Let me try a different approach. From your point of view and/or that of anti-US/Coalition factions, throughout the world, how is this little insignificant item (among massive bombing, bullets, invasion, mayhem, etc.), which has no basis in fact and that is quite obvious, going to change those faction's perceptions? The smoking gun? The whole subject matter is inconsequential to anything.
if it were inconsequential, no one would talk about it. if the stations were named "alpha" and "bravo" there would be no discussion about it.
US-Basen im Irak heiÃen Shell und Exxon Kritiker, die den Irak-Feldzug vor allem für einen Krieg ums Ãl halten, sehen sich durch die neueste PR-Panne des Pentagons bestätigt. Die wenig subtilen Militärs hatten offenbar keine Hemmungen, zwei Armee-Camps im Kriegsgebiet nach groÃen Ãlkonzernen zu benennen. New York - Einhaltung der Menschenrechte, Beseitigung von Massenvernichtungswaffen und Stärkung der Demokratie sind angeblich die hehren Ziele, welche die US-Regierung im Irak verfolgt. Umso peinlicher ist, wie sorglos das US-Militär mit dem für die Regierung heiklen Ãlthema umgeht. Wie die "New York Times" berichtet, tragen zwei Lager der 101st Airborne Division im Zentral-Irak die Namen von Ãlkonzernen. Eines trägt den Titel "Forward Operating Base Shell", ein weiteres heiÃt "Forward Operating Base Exxon". Kriegsgegner werfen dem WeiÃen Haus seit Längerem vor, es gehe den Amerikanern bei der Beseitigung von Saddam Husseins Regime einzig und allein ums Ãl. Beide Konzerne zeigten sich überrascht von der unerwarteten Ehrung durch das US-Militär. Eine Sprecherin von Royal Dutch Shell sagte, das Unternehmen unterhalte im Irak keine Einrichtungen. Wie die US-Armee ihre Basen tituliere, sei nicht Shells Angelegenheit. Etwas enthusiastischer äuÃerte sich Tom Cirigliano von Exxon Mobil . Er hält die Namensgebung nicht für ein politisches Statement: "Ich glaube, die 101st war recht kreativ und benennt Sachen nach Dingen, die sie an die Heimat erinnern. Ich finde das prima." Das Pentagon versucht, die Sache herunterzuspielen. "Diese Stützpunkte sind normalerweise zur Versorgung mit Treibstoff da - im Grunde handelt es sich um Tankstellen in der Wüste", so eine Sprecherin gegenüber der "New York Times". Klärend fügte die Sprecherin hinzu: "Ob wir oder ob wir nicht jedem einen Vortrag darüber halten, dass man wegen politischer Empfindlichkeiten darauf achten sollte, wie man seine Tankstellen benennt, ich weià nicht ob das etwas ist, dass man tun sollte oder das getan werden könnte." Politische Gegner Bushs halten die derzeitige US-Regierung ohnehin für eine Marionette der der Energie- und speziell der Ãlbranche. Das Argument ist nicht ganz aus der Luft gegriffen: Vizepräsident Dick Cheney war früher Vorstandschef des Ãlausrüsters Halliburton. Sicherheitsberaterin Condoleezza Rice, nach der sogar ein Ãltanker benannt wurde, arbeitete lange für Chevron. Der Präsident verfügte über exzellente Beziehungen zu Enron-Boss Kenneth Lay und nannte seinen Intimus schmeichelnd Kenny Boy. Die Energieindustrie war einer der gröÃten Wahlkampfspender Bushs und hat die Energiepolitik der Regierung maÃgeblich beeinflusst. Von Thomas Hillenbrand http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/0,1518,242341,00.html
So one idiot seizes on another idiot's story line. And both are wrong, in my estimation. The bases were named after gas stations, not oil company's per se, as in "Where'd ya get gas?" "I filled up down at the Exxon station." BFD.
And you were so worried about Exxon and Shell being used for names of FARRPs. Here, bitch on, left wingers: http://slate.msn.com/id/2080793/ Everyone says U.S. officials expect the situation to improve now that the weather has clearedâa much-needed C-130 transport plane landed yesterday at an airfield near Nasiriya that Marines, in a bold PR move, rechristened "Bush International Airport." BTW, this is from SLATE's daily newspaper summary, a daily morning must read, imo.
