[PAA-Discuss] FW: Interviews Available -- Iraq Oil Bill: Democrats Doing Bidding of Big Oil?

Sat May 5 09:51:06 EDT 2007

     For anyone who thought the "mission" was "Bringing freedom, democracy, stabilization, success, etc. to Iraq,  or,  "winning,"   or,   "national security type - gotta fight 'em over there so they don't come over here line-of-thinking,"  . . . 
  The article below clarifies that it was just about oil all along.   And now in danger of being  encoded into Law that it was / is merely about oil.

  Encoding the just-about-oil rationalle into law would create the false impression that this war was somehow legitimate after all the many proofs to the contrairy (Downing Street Memo, no WMD's,  etc.).

  But the Pat Act, Mil Commissions Act, removal of Habeus Corpus,  lying, spying, torture, mass-murders, and endless atrocities are NOT legitimate.   Getting oil  (to profit take-the-$-and-run-to-Dubai Halliburton, etc.) does not make it so.  

  If there were any blatant reason to impeach Halliburton CEO Cheney, this is it.   (Of course, Bush should be impeached, as well.)

  In faxing the below to one's public servants, it seems important to point this out.   Otherwise, it will be up to them to try to guess what the point is, and they are likely to guess the opposite of what you may have intended, in sending it.

  This is a wierd url to go to, to get fax #'s, but it seems to be the easiest, most direct provider of that info:   http://www.aspb.org/publicaffairs/state_fax_nmbrs.cfm   

  Aleithia Artemis

Lee Loe <leeloe at igc.org> wrote:
    This is so very inportant. Guess we should copy it and FAX to key reps and
senators in Congress.  Lee Loe

-----Original Message-----
From: Institute for Public Accuracy [mailto:dcinstitute at igc.org] 

Big Oil?

Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa at accuracy.org
___________________________________________________

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Will the Iraq Oil Bill Increase Violence in Iraq?

Interviews Available

The lead story in the New York Times today is headlined "A Draft Oil Bill
Stirs Opposition from Iraqi Blocs; Sunnis and Kurds Balk; Benchmark in
Danger..." The piece states that the proposed Iraqi oil law "establishes a
framework for the distribution of oil revenue" and that "the White House was
hoping for quick passage to lay the groundwork for a political settlement
among the country's ethnic and sectarian factions."

ANTONIA JUHASZ, cell: (415) 846-5447, antoniajuhasz at gmail.com,
http://www.bushagenda.net/article.php?id=369, http://priceofoil.org

Juhasz is a Tarbell Fellow at Oil Change International and a visiting
scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies.

She said today: "The Democratic leadership is ... focusing on
'benchmarks' that the Iraqis must meet. Chief among these benchmarks is the
requirement that Iraq pass a new national oil law. Contrary to the spin used
to sell this benchmark to both the American and Iraqi public, this so-called
'revenue sharing plan' for Iraq's oil is but a minor portion of the new oil
law -- it's three sentences, which haven't even been agreed upon, in a
40-page document I doubt most members of Congress have read. The major
provisions of the REST of the law turn over the Iraq oil industry to
quasi-privatization and foreign ownership. So the Democrats who are
demanding that the Iraqis pass this oil law are -- knowingly or not -- doing
the bidding of Big Oil."
Juhasz wrote the piece "Whose Oil Is It, Anyway?" which appeared on the
New York Times oped page on March 13. In it, she noted: "The administration
has highlighted the law's revenue sharing plan ... But ... [t]he law would
transform Iraq's oil industry from a nationalized model closed to American
oil companies except for limited (although highly lucrative) marketing
contracts, into a commercial industry, all-but-privatized, that is fully
open to all international oil companies."
Juhasz is author of the book "The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One
Economy at a Time."

RAED JARRAR, [in D.C.] cell: (510) 932-0346, jarrar.raed at gmail.com,
http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com
Iraq consultant for the American Friends Service Committee, Jarrar wrote
the recent piece "The New Oil Law Will Increase Violence in Iraq," 
which states: "The new oil law is a direct intervention in Iraq's domestic
policies. It will result in nothing more than increasing the Iraqi-Iraqi
imposed violence, and the Iraqi occupation fight. The best oil law is the
law that the Iraqis will choose after the last U.S. 
soldier leaves." Jarrar translated the proposed law into English: 
http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/2007/03/final-official-copy-of-iraqi-oil
-and.html

MICHAEL EISENSCHER, (510) 436-6125, cell: (510) 693-7314,
m_eisenscher at uslaboragainstwar.org, http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org
Eisenscher is national coordinator for U.S. Labor Against War, a
coalition of U.S. labor unions which has been cooperating with Iraqi oil
worker unions.
He said today: "The [proposed] oil law has been sold to members of
Congress as a measure designed to assure that the proceeds from the sale of
oil are shared by all Iraqis. On its face, few would argue with that. 
But because few, if any, members of Congress have actually read the law,
they are not aware of its real purpose. ...
"This oil law is not the product of a deliberative process by Iraqis
within Iraq. It was not conceived by Iraqis at all. It was imposed upon the
Iraqi Council of Ministers by the Bush administration with cooperation from
the International Monetary Fund with instructions to submit it to the Iraqi
parliament for approval. The law had its origins in a report prepared by a
group of oil industry executives and consultants provided to the Bush
administration before the invasion of Iraq."

A PDF of the oil law is also available at the Kurdistan Regional Government
web page:
http://web.krg.org/uploads/documents/Draft%20Iraq%20Oil%20and%20Gas%20Law%20
English__2007_03_09_h17m2s47.pdf

Also see the blog http://www.HandsOffIraqiOil.org  organized by PLATFORM, a
British human rights and environmental group that monitors the oil industry.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541)
484-9167

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