Just in case you have any lingering doubts about what the illegal Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation was about all along, what it's always been about and what they're really fighting for, this latest news nails the coffin shut tight on such doubts.

Of course, the US state-corporate lapdog media is (as usual) silent about this recent scoop on how a new deal between the oil giants and the Iraqi government will guarantee that future Iraqi oil will be siphoned off to Western investors.

Bush & Cheney Oil Co. have now accomplished their objectives for Iraq; however, security is still a vital concern; thus, more blood is needed to maintain security, especially while positioning how to take the next piece in the geopolitical chess board - Iran.

Blood and oil: How the West will profit from Iraq's most precious commodity

The 'IoS' today reveals a draft for a new law that would give Western oil companies a massive share in the third largest reserves in the world. To the victors, the oil? That is how some experts view this unprecedented arrangement with a major Middle East oil producer that guarantees investors huge profits for the next 30 years

Published: 07 January 2007

So was this what the Iraq war was fought for, after all? As the number of US soldiers killed since the invasion rises past the 3,000 mark, and President George Bush gambles on sending in up to 30,000 more troops, The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the Iraqi government is about to push through a law giving Western oil companies the right to exploit the country's massive oil reserves.

And Iraq's oil reserves, the third largest in the world, with an estimated 115 billion barrels waiting to be extracted, are a prize worth having. As Vice-President Dick Cheney noted in 1999, when he was still running Halliburton, an oil services company, the Middle East is the key to preventing the world running out of oil.

Now, unnoticed by most amid the furore over civil war in Iraq and the hanging of Saddam Hussein, the new oil law has quietly been going through several drafts, and is now on the point of being presented to the cabinet and then the parliament in Baghdad. Its provisions are a radical departure from the norm for developing countries: under a system known as "production-sharing agreements", or PSAs, oil majors such as BP and Shell in Britain, and Exxon and Chevron in the US, would be able to sign deals of up to 30 years to extract Iraq's oil.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...cle2132574.ece

The "Independent on Sunday"? Guess I don't recognize them as a common news source. Not a new theory, though. I'm sure this will raise hackles among many Forum readers, as it speaks against the regime in power.
Thank you for your input. Time will tell if this will be a "Nail in the coffin".

If this is the "nail in the coffin," then we should see the perpretrators brought into court and tried and convicted. And, I am sure that there are many (in powerful places) who would love to do nothing more than that. So, until I see that happen, this report will remain speculation. When it is no longer speculation, then I will (probably) hear it from the lips of Sen. Kennedy, not getting it second-hand from the "Sunday Independent." (Give me a break.)

So, are you saying that the Independent is just making all this up - that the hydrocarbon law is just a fantasy? It is indeed funny how brainwashed Americans like you had so much belief when it came to Saddam's fictitious WMD program, and many of you are still proclaiming that you are so sure that they existed. Your "faith" in this matter is remarkable.

Yet, when it comes to the very real hydrocarbon law that has been in the making for quite some time by the Iraqi Council of Ministers, you immediately jump to try to discredit the source and express such avid scepticism about the very existence of this law. What a joke you are. How thick your state of denial becomes you.

Try these other sources out, and then when the law is finalized and the corporate media is finally forced to report about it, I am curious what your next step of denial will take.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security.../1109kurds.htm

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/46602/

http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-white120107.htm

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...cle2132569.ece

For further reference and background, see:

