Camp Exxon

posted by ewing2001 on Tuesday August 19, @05:27PM

IRAQ: Washington's oil grab

Greenleft.org.au -August 13

BY STEVE KRETZMANN & JIM VALLETTE

Photo: Members of 2nd Battalion 187th Abn Inf at Camp Exxon

In early April, during the initial assault on Baghdad, soldiers set up forward bases named Camp Shell and Camp Exxon, until Pentagon PR realised that that did not look very good and ordered them renamed. Those soldiers knew the score. Several months and dozens of lives later, Bechtel, Halliburton and a host of oil companies are ensuring that the fledgling “free market” in Iraq will be particularly free for US corporations.

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The ultimate prize in Iraq is oil, and the Bush-Cheney gang has uncoiled a vastly under-reported legal and financial cord that plugs US corporate control into these resources. The basic wiring has three prongs and is already complete. The first, created by the United Nations under US pressure, is the Development Fund for Iraq. This is to be controlled by the US, with advice from the Washington-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Unsurprisingly, this is a slush fund for US corporate welfare.

The second is a recent executive order by US President George Bush that provides absolute legal protection for US interests in Iraqi oil. A third and final prong is being crafted to ground the whole system and get as much profit as possible out of it.

On May 22, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1483, which ended sanctions and endorsed the creation of Development Fund for Iraq, overseen by a board of accountants, including UN, World Bank and IMF representatives. It endorsed the transfer of more than US$1 billion (of Iraq's oil money) from the Oil for Food program into the Development Fund. All proceeds from the sale of Iraqi oil and natural gas are also to be placed into the fund.

The fund, controlled by US viceroy Paul Bremer, has swelled to $7 billion, thanks to a $3.1 billion contribution from US Congress, and billions of dollars more in seized assets of the Iraqi government.

To who have the occupying powers pledged these riches? The UN resolution states that the fund “shall be used in a transparent manner to meet the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people”. John Negroponte, the US representative at the UN, told reporters after the vote, “the intent is to use Iraq's resources and to dispose and dispense Iraq's resources to the benefit of the people of Iraq”. That paternalism towards Iraq's people is mighty white of ambassador Negroponte.

Originally released at Counterpunch

The Development Fund for Iraq established by the United Nations does not spell out ownership as it was assumed it would be the Iraqi people who would own the oil from Iraq. Putting Mr. Paul Bremer, an old American oil-hand in charge of Iraq made him the perfect choice as head of the fund, though most would have disagreed had they been asked, and seemed natural for the U.N. and the Bush regime.

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