It's the oil, stupid

** After Colin Powell's presentation to the UN last week, it would have been easy to conclude that it's worth sending troops, mostly US, into Iraq to rid the world of that bad, bad guy, Saddam, because he has lots of bad, bad stuff hidden away. But wait, what's new about that? The US gave Saddam all that bad, bad stuff in the first place. Now we want it back? What for?

Oil.

It's so obvious it's easy to overlook: Saddam controls Iraq's huge oil reserves and we want that oil for ourselves, without restriction. Many US companies stand to profit handsomely from a regime change in Iraq. That alone should make us cautious about wasting our youth in the streets of Baghdad.

That's what the organization Target Oil thinks. Here are a few highlights from an article on their Web site:

Weeks before a prospective invasion of Iraq, the oil-rich state has doubled its exports of oil to America, helping US refineries cope with a debilitating strike in Venezuela.

Saddam has offered lucrative contracts to companies from France, China, India and Indonesia as well as Russia.

It is only the oil majors based in Britain and America - now the leading military hawks - that don't have current access to Iraqi contracts.

A leaked oil analyst report from Deutsche Bank said ExxonMobil was in 'pole position in a changed-regime Iraq'.

Chevron used to employ the hawkish Condoleezza Rice, Bush's National Security Adviser, as a member of its board. Five years ago the then Chevron chief executive Kenneth Derr, a colleague of Rice, said: 'Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas - reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to.'

Full article
See also:
Fueling war - Christian Science Monitor
December 05, 2002
With the cold war over, more global conflicts are being spurred by a scramble for natural resources rather than by geopolitics, and poor countries rich in mineral deposits are the new focal point.