As was our country’s original mission, it looks like we – woops, I mean big oil – will start to see some profits out of this nearly trillion dollar war.  God bless America.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/07/17/news/Iraq-Oil-Deals.php

“Al-Shahristani was expected to annonce the completed contracts at the end of last month. But he said the government was still negotiating the deals because the firms wanted to participate in oil field production rather than simply provide consultancy services for cash.

Neither al-Shahristani nor the senior oil official named the companies involved.

But Iraqi officials have said the government is negotiating short-term technical service contracts with Royal Dutch Shell PLC, BP PLC, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron and Total to boost oil production by 500,000 barrels per day.

The U.S. State Department has said it provided advisers to help draft the contracts, which led to an outcry in Washington.”

Yeah, yeah – Raad Alkadiri at the Washington Post tries to justify the no-bid contracts…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/25/AR2008072502717.html

“Reports that a number of international oil companies are on the brink of signing contracts with Iraq have prompted a furious reaction in certain parts of the media and on Capitol Hill. The deals have been widely characterized as no-bid contracts, implying that Big Oil has somehow used its political clout to muscle in on Iraq and renewing suspicion that the whole U.S. intervention in Iraq was primarily a grab for natural resources. In the Senate, senior Democrats have argued that the contracts would heighten Iraq’s sectarian tensions, and those lawmakers are threatening to cut financing for some nonmilitary programs in Iraq if the deals go ahead without prior passage of new hydrocarbons legislation.

These are gross mischaracterizations of the Iraqi contracts.”

P.S.  I’d rather see bin laden’s head on a platter but I guess big oil profits – so we can destroy the planet with more consumption at a lower price – is good enough.  Yes, I’ve been asking for an interest rate hike for some time now (going back before the blog’s May 2008 inception) so that inflation could ease and the cost of oil, food, etc. would go down.  However, at some point you have to be more concerned about workers being able to afford the commute to work than pollution.