AFP
http://afr.com/articles/2005/11/24/1132703276123.html
Quote:
Up to $US194 billion ($263 billion) in Iraqi oil revenues are going to multinational oil companies under long-term contracts, and not to the Iraqi people, a social and environmental group said.
In a report, the group known as Platform said that oil multinationals would be paid between $US74 billion and $US194 billion with rates of return of between 42 per cent and 162 per cent under proposed production-sharing agreements, or PSAs.
"The form of contracts being promoted is the most expensive and undemocratic option available," Platform researcher Greg Muttitt said.
"Iraq's oil should be for the benefit of the Iraqi people not foreign oil companies."
Muttitt added: "Iraq's institutions are new and weak. Experience in other countries shows that oil companies generally get the upper hand in PSA negotiations with governments.
"The companies will inevitably use Iraq's current instability to push for highly advantageous terms and lock Iraq to those terms for decades."
The report, titled Crude Designs: The Rip-Off of Iraq's Oil Wealth, said the majority of Iraqis were against the large-scale involvement of foreign companies in the post-Saddam era.
"Iraqi public opinion is strongly opposed to handing control over oil development to foreign companies," it said.
Continues..
This is from Tvnewslies headlines and to me it seems that it is the way Bush is helping his friends to get the money that should be the Iraqi's right and redemption from our invasion. Worse is the fact that the war is costing the American taxpayer this amount of money, and a lot of dead soldiers, while the oil companies reap free profits from the country that American taxpayers are paying for- so the oil companies can go in and rip off the profits that would give Iraq financial independance from the rest of the world. Thus making the invasion and the destruction of this country legitimate, since they are poor and have no assets to become independant.
http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php ... Itemid=182
We have to stop using our military to finance the rich corporations by ending our governments control of ther militaries usage for offensive wars of resources. The Commander in chief concept must be removed from the president, and congress and the people should be the ones that decide when and for what reasons America goes to war, and ONLY after all the facts have been presented, not hidden speculation. The president should only have an emergency clause that he can exercise when America is under real threat of attack, and it should be only used in the most severe of moments.
Amendments must be made to remove the power the president exercises at this point. We now can see how it can be abused and in the wrong hands with the wrong motives can be a weapon against the world and not an asset, for the people- Not an asset for the elite to use to pad their wallets- at the expense of the American taxpayer and the lives of so many brave deluded soldiers, who go to their deaths for the greed of a few.
This is how we use our military.
Talk about a timely war. What with the oil prices being forced up by the war, so oil companies could reap profits while the Iraqis country is devastated beyond repair, thus making our need to be there somehow legitimised. They need us to keep them from hurting themselves and being a poor destitute country. WE aren't making them poor and destitute. We aren't hurting them. WE are there to help them.
Is this a pattern of internal destruction that corporations and governments have exercised for their own greed in the world for as long as greed and deception have been one? Could this be a pattern of maintaining power that we pay for with our taxes and lives so the business elite could help the politicians maintain wealth and power?
What are we doing supporting this war of attrition upon the innocent Iraqi people. Are we the monsters we attribute to Saddam? Is our government worse than anything Saddam could have ever been?
Enjoy your turkeys people. Eat hearty on the blood of the Iraqis and the world.
