POLITICS: The French War For Oil, Along With Others. (UPDATED)

NEW YORK POST- MARCH 16, 2004:
Documentation has been obtained that indicates that there was more to the contrived conspiracy theories of Iraq's oil then just Bush and the United States. An indepth investigation into the French relationship to Saddam and Iraq has uncovered that the French opposition to the US-led war against Iraq was more than just mere foreign policy.

Chirac's War for Oil
The French War For Oil

In documents I obtained during an investigation of the French relationship to Saddam Hussein, the French interest in maintaining Saddam Hussein in power was spelled out in excruciating detail. The price tag: close to $100 billion. That was what French oil companies stood to profit in the first seven years of their exclusive oil arrangements - had Saddam remained in power.

Those two deals, which I detail in "The French Betrayal of America," would have been worth an estimated $100 billion over a seven-year period - but were conditioned on the lifting of U.N. sanctions on Iraq. Simply put, analyst Gerald Hillman told me, the French were saying: "We will help you get the sanctions lifted, and when we do that, you give us this.

Many millions of people, along with anti-war proponents, anti-Bush proponents, as well as anti-US proponents, have vehemently insisted that the United States went to war for the oil: its all about oil.....?

Related Sources of Interest
Welcome to Anglo-Saxon reality
Chirac's Latest Ploy

Related ATS Discussion
IRAN & SYRIA Next: Terror for Oil & Israel
What is the real reason the USA went to Iraq?
Anti-war nations 'took bribes' before war began
Is it about US Oil, or French Oil?

[Edited on 19-4-2004 by Seekerof]

Good. I'm glad they got stiffed.

I think the reason why those weasels forgave the Iraqi debt so suddenly after Saddams capture was because they didn't want too much exposure about what most of those debts were for. After examination of the modern French weaponry as well as the luxury goods that were enjoyed by the card carrying Baathists, it is obvious that they were in violation of their ever so precious U.N. resolutions. They probably guilted Washington (in standard liberal fashion) into dropping the matter after their announcement in the name of something phony like "closing the transatlantic rift".

>>> Many millions of people, along with anti-war proponents, anti-Bush proponents, as well as anti-US proponents, have vehemently insisted that the United States went to war for the oil: its all about oil.....?

Guess who got the oil in the end???? DOH

1

[edit on 2004-7-2 by Teknik]

I (along with others) have been saying this about France for nearly a year. Should come as no surprise.

Now, for chapter 2: why do you think that Germany and Russia opposed us going into Iraq? Humanitarian reasons?

john

You can be assured that this is only the Tip of the Iceburg!
Add these to the list also:

The Oil-for-Food Scandal-The program was corrupt. The U.N. owes the Iraqis--and Congress--an explanation.
Kojo & Kofi: Unbelievable U.N. stories.
Oil for Saddam's Influence Machinery
French for Bribery
Iraqi govt. papers: Saddam bribed Chirac

Yeah, just the tip.....
What is amazing is the amount of flack and protest garnered against the likes of Halliburton, etc. and YET, no outrage or recognition of this or those associated with this under-handed BS.
But hey, News is News, isn't it? It all washes out in the end, eh?



seekerof

[Edited on 18-3-2004 by Seekerof]

Its not about who has the most oil, its about who has the most left, when its almost out.

It's basically a piggybank, and when the time comes, you will have to brake it.

The thing that I don't understand is the willingness of people to scream CORRUPTION! at the drop of a hat.

Think about it: oil derricks are burning, oil is being dumped on the ground, the infrastructure has been severly damaged, the environment is being polluted. Who you gonna call? There are only a handful of companies in the WORLD that have the resources to handle the job, half of them in France.

It's not like you can go to the yellow pages and call 1-800-OIL-FIRE to get the job done.

But just because Cheney was part of Halliburton AT ONE TIME makes the whole deal smell, right? No, it's much easier to throw logic away and say stuff like, Bush/Cheney staged the whole war just to give the contracts to Halliburton.

Spoken by the same people who whine when gas prices rise. It's all part of the vast scheme by Bush to hurt the little guy, right?

john

Actually, there are only 2 companies in the world capable of the job in Iraq, which includes putting out large oil fires. Halliburton, and the French one I can't spell, Schlumberger (sp?).

If you want to know why you are paying high prices for gas right now, talk to the turban (OPEC), and to the environmentalists. We are short of supply due to OPEC, which just cut production as demand rises. We are short of refining capacity due to environmental restrictions as we switch to special fuels for summer to keep pollution lower.

There is no free lunch. Bush would love to see lower prices to help his re-election effort, but he can't do anything about what is happening now, except use the US strategic reserve to add supply. That won't help much because we can't refine the crude any faster anyway, we don't have enough refineries, as noted above.

Last time I was in Italy, (2002), gas was about $5.50 a gallon, though they use liters over there. Can anyone from Europe tell us what gas is costing there now?

[Edited on 18-3-2004 by kricket]

Prices in Europe have not risen nearly as much, as the US dollar continues to fall (down about 40% vs the Euro in the past two years).

Our $37-$38 crude oil prices currently equate to European crude oil prices of about $4-5 less.

Nice find Seekerof.

Just goes to show that all countries have a corrupted administration. The U.S. is not alone. Hell, even in Canada, we're having political scandal right now.

There's no administration better than an other. They're all craving for money and power.

