American plans to loot Iraqi oil and other Bush war crimes
Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

June 1, 2008

Though Bush has given every other lie and cover story to justify the US war of aggression against Iraq, the real reasons for the 'war' are now openly admitted. An article in American Daily proposes that the oil fields of Iraq be seized and plundered to pay off America's national debt of some 9.3 trillion dollars. I am shocked by the implication that they haven't been so plundered already! I am outraged that the author expects the victims of US aggression pick up the tab for Bush's capital crime! The article proposes that the US commit yet another war crime.

As immoral as anything put forward by Bush/Cheney, this plan differs only in the distribution of booty. Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force would conspire to further enrich the robber barons of big oil, themselves now war criminals under international conventions to which the US is legally bound whether Bush likes it or not! The alternative plan is a 'neat' rationalization and equally reprehensible.

We should create a taxpayer-owned oil company (Perhaps, call it US Oil?). It would require a long-term (maybe a 99 year) lease on a portion of Iraq’s oil fields. The price of such a lease?...The spilled blood of American servicemen!

Since the oil fields are up and running, that oil should be sold on the open market for $20 a barrel. The revenues from the oil sales would go directly and solely to pay off our debt. In addition, with a large volume of the world’s oil being sold at $20 a barrel, the price would plummet worldwide, translating into affordable fuel prices once again.

The taxpayers would be repaid for the treasure we have lost in Iraq, and a long-term solution to our growing need for oil would be accomplished without any further drilling in this country. It would also provide time to increase long-overdue and meaningful fuel efficiency standards in our automobiles, as well as making alternative energy solutions practical to most Americans.

--Dave Gibson, Analysis with Political and Social Commentary

American Daily has proposed the immoral theft of resources that do not belong to the United States. Bluntly, Mr. Gibson, what you have proposed is a war crime.

b) War crimes:

Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill treatment or deportation to slave-labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

--Declaration of the Jury of Conscience, World Tribunal on Iraq - Istanbul, June 23 - 27, 2005

Secondly, Dick Cheney's cronies --consisting of Halliburton, Exxon Mobil, Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil, BP America Inc, having lied, schemed and waged bloody war --would never agree! Dick Cheney and George W. Bush did not invade Iraq in order to pay off the national debt; nor did Dick Cheney and George W. Bush conspire with the elite base in order to lower the price of gasoline at the pump. Moreover, the transcript of US Ambassador April Glaspie's 'interview' with Saddam Hussein proves that the US 'lured' Saddam into attacking Kuwait because Saddam had wanted to lower the price of oil. Hussein's attack of Kuwait was the pretext needed by Bush.

Bush was determined to wage war on Iraq. Nothing could have been done to prevent it. The UK Daily Mail reported that Hussein had agreed to exile for a paltry $1 billion but Bush, hellbent on war, refused. It was, in fact, the inevitable result of war fever and greed. Investors, smelling 'oil profits' and 'defense contracts', bid up the prices of Boeing and Raytheon stocks. It was a heady time for war profiteers and robber barons.

That the author of the 'American Daily' article believes that his proposed 'oil lease' is already paid for with the 'blood of American soldiers misses the point that aggressive war is aggressive war, that the theft of a nation's resources is a war crime whether it is perpetrated by Dick Cheney's consortium or by a collective of 'the people'! Theft is theft and, in this case, it is also a war crime. That the US finds itself in a position in which it must scheme to plunder is proof that the US is poised for collapse as was Rome when its mercenaries sought out the foreign booty to be looted in Briton, Dacia, and other resource rich targets of conquest.

As Gore Vidal pointed out in his book --The Decline and Fall of the American Empire --the founders sought to create an oligarchical state in which two wings of a single party would preside over the distribution of 'bread an circuses'. That's certainly what we got. The only issue of concern to a ruling class, Vidal writes, is whether 'to coerce or to bribe' a powerless majority. Vidal is correct. The fall of American empire will resemble that of Rome in every major trend.