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/43045/

http://www.alternet.org/story/43077/

This is not a brainwashed American. Who are you? A brain-dead Korean? I have sent more than my share of letters/notes, and done some standing and protesting American policies when I thought our government was wrong.
What my beef with you is, Who is the "Independent?" Give me a name of a city or county that publishes it. Don't just drop a name that can't be confirmed.
Now, I will tell you that when Bush did go into Iraq I was all for him doing so. We "brainwashed" Americans were still in shock from 9/11. (Wonder what would happen if the tallest building in S. Korea were attacked? Probably about the same reactions here that we felt as Americans. But, I did think that Bush did not push the button too fast. In fact, he was incredibly slow, as far as I was concerned. I was in an "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" mode. It stirs me to see one minute, the trade centers falling to the ground, and in the next, crowds of Arab ladies dancing and singing like they were at a party.) Even when the U.S. had enemies, and our military was defeating them, I never danced and sang. Violence against any other human, even tho it might seem needed, is never a thing to have joy about. And I would say that about Hussein, or Kim Jung whatever up north of us. If he got what was coming to him, after the cruel things he has done to his own people, I still would not feel happy, even when justice was metted out.
I did think that Iraq had WMD. The leader of Iraq said, and acted, so; Russian intelligence said so; Israel intelligence said so; US intelligence thought so; and the other countries of the world, even tho they did not think so, could not say unequivocally that NO! Iraq DOES NOT have WMD. So, yes, I thought that the U.S. leaders had done their homework. Seems, from my viewpoint now, that they did not. I changed my opinion when Pres. Bush began to change his reasons for attacking Iraq, which was pretty early on.
I am against the war that is going on there. I don't want anymore U.S. or Iraqii peoples killed, especially when it is becoming clearer to me that THE IRAQ people have no idea what freedom is, and their tribal leaders are not willing to let go of their power in order to work together. So, I am against any surge, any prolongment of hostilities.
But, having said that, I haven't a good outlook about what is going to happen when we leave. Iraq probably will fall apart, perhaps split into 2 or 3 main factions, and other aggressive nations in that part of the world are very likely to use Iraq's weakness to advance their own power plays.
It will probably end up very messy. And, if it does, tell me: who is going in and get the oil? No one in their right mind. Perhaps.........PERHAPS that was an (original) hidden reason for the invasion of Iraq. I hope not. But, it is possible. But, I don't care who writes the rules of who gets the oil. If Iraq goes into what I envision it to go into, then NOONE WILL GET THE OIL.

Maybe the country that you love will want to take a crack at it. Good luck. (Maybe you could volunteer, to be right up front in the lead group.)

If the U.S. actually receives any remuneration (oil) from Iraq it will be the first time in a long time that we receive some reward for attempting to be the international police force. Usually, in a war, no one really "Wins". I think it would be nice for a change.
I'm not sure just how grateful Kuwait was when we saved them from Saddam, but I would like to think they should give us lots of oil ,too.

kudos for american soldiers for obeying and doing the things that they are told to do and everything, but come on, this story is not a speculation. everyone who is intelligent enough to see the whole picture knows that the war was all about oil. International police? since when did police bomb and invade other people's territory?

Are you saying that you "see the whole picture?" What intelligence briefings have you been privy to? Have you set in on one presidential briefing ....in Russia? in the U.S.? in Iran? Wow!! To "see the whole picture" must be a rush. Please enlighten the rest of us mere mortals. And, please speak to the leading world-class newspapers, so they can let all know and understand what the "whole picture" is.
Might have been oil. Very possibly was. That's all the further I will go.
The rest, until one of the principles confesses, is merely speculation.
Might be edumacated speculation. But it is still speculation. (I do wish that some in the top eschelons of our government would have speculated about the possibility of a day like 9/11 happening. There were indicators.)

Here's more on the secret Iraqi OIL steal deal. It's from the Institute for Policy Studies.

Also, I just want to add that just because the corporate media doesn't print something or else buries it in an obscure corner on page 23 doesn't mean that it isn't newsworthy. You should be aware that the corporate media is protecting its interests as well when it manages perceptions with "all the news that's fit to print." This particular bit of news should make its way into mainstream media eventually but only after it is already old news.

It's Still About The Oil
Antonia Juhasz
January 19, 2007

(Antonia Juhasz, a visiting scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, is the author of The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time (HarperCollins, 2006). She is also contributing author, with John Perkins and others, to A Game as Old as Empire (Berrett-Koehler, February 2007).)

For more than four years, the Bush administration and its oil company cohorts have worked toward the passage of a new oil law for Iraq that would turn its nationalized oil system over to private foreign corporate control. On Thursday, January 18, this dream came one step closer to reality when an Iraqi negotiating committee of "national and regional leaders" approved a new hydrocarbon law. The committee chair, Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, told Reuters that the draft will go to the Iraqi cabinet next week and, if approved, to the parliament immediately thereafter.

The good news is that the Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) so hotly desired by the Bush administration and the world's oil companies that appeared in earlier drafts of the law have apparently been removed. The PSAs gave private companies (including foreign ones) control of Iraq's oil production and 70 percent of the profits, specified that up to two thirds of Iraq's known oil reserves would be developed by private companies and locked the government into 30-year contracts.

Unfortunately, the bad news still outweighs the good.

First, the committee has debated the new law in near total secrecy: almost no one—both outside of and within the Iraqi government, including the parliament—has seen it.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/200...ut_the_oil.php