Reply #6: and then there's this...

[stillcool]

Benchmark Boogie: A Guide to the Struggle Over Iraq's Oil

By Antonia Juhasz, AlterNet. Posted July 14, 2007.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/56672 /

The Bush administration has spent four years trying to force successive Iraqi governments to pass the law, referred to as either the "hydrocarbons" or "oil" law. While it has gone through several permutations, the basics have remained the same and have followed the original prescriptions set out by the State Department.

The law would change Iraq's oil system from a nationalized model -- all but closed to U.S. oil companies -- to a privatized model open to foreign corporate control. At least two-thirds of Iraq's oil would be open to foreign oil companies under terms that they usually only dream about, including 30-year-long contracts. (For details of the law, see my March 2007 New York Times Op-Ed, "Whose Oil Is It, Anyway?")

In January, after four years of trying to get the law passed in Iraq, President Bush went public with this demand when he made his "speech to the nation" announcing the "surge" of 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq.

The president explained that the surge would be successful where other U.S. efforts had failed in Iraq because the Iraqi government would be held to a set of specific "benchmarks." Those benchmarks were laid out in a White House Fact Sheet released the same day that explained that the Iraq government had committed to several economic and political measures, including to "enact hydrocarbons law to promote investment, national unity, and reconciliation."
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Congress adopts the president's benchmark

By the time the Congress took up the issue of funding the war in May, public awareness of and opposition to the oil law both in Iraq and the United States had grown substantially. Congress passed and the president signed the Iraq Supplemental War Spending Bill (PDF) to fund the Iraq war through the end of September.

In the Supplemental, Congress deliberately adopted the president's benchmarks, specifically and continually referencing his January 10, 2007, speech. Congress made clear its desire to hold both Bush and the Iraqi government to the commitment to meet the benchmarks. But, the words "hydrocarbon law" were never used. Instead, Congress referenced the president's benchmarks but described only the revenue-sharing component.

The Supplemental finds that "it is essential that the sovereign government of Iraq set out measurable and achievable benchmarks and President Bush said, on January 10, 2007, that 'America will change our approach to help the Iraqi government as it works to meet these benchmarks.'" And, "The president's January 10, 2007, address had three components: political, military, and economic … The United States strategy in Iraq, hereafter, shall be conditioned on the Iraqi government meeting benchmarks … including: (iii) Enacting and implementing legislation to ensure the equitable distribution of hydrocarbon resources of the people of Iraq without regard to the sect or ethnicity of recipients, and enacting and implementing legislation to ensure that the energy resources of Iraq benefit Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, Kurds and other Iraqi citizens in an equitable manner."

Congress stipulated that if the benchmarks were not met by September, it would cut off funds being made available to Iraq under the "Economic Support Fund." These are funds used for, among other things, U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq.
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http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/56672