UK oil companies are now flaunting their huge Iraq reserves on social media - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14878542
15 years after the invasion of Iraq, and now largely out of the glare of the media, US and UK oil corporations start to flaunt the spoils of imperial conquest.

After 15 years of repudiating claims that the invasion of Iraq was only initiated to seize Iraqi resources, large oil corporations fronted by former architects of the war who vacated to the private sector are flagrantly advertising their contracts for exploration and production of Iraqi oil fields to potential investors.

The British oil and gas company BP won the contract to operate the Rumaila Oil Field back in 2009, and now proudly boast of its new drilling capabilities on Twitter. Rumaila is simply huge; by some measures it is the third largest reserve of crude oil on the planet, and is currently extracting 100 million dollars worth of oil every day – enough to cover the annual health budget of Iraq under the wartime rule of the US coalition every five days.

One of the board members of BP at present is Sir John Sawers, the former Chief of MI6 from 2009 to 2014 who acted as UK special representative to Iraq during the occupation. He cashed in a few favours and joined BP as an Independent Non-Executive Director in 2015, one year after he departed MI6 and two years after BP had been handed a licence to exploit one of the most valuable pools of liquid gold on the planet. There was seemingly no regulatory oversight of this very British oligarchy.

In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, BP denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as “highly inaccurate” and denied that it had any “strategic interest” in Iraq, while Tony Blair described “the oil conspiracy theory” as “the most absurd”.

However, memos disclosed by The Independent in 2011 tell a very different story. In a series of meetings in 2003, BP revealed that they had approached Labour Peer Lady Symons to lobby the Blair government into demanding a share of spoils from the Iraq War in return for UK military support.

Minutes of a meeting with BP, Shell and BG (formerly British Gas) on 31 October 2002 read: “Baroness Symons agreed that it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis.”

The minister then promised to “report back to the companies before Christmas” on her lobbying efforts.

The Foreign Office also invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq “post regime change”. Its minutes state: “Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity.”

Not for the first time in their history (see the 1953 Iranian coup d’etat) BP succeeded in convincing the UK government to forcibly seize the resources of a sovereign foreign nation to bolster the share prices of large corporations like themselves. Cronies who endlessly spin around the revolving door between military/government positions like Sir John Sawers no doubt made a fair few quid in dividends and obscene salaries; in fact, Sawers is now a regular feature at Bilderberg conferences, rubbing shoulders with Hillary Clinton and George Bush. I imagine they got on famously.

The only cost was 100,000 Iraqi civilian lives.

At least now we can say conclusively that, yes, the Iraq War was about oil.
#14878561
The Iraq economy has expanded hugely since the 2003 invasion. Most of the deaths in Iraq have been Sunni Muslim terrorists, that's a good thing not a bad thing. However the Sunni Arab Muslim terrorists have murdered a lot of Shia, Kurds and Christians. That's sad but inevitable. Fifty five million people were killed in the second world war. Fighting Sunni Muslim terrorism may be even more deadly, but it is even more necessary than fighting the Nazis.
#14893826
Rich wrote:The Iraq economy has expanded hugely since the 2003 invasion. Most of the deaths in Iraq have been Sunni Muslim terrorists, that's a good thing not a bad thing.


Are you claiming the majority of the death toll are not civilians?
#14893924
redcarpet wrote:Are you claiming the majority of the death toll are not civilians?

The United States sets the age of criminal responsibility at 11. Of course the Sunni Arab Muslim terrorists have killed lots of civilians, including Sunni Arab Muslims. However while there have inevitably been some innocents killed as collateral damage, by the forces opposing the Sunni Arab (and their Turkomen collaborators and the foreign Sunni Muslim Jihadists), the overwhelming majority are individuals over the age of eleven who have participated in terrorism.

It should be noted I don't support the so called "war on terror." The seizure, incarceration and torture of foreign suspects without due process is abhorrent and puts us, the US and its allies on the same moral level as the Bolsheviks, Auschwitz and the Zulu. However, our war to remove Saddam, which I would have supported before 9/11 was incredibly clean, far cleaner than the Allies war against the Nazis.
#14894237
Rich wrote:The United States sets the age of criminal responsibility at 11. Of course the Sunni Arab Muslim terrorists have killed lots of civilians, including Sunni Arab Muslims. However while there have inevitably been some innocents killed as collateral damage, by the forces opposing the Sunni Arab (and their Turkomen collaborators and the foreign Sunni Muslim Jihadists), the overwhelming majority are individuals over the age of eleven who have participated in terrorism.

It should be noted I don't support the so called "war on terror." The seizure, incarceration and torture of foreign suspects without due process is abhorrent and puts us, the US and its allies on the same moral level as the Bolsheviks, Auschwitz and the Zulu. However, our war to remove Saddam, which I would have supported before 9/11 was incredibly clean, far cleaner than the Allies war against the Nazis.


I'm asking for proof the majority of the Iraqi death toll is of armed partisans/guerrillas, etc. Got any?
#14895041
redcarpet wrote:I'm asking for proof the majority of the Iraqi death toll is of armed partisans/guerrillas, etc. Got any?

No one's denying that the Sunni Arabs have killed a lot of civilians. Lefties seem to love terrorist parasites, so when the Sunni Arab Muslim terrorists blow up Shia women and children, lefties think that's a slam dunk case for the continuance of Sunni Arab minority rule. For me its all the more reason to exterminate the Sunni Arab terrorists. Any weakness, any timidity in the face of Sunni Muslim terrorism will lead to more innocent death in the long term not less.

Sunni Arabs ruled Iraq for eighty years, Sunnis ruled the territories for hundreds of years before that. The 2003 invasion brought majority rule to Iraq. It also exacerbated the Sunni Shia split. That's good. We neeed to divide the Muslim enemy.
#14895314
Zagadka wrote:Image

You're absolutely correct, cuckservatives are rather fond of them too. W. Bush, Obama and the 9/11 truthers, all speak from the same fantasy script: Islam is a religion of peace, therefore 9/11 can have nothing to with Islam. In the real world in the years up to 9/11, Muslims were murdering, raping and thievin from Infidels and from other Muslims on an industrial scale, as they have been doing for the last 1400 years.

I have no problem with our alliances with the Afghan Mujahedin and the Khmer Rouge in the 1980s as long as its recognised that this came out of terrible weakness. Ronald Reagan didn't bring down the Soviet Union. While the invasion of Grenada was a noble venture, it will never really put Reagan up there with Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar or Napoleon. During the cold war, an alliance with the Sauds was a necessary evil. But there was no excuse for it when the Berlin wall fell. There was never an excuse for our alliance with Saddam. And I opposed it at the time. Our support for Saddam's invasion of Iran was despicable. I was anti Saddam when he was feted by the likes of Rumsfeld and Cheney and opposed by the likes of George Galloway. I was anti Saddam, when they swapped and he became the new Adolf Hitler for the American right, while transforming into an anti imperialist liberator for George Galloway and his leftie chums.

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