* Like Rome, American society is increasingly characterized by absurd inequalities of wealth and income
* Like Rome, modern America is beset by weird and kooky cults
* Like Rome, America's biggest export is conquest and death
* Like Rome, America distracts its teeming citizenry with 'bread and circuses'
* Like Rome, America's currency, by the time of its ultimate fall, will be utterly worthless

Warnings go unheeded. The American robber baron class is assured the greater part of the spoils of aggressive war and, for quite a long time, the middle class indulged the belief that, one day, they too would achieve great riches, wealth would trickle down, and a hollow, corporate culture of SUVs and suburbs would rule forever. It was all smoke and mirrors. Since Ronald Reagan offered up a vision of a right wing 'promised land', wealth has failed to 'trickle down'. They have not fallen off the ladder, the ladder itself simply slips into an economic black hole that swallows it from the bottom up. So called 'middle class tax cuts' are, therefore, meaningless.

The middle class is disappearing. Already, the upper one percent of the population is worth more than everyone else combined. They are America's imperialist establishment which now openly proposes that the oil resources of Iraq be plundered for their benefit. Thus --America became a banana republic though our industry is not bananas but death. We are ruled by ruthless oligarchs --an imperial establishment like that of Rome --whose living is made by state-sponsored, industrialized murder. The apparatus of state has been bought and paid for. 'Democracy' is but the illusion that pacifies us. It will take a real revolution to change things.

In 1968, Robert Kennedy sought to rescue the party and his own ambitions from the threat of real change that came from an alliance of the civil rights campaign and the anti-war movement then commanding the streets of the main cities, and which Martin Luther King had drawn together until he was assassinated in April that year.

--From Kennedy to Obama: Liberalism’s Last Fling

That 'threat' of real change is as close as this nation had come to real revolution. I am asked if 'ailing' empires ever recover. The fate of western empires indicates --no! The 'nation' might 'recover' ---but not the empire. Rome, for example, is often said to have 'survived' but in the form of the Catholic Church. America will not be that lucky. There is no 'American' church to survive its fall. There is no analogous American institution that might survive a total economic melt-down. When a future 'Gibbon' writes a multi-volume, analytical history of America's short-lived empire and precipitous fall, the 'religious establishment' will share the blame but will not survive as an institution.

The fall of American empire shares many characteristics with that of Rome. Like Rome, 'America' has become an enterprise for which death is a 'product'. Our Praetorian Guard is called 'Blackwater'. It is in the Military/Industrial complex that one finds the larger analogy to Rome.

It had been able to dominate the Italian peninsula. But Rome as the ruler of the entire civilized world was a political impossibility and could not endure. Her young men were killed in her endless wars. Her farmers were ruined by long military service and by taxation. They either became professional beggars or hired themselves out to rich landowners who gave them board and lodging in exchange for their services and made them "serfs," those unfortunate human beings who are neither slaves nor freemen, but who have become part of the soil upon which they work, like so many cows, and the trees.

--Hendrik van Loon, The Story of Mankind

Of America's fall, Gore Vidal implies that the manner of our fall is implicit in our beginning.

Our only political party has two right wings, one called Republican, the other Democratic. But Henry Adams [Brooks' older brother] figured all that out back in the 1890s. 'We have a single system,' he wrote, and 'in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and circuses.'"

--Gore Vidal, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

Rome as a military power house was finished by the time the last emperor was driven off the 'throne' in the year 475. Rome was in serious decline by the time the Battle of Adrianople was fought almost one hundred yeas earlier in 378. The Emperor Valens could not even raise an army of Romans; the battle consisted of pro-Roman barbarians under Valens command vs anti-Roman barbarians arrayed against him. Adrianople was Rome's worst defeat since Hermann's German victory of AD 9 in the Teutoburger forest. For many it seemed as if the world had ended. St. Ambrose it "the end of all humanity, the end of the world."

Though the battle is often said to have been the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire, there is solid evidence that Rome's decline had begun much earlier. In Nero's day, the slums of Rome were a picture of a top heavy society in decline, dependent upon conquest to sustain a spoiled 'nobility'. By the time the Praetorian Guard (Blackwater of its day) auctioned off the empire to a 'nobleman', one Didius Julianus, the sale was completed in Greek Drachmas --not worthless Roman sestercius.

These several 'themes' are found today in Bush's America. It was said of Nero that he 'fiddled' while Rome burned. In fact, there were no 'fiddles' at that time; Nero played a lyre and often boasted that, if forced to, he could make a living at it. While New Orleans drowned, Bush cannot be said to have 'played' a guitar. He punished it.

