You're currently reading an archived version of Jim Hightower's work.
The latest (and greatest?) observations from Jim Hightower are only now available at our Substack website. Join us there!
It’s embarrassing that George W keeps trying to deceive the American public about developments in Iraq, but it’s shameful that the media establishment blithely goes along, parroting Bush’s deceit.
Take Bush’s high-pressure push to ram a new oil law through the Iraqi Parliament. The official line is that this is a healing measure that would provide for a fair distribution of oil profits among Iraq’s Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. The oil law is touted by the Bushites as key to unifying these factions, and its passage is the number one non-military benchmark that the White House has set to measure Iraqi “progress.”
Enjoying Hightower's work? Join us over at our new home on Substack:
Major media outlets in our country have swallowed Bush’s line whole, frequently and unquestioningly reporting that, for some reason, those quarrelsome Iraqis can’t even agree on something as basic as sharing oil revenues. There have been several impatient editorials, demanding that Baghdad get on with it.
If our media barons were to have a sudden attack of journalistic curiosity, however, they might peer a bit deeper into the oil law. Then they’d learn that the glitch is not about sharing profits, but about a cynical power grab by multinational oil giants. Eager to seize control of Iraq’s massive petroleum reserves, Big Oil got the Bushites to write a provision into the proposed law that would open two-thirds of that nation’s oil fields to ownership by foreign corporations.
In short, the law would force Iraq to surrender sovereignty over its most valuable economic resource – and that’s why it is not passing. The people there have enough trouble without losing control of their oil, and there is vehement public opposition to Big Oil’s law.
So when you see stories about Bush, Cheney and others imploring Iraq’s Parliament to pass this law – remember, They’re not promoting national reconciliation, they’re promoting a shameful oil scam.
“Opposition to American Oil Grab is Unifying Iraqis,” July 9, 2007