“Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.” James 5:1-2
The Bible is filled with stories about those who lost their way and succumb to the temptations of material wealth.
We have a modern example in Watergate. Woodward and Bernstein were able to unravel the threads of the Watergate cover-up by following the money. That remains good advice today. Regardless of what people say, how they spend their money is one of the most reliable indicators of what people are really thinking.
There is a wonderful cognitive dissonance in this country between the material and the spiritual. Though we idolize the rich, we hold our government to a higher standard. We expect our government to operate for the good of all the people, not just the rich. We punish those elected officials who use their office for personal gain. The majority of Americans, for example, would have rejected a plan to invade Iraq for oil regardless of how much money it could have saved us at the pumps. Unfortunately as all other excuses fall away, oil remains the one consistent element in the Iraq story.
Just so that we are all on the same page, our current stated strategy in Iraq is to use our military to suppress the insurgency long enough for the Iraq government to build the sorts of coalitions necessary to effectively govern the country. One of the key benchmarks of that coalition is an oil revenue sharing agreement. The main oil producing regions are in the south (Shia) and the north (Kurds).
Last week Paul Krugman published a column describing how Hunt Oil just signed an oil deal directly with the regional Kurdish government in the north of Iraq rather than the national government in Baghdad.
The implications are obvious. It is a clear signal to the Kurd and Shia factions in Iraq that they don’t have to make a deal with the Sunni’s in Baghdad. They can make their deals directly and not have to give up anything to any other region or ethic group.
When asked about that deal, President Bush appeared a little flustered and said it was news to him.
Now on the surface you might take the President at his word. Some rogue entrepreneur must be out there putting his own interests ahead of US policy. Actually nothing could be further from the truth. The person who signed this deal with Kurdistan is Ray Hunt. Mr. Hunt has been a significant financial supporter and close political ally of George Bush. He joined the Halliburton board when Dick Cheney was CEO. In 2001 President Bush appointed Mr. Hunt to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board where he had access to most all of the same briefings and classified intelligence as the President and Congress.
It is still hard to believe. Here is a person that Bush brought into the government. He knows what the government strategy is and what his role is in that strategy. He knew what he was doing. He is not interested in embarrassing Mr. Bush. He also probably required at least some level of government approval, if not also government assistance, before the deal could be signed. Do you think for a moment that Ray Hunt would even consider this move without first talking it over with Mr. Bush and getting his approval too? I don’t think so either.
What this deal says is that the Iraqis are not the only ones preparing for partitioning the country. If you follow the money, all the talk about staying until the mission is done and victory as the only plan is just that – talk. The smart money is clearly being placed on the country being partitioned, the Kurds emerging as the most stable of those regions, AND the Americans protecting the Kurds from any attack from any of its neighbors.
Former Fed Chairman and staunch Republican Alan Greenspan just published a book that said the real reason we invaded Iraq was oil. He lobbied for the war because of his fear that Iraq under Saddam would seek to control a vital waterway through which much of the Middle East’s oil flows.
The documented neocon plan for remaking Iraq in our image and likeness was all about securing a cheap friendly source for Mideast Oil. They even told us that oil revenue would finance Iraq reconstruction. In the wake of that failed plan, when you follow the money today, it is says loud and clear that it is still all about oil even as we prepare to leave.
Fortunately those who sow deceit always eventually reap what they sow.
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on Friday, September 21st, 2007 at 11:47 pm and is filed under Finance, Politics.
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