News Is Iraq Regaining Control Over Its Oil Industry?

[fourier jr]

& I thought the US would install a government of American bootlickers! (but maybe they did, & managed to lose control of it)

Iraqi parliament working on law to re-establish state oil company

By Sinan Salaheddin, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BAGHDAD - A parliamentary committee is working on a pair of oil-related draft bills, one to re-establish the state-run oil company and another to fight oil smuggling, a senior lawmaker said Saturday.

Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani, deputy chairman of the committee on oil, gas and natural resources, said legislation to re-establish the Iraqi National Oil Co. was likely to be presented to parliament on Tuesday.

The measure is part of a package which also includes legislation to regulate the country's oil sector, reorganize the Oil Ministry and distribute revenues among Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish regions.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2008/04/06/5205601-ap.html

 

[wasteofo2]

Did you know that Iraq had multi-party elections in which religious Shia parties won the majority, defeating the secularists like Ayad Allawi and Ahmed Chalabi, whom the U.S. had hoped would lead Iraq?

The U.S. government did have significant influence over the Iraqi government between the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the January 2005 elections for Parliament, but since then the Iraqi government has been run by the elected representatives of the Iraqi people.

 

[fourier jr]

The US still has bases in Guantanamo Bay, Korea, Okinawa... there's no reason to believe that the US won't keep bases in Iraq. They've built a gigantic embassy in Baghdad also. There's no reason to believe that the US won't try to maintain some influence there indefinitely, especially given this recent story in the Guardian:

A confidential draft agreement covering the future of US forces in Iraq, passed to the Guardian, shows that provision is being made for an open-ended military presence in the country.

The draft strategic framework agreement between the US and Iraqi governments, dated March 7 and marked "secret" and "sensitive", is intended to replace the existing UN mandate and authorises the US to "conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security" without time limit.

The authorisation is described as "temporary" and the agreement says the US "does not desire permanent bases or a permanent military presence in Iraq". But the absence of a time limit or restrictions on the US and other coalition forces - including the British - in the country means it is likely to be strongly opposed in Iraq and the US.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/08/iraq.usa

 

[drankin]

I would expect that we are going to maintain military bases in Iraq. It's strategic to our efforts in Afghanistan and someday Iran.

 

[russ_watters]

The US still has bases in Guantanamo Bay, Korea, Okinawa... there's no reason to believe that the US won't keep bases in Iraq. They've built a gigantic embassy in Baghdad also. There's no reason to believe that the US won't try to maintain some influence there indefinitely...

So you are making the claim that those bases exist for the purpose of influencing those governments. Interesting. Care to provide some justification for that claim?

In any case, it is not surprising nor bad that Iraq has nationalized the oil industry.

 

[fourier jr]

the giant embassy is finally open for business:

For many Iraqis, though, the sand-and-ochre-colored compound peering out across the city from a reedy stretch of riverfront within the fortified Green Zone is an unsettling symbol both of what they have become in the five years since the fall of Saddam Hussein, and of what they have yet to achieve.

"It is a symbol of occupation for the Iraqi people, that is all," says Anouar, a Baghdad graduate student who thought it was risk enough to give her first name. "We see the size of this embassy and we think we will be part of the American plan for our country and our region for many, many years."

The 104-acre, 21-building enclave – the largest US Embassy in the world, similar in size to Vatican City in Rome – is often described as a "castle" by Iraqis, but more in the sense of the forbidden and dominating than of the alluring and liberating.

"We all know this big yellow castle, but its main purpose, it seems, is the security of the Americans who will live there," says Sarah, a university sophomore who also declined to give her last name for reasons of personal safety. "I heard that no one else can ever reach it."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0424/p01s04-wome.html