[NY TIMES] Iraq-China Oil Deal

How could freaking China win this, right?
It's funny, but ... Hey, as long as there is this thing called geopolitics, the winners are not always who fought the war. Well, the US has struck big in the both world wars, but the Soviets lost big in Afganistan, the Chinese in North Korea (800K lives and Taiwan for this headache now), and who exactly won in Vietnam? Nothing new here.

 

Thanks W. If you won a war at least you should get some of the spoils. We spent trillions on the war and China gets the benefit.

 

Especially considering this was the reason for the war

Well, at least KBR and Haliburton cleaned house...

 

How did dick Cheney come out?

 

The United States is going to be a net exporter of oil soon. Not like we needed it. Although it would've been nice if some Houston companies could've got some of these contracts I suppose.

 

um...o_0

 

He probably owns significant shares of Exxon, KBR, Halliburton, Lockheed Martin etc

I'm sure W and every other war hawk came out just fine.

 

It's pretty well known actually...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22524597

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_...-by-2025-will-be-net-exporter-of-oil-and-gas/

 

hmmm...I had seen 2025 and 2030 before, but 5 years is closer to the ballpark. I guess we just have different definitions of soon.

 

My dad made an interesting point last week when we were talking about the US having energy independence. He said that if this had happened 10 years ago the invasion of Iraq might not have happened.

Anyway I still don't believe that oil was the primary reason for the invasion. It would've been easier just to deal with Saddam to get his oil but I think it was a mixture of Neocon belief among the GW Bush Admin. that they could change the Middle East by changing Iraq, they actually believed the conflated threat, and plain old fashioned spite from the first Gulf War.

 

You left out the prime drivers of George W. Bush's decision to invade and conquer Iraq. Brute stupidity, combined with an avid willingness to lie.

 

For real.
This is , was , and has always been about MONEY MONEY MONAY

 

"Oil did not at least have something to do with the war" is so vague as to be meaningless. Yes, it's possible that some oil executive was friends with Cheney's secretary who influenced Cheney and blah blah six degrees of Kevin Bacon and all that. But no, we didn't invade for oil as a primary and really not as a secondary reason. We invaded for a myriad of reasons some very well-intentioned but stupid, some not so well-intentioned but still stupid. The fact that well, we didn't get any money out of said oil is evidence enough.

 

not 'we' more like 'them' aka Halliburton.. And miraculously cheney was ex ceo. Yeah this doesn't stink at all. you are right 'we' didn't make anything. Come on man you are a smart guy and better than this.

"Cheney's Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion on Iraq War
By Angelo Young, International Business Times



he accounting of the financial cost of the nearly decade-long Iraq War will go on for years, but a recent analysis has shed light on the companies that made money off the war by providing support services as the privatization of what were former U.S. military operations rose to unprecedented levels.

Private or publicly listed firms received at least $138 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for government contracts for services that included providing private security, building infrastructure and feeding the troops.

Ten contractors received 52 percent of the funds, according to an analysis by the Financial Times that was published Tuesday.

The No. 1 recipient?

Houston-based energy-focused engineering and construction firm KBR, Inc. (NYSE:KBR), which was spun off from its parent, oilfield services provider Halliburton Co. (NYSE:HAL), in 2007.

The company was given $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts over the past decade, with many of the deals given without any bidding from competing firms, such as a $568-million contract renewal in 2010 to provide housing, meals, water and bathroom services to soldiers, a deal that led to a Justice Department lawsuit over alleged kickbacks, as reported by Bloomberg.

Who were Nos. 2 and 3?

Agility Logistics (KSE:AGLTY) of Kuwait and the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. Together, these firms garnered $13.5 billion of U.S. contracts.

As private enterprise entered the war zone at unprecedented levels, the amount of corruption ballooned, even if most contractors performed their duties as expected.

According to the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the level of corruption by defense contractors may be as high as $60 billion. Disciplined soldiers that would traditionally do many of the tasks are commissioned by private and publicly listed companies.

Even without the graft, the costs of paying for these services are higher than paying governement employees or soldiers to do them because of the profit motive involved. No-bid contracting - when companies get to name their price with no competing bid - didn't lower legitimate expenses. (Despite promises by President Barack Obama to reel in this habit, the trend toward granting favored companies federal contracts without considering competing bids continued to grow, by 9 percent last year, according to the Washington Post.)

Even though the military has largely pulled out of Iraq, private contractors remain on the ground and continue to reap U.S. government contracts. For example, the U.S. State Department estimates that taxpayers will dole out $3 billion to private guards for the government's sprawling embassy in Baghdad.

The costs of paying private and publicly listed war profiteers seem miniscule in light of the total bill for the war.

Last week, the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University said the war in Iraq cost $1.7 trillion dollars, not including the $490 billion in immediate benefits owed to veterans of the war and the lifetime benefits that will be owed to them or their next of kin."

http://readersupportednews.org/news...neys-halliburton-made-395-billion-on-iraq-war

 

Oh. The "We went to war for defense contractors" thing, then( God, nearly a century ago people were bleating that's why we fought in the Great War)? That just invites an incredibly obvious question: why didn't we use them more? There were plenty of times where our soldiers DIDN'T have enough equipment, like body armor and such. If the war was really fought for defense contractors, it would make sense that the Bush administration ( and it should be noted how they trumpeted that the war would be cheap, with new technology and such) would demand all the equipment they could get. Their defense contractors get even richer, less soldiers die meaning less political turmoil. Everyone wins. Yet we didn't do this. Why?

Iraq was fought over largely ideological reasons, and thus shows the importance of ensuring that ideology does not trump practical reality - there is no moral imperative to do what cannot be done. There were some incredibly shaky national security reasons, but that's about it. People who think the government's a bunch of shady people really give it too much credit.