Not just oil: Bush grabs other minerals in Iraq
Published by MAC on 2003-08-09
Not just oil: Bush grabs other minerals in Iraq
We were told it wasn't a war for oil, but for democracy. And some opponents of the Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq might indeed have been naive. For now - just over hundred days after the formal declaration of "peace" - US plans are emerging to take over not just oil, but mining, cement and other Iraqui indusrtries,. Meanwhile Congress has passed legislation placing US oil companies "above the law" in Iraq - including exempting them from responsibility for environmental damage. Ironically, fifty years ago this month, another US-British coalition alleged it too was bringing democracy to Iraq's neighbour, Iran, when it engineered the overthrow of elected president Mossadeq. Then, the middle eastern oil reserves ended up in the hands of British Petroelum (BP). This time it looks like they will go to vice-president Cheney's favourite company Halliburton.
Cheney firm's rival is forced to drop oil bid
David Teather, New York, The Guardian
August 9, 2003
One of the main bidders for the lucrative contract to rebuild the Iraqi oil industry has dropped out of the race, amid concerns that the tender process unfairly favours Halliburton, the company with close ties to the US vice-president, Dick Cheney.
The construction giant Bechtel, one of the biggest engineering companies in the world, now plans to sidestep Washington and apply directly to the Iraqi oil ministry for work.
The growing disquiet over cronyism in George Bush's administration was further stirred yesterday when it emerged that a friend of the president who helped his election campaign had been hired as the director of private development in Iraq.
Thomas Foley, 51, befriended Mr Bush when they attended Harvard. He will be in charge of 200 state-owned enterprises including mining, chemical, cement and tobacco production, and report directly to the top US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer.
A Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, was quietly awarded a contract without tendering in the spring to perform immediate repairs to Iraq's oil infrastructure, and extinguish oil fires. The Army Corps of Engineers said the work, which could be worth up to $7bn (£4.3bn), was part of a wider contract signed last year.
Two further contracts worth $500m each for repair work in the oil industry have since been offered.
However, a week ago, the date for completion of the work was brought forward to December 31, sparking concerns that the deadline would be nearly impossible to meet for any company not already on the ground in Iraq.
The Army Corps did not return telephone calls on the matter yesterday.
A Bechtel spokeswoman, Alison Abbott, said: "The Army Corps of Engineers' final plan for Iraqi oil services work details their intent to accelerate the transition of responsibility to the Iraqi oil ministry, effectively minimising the scope of any new contracts. Given this plan, Bechtel has decided to focus our efforts on future opportunities with the ministry."
The San Francisco-based company won the $680m chief contract to begin work on rebuilding other Iraqi infrastructure - roads and schools - from the US agency for international development earlier this year.
At a meeting with the Army Corps last month to discuss the forthcoming contracts, several of the putative bidders expressed concerns that Halliburton would have an unfair advantage because it was already working in Iraq.
Halliburton was involved in a separate meeting in late July in Baghdad with the Army Corps, the oil ministry and other officials to set out what was needed to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure to prewar levels.
Mr Cheney is the former chief executive of Halliburton, and left with a $36m severance package in 2000 to join the White House campaign. In its latest financial results, Halliburton said 9% of its $3.6bn quarterly revenues had come from Iraq.
Democrats have expressed dismay that a single company should make so much from the rebuilding of Iraq, and questioned the links between Mr Cheney and the firm.
Groups Demand Repeal of Bush Immunity for US Oil Companies in Iraq
from Sustainable Energy and Economy Network, USA
July 28 2003
WASHINGTON - Representatives of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and Government Accountability Project (GAP) today urged Congress to investigate - and repeal - an executive order signed by President George W. Bush that gives sweeping powers to U.S. oil companies operating in Iraq.
The two public interest organizations charged that President Bush far overreached a May 22, 2003, United Nations resolution that was designed to protect Iraqi oil revenues for humanitarian purposes when he signed an executive order that could place U.S. corporations above the law for any activities "related to" Iraqi oil, either in Iraq or domestically. Bush signed Executive Order 13303 the same day that the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1483, which sets up a development fund, from Iraqi oil revenues, for "humanitarian purposes."
"This order reveals the true motivation for the present occupation: absolute power for U.S. corporate interests over Iraqi oil," said IPS Senior Researcher Jim Vallette. "This is the smoking gun that proves the Bush administration always intended to free corporate investments, not the Iraqi people."
"In terms of legal liability, the Executive Order cancels the concept of corporate accountability and abandons the rule of law," charged Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project. "It is a blank check for corporate anarchy, potentially robbing Iraqis of both their rights and their resources."
In order to encourage the flow of oil revenues into the Development Fund, the UN Security Council declared that Iraqi oil and gas would be immune from legal proceedings until Dec. 31, 2007. The intent was to immunize the oil and gas only "until title passes to the initial purchaser" and further does "not apply to any legal proceeding... necessary to satisfy liability to damages assessed in connection with an ecological accident."
