Still think I'm wrong on Iraq? Yes there are plenty of union members that don't keep up on current events. I'm not one of them. I'm out to blast the Republicans out of office. We need 65 D's in the Senate. Congress will be picking up in more in November. Then we as a party have to get our act together. It can be done. Do you have a plan?
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2003/2003companiesiniraq.htmNew Iraq Contracts and Moves toward War
The big US-UK companies made no secret of their strong desire for Iraqi oil. BP and Shell conducted secret negotiations with Saddam Hussein, while Exxon and Chevron took a harder line and waited for Washington to eliminate Saddam covertly. In 1997, as the sanctions lost international support, Russia’s Lukoil, France’s Total, China National and other companies struck deals with the government of Iraq for production sharing in some of Iraq’s biggest and most lucrative fields. Lukoil reached an agreement for West Qurna, Total got Majnoun, while China National signed on for North Rumaila, near the Kuwaiti border.44 Paris, Moscow and Beijing, as Permanent Members in the UN Security Council pressed for an easing of the sanctions, with support from a growing number of other countries. Grassroots movements, concerned about Iraq’s humanitarian crisis, called on the UN Security Council to end the sanctions forthwith.
In 1997-98, the US companies saw the writing on the wall. With Iranian fields already slipping into the hands of competitors, such losses in Iraq threatened to reduce them to second rank and confront them with fierce international competition and downward profit pressure. The companies stepped up their lobbying in Washington and made their wishes for Iraq oil crystal clear. “Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas – reserves I’d love Chevron to have access to,” enthused Chevron CEO Kenneth T. Derr in a speech at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco.45
Almost as soon as Iraq signed the new oil agreements, Washington began to deploy military forces near the country’s borders in a very threatening forward posture. Operation Phoenix Scorpion and Operation Desert Thunder in various phases lasted almost continuously from November 1997 through December 1998. In Washington, the rhetoric grew increasingly hard-line and threatening. On January 26, 1998 members of the right-wing Project for a New American Century sent a letter to President Bill Clinton warning that the containment policy “has been steadily eroding over the past several month” and calling for “removing Saddam Hussein from power.”46 CIA sources told journalists and members of Congress that Saddam was hiding large stocks of deadly weapons. Congress held hearings and began drafting legislation. The President asked the Pentagon to plan a variety of military options, ranging from limited strikes (later designated Operation Desert Fox) to full-scale war (Operation Desert Lion).
On May 1, President Clinton signed a law that provided $5 million in funding for the Iraqi opposition and set up “Radio Free Iraq.” That was only the beginning. On May 29, the Project for a New American Century sent an open letter to Congress on Iraq, insisting that the US government was not sufficiently firm with Saddam, attacking what it called the President’s “capitulation” and warning of severe “consequence” to US interests. Among the signatories of this high-profile letter were Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliot Abrams, John Bolton and others who would later take high posts in the Bush administration.47 The Clinton White House was ready to oblige. On August 14, the President signed another law (PL 105-235) that accused Iraq of building weapons of mass destruction and failing to cooperate with UN inspectors, declaring ominously: “Iraq is in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations.” Finally, on October 31, the President signed the “Iraq Liberation Act of 1998” (PL 105-338), a text still more bellicose. “It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq,” read the key sentence. In London, government leaders made similar expressions of determination and a UK Strategic Defence Review of July 1998 affirmed readiness to use force. “Outside Europe,” the Review concluded, “the greatest risks to our national economic and political interests . . . will remain in the Gulf.”48
On December 16-19, 1998, the US-UK launched Operation Desert Fox. Hundreds of strike aircraft and cruise missiles hit Baghdad and other major Iraqi targets, including an oil refinery. The attacks ended the UN arms inspection program, pre-empting any declaration that Iraq was nearly free of mass destruction weapons. Following Desert Fox, US-UK air forces patrolled the “no-fly” zones with new, more aggressive rules of engagement and regular attacks on Iraqi targets.
This increasingly aggressive policy towards Iraq expressed a hardening conviction among leaders in the US and the UK that Saddam Hussein could not be ousted by covert means, and that invasion and direct control over Iraq’s oil would now be required.
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