Olbermann and Scahill Highlight Important Truths About Iraq
September 2nd, 2010 § 1 Comment
This Keith Olbermann segment is focused on President Obama’s recent speech on Iraq, but it is significant for another reason. For the first time in a very long time it is being admitted in the mainstream media that the real pushers of the US’s illegal war on Iraq were the neoconservatives, one of which is Bill Kristol, appropriately identified by Olbermann here. Secondly, commentator and investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill importantly notes that among the real “winners” in Iraq are China and Russia for beating out the US on the most profitable oil contracts. In the words of Alexander Cockburn: “If this really was a “war for oil,” it scarcely went well for the United States…”
Cockburn also writes:
Run your eye down the list of contracts the Iraqi government awarded in June and December 2009. Prominent is Russia’s Lukoil, which, in partnership with Norway’s Statoil, won the rights to West Qurna Phase Two, a 12.9 billion–barrel supergiant oilfield. Other successful bidders for fixed-term contracts included Russia’s Gazprom and Malaysia’s Petronas. Only two US-based oil companies came away with contracts: ExxonMobil partnered with Royal Dutch Shell on a contract for West Qurna Phase One (8.7 billion barrels in reserves); and Occidental shares a contract in the Zubair field (4 billion barrels), in company with Italy’s ENI and South Korea’s Kogas. The huge Rumaila field (17 billion barrels) yielded a contract for BP and the China National Petroleum Company, and Royal Dutch Shell split the 12.6 billion–barrel Majnoon field with Petronas, 60-40.
Read the full version of Cockburn’s important recent article here.
I guess the next stop for Antonia Juhasz and crew is Democracy Now!