No Oil for Blood | The Weekly Standard

No Oil for Blood | The Weekly Standard
Since the news of China getting its hands on oil in Iraq is now back in the news, I thought a little history lesson was appropriate.

This is all due in part to 3 Senators, Charlotte Chucky Boy Schumer, Effing John sKerry, and Claire McCaskill who thought Iraq needed a hydrocarbon law before they could start selling their oil to American oil companies. All this despite the fact that Americans had spilled blood in the desert sands to rid Iraq of a despot who killed his own people and used chemical weapons on everyone else.

The Iraqi government was poised to sign no-bid contracts with those firms this summer to help make immediate and needed improvements in Iraq's oil infrastructure. The result would have been significant foreign investment in Iraq, an expansion of Iraqi government revenues, and an increase in the global supply of oil. One would have thought that leading Democratic senators who claim to be interested in finding other sources of funding to replace American dollars in Iraq, in helping Iraq spend its own money on its own people, and in lowering the price of gasoline for American citizens, would have been all for it. Instead, Senators Chuck Schumer, John Kerry, and Claire McCaskill wrote a letter to Secretary of State Rice asking her "to persuade the GOI [Government of Iraq] to refrain from signing contracts with multinational oil companies until a hydrocarbon law is in effect in Iraq." The Bush administration wisely refused to do so, but the resulting media hooraw in Iraq led to the cancellation of the contracts, and helps to explain why Iraq is doing oil deals instead with China.