Follow the Money
Last January, Bush declared that “America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.” He promised: “to give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis.”
The reason for this was that oil is the only thing Iraq has going for it and the only reason that the occupation has continued. Without an agreement for sharing oil revenues Iraq is a collection of armed gangs fighting for control of this resource.
Bush’s pledge hasn’t happened and on 9/12/07 all attempts to arrive at a compromise oil law collapsed. The cause of the breakdown occurred after the provincial government in Kurdistan, defied the central government, and passed its own oil law. It’s been announced that the Kurdish provincial government had signed a production-sharing deal with the Hunt Oil Company of Dallas.
Ray L. Hunt, the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is a close political ally of Bush. Furthermore, Hunt is a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key oversight body. Thus, we have a businessman with very close ties to the Bush regime undermining his stated policy. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since Halliburton continued to sign business deals with Iran after Bush declared Iran a member of the “axis of evil.”
As a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Hunt undoubtedly was well-informed about the actual state of affairs in Iraq. By putting his money into a deal with the Kurds, despite Baghdad’s disapproval, he’s betting that the Iraqi government won’t get its act together. Hunt is betting against the survival of Iraq as a nation. His access to insider information made him confident that the surge had failed and the war is lost.
The reason for this was that oil is the only thing Iraq has going for it and the only reason that the occupation has continued. Without an agreement for sharing oil revenues Iraq is a collection of armed gangs fighting for control of this resource.
Bush’s pledge hasn’t happened and on 9/12/07 all attempts to arrive at a compromise oil law collapsed. The cause of the breakdown occurred after the provincial government in Kurdistan, defied the central government, and passed its own oil law. It’s been announced that the Kurdish provincial government had signed a production-sharing deal with the Hunt Oil Company of Dallas.
Ray L. Hunt, the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is a close political ally of Bush. Furthermore, Hunt is a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key oversight body. Thus, we have a businessman with very close ties to the Bush regime undermining his stated policy. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since Halliburton continued to sign business deals with Iran after Bush declared Iran a member of the “axis of evil.”
As a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Hunt undoubtedly was well-informed about the actual state of affairs in Iraq. By putting his money into a deal with the Kurds, despite Baghdad’s disapproval, he’s betting that the Iraqi government won’t get its act together. Hunt is betting against the survival of Iraq as a nation. His access to insider information made him confident that the surge had failed and the war is lost.
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