Fifteen Years After Invasion of Iraq: Anglo-American Oil Giants Start to Flaunt the Spoils of War

[yurbud]

Just a reminder of who actually profits as various factions in Washington lobby for war and regime change in nations big and small.

The British oil and gas company BP won the contract to operate the Rumaila Oil Field back in 2009, and now proudly boast of its new drilling capabilities on Twitter. Rumaila is simply huge; by some measures it is the third largest reserve of crude oil on the planet, and is currently extracting 100 million dollars worth of oil every day – enough to cover the annual health budget of Iraq under the wartime rule of the US coalition every five days.




One of the board members of BP at present is Sir John Sawers, the former Chief of MI6 from 2009 to 2014 who acted as UK special representative to Iraq during the occupation. He cashed in a few favours and joined BP as an Independent Non-Executive Director in 2015, one year after he departed MI6 and two years after BP had been handed a licence to exploit one of the most valuable pools of liquid gold on the planet. There was seemingly no regulatory oversight of this very British oligarchy.

In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, BP denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as “highly inaccurate” and denied that it had any “strategic interest” in Iraq, while Tony Blair described “the oil conspiracy theory” as “the most absurd”.

However, memos disclosed by The Independent in 2011 tell a very different story. In a series of meetings in 2003, BP revealed that they had approached Labour Peer Lady Symons to lobby the Blair government into demanding a share of spoils from the Iraq War in return for UK military support.

[hibbing]

1. Yeah, it wasn't about oil n/t

[yurbud]

2. it was a selfless attempt to deliver freedom fries that accidentally killed a million people