Saudi Arabia is accused of harboring terrorists, 9/11, etc ... ooops ... but it is a major oil supplier ... hmmm .... get the Iraqi oil today ... attack saudi arabia next .... hmmm ... why Iraq ? well .... one of the world's largest oil suppliers ... maybe the only country who could replace saudi arabia .... also thought to be militarily weak ... oh well ... intelligence gurus were wrong on this last one ... so it's getting out of hands ... and soon would lead to a dear price .... but hey, could the US attack saudi arabia next, when it was saudi arabia who brought the US in the first place in 1991 and hosted all those US troops ? Oh well, the US also supported Bin Laden and Afghanistan on their war agaisnt the Russians, and Iraq on its war against Iran, and once done, it screwed both at the very first opportunity. Kind regards to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait
I like your second post to ET: [size=-2]Who ? The Jews indeed. Why ? because they wrote so on the torah. They are the chosen race, and the rest of the world is a lower race, and some orthodox Jews even group the rest with animals in the same category. So it's like a Jew is free to kill, steal, wrape a non-Jew, but is forbidden to do so to a fellow Jew. Oh yes, and they teach it to their children at school. And one last thing, they detest every other religion on the world, and would do anything to destroy it. My regards to all Christian churches all across the US![/size] It shows you're "another" nut case poster. The question is what was/is your former or concurrent alias(es)? This one seems to be a candle-twit/msfe combination of lunacy.
Halliburton out of the running Dick Cheney's former employer won't have lead role in reconstructing Iraq March 28, 2003: 7:45 PM EST NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Halliburton, the energy and construction company once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, is no longer in the running for a $600 million contract to rebuilt post-war Iraq, according to the United States Agency for International Development. The development is likely to spare Cheney, who was Halliburton's CEO from 1995-2000, and the Bush administration from conflict-of-interest criticism. A spokesperson for USAID, Ellen Yount, said there are two remaining firms bidding on the contract. No decision has been made on who will be awarded it, she said. Halliburton, which declined to comment, could still be awarded a sub-contractor role. Newsweek reported that it was unclear whether Halliburton took itself out of the running for the contract, was asked by the Bush administration to do so, or whether its bid was simply not deemed competitive. Post-war Iraq will require massive rebuilding centered on reconstructing oil wells. The work will also include emergency repair of electrical supply facilities, water and sanitation systems, roads and bridges, public buildings such as hospitals and schools, irrigation structures and ports. Newsweek reported that a Cheney spokeswoman, Cathie Martin, said the vice president "hadn't even heard" that Halliburton would not be awarded the reconstruction contract and added, "The vice president has nothing to do with these contracts." Cheney sold his Halliburton shares when he re-entered politics as Bush's running mate. He held on to some options, but promised to donate all profits to charity. Timothy Beans, the chief acquisition officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development, would not identify the final bidders on the contract, the weekly magazine said. Halliburton has won one Iraq-related job. The company's Kellogg Brown & Root unit this week was awarded a contract by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to put out oil fires and make emergency repairs to Iraq's oil infrastructure. Halliburton wouldn't speculate about the deal's monetary value. Shares of Dallas-based Halliburton (HAL: Research, Estimates) fell 6 cents to $21.44 Friday.
