The Spoils of War, indeed!

I just stumbled across this interesting news from the UK Independent:

Future of Iraq: The spoils of war

How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches

By Danny Fortson, Andrew Murray-Watson and Tim Webb

Published: 07 January 2007

"Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.

The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972."

This is why it is so important to surge or "augment" as Condoleeza puts it. Which is to be understood as somehow differnt from "escalation." AT anyrate, they are desperate to hold on until this law can be passed. Then let the place burn to the ground so that Haliburton can come in and rebuild it. You can read the rest of this article here.