The Lubricious Embrace of Iraqi Oil Fields

Well, the Bushites have succeeded for the time being of rewarding those for whom Bush went to war in Iraq: The giant oil companies.

Our State Department, acting as broker for Exxon, Mobil, Shell, BP, Total and Chevron, has strong-armed the ministers of our Iraqi client government into giving these suffering corporations no-bid contracts to exploit Iraq’s oil fields, supposed to hold the second-biggest pool of oil in the world after Saudi Arabia’s.

That means a couple of things for those who appreciate history. It means the U.S., the UK and France now have giant economic interests in Iraq. It means we all will poke around there for decades to protect the oil companies, once they spend a few bucks bribing Iraqi politicians and rearrange the Iraqi economy and government to suit themselves. Dick Cheney probably will head the oil consortium ruling Iraq. He'll go down in history as Big Dick.

The foreign policies of the U.S., the UK and France in the Middle East for nearly a century have been spelled OIL. True, we’ve garnished our selfishness in the Arab and Persian world with cant about bringing democracy to the downtrodden and so forth, but all that has no meaning than a sprig of parsley served beside a sizzling pork chop.

François Georges-Picot and Mark Sykes would snicker at the hypocrisy being offered for the Bush II war in Iraq. They were the young French and British diplomats who in 1916 at the behest of their governments took a ruler and compass to the map and penciled in most the lines still defining what a nation is in Greater Arabia and Old Persia. They left us out of fussing up the new governments, but when we sniffed oil we hustled in so that by the 1940s we had a few puppets of our own sitting on thrones while we mewed about self-governance for the downtrodden.

Bush II had a couple of other motives for going to war. First, he need a good war, to make his scratch on history. He wasn’t going to have fame otherwise. Daddy had a war called Desert Storm. Son created Desert Farce.

Second, there was a matter of revenge. Saddam Hussein had tried to bump off Bush I. Bush family honor demanded satisfaction. It's the kind of thing you swear to in Skull & Bones.

Last, knocking off Saddam gave the Israelis pols orgasms. Now they'd like El Stupido to do them another favor before he stumbles out of office in six months: Invade Iran.

Lots of oil there too. Good war might elect McBush and save the Republican party from the oblivion it deserves.

Stay tuned. The oil boys are thinking, plotting, scheming, manipulating. They got themselves a president and they might as well squeeze all they can out of him before he joins U.S. Grant as an exemplar of ethical leadership.