Iraqi puppet regime to
get this passed and he's produced overwhelming bipartisan support. Just goes
to show you: we live in an imperialist country in which those holding high
political office almost inevitably cast their votes for what the Nobel
laureates cited above call "more U.S. corporate control."
Kucinich seems to be an exception. By no coincidence, he has introduced
House Resolution 333, calling for Vice President's impeachment. As the
people of Iraq rise up against this made-in-Cheney's-office draft law, we
can help them by forcing the ouster (now!) of the Cheney/Bush regime.
_______
About author Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of
Comparative Religion, at Tufts University and author of numerous works on
Japanese history. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu [4].
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Gary Leupp
Created Jul 27 2007 - 9:46am
When it became apparent as of mid-2003 that there were no weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq, the mendacious Bush administration found a scapegoat:
the CIA and its "intelligence failures." No matter that the lies about Iraq
originated in the circle around the Vice President, rather than the
intelligence community; the CIA (powerless to protest by its very role in
the system) was faulted and "reorganized" in an embarrassingly public way to
make it friendlier to the Straussian/neocon concept of intelligence based on
deception. The real disseminators of disinformation were meanwhile left off
the hook. Anyway, arch-neocon lie-peddler Paul Wolfowitz told reporters
after returning from an Iraq visit in July 2003, Americans shouldn't be
"fussing so much about this [merely] historical issue" when there are so
many practical issues to attend to in Iraq, like fighting the Baathists and
building democracy.
The reconstruction and democratization of Iraq became the new rationale for
the invasion and occupation. But it's become apparent that these are as much
chimeras as the missing WMDs. The real prospect of failure looms - the
failure of the U.S. to implant a government perceived by the people as
legitimate; the failure to obtain adequate international cover for
occupation; the failure to sufficiently persuade the American people that
their youth aren't dying for an Iraqi regime weak, doomed, paralyzed by
factional division, dominated by various forms of Islamic fundamentalism.
(One has to emphasize that this Islamist empowerment followed the wholesale
purging of the secular Baathists accomplished in 2003. Bush now wants to
undo that last deed, declaring January 10, 2007 that "to allow more Iraqis
to re-enter their nation's political life, the government [of Iraq] will
reform de-Baathification laws - and establish a fair process for considering
amendments to Iraq's constitution." Washington worked well enough with the
Baathists all through the Cold War, favoring them as a mainstream secular
alternative to Islamists, and also anticommunist. Now bringing back secular
Baathists is a benchmark for the Iraqis to meet. The problem is the U.S. has
placed in most of the top positions people who don't want to do that.)
If the U.S. must withdraw, those responsible for the war will need to
deflect liability for the failure from themselves. The "sovereign" Iraqi
regime - which was in fact created in response to massive demonstrations
beginning in late 2003, created as window-dressing for ongoing occupation -
has been targeted as the scapegoat for some time, threatened repeatedly with
the withdrawal of U.S. support if it doesn't meet Washington's demands.
Democrats and Republicans, Congress and the administration, all take part in
the scapegoating and thus (wittingly or not) protect the neocons responsible
for the unfolding crime of occupation. They are blaming the victims: the
Iraqi people who never asked to be invaded and have responded with a mix of
violent resistance, militant protest, militia organizing, and sectarian
fighting. The sectarian fighting would not be taking place had a secular
government that had provided order, firmly separated mosque and state and
kept the lid on political Islam not been destroyed by the invaders. But in
U.S. political discourse it is attributed to Iraqis' arcane centuries-old
religious disputes, while attacks on U.S. troops are chalked up to fanatical
anti-Americanism. "These are the same people who attacked us on 9-11,"
insists Bush.
Of course the U.S. has few friends in Iraq. Polls have shown for a long time
that the vast majority of Iraqis want the U.S. out! Such friends as it has
are in the client regime headed by Nouri al-Maliki, a man highly
uncomfortable in his position. He said in January, "I wish I could be done
with it even before the end of this term. I didn't want to take this
position. I only agreed because I thought it would serve the national
interest, and I will not accept it again." Contradictions have developed
between his administration (one divided within itself) and new Parliament on
the one hand, and the U.S. government on the other. A majority of Iraqi
legislators have recently called for the U.S. to withdraw. If you can't get
better cooperation than that from people risking their lives and reputations
to work with you and give your imperialist project some cloak of legitimacy,
you're in big trouble.
