Cheney's chums get war contracts

please... you people are ridiculous.. evreything is a conspiracy to you.

Other reconstruction bids are already being taken. They were not open to the international community - only US bids. (link Saw it on TV, and found it on ABC's site) This is sure to piss a lot of people off.

What are you implying?

So, are you suggesting that Halliburton should just have gone out of business after Cheney left?

i know.. he seems to be suggesting that Haliburton in it's own right wasn't the most qualified...

if you want to compare coincidences... why doesn't he talk about Clinton and his bombing parade during the monica lewinsky scandel...

told you... liberals are hypocrites

no, but on that page is an interesting link to another story: halliburton eyed as trading with terrorist state

To conclusively prove this was NOT all about oil, the bids (which are highly premature, by the way) should have been open to global companies, not just a handful of US companies.

mindless predictable kneejerk right wing response to ANY criticism of the present administration is to mention Monica Lewinsky.
ANY criticism, ANY time, related or not....

or are you suggesting she used crude oil as a lubricant?

To some, it has already been conclusively proven that this is not about oil. To others, NOTHING will prove to them that Bush is out for oil only.

Why should the US army contract international companies? It's the US taxpayer's money that is spend, so I can very well understand the desire to keep the money inside the country.

Not that I am defending Cheney (I don't care for him all that much), but a little balance would be in order: a whole friggin' lot of his non chums got contracts, too. When you're in the denfense industry, you got a limited pool from which to pull.

surprise, surprise...

I wouldn't put it past her.

But seriously funny Lerk.

Not only have you completely misunderstood the role that oil plays in this conflict, you've grossly mischaracterized the the people that keep bringing up it's central importance to our strategic interests in the region.

Now we see how the financial and economic interests will betray our idealistic rhetoric as the taxpayers pay for the war, pay for reconstruction, pay for humanitarian assistance and private industries profit at every step of the way.

Using public funds to secure private profits is a very old game in Washington and the current administration is full of men who have perfected it.

Now THIS is funny.
Oh. What are they teaching you up there in Beverly? Not spelling, certainly. Call Mitt. Tell him there really can be no more fund bleeding from the Public School System. Submit yourself as proof.

Ha! I posted about that TWICE earlier today - http://forums.macnn.com/showthread....50&pagenumber=2

Of course, I was attacked for doing so. Who are the hypocrites?

I agree 100%. Lets keep the money IN this country.

I guess when the US doesn't take the oil, but uses it to rebuild Iraq and help the Iraqi people, they will be looking pretty foolish.

Of course, by then, they will have thought up more excuses.

Nothing new.

They want to dodge the fact we could have taken all the oil we wanted to in the early 90s. We didn't. We continued to pay for it, just like everyone else.

You know what would be ironic? If in a few years with their new 'democracy' the people of Iraq elect an Islamic government into power and they nationalize all oil companies. What are the odds of that?

oh, it's not just the desire, that's been part of the plan all along...everything going along as planned.

slim to 0. the american anti terror gestapo would immediatley declare them as terrorists and simply assasinate them long before they could actually establish any kind of political power.

I can see it now, Fight the power! Vive le Iraq!

So what if they do? They would still have to sell the oil to make any money from it. That oil would still go into the world oil market, which doesn't give a hoot who owned the oil well. All the world oil market cares about is obtaining the product. Oil is pretty much a fungible commodity, where it came from, or which company sold it is irrelevant.

I'd say 50:50. After all Hussein got great applause from his people when he did exactly that.

Do you think the US is going to take that chance and really install a democracy in Iraq?

.

Yea, ok maybe... but what if they decided not to sell any to the US? Or what if they joined OPEC?

Fungible means it goes into one big pot and the goods can't be separated out. Remember, there is basically only one price for oil in the market. When the sanctions are lifted, and Iraqi supply comes fully on stream, the supply of oil to the world is going to increase. That means the price will drop. If Iraq could somehow keep American buyers away from their oil (and I'm not sure that is even possible), the US would still benefit from the fact that the overall oil price would be lower.

As for OPEC, it is a cartel that has been in serious decline for decades. This isn't 1973 any more. There are too many supplies outside of OPEC for OPEC to control the price in the way it did in the 1970s. There are also two problems if OPEC were to try to do today what it did in the 1970s. First of all, OPEC's lever is to restrict supply. But that hurts the seller more than it does the buyer since most OPEC country's sell oil and almost nothing else.

Secondly, and relatedly, it is inherently hard to keep a cartel in line. There is too much temptation to cheat and sell a little more in secret. This is called the prisoner's dilemma. So for these reasons, it is unlikey that OPEC could do what it did in the 1970s, even if Iraq were to join.

So I stand by my "so what" statement.

(Note: apologies to finboy, I'm not an economist, but I think this is basically the right anaysis).

The oil concerns will be quickly answered after the war. It will hinge on whether or not the US tries to influence the new regime (or decree it acting as the new regime) to privatize the oil industry.

I don't see how a move towards privatization will be met with anything but howling derision from just about everyone. For the EU and Americans against the war it will confirm our darkest suspicions. For Arabs it will signal the complete farce of our humanitarian declarations.

Not even Saddam could have privatized the oil industry and stayed in power.

Time will tell.

The other issue (and closer to the topic) is who pays for it all and who profits?

Using public funds to secure private profits is only palatable if you're comfortable with the idea of "trickle down". Yes it will put money into our economy which will have some beneficial ripple effect, but will that ripple counterbalance the massive expenditure of public funds? Especially when those funds could have been spent more directly on public interests.

This actually has a bad precedent: Right next door in Iran in 1950 the CIA and MI6 engineered a coup which brought down the elected president Mossadeq, and installed the Shah. The rest is history.

Hope it doesn't repeat itself. I have been watching a series of interviews with the Iraqi opposition on French TV5. They are a bunch of ex murderers in the form of ex military intelligence types, criminals in the form of a guy that is under investigation for having swindled a couple of million here and there, and a bunch of other lunatics or otherwise fanatics, sprinkled with a voice or two of wisdom.

Watching that suddenly made me understand why the US is not so confident that it can restore a civilian government very soon.

Iraq is a member of OPEC. The question is if it will stay a member after it will start selling oil at 2x-3x its quota in order to pay for the war and reconstruction.
And, of course, if OPEC does not collapse due to the low oil prices.