More disturbing information on this:

NRO: Did Chirac actually lie to President Bush before the Iraq war?

Timmerman: Yes, and this is why the president and Secretary of State Powell were so taken aback when foreign minister Dominique de Villepin pulled the rug out from under United Nations negotiations on January 20, 2003, by announcing, apparently out of the blue, that France would never ever agree to using force against Saddam Hussein.

Before the first U.N. vote in early November 2002 (actually, it was the 17th U.N. resolution condemning Saddam and calling on him to voluntarily disarm or suffer the consequences, which included his forceful ouster), Jacques Chirac picked up the phone and called President Bush at the White House, personally reassuring him that France "would be with" us at the U.N. and in Iraq. To demonstrate his intentions, he said, he was sending one of his top generals to Tampa, Florida, to work out the details with U.S. Central Command leaders for integrating French troops into a Coalition force to oust Saddam.

"Chirac's assurances are what gave the president the confidence to keep sending Colin Powell back to the U.N.," one source who was privy to Chirac's phone call to Bush told me. "They also explain why the administration has been going after the French so aggressively ever since. They lied."

NRO: You accuse France of actually encouraging genocide � it seems like an outrageous charge.

Timmerman: It's a very specific charge, made by Hoshyar Zebari, who is now the Iraqi foreign minister. Zebari was referring to the massacre of the Marsh Arabs who used to live in the Howeiza marshes along the southern border between Iran and Iraq. In the mid-1990s, at the urging of the French, who worried about sending their oil engineers into the area, Saddam drained the marshes � an area the size of the state of Delaware � turning the rich, fertile homeland of this ancient people into a dust bowl. Then he sent in the Republican Guards, massacring thousands of civilians. Why? To make the area safe for French oil engineers and French oil workers.

NRO: You say in your new book that the Iraq war was, in fact, all about oil.

Timmerman: The war in Iraq was indeed a war for oil � waged by the French, not the United States. The Chirac government was desperate to maintain its exclusive � and outrageously exploitative � oil contracts with Saddam's regime, which would have earned the French an estimated $100 billion during the first seven years of operations, according to experts I interviewed for my book. My worry today is that a Kerry administration would back the French, who continue to assert that these contracts are legally binding on the new Iraqi government. That would be a travesty and a dishonor to all those Iraqis who died under Saddam.

The French Connection

Hmmm, I wonder if Kenneth Timmerman will be invited anytime soon to appear on "60 Minutes"? Wait! That's right, he's not bashing this current administration.


seekerof

[Edited on 22-3-2004 by Seekerof]

Petroleum certainly is the most valuable commodity of our time, poised to become worth trillions to those who control it.

For more insight, read the thread called "Peak Oil" in the site business forum.

UPDATE
Probe to blow lid off massive U.N. scandal:
Documents prove oil-for-food corruption involving world leaders
Documents Prove U.N. Oil Corruption

A team of international forensic investigators is preparing to blow the lid off the much-disputed U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq and will present new evidence of corruption at an upcoming congressional hearing that directly will implicate world leaders and top U.N. officials, Insight has learned.....

An Iraqi newspaper, Al-Mada, published the list of 270 recipients of special "allocations" [also known as vouchers] in January. But as Insight goes to press, the testimony of Hankes-Drielsma on April 22 before the House International Relations Committee is expected to provide new evidence of widespread international corruption.

The ATS thread that discussed the 270 "vouchers" as early as January fo this year:
Anti-war nations 'took bribes' before war began.


seekerof

[Edited on 15-4-2004 by Seekerof]

so not only is the Bush administration corrupt, it now seems that ALL the world leaders or world organizations are also corrupt....surprise, surprise.
Is there such a thing a good government or administration?

Further development on this:
Diplomats: Volcker wants U.N. resolution backing oil-for-food investigation

UNITED NATIONS (AP) Former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, tapped to chair a panel investigating alleged corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program, wants the Security Council to endorse the panel with a resolution before he takes the post, diplomats said Thursday.....

The corruption claims a major embarrassment for the United Nations surfaced last January in the Iraqi newspaper Al-Mada, which published a list of about 270 former government officials, activists and journalists from more than 46 countries suspected of profiting from Iraqi oil sales under the U.N. program

Kick the tires and light the fires....



seekerof

Those numbers on the list of oil recipients seem a little off.
That's about 2 billion barrels of oil on the recipient list and that list is incomplete.

Iraq only pumps out just over 2 million barrels a day.

The oil for food program started in 1997 until 2002.

The oil vouchers just on that incomplete list would account for almost a million barrels a day for that entire period.

If you look at the image I posted in my Iraq Oil Exports thread, they already have about 2 million barrels a day accounted for.

BTW, maybe someone can offer plausible reasons why Oil exports to Western Europe and Asia went down so drastically in 2001 while exports to the US went up.

Your assuming that all oiled pumped by Iraq was accounted for right?
Saddam was restricted to the amounts he could pump, based on the sanctions and the requirements of the UN's Oil for Food Program. As such, again, oil could have been pumped that was not allotted for nor recorded, except by way of the 'vouchers'?



seekerof

I think he only had the capability to pump a max of around 2 million barrels a day.

Even now, after the handover, they are still pumping around 2.3 million a day and I'm sure they are trying to get much as they possibly can get out of those wells to go into the reconstruction fund.