V-I Day Is At Hand

Iraqi Cabinet Approves Draft of Oil Law (New York Times)

I may be writing more on this later, if I have the stomach for it, but read through the above New York Times report on the new oil law approved by the Iraqi government – and gasp in shock-and-awed wonder that the leading newspaper in the United States could file a story like this and only note – in the next-to-last paragraph – that Iraq’s oil will [be] controlled by the iron fist of a “central body called the Federal Oil and Gas Council” which will have “a panel of oil experts from inside and outside Iraq” as part of the operation… without telling us that these “oil experts” will in fact be executives and representatives of American and other Western oil companies.

In other words, the Bush-backing oil barons will now have an official stranglehold on the oil of the Iraqi people. No wonder the Administration has been so adamant that “a new oil law is crucial to the country’s political and economic development,” as the warm and fuzzy Times tells us.

As we noted here a few weeks ago, an oil law giving Bush’s crony conquistadors a dominant hold on Iraq’s oil has always been the true “benchmark” of victory for the White House. And now it is within reach; the Iraqi parliament will vote on the law next month – with 140,000 American troops parked all around the country, and American bombs falling on the capital.