Bomb before you buy What is being planned in Iraq is not reconstruction but robbery Naomi Klein Monday April 14, 2003 The Guardian On April 6, deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz spelled it out: there will be no role for the UN in setting up an interim government in Iraq. The US-run regime will last at least six months, "probably longer than that". And by the time the Iraqi people have a say in choosing a government, the key economic decisions about their country's future will have been made by their occupiers. "There has to be an effective administration from day one," Wolfowitz said. "People need water and food and medicine, and the sewers have to work, the electricity has to work. And that's coalition responsibility." The process of how they will get all this infrastructure to work is usually called "reconstruction". But American plans for Iraq's future economy go well beyond that. Rather than rebuilding, the country is being treated as a blank slate on which the most ideological Washington neo-liberals can design their dream economy: fully privatised, foreign-owned and open for business. The $4.8m management contract for the port in Umm Qasr has already gone to a US company, Stevedoring Services, and there are similar deals for airport administration on the auction block. The United States Agency for International Development has invited US multinationals to bid on everything from rebuilding roads and bridges to distributing textbooks. The length of time these contracts will last is left unspecified. How long before they meld into long-term contracts for water services, transit systems, roads, schools and phones? When does reconstruction turn into privatisation in disguise? Republican congressman Darrel Issa has introduced a bill that would require the defence department to build a CDMA cellphone system in postwar Iraq in order to benefit "US patent holders". As Farhad Manjoo noted in the internet magazine Salon, CDMA is the system used in the US, not in Europe, and was developed by Qualcomm, one of Issa's most generous donors. Then there's oil. The Bush administration knows it can't talk openly about selling Iraq's oil resources to ExxonMobil and Shell. It leaves that to people like Fadhil Chalabi, a former Iraqi petroleum minister and executive director of the Center for Global Energy Studies. "We need to have a huge amount of money coming into the country. The only way is to partially privatise the industry," Chalabi says. He is part of a group of Iraqi exiles that has been advising the state department on how to implement privatisation in such a way that it isn't seen to be coming from the US. Helpfully, the group held a conference in London on April 6 and called on Iraq to open itself up to oil multinationals shortly after the war. The Bush administration has shown its gratitude by promising that there will plenty of posts for Iraqi exiles in the interim government. Some argue that it's too simplistic to say this war is about oil. They're right. It's about oil, water, roads, trains, phones, ports and drugs. And if this process isn't halted, "free Iraq" will be the most sold country on earth. It's no surprise that so many multinationals are lunging for Iraq's untapped market. It's not just that the reconstruction will be worth as much as $100bn; it's also that "free trade" by less violent means hasn't been going that well lately. More and more developing countries are rejecting privatisation, while the Free Trade Area of the Americas, Bush's top trade priority, is wildly unpopular across Latin America. World Trade Organisation talks on intellectual property, agriculture and services have all got bogged down amid accusations that the US and Europe have yet to make good on past promises. So what is a recessionary, growth-addicted superpower to do? How about upgrading from Free Trade Lite, which wrestles market access through backroom bullying at the WTO, to Free Trade Supercharged, which seizes new markets on the battlefields of pre-emptive wars? After all, negotiations with sovereign countries can be hard. Far easier to just tear up the country, occupy it, then rebuild it the way you want. Bush hasn't abandoned free trade, as some have claimed, he just has a new doctrine: "Bomb before you buy". It goes much further than one unlucky country. Investors are openly predicting that once privatisation takes root in Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will all be forced to compete by privatising their oil. "In Iran, it would just catch like wildfire," S Rob Sobhani, an energy consultant, told the Wall Street Journal. Pretty soon, the US may have bombed its way into a whole new free trade zone. So far, the press debate over the reconstruction of Iraq has focused on fair play: it is "exceptionally maladroit", in the words of the European Union's commissioner for external relations, Chris Patten, for the US to keep all the juicy contracts for itself. It has to learn to share: Exxon should invite France's TotalFinaElf to the most lucrative oil fields; Bechtel should give Britain's Thames Water a shot at the sewer contracts. But while Patten may find US unilateralism galling, and Tony Blair may be calling for UN oversight, on this matter it's beside the point. Who cares which multinationals get the best deals in Iraq's pre-democracy, post-Saddam liquidation sale? What does it matter if the privatising is done unilaterally by the US, or multilaterally by the US, Europe, Russia and China? Entirely absent from this debate are the Iraqi people, who might - who knows? - want to hold on to a few of their assets. Iraq will be owed massive reparations after the bombing stops, but in the absence of any kind of democratic process, what is being planned is not reparations, reconstruction or rehabilitation. It is robbery: mass theft disguised as charity; privatisation without representation. A people, starved and sickened by sanctions, then pulverised by war, is going to emerge from this trauma to find that their country had been sold out from under them. They will also discover that their new-found "freedom" - for which so many of their loved ones perished - comes pre-shackled by irreversible economic decisions that were made in boardrooms while the bombs were still falling. They will then be told to vote for their new leaders, and welcomed to the wonderful world of democracy.
that's right- and don't forget BP, Lukoil, TotalFinaElf, Petrobras, Syncrude, PetroChina, Pemex.... Iraq will be as rich as Kuwait in 20 years. long live free enterprise p.s. by the way, Shell's home base is in the Netherlands- oops