Long before starting this blog, I wrote elsewhere that 'terrorism' was a tactic --not an enemy that could be defeated militarily. 'Terrorism' is not a nation against whom war can be waged and won. 'Terrorism' is not an ideology against which propaganda may or may not be effective. 'Terrorism' is the means by which those who have been marginalized, robbed, made helpless or shut out fight back! Events have borne this out. Bush's ham-fisted Bush approach, like that of every other GOP regime, has made terrorism worse and I have the cold hard verifiable stats to prove it. [See: Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes] But those facts mean nothing to the Straussians and neocons and other cults embraced by the GOP. The Bush administration is, rather, a 'hologram' controlled by a 'man behind a curtain'. The goal was the theft of oil and the 'plan' is now openly discussed in the wake of Bush's trillion dollar blunder in Iraq.

Like that of Rome, America's imperialist establishment is dependent upon conquest. The US, a nation once rich in resources, no longer leads the rest of the world in the production of steel, cars, electronics or even service 'industries' like computer programming. In most areas, we now pull up the rear. How then are the lifestyles of the rich and famous to be paid for? The old fashioned, Roman way. Conquest and plunder.

Posted by: Bush war crimes at June 6, 2008 8:41 AM

whAT DOES BUSH SAY ABOUT THE REPORT?

Posted by: mel tal at June 6, 2008 9:13 AM

Are you serious about the 3rd term thing? Or is that you *trying* to be funny?

Posted by: Jun at June 6, 2008 9:13 AM

I learned something new today,
when a lie is told it is not a lie. It is either an overstatement or overstatement.
I wish I'd known that when making my case with my parents

Posted by: noti at June 6, 2008 9:15 AM

Thanks to Mr. Bush and his administration I now know beyond any doubt that all histories of anywhere is nothing but lies. I know longer trust anything written by anyone from anywhere. In fact history should be thought in school as fiction.

Posted by: Markux at June 6, 2008 9:16 AM

In all the excitement of this groundbreaking expose, folks have completely overlooked the recent senate investigation that reveals President Lincoln's assassination was a Confederate conspiracy.
I don't know what's more pathetic, a lying, conniving executive branch or a totally dysfunctional congress. Maybe it would have been better if al-quaeda had crashed a jet into the capitol....at least while congress was in session.

Posted by: Ed Magowan at June 6, 2008 9:19 AM

Isn't there a law against lying to the people of a country to invade another country for no reason excpet for personal reasons? Oh yeah, and get over 4,000 soldiers killed and 30,000 wounded using them with their own lies...
To me that's worse than the attacks on 9/11 and our judicial system can't even get the few we caught for 9/11 tried for their crimes, let alone the ones we stopped looking for. Oh, like say Osama Bin Laden & playmates...
I can't imagine ever trying those responsible for screwing up our country and the world (Bush & his playmates) Remember executive privilege? You can do anything as president and get away with it...Well, except have oral sex in the white house...

We have become a nation of sheep and fools...Pathetic...And to think there are still some who believe this is all bull#@%^ leftwing propaganda and our leaders would never do anything wrong...

Posted by: Kerry at June 6, 2008 9:19 AM

The end of your report says "The detailed Senate report is unlikely to have any impact on the 2004 election."

Sadly, I don't think that was a typo.

More sadly, I don't think the report will have any impact on the 2008 election either.

HARKAVY REPLIES:
You're right; it wasn't a typo.

Posted by: Craig Wiesner at June 6, 2008 9:20 AM

bush, dick, et al should be charged for war crimes and sent to iraq for hanging in the same gallows as saddam.

Posted by: todd frog at June 6, 2008 9:20 AM

They are all a bunch of hypocrites. They lie, they cheat and do anything to futher their ways. I hope Bush sleeps well at night with 4000+ dead related directly to him. This is the worst administration this country has ever had and if we don't get our act together, there will be no country to save.

Posted by: Guest at June 6, 2008 9:20 AM

"Dubya's chances for a third term are thought to be nil"

What do you mean by this? Hopefully you were being sarcastic, as presidents are not allowed more than 2 terms.

Posted by: Anonycommentor at June 6, 2008 9:25 AM

On behalf of the dead and wounded in Iraq, I feel that Bush should be impeached.

