Bush Pushes To Use Iraq - Oil To Pay For US War
WASHINGTON - Bush administration officials are considering proposals that the United States tap Iraq’s oil to help pay for a military occupation.
Such a move is likely to prove highly inflammatory in an Arab world already suspicious of US motives in Iraq.
Officially, the White House agrees that oil revenue would play an important role during an occupation period, but only for the benefit of Iraqis, according to a National Security Council spokesman.
But there are strong advocates inside the administration, including in the White House, for appropriating the oil funds as “spoils of war,” according to a source who has been briefed by participants in the talks.
“There are people in the White House who take the position that it’s all the spoils of war,” said the source, who asked not to be named. “We (the United States) take all the oil money until there is a new democratic government.”
The source said the Justice Department had doubts about the legality of such a move.
Another source, who has worked closely with the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, said several officials there are also urging that Iraq’s oil funds be used to defray the cost of occupation.
A spokeswoman for Mr Cheney, Jennifer Millerwise, declined to talk about “internal policy discussions”.
Using Iraqi oil to pay for an occupation would reinforce a belief in the Middle East that the conflict is about control of oil, not rooting out weapons, according to a recently retired professor of Arab studies at Georgetown University, Halim Barakat.
“It would mean that the real . . . objective of the war is not the democratisation of Iraq, not getting rid of Saddam, not to liberate the Iraqi people, but a return to colonialism,” he said.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the cost of an occupation would range from $US12 billion ($A20.8 billion) to $US48 billion a year, and officials believe an occupation could last 18 months or more.
Iraq’s proven oil reserves are second in the world only to Saudi Arabia’s. But how much revenue could be generated is an open question. The budget office estimates Iraq now is producing nearly 2.8 million barrels a day, with 80 per cent of the revenue going for the United Nations Oil for Food Program or domestic consumption.
Comment: The Islamic ideology provides the only real alternative to the Capitalist dominated world we live in today. Islam provides both solutions that address the spiritual and political voids in society. In contrast to the colonialist foreign policy of the Capitalist states, Islam seeks simply to spread its ideas and system so that the injustices of human inspired legislation is removed. The Islamic ideology has spawned a great civilisation, which was implemented and led the world for centuries. It excelled in scientific achievement and advancement while Western Europe decayed during the dark ages. It was not without reason that Christians fought alongside Muslims against the Crusaders in the eleventh and twelfth centuries since they believed in the superiority of living under the Islamic Khilafah. This was confirmed by thousands of Jews three centuries later who having been banished after the Spanish Inquisition left for the sanctuary of the Islamic Khilafah. This is because the Islamic Khilafah applied to the letter of the law the Prophet of Islam’s statement “Whoever harms a dhimmi (non-Muslim citizen) harms me”. Look at the history of Palestine under Islam and compare it to when it was ruled by the Crusaders and more recently by the Jewish occupiers.