So what do you do, if you're an official in the government of the
imperialist country responsible? While rabid American news commentators
complain about how ungrateful the Iraqi people are for all America's
sacrifice on their behalf, you express your disappointment at the failure of
the Iraqi "government" to meet U.S.-posted "benchmarks." If you're a
legislator urging gradual withdrawal you say, "Well, Maliki's government
isn't doing its job so we're not going to help him anymore." As though all
this slaughter of Iraqis has been a form of altruistic assistance requited
with incompetence. If on the other hand you're urging, "Stay the course,"
you can at some point proclaim some failing on the part of this sovereign
Iraqi government the last straw and join your colleagues in endorsing an end
to the war.
Reasons for blaming the victim vary. There are those who simply find it
politically useful to say, "We did our best at establishing a democracy, but
we should get out now and avoid involvement in their civil war." That means
not having to say you're sorry about the dead and all that, while still
satisfying the American masses' demand for withdrawal. Then there are those
mulling the replacement of Maliki by a military coup which might posture as
a regime better organized to meet the dictated benchmarks as the country
prepares for a "return to democracy." (The U.S. has historically had no
problem with military coups. The one in September last year in Thailand,
deposing the first democratically elected prime minister in Thai history,
met with a State Department statement of "disappointment," zero media
coverage and few cries of outrage. And have Americans been reminded lately
that in October 1999 the constitutional prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz
Sharif, sought to replace the man who is now Pakistan's president, Gen.
Pervez Musharraf, who then seized power? Musharraf was the Army Chief of
Staff, promoted to that post by Sharif a year earlier. When Sharif tried to
replace him, the army executed a coup d'etat. These days the State
Department hails Musharraf as a statesman and key ally in the War on
terror.)
What are these benchmarks Iraq is supposed to achieve? While administration
officials have used the term broadly and vaguely, there are actually 18
specified in the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery, and
Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, 2007. That's Public Law 110-28,
which mandated two reports from the president (one just released) indicating
his judgment about Iraq's progress in achieving the benchmarks. These
involve security, political reconciliation, diplomacy, economic changes,
etc., with the establishment of an effective Iraqi (puppet) army and
reintegration of reconcilable Baathists near the top of the list. But the
most important single benchmark to the neocons centered around Vice
President Cheney's office is the passing of the Hydrocarbon Act by the Iraqi
parliament. This would reverse the nationalization of Iraqi oil accomplished
by law in 1975.
As Rep. Dennis Kucinich recently explained in a long, detailed speech before
the House of Representatives, the law was drafted by BearingPoint (a McLean,
Virginia-based management consulting provider listed by the Center for
Corporate Policy as the number 2 top war profiteer of 2004) in February
2006. It was presented soon thereafter to the newly-appointed Iraqi Oil
Minister Dr. Hussein Al-Shahristani (a scientist in exile from 1991 who
returned with the invaders in 2003). Shahristani then met in Washington DC
with representatives of Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and
ConocoPhillips to get their comments on the draft. Shahristani promised
(optimistically, as it turns out) the International Monetary Fund that the
Iraqi parliament would pass the law by the end of 2006. But as Kucinich
noted, the Iraqi parliament bunkered in the Green Zone hadn't even seen the
draft law yet. (The 33-page text was only leaked to the press on Feb. 15 of
this year. One could say that like most products of Cheney's office it had
been marked "top secret.") Months earlier an Oil Ministry official had said
that Iraqi civil society and the general public would not be consulted at
all on this matter!
London-based Iraqi political analyst Munir Chalabi has written [1] that an
as yet, unrevealed appendix to the draft law "will decide which oil fields
will be allocated to the Iraqi National Oil Company (INOC) and which of the
existing fields will be allocated to the IOCs [international oil companies].
The appendices will determine if 10% or possibly up to 80% of these major
oil fields will be given to the IOCs." Six women recipients of the Nobel
Peace Prize recently wrote that the Hydrocarbon Act "would transform Iraq's
oil industry from a nationalized model to a commercial model that is much
more open to U.S. corporate control. Its provisions allow much (if not most)
of Iraq's oil revenues to flow out of Iraq and into the pockets of
international oil companies." These voices [2] are part of a rising chorus
challenging the oil law.
Kucinich nicely documents U.S. efforts to shove this law down the Iraqi
people's throats and the smug assurance the law's authors felt about its
passage. But something happened - something the arrogant, sneaky, bullying,
greedy proponents of the law in this country somehow didn't anticipate.
