In Iraq, Follow the oil money

When planning the family Christmas vacation, Iraq was not on the short list of likely destinations. I can not remember turning over any product and seeing a stamp stating “Made in Iraq”. It is clear the Iraq has one and only one commodity to sell, and that’s oil.

When President Bush announced that "America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks." One that was top of the list was the pledge "to give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy”. In Iraq that means “Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis."

It has long been understood that Without a system for sharing oil revenues, there will never be an Iraq. The Palestinians would sooner give up Jerusalem then would the Sunni’s or Shiite give up their share of Iraq’s oil resources. So it was very upsetting to hear that the negotiations failed and even more so when it became clear that a factor in the collapse of the deal was a deal Hunt Oil of Dallas made with the Kurdish provincial government.

This deal does two things, one it confirms that those with “Inside information” believe that the surge has failed, and that any attempt to get any negotiation back on track, has just been made much harder.

For years, many people here in the States as well as in Iraq, have suspected that the Bush/Chaney team have, as a part of their plan, a desire to profit from control of Iraq’s oil. I for one, laughed this off as “Left-Winged” propaganda. To take a line from the Yippies at the 68 convention in Chicago, “The whole world is watching”. I questioned some of the wisdom behind the move into Iraq, but not the motive. But let’s look at a few things we know:

1. Ray L. Hunt is the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil.
2. Hunt is a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
3. Ray Hunt, the current chair of the company, is also on the board of Halliburton
4. Ray Hunt has contributed $35,000,000.00 to form the Bush Library at MSU
5. Mr. Hunt is on the board of SMU. Southern Methodist University.
6. Mr hunt is on the Board of Trustess for the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation.
7. Haliburton Corp received $16.5 Billion in no bid contracts from Iraq war?
America has placed spent an amazing amount of “Blood and Treasure” in Iraq, I desperately want to believe that that sacrifices made were not in vane. I would love to see the Iraqi Government hit each of the benchmarks; but it seems as if the “inside money is betting the other way.

Larry Lubell
Larry@urbaninsuranceagency.com