It was oil all along and it is oil ahead

THE PRESSURE that the US administration of President George W Bush is applying on the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki and others in Iraq for having the draft law on the country’s oil resources passed and enacted clearly shows the truth in what many commentators have been saying from day one of the US invasion of Iraq: It was oil all along and it is also oil ahead.

… The draft law on Iraqi oil will open the door for 30-year exclusive rights for British and American oil companies and these rights cannot be revoked by future Iraqi governments.
The US could relax only when it is adopted by the Iraqi parliament and comes into force without any possibility of it being reversed at any point short of yet another foreign invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Now, the question is whether the intended use of Iraqi oil was to serve US national interests or to benefit American oil companies. The answer is clear that oil companies with links to top Bush administration officials stand to reap tens of billions of dollars by exploiting Iraq’s oil wealth.

And so it would appear that the hundreds of billions of dollars and the nearly 4,000 American lives that the US military has sacrificed so far in the Iraq war — not to mention the nearly 30,000 soldiers crippled or maimed for life — went to serve the interests of selected American oil companies. True that the job is not done yet, but that does not dilute the deception that went into action and launched the war against Iraq.

The Gulf Today