Civil society rebelled against the Hydrocarbon Act. The Sunni bloc in
parliament rejected the law. So did the Shiite followers of Muqtada al-Sadr
who denounce the act as an attack on Iraqi sovereignty. Oil field workers
have staged protests and vowed "mutiny" if the law is passed. "This law
cancels the great achievements of the Iraq people," Subhi al-Badri, who
heads the Iraqi Federation of Union Councils, said in a televised interview
last week. "If the Iraqi Parliament approves this law, we will resort to
mutiny. This law is a bomb that may kill everyone. Iraqi oil. . belongs to
all future generations." Even the Iraqi minister of planning and
development, Ali Baban, has vowed to "resign one hour after [the] passing
[of the] oil and gas draft law."
Cheney, with one foot in the military-industrial complex and the other in
the neocon cabal, is upset about this. In his last trip to Iraq, he told the
Los Angeles Times, May 13, "I did make it clear that we believe it is very
important to move on the issues before us in a timely fashion and any undue
delay would be difficult to explain." (Explain to whom? Certainly not the
Iraqi people, who don't want "their" lawmakers to approve the law. Nor the
American people, who aren't well-informed about the issue and not very
well-disposed to the oil companies. Maybe Cheney means it would be hard to
explain to Congress, where so many have signed onto a demand for progress on
this benchmark as a condition for continued U.S. "support.") Secretary of
Defense Gates also, according to the Guardian, "rebuked politicians" during
an Iraq visit in June "for failing to reach consensus on sharing oil
revenues" - a euphemism for failing to provoke the Iraqi people by selling
off the precious natural resource that produces 90% of Iraq's revenue!
Yes, they are getting very upset at the Iraqi legislators' failure to pass
that act. No doubt angry too at the oil workers; the Sunni bloc in
parliament, the Sadrists and the foreign critics. So they try to depict
opposition as being ethnic-based (a squabble among these inscrutable
fractious people about who gets what quantity of the oil profits) rather
than acknowledging their own desire to claim a hefty share. They want to
depict the Iraqi politicians' delay in passing this law so crucial to their
own rapacious selves as a reflection of conflicting Sunni, Shiite, and
Kurdish claims to shares of oil revenue petty enough to resolve through a
few days of talks with some expert U.S. input. But as Kucinich notes, the
"fact is that except for three scant lines, the entire 33 page 'Hydrocarbon
Law,' is about creating a complex legal structure to facilitate the
privatization of Iraqi oil." The issue holding up passage isn't ethnic and
religious rivalries but Iraqi nationalism versus imperialist globalization.
The Iraqi parliament's plans for a long summer break have drawn strong
reaction in Washington. Maybe it's to escape the 130 degree heat, Bush
spokesman Tony Snow suggested. That drew reactions from legislators again
blaming Iraqis for this whole mess. "If they go off on vacation for two
months while our troops fight - that would be the outrage of outrages,"
declared Rep. Chris Shays ( R-Conn). (Snow was forced to apologize for his
remark and thus cave in to the bashing of the Iraqi lawmakers.) But maybe
the parliament, that has met rarely and often lacked a quorum [3], just
finds itself inclined to respond to overbearing U.S. pressure on this oil
issue and others by absenting itself for awhile. Sort of like going on
strike.
Thus the failure of Iraqis to meet this "benchmark" in a timely fashion, as
demanded by Dick Cheney, the International Monetary Fund, Shell, BP,
ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips, and the U.S. Congress is a
failure to say, "Yes, Boss, go ahead and rape my country. Even more than you
already have! You overthrew our dictator, so your deserve it! Thank you!"
Congress and the administration are almost united in demanding this
statement of abject submission in the form of the Hydrocarbon Law. Sen. John
Warner in particular has led efforts to pressure the Iraqi puppet regime to
get this passed and he's produced overwhelming bipartisan support. Just goes
to show you: we live in an imperialist country in which those holding high
political office almost inevitably cast their votes for what the Nobel
laureates cited above call "more U.S. corporate control."
Kucinich seems to be an exception. By no coincidence, he has introduced
House Resolution 333, calling for Vice President's impeachment. As the
people of Iraq rise up against this made-in-Cheney's-office draft law, we
can help them by forcing the ouster (now!) of the Cheney/Bush regime.
_______
About author Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of
Comparative Religion, at Tufts University and author of numerous works on
Japanese history. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu [4].
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson