While you weren’t looking…
President Bush Asserts Right to Control Iraqi Oil
WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 /USNewswire/ — President George Bush this week rejected a Congressional effort to bar the United States military from controlling Iraq’s oil resources.
In the authorization bill, Mr. Bush challenged four sections. One forbid the money from being used “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq”; another required negotiations for an agreement by which Iraq would share some of the costs of the American military operations there.
The Friends Committee on National Legislation, a 65-year-old Quaker lobby, has worked with Congress for three years to pass legislation that bars the United States from building permanent military bases in Iraq or exercising control of Iraq’s oil resources. “We are dismayed that the president would deny the Iraqi people and its government the basic sovereign right to control their own natural resources. President Bush apparently believes that as commander in chief he is entitled to seize Iraq’s oil fields and control Iraqi oil if he should deem it necessary to protect U.S. national security,” said Jim Fine, a lobbyist for the Friends Committee on National Legislation. “It’s hard to see any other logic behind his signing statement. He has, in effect, declared himself — and any future U.S. presidents who fail to repudiate his outlandish claims — emperors of Iraq.”
President Bush has signed the restriction against controlling Iraqi oil into law five times since 2006, but has issued 2 signing statements this year asserting that banning U.S. control over Iraqi oil would violate the constitutional powers of the executive. He argues that his administration is not legally bound to abide by those provisions.
For more on FCNL’s Middle East program, see http://www.fcnl.org/iraq.
The Friends Committee on National Legislation, the oldest registered religious lobby in Washington, is a nonpartisan Quaker lobby in the public interest. FCNL works with a nationwide network of tens of thousands of people from every state in the U.S. to advocate for social and economic justice, peace, and good government. For more information, visit http://www.fcnl.org/.
Bob, using US money to control their resources is not the same as making them take control of paying for the peace keeping expenses.
I heard the right yelling and screaming about the false claim that China was drilling for oil off Cuba. We owe China far more money than Iraq owes us – should we open up our previously authorized offshore drilling areas to the Chinese?
Hey JD – and this is a bad thing why? Considering everyone on the left, and Obama has brought it up in the debates, that we have spent almost $1Trillion there, we’ve lost American lives there, and they have a surplus – wouldn’t it behoove the U.S. now to exert force on the Iraqi government to start helping out monetarily with a threat of control over their oil?
It seems with you guys we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. So..which is it…do you guys want us to recoup some of the money we’ve spent from Iraq or not?
The BoBos last blog post..If you’re voting for Obama – You MUST be retarded!