Reply #141: Oil -- Money -- Power

[Zan_of_Texas]

1. The US has 22 billion barrels of oil in proven reserves. Iraq has 112 billion barrels. (At $30/barrel, that would be over $3 trillion. Minus expenses.) Iraqi oil is among the cheapest in the world to extract (not including costs of invasion and nation-building, of course.) Before the invasion, Iraq was switching to using the euro instead of the dollar, which had huge implications for the U.S. dollar. The US is one of the world's largest importers of oil.

2. Chaos reins in Iraq. But, the oil buddies of BushCo could almost taste the sweet crude.

3. Who could stand in the way? The U.N. Re the envoy killed:

Throughout his tenure in Baghdad, he took pains to remind everybody that the United Nations would be in the country long after U.S. forces leave and insisted that the world body - not the U.S.-led coalition - should control the spending of Iraqi oil revenues.

4. Where was the blast situated? Directly at the envoy.

5. Who else has the US military been killing on sight? Journalists -- latest at 30 meters, killed by tanks.

Word for word sentences from mainstream sources from 8-19 and 8-20, Houston Chronicle or AP:

In today's attack, a cement truck -- packed with twice the amount of explosives as the embassy blast -- detonated at the concrete wall outside the three-story Canal Hotel. The blast occurred while a news conference was under way in the building, where 300 U.N. employees work.

The positioning of the bomb near the envoy's office suggested he was the target of the attack, L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, told CNN.

Most of the excerpts below came from this link:
http://www.ktvb.com/sharedcontent/northwest/specialreport/stories/NW_081903SRBdemelloobit.20814034.html

UNITED NATIONS - Sergio Vieira de Mello, a United Nations veteran who served for more than 30 years as a troubleshooter in the world's most dangerous hotspots and became the top U.N. envoy in Iraq, was killed Tuesday in a truck bombing against his offices in Baghdad. ...After being named to the Iraq post in June, the Brazilian diplomat said his top priority was to protect the interests of the Iraqi people under the U.S.-led occupation. "I have been sent here with a mandate to assist the Iraqi people and those responsible for the administration of this land to achieve ... freedom, the possibility of managing their own destiny and determining their own future," he said on arrival in Baghdad in June.
...
U.N. staffers gathered in corridors, on the promenade facing the East River and around television sets as they mourned the loss of the man spokesman Fred Eckhard called "a rising star." "He was a wonderful guy. He was the U.N. in a way," Salim Lone, the U.N. spokesman in Baghdad, said. "Wherever there was suffering he was there. ... He was everywhere. He was a very brilliant man, totally wedded to the United Nations." U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan agreed. "The loss of Sergio Vieira de Mello is a bitter blow for the United Nations and for me personally," Annan said. "I can think of no one we could less afford to spare."

(also mentions his prominent role in East Timor)

In his last interview published before his death, Vieira de Mello sympathized with Iraqi resentment at having foreign troops on their soil. "It is traumatic. It must be one of the most humiliating periods in their history. Who would like to see their country occupied? I would not like to see foreign tanks in Copacabana," he told the Brazilian newspaper Estado de Sao Paulo in an interview published Monday.

Throughout his tenure in Baghdad, he took pains to remind everybody that the United Nations would be in the country long after U.S. forces leave and insisted that the world body - not the U.S.-led coalition - should control the spending of Iraqi oil revenues. "We're truly in a unique situation here," he said of the occupation. "By the usual U.N. standards, this is at best a bizarre situation."