However, the president's executive order ignores these important caveats and declares that "any attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment, or other judicial process is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void," with respect to the Development Fund for Iraq and "all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products, and interests therein."
In addition to an exemption for ecological accidents, the UN order had restricted immunity to the point of initial sale. Bush grants Iraqi oil a lifetime exemption provided US companies are involved in the oil's production, transport, or distribution. His order applies to Iraqi oil products that are "in the United States, hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons." Under U.S. law, corporations are "persons." Executive Order 13303 means that if oil companies establish separate corporations to handle Iraqi oil, they may be able to escape liability entirely.
For further information, visit: http://www.seen.org/BushEO.shtml
We Had a Democracy Once, But You Crushed It
11 August 2003
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
In yesterday's Washington Post, Condoleeza Rice, the President's National Security Advisor, writes the following:
"Our task is to work with those in the Middle East who seek progress toward greater democracy, tolerance, prosperity and freedom. As President Bush said in February, ‘The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed ideologies of murder. They encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life.'"
Now, if we only had a nickel for every time Bush, or Rice, or Colin Powell, or Paul Wolfowitz or Dick Cheney or Richard Perle or Donald Rumsfeld talked about bringing democracy to the Middle East.
Talk, talk, talk
Here's something you can bet on: Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz will not hold a press conference this month to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the U.S.-led coup of the democratically elected leader of Iran -- Mohammed Mossadegh.
Rice and Powell won't hold a press conference to celebrate Operation Ajax, the CIA plot that overthrew the Mossadegh.
That was 50 years ago this month, in August 1953.
That's when Mossadegh was fed up with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company -- now BP -- pumping Iran's oil and shipping the profits back home to the United Kingdom.
And Mossadegh said -- hey, this is our oil, I think we'll keep it.
And Winston Churchill said -- no you won't.
Mossadegh nationalized the company -- the way the British were nationalizing their own vital industries at the time.
But what's good for the UK ain't good for Iran.
If you fly out of Dulles Airport in Virginia, ever wonder what the word Dulles means?
It stands for the Dulles family -- Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, the CIA director, Allen Dulles.
They were responsible for the overthrow of the democratically elected leader of Iran.
As was President Theodore Roosevelt's grandson, Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA agent who traveled to Iran to pull off the coup.
Now why should we be concerned about a coup that happened so far away almost 50 years ago this month?
New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer puts it this way:
"It is not far-fetched to draw a line from Operation Ajax through the Shah's repressive regime and the Islamic revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York."
Kinzer has written a remarkable new book, All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Wiley, 2003).
In it, he documents step by step, how Roosevelt, the Dulles boys and Norman Schwarzkopf Sr., among a host of others, took down a democratically elected regime in Iran.
They had freedom of the press. We shut it down.
They had democracy. And we crushed it.
Mossadegh was the beacon of hope for the Middle East.
If democracy were allowed to take hold in Iran, it probably would have spread throughout the Middle East.
We asked Kinzer what does the overthrow of Mossadegh say about the United States respect for democracy abroad?
"Imagine today what it must sound like to Iranians to hear American leaders tell them -- ‘We want you to have a democracy in Iran, we disapprove of your present government, we wish to help you bring democracy to your country.' Naturally, they roll their eyes and say -- "We had a democracy once, but you crushed it,'" he said. "This shows how differently other people perceive us from the way we perceive ourselves. We think of ourselves as paladins of democracy. But actually, in Iran, we destroyed the last democratic regime the country ever had and set them on a road to what has been half a century of dictatorship."
After ousting Mossadegh, the United States put in place a brutal Shah who destroyed dissent and tortured the dissenters.
And the Shah begat the Islamic revolution.
During that Islamic revolution in 1979, Iranians held up Mossadegh's picture, telling the world we want a democratic regime that resists foreign influence and respects the will of the Iranian people as expressed through democratic institutions.
"They were never able to achieve that. And this has led many Iranians to react very poignantly to my book," Kaizer told us. "One woman sent me an e-mail that said ‘I was in tears when I finished your book because it made me think of all we lost and all we could have had.'"
Of course, the overthrow of Mossadegh was only one of the first U.S. coups of democratically elected regime. (To see one in movie form, pick up a copy of Raoul Peck's Lumumba, now on DVD.)
Kinzer's previous books include Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala.
He's thinking of putting together a boxed set of his books on American coups.
Get copies of Bitter Fruit and All The Shah's Men.
Read them.
And the next time a politician talks about spreading democracy around the globe, ask them about Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala.
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter, http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com.
Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, http://www.multinationalmonitor.org.
They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.corporatepredators.org).
© Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
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