PITY WE LOST INDJA

Bremer a quick study in colony building (Pepe Escobar, 7/12/03, Asia Times)

Whatever the spin, and whatever the cost - at least in the short to medium term - in US casualties, the game plan remains to occupy and control Iraq for years. Iraqi sources inside the country and in Jordan and Egypt have confirmed information already circulated by the Israeli website DEBKA-Net-Weekly that the Americans are spending US$500 million to build two giant intelligence facilities: one north of Mosul, in Kurdish territory, and another in Baghdad's middle-class Saadun neighborhood on the Tigris River's east bank. This massive military presence may be a throwback to when the United States had a faithful regional gendarme, the Shah of Iran. But the facilities are necessary in order to enforce the economic agenda that really matters to Washington: the privatization of Iraq's economy and most of all the exploitation of its immense oil reserves.

This will mark the end of an era, and will be the ultimate graphic demonstration by the United States of what happens to regimes that dare to defy the superpower - or outlast their usefulness, as was Saddam's case. The Iraq Petroleum Co was nationalized in June 1972. It was a progressive nationalization: first the oilfields in the northeast, then - during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war - what was controlled by Exxon, Mobil and Shell. Finally, in 1975, what was controlled by British Petroleum and the Compagnie Francaise des Petroles. From 1975 until the embargo applied in response to the invasion of Kuwait, in 1990, Iraq controlled 100 percent of the exploitation of its oil resources.

Anglo-Americans have never forgiven Iraq for this move. The British have never forgiven the Ba'ath Party for ending their more than half a century of influence in Mesopotamia - and making it even worse by opening the doors of Iraq and the Persian Gulf to France. The United States for its part has never forgiven Iraq for setting an example to the developing world and for taking the lead in a sort of front of Arab export countries when the Organization of Petroleum Export Countries (OPEC) was created in 1973.

Let's concede for a moment that George W. Bush is simply doing the bidding of the petroleum companies who want revenge for the nationalization of the oilfields. But does anyone in their right mind truly believe that Tony Blair still harbors a grudge for the loss of British influence in Mesopotamia or that the British generally--who couldn't wait to give up Hong Kong, a place that was actually worth having--still care about lost colonies? The Blair government gave up Scotland and Wales for cripessake...but we're supposed to picture the PM tossing in his sleep, muttering about Babylon? Posted by Orrin Judd at July 12, 2003 8:04 AM