RUJAX!

First Allawi, And Now Chalabi May Be Excluded From New Iraqi
Government

I don't think this was the way it was written up on the powerpoints in the
White House or at the American Enterprise Institute.
It’s a bad time in Iraq
to be an American stooge. First, Ayad Allawi’s party received fewer votes in the
December 15th election than they did in the previous election, and faced the
prospect of watching from the sidelines when the current governing Shiite
alliance puts together a new coalition. Now word comes that Ahmad Chalabi, who
was crowing about being a serious candidate for prime minister in the new
government just weeks ago, may now not even get a seat in the new parliament.
Why? He and his split-off
party failed to get the minimum number of votes necessary to get a single
seat in the 275-seat parliament. Unless the Bush boys can use their magic to
make 8,000 votes magically appear for Chalabi in the next several days, he won’t
get a seat and may be out of the government altogether.
See, Chalabi thought
he was so personally popular that he pulled out of the governing Shiite alliance
and formed his own political block just before the election, thinking he would
have more bargaining power if he could be an independent force. Instead, he may
be watching from the sidelines as the Shiites now can choose to ignore him and
instead work on forming
a national unity government with the moderate Sunnis and the Kurds, whose
unifying goal is to get us out of their country by the end of 2006.
So if
Chalabi and Allawi both find themselves out of power this year, who will be left
to steer Iraqi oil towards the United States? No one.
See, I have no doubt
that the major reason why Cheney is fighting the release of his Energy Task
Force documents isn't so much his long-standing belief in unfettered executive
power, but rather the reality that months before 9/11, this group of oil men
were told in the White House that the Bush Administration would topple Saddam
and get its hands on Iraqi oil by hook or by crook. There were already stories
in the media that among the documents being reviewed and discussed at these
meetings were the maps of Iraqi oil fields, so it isn't a long shot that Cheney
and the PNAC/AEI soulmates were telling the oil companies to start planning for
how to access these new fields and break OPEC's stranglehold on world oil
supplies and prices.
One of the things that these oil execs would have been
told was the grand plan to get rid of Saddam one way or another, and have him
replaced with someone like Chalabi or Allawi, two guys only too willing to take
our offer of installing them at the head of a new government in exchange for an
Oil Ministry that let American firms carve up the country. You can almost hear
the speeches by the AEI and PNAC guys to these oil execs now, about how now with
the Bush team in charge, a number of dreams could now come true for Big Oil, and
as a sidelight, oh yeah, we'd "liberate" the Iraqis and bring the benefits of
capitalism to them while their national resources are once again plundered for
our benefit. And if we can help Israel and cripple the Palestinians at the same
time, great. The PNAC guys and the AEI whiz kids like Ledeen and the others
could become the new "Wise Men."
Except that it won't be turning out that
way. We've managed to get over 2,000 Americans and over 30,000 Iraqis killed so
that Iran can now not only control Iraq, but also keep their oil from being used
by the Cheney cabal for their purposes.
Don't you love it when a plan,
hatched by "Wise Men", comes together?
Steve Soto :: 7:41 AM :: Comments
(23) :: TrackBack
(1)

# posted by Rujax! : 6:47 PM