SF

Posted by: Stanley Froud at June 6, 2008 9:26 AM

"The detailed Senate report is unlikely to have any impact on the 2004 election. "

Yup, it seems unlikely that this information will have any effect on the 2004 elections...

Posted by: jdub at June 6, 2008 9:26 AM

Wow. Tell us something we DON'T know!

We have known Bush misled America for years now. Why sound so surprised now?

Posted by: Craven Moorehead at June 6, 2008 9:29 AM

I wuz robbed! The dripping sarcasm, typical of losers, is appreciated though. Go Obuma!

Posted by: John Kerry at June 6, 2008 9:31 AM

Amazing news! Hundreds of Democrats on Capitol Hill opine that Bush lied! Imagine that! Why is this a story at all? BTW, love the line that Bush's chance at a 3rd term are nil.

Of course, you're writing half the truth, just like the rest of the press. How 'bout reporting:

“Statements by the President, Vice President, Secretary of State and the National Security Adviser regarding a possible Iraqi nuclear weapons programs were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates”, (p.15)

“statements in the major speeches analyzed regarding Iraqi ballistic missiles were generally supported by available intelligence”(p. 57)

“intelligence reporting highlights more than a decade of contacts between the Iraqi Government and al-Qa’ida based on shared anti-US goals and Bin laden’s interest in unconventional weapons…” (p. 63)

“statements that Iraq provided safe haven for … al-Zarqawi and other al-Qa’ida-related terrorists…and regarding Iraq’s contacts with al-Qa’ida…were substantiated by intelligence estimates”,
(p.71)

Why can't you tell us the **whole truth**?

Posted by: JSmithCSA at June 6, 2008 9:33 AM

I always believed we were being duped. The weapons inspectors never found anything. Germany and France were right, we should have never invaded Iraq. The lives lost and money spent..a travesty!

Posted by: Gail at June 6, 2008 9:35 AM

The detailed Senate report is unlikely to have any impact on the 2004 election.


I would hope not. :-)

Posted by: Knappy at June 6, 2008 9:38 AM

stupid column. total waste of time.

Posted by: savvy voter at June 6, 2008 9:43 AM

Lets hold an instant recall election and then prosecute Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and all of the conspiracy gang.

An impeachment would take too long. If both of them would resign, Nancy Pelosi could serve out the balance of his term.

Why did it take so long this is what I was saying before Bush invaded Iraq.

Posted by: Jeff Goolsby at June 6, 2008 9:45 AM

Very smart report. Now what? Smirk on the Bush's face will be lightened, wow they found out, but what can they do? Report is waste of public money, we do not need these people to tell us the obvious truth. But it is a NEWS that they could find out after evrything is done and cannot be undone.

Posted by: Nash at June 6, 2008 9:46 AM

Um, since when do presidents serve THREE terms? And yes, given that the 2004 election is already over and done with, I seriously doubt these findings will have ANY impact on them.

Posted by: C at June 6, 2008 9:46 AM

So what? If Saddam Hussein and his House of Horrors were still in operation today, does anyone think he would still be contained, merely shooting at American aircraft trying to enforce the no-fly zones and snubbing UN sanctions imposed in 1991? Hardly.

I was in Iraq recently and I spoke at length to a number if Iraqi soldiers and civilians who say otherwise. Lead al-Qaida elements and coordinators had conducted talks with Saddam about setting up safe houses for al-Qaida operatives in Iraq. Meanwhile, an army of black clad jihadists were already organized to conduct anti-western operations from Iraq. We know that because we had to fight them going in.

Since Iraq operations began, mountains of intelligence have been gathered that prevented a number of al-Qaida attacks against western targets; some in the U.S. Some of the Iraq intell was easily cross referenced with intell gathered from Afghanistan, fifteen hundred miles away. Finally, al-Qaida gambled and lost when they thought they could undermine U.S. efforts against them on an “Iraq Front.” Of course their gamble failed and al-Qaida is now on the defensive, just trying to survive; hardly in a position to conduct 9/11 style operations against the U.S. and elsewhere. As Iraq stabilizes, U.S. troops will leave and we’ll have to wonder where al-Qaida will conduct their future operations from and be ready to meet that threat.

