They don’t just control our current financial environment and all of our debt, they also control our future:
An Iraqi plan to award six no-bid contracts to Western oil companies, which came under sharp criticism from several United States senators this summer, has been withdrawn, participants in the negotiations said on Wednesday.
Iraq’s oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, told reporters at an OPEC summit meeting in Vienna on Tuesday that talks with Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, Total, BP and several smaller companies for one-year deals, which were announced in June and subsequently delayed, had dragged on for so long that the companies could not now fulfill the work within that time frame. The companies confirmed on Wednesday that the deals had been canceled.
While not particularly lucrative by industry standards, the contracts were valued for providing a foothold in Iraq at a time when oil companies are being shut out of energy-rich countries around the world. The companies will still be eligible to compete in open bidding in Iraq.
***Since that time, however, Iraq’s central government has moved on with other energy deals. The Oil Ministry last month signed its first major post-Hussein contract with the China National Petroleum Corporation. On Sunday, the Iraqi cabinet approved a deal with Shell to process natural gas in southern Iraq.
lr
The book has already been written. It’s called American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips. The book mainly deals with currency and oil, and how the 20th century belonged to us, and the 21st century will belong to Asia.
Mole
“In the year 2100, the bestselling history book will be “The Decline of the American Empire,” and it will be written in Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.”
And British English.
Scott H
Gore Vidal wrote the books you’re looking for in the 20th Century.
oh really
And here I thought it was going to be: “How History Totally Vindicated George W. Bush and Revealed Him to Be the Greatest of All American Presidents and the Single Most Courageous, Insightful, Peace Loving, and Incredible Human Being Evah to Have Strode the Earth.”
And I thought it would be written in “Ungush,” i.e., what will be left of the English language when future generations of Americans get finished with it.
PS Don’t tell Bush about your book. He’s really counting on mine.
Michael D.
Off topic, but this has to be the nuttiest thing I’ve read in awhile:
Well, it made me laugh anyway.
Napoleon
That was one of the best books I have read in the recent past. Hard to believe Philips was one of the political guys in the Nixon White House along with Pitchfork Pat Buchanan.
Zifnab
I’m just happy that America are getting screwed across the board on this one. It always pisses me off when a handful of Republicans walk away winners at the expense of the nation.
Suck the sweet, sweet fruit of short-sighted incompetence Big Oil! Hahahahaha!
Texas Dem
Remember that best seller by Paul Kennedy written in the eighties, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers”? Some of his conclusions (ignore most of the last chapter) are clearly out of date, but this central thesis is sound. He points out that, throughout history, great powers have fallen because the imperial obligations they inevitably acquired as part of their rise to greatness eventually became such an economic burden that younger, scrappier powers were able to get a leg up. In the nineteenth centure it was Great Britain v. USA. Now it’s USA v. China (and possibly India). History repeats itself. And the candidate that’s probably going to win this election (McCain) is committed to making things worse. Trust me on this folks, teach your kids Chinese.
Notorious P.A.T.
What did Bush say? We’ll all be dead by the time the history books are written, so who cares what they’ll say?
Delia
Yeah, no one could have predicted, all right. No one except the whole world and that portion of the American public that still has its eyes open.
Got some good quotes here.