The article mentioned four thousand casualties; that’s about how many Americans died in a week of fighting at Iwo-Jima and numerous other struggles. Certainly, all of us who volunteered to defend the American people know the risks. My wife and I are both veterans and never considered not serving in time of need. She served during the ’91 Persian Gulf War and I served in the Iraq War. The last thing that I would have wanted, had I given my life or suffered serious injury, would have been my death or injury to be politicized by and anti-war effort whose concerns really are not with those of us who are willing to sacrifice, but rather an underlying contempt for our form of government and western society as a whole.

I don’t expect what I said to have any effect on the “Bush Lied-Thousands Died” subculture who normally read this publication. This country is suffering from a three-way polarization to ever fully recover while a slim minority of us struggle to preserve our Constitution and western culture, an equally slim minority struggles to rear down everything ever gained as a nation, and a big majority that could care less about anything goes about entertaining itself oblivious to the world around them.

Posted by: Back from Iraq at June 6, 2008 9:57 AM

"The detailed Senate report is unlikely to have any impact on the 2004 election."

Awww. Look forward to another major Senate findings on the Democratic congress/white house in 2012. Weeeeee...

Posted by: billaried at June 6, 2008 10:01 AM

i've said all along bush was rong this just prove's me right

Posted by: thomas at June 6, 2008 10:14 AM

Impeachment can be over in a matter of days. (Yes, really.)

There is nothing to investigate. No fact witnesses. No "smoking gun" to find. Everything is already on the public record.

A simple up or down House vote for or against torture and terrorizing The American People with lies of "Mushroom Clouds!!" ought to sail through.

Then a day or two in the Senate for James A. Baker to prattle on about how the WMD were "counted, and recounted, and recounted" and how Plame's WMD-tracking network had to be rolled up so "grown-ups" could take charge of all that yellow cake.

And then, at long last, the DC/Euphemedia Analstocracy might break out of its self-induced coma to DO SOME DAMN THING about the serial treason against our once-great nation, that's been underway since the Felonious Five took the sovereign American People "out of the loop" -- making us fair game for 9-11 and legally and morally liable for nazi-like atrocities worldwide.

Impeachment remains the ONLY moral, patriotic option.

The only thing that can even begin the Redemption Of Our National Soul.

--

Posted by: thedeanpeople at June 6, 2008 10:28 AM

3rd Term for one president?
Are we in USA or what?

Posted by: Nash at June 6, 2008 10:41 AM

It’s true the Neo-Cons in Washington wanted this war , mostly in part because of their indifference to the Arabs and Persians in the region. They were “The Decision Makers “ for sure, but we must also openly criticize “The Enablers”, the Neo-Cons in the press.

Here one from “The Moses” of “The Paper of Record.” New York Times's Thomas L. Friedman writing on March 13, 2003, seven days before the Iraq invasion.
"Removing Mr. Hussein—with his obsession to obtain weapons of mass destruction—ending his tyranny and helping to nurture a more progressive Iraq that could spur reform across the Arab-Muslim world are the best long-term responses to bin Ladenism."

In total Goose-step with Bush & Co.

For us as a people, to truly understand how America marched to war, we must connect all the dots and drag each element into the light.
It's the only way to stop it from happening again.

HARKAVY REPLIES:

Wholeheartedly agree with you. And thanks for dragging this cockamamie stuff from Friedman into the light.

Posted by: Larry Gilbert at June 6, 2008 10:47 AM

That Bush and Co. deceived the American public about Iraq is old news. What we all should be focusing on, and be furious about, is this:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/revealed-secret-plan-to-keep-iraq-under-us-control-840512.html

Posted by: GiorgioNYC at June 6, 2008 1:44 PM

I well remember standing out in the pouring rain in LA in Feb of 2003, knowing then that the man lied through his teeth. What I can't understand is how so many people were deceived for so long. The third term? Well, there is an order to suspend the elections if the country is under a certain type of threat..... Of course, I hope we get a change of administrations, but I wonder if it isn't already too late for the Empire we have become. Ancient Athens sold its soul for empire, becoming brutal first abroad and then at home. No Empire has learned that lesson.

Posted by: Shelia Cassidy at June 7, 2008 3:19 AM