CONFRONTING IRAN, "PROTECTING ISRAEL": The Real Reason for America's War on Syria

by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky


Global Research, June 8, 2012

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is calling for an R2P humanitarian military intervention in Syria to curb the atrocities allegedly ordered by the government of president Bashar Al Assad. In a twisted logic, Clinton recognizes that while "opposition forces" are integrated by Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists, the government rather than the terrorists is held responsible, without a shred of evidence, for the ongoing massacre of civilians.

Amply documented, these sectarian killings and atrocities are being committed by foreign mercenaries and militia which are armed and supported by the Western military alliance.
The killings are carried out quite deliberately as part of a diabolical covert operation. The enemy is then blamed for the resulting atrocities. The objective is to justify a military agenda on humanitarian grounds.

In US military jargon, it's called a "massive casualty producing event", the historical origins of which go back to "Operation Northwoods", an infamous 1962 Pentagon Plan, consisting in killing civilians in the Miami Cuban community, with a view to justifying a war on Cuba. (See Michel Chossudovsky, SYRIA: Killing Innocent Civilians as part of a US Covert Op. Mobilizing Public Support for a R2P War against Syria, Global Research, May 30, 2012)

"Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro." (U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba - ABC News emphasis added. This Secret Pentagon document was declassified and can be readily consulted, See Operation Northwoods, See also National Security Archive, 30 April 2001)

In the logic of Operation Northwoods, the killings in Syria are carried out to "create a helpful wave of indignation", to drum up public opinion in favor of an R2P US-NATO operation against Syria. "The international community cannot sit idly by, and we won’t”, said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.


What lies behind this outburst of humanitarian concern by "the international community". Is America coming to the rescue of the Syrian people? What is the real reason for America's war on Syria?

This question is addressed in a lead article by James P. Rubin, a Bloomberg executive editor and former State department official under the Clinton administration. The article appears in this month's Foreign Policy Magazine under the clear-cut title: "The Real Reason to Intervene in Syria"

In an unusual twist, "the answer to the question", namely "the real reason" is provided in the article's subtitle: "Cutting Iran's link to the Mediterranean Sea is a strategic prize worth the risk.".

The subtitle should dispel --in the eyes of the reader-- the illusion that US foreign policy has an underlying "humanitarian mandate". Pentagon and US State department documents as well as independent reports confirm that military action against Syria has been contemplated by Washington and Tel Aviv for more than 20 years.

Targeting Iran, "Protecting Israel"

According to James P. Rubin, the war plans directed against Syria are intimately related to those pertaining to Iran. They are part of the same US-Israeli military agenda which consists in weakening Iran with a view to "protecting Israel". The latter objective is to be carried out through a pre-emptive attack against Iran: "We're not done with the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran" says James P. Rubin.

According to Clifford D. May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies ("a policy institute focusing on terrorism and Islamism"), the humaniitarian concern is not the primary objective but rather as "a means to an end": "If the Arab League is unmoved by the massacres of Syrian women and children (their angry eyes fixed as ever on Israel), and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation doesn’t give a fig about Muslims slaughtering Muslims, why should we Americans expend an ounce of energy? ...[The answer] Because Syria, under the Assad dictatorship, is Iran’s most important ally and asset. And Iran is the single most important strategic threat facing the U.S. — hands down." (See National Review, May 30, 2012)

The military roadmap to Tehran goes through Damascus. The unspoken objective of the US-NATO-Israeli sponsored insurgency in Syria is to destabilize Syria as a Nation State and undermine Iran's influence in the region (including its support of the Palestinian Liberation movement and Hezbollah). The underlying objective is also to eliminate all forms of resistance to the Zionist State:

"That is where Syria comes in, says James P, Rubin. It is the strategic relationship between the Islamic Republic and the Assad regime that makes it possible for Iran to undermine Israel's security. Over the three decades of hostility between Iran and Israel, a direct military confrontation has never occurred -- but through Hezbollah, which is sustained and trained by Iran via Syria, the Islamic Republic has proven able to threaten Israeli security interests.
The collapse of the Assad regime would sunder this dangerous alliance. Defense Minister Ehud Barak, arguably the most important Israeli decision-maker on this question, recently told CNN's Christiane Amanpour that the Assad regime's fall "will be a major blow to the radical axis, major blow to Iran.... It's the only kind of outpost of the Iranian influence in the Arab world ... and it will weaken dramatically both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza." (The Real Reason to Intervene in Syria - By James P. Rubin | Foreign Policy, June 2, 2012, emphasis added)

US-Israeli War Plans directed against Syria
Rubin candidly outlines the contours of US military intervention in Syria, which is to be implemented in close liaison with Israel. A diplomatic solution will not work, nor will economic sanctions: "only the threat or use of force will change the Syrian dictator's stance" says Rubin:

"U.S. President Barack Obama's administration has been understandably wary of engaging in an air operation in Syria similar to the campaign in Libya, for three main reasons. Unlike the Libyan opposition forces, the Syrian rebels are not unified and do not hold territory. The Arab League has not called for outside military intervention as it did in Libya. And the Russians, the longtime patron of the Assad regime, are staunchly opposed." (Ibid)
Washington's first step, according to James P. Rubin, should be to work with "its allies", the Arab sheikdoms --Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey-- "to organize, train, and arm Syrian rebel forces."
This "first step" has already been launched. It was implemented at the very outset of the insurgency in March 2012. The US and its allies have been actively supporting the Free Syrian Army (FSA) terrorists for over a year. The organization and training consisted in the deployment of Salafist and Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists, alongside the incursion of French, British, Qatari and Turkish special forces inside Syria. US-NATO sponsored mercenaries are recruted and trained in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Sidetracking the UN

Rubin's proposed "second step" is "to secure international support for a coalition air operation." outside the mandate of the United Nations. "Russia will never support such a mission, so there is no point operating through the U.N. Security Council" says Rubin. The air operation contemplated by Rubin is an all out war scenario, similar to the NATO air raids conducted in Libya.

Rubin is not expressing a personal opinion on the role of the UN. The option of "sidetracking" the UN Security Council has already been endorsed by Washington. The violaiton of international law does not seem to be an issue. US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice confirmed in late May, in no uncertain terms, that "the worst and most probable scenario" in Syria might be the option of "acting outside of the UN Security Council's authority".

"In the absence of either of those two scenarios, there seems to me to be only one other alternative, and that is indeed the worst case, which seems unfortunately at the present to be the most probable. And that is that the violence escalates, the conflict spreads and intensifies, it reaches a higher degree of severity... The Council's unity is exploded, the Annan plan is dead and members of this Council and members of the international community are left with the option only of having to consider whether they're prepared to take actions outside of the Annan plan and the authority of this Council." Actions outside UN Security Council Likely in Syria - Rice | World | RIA Novosti, May 31, 2012
Rubin also points to "the reluctance of some European states" (without mentioning the countries) to participate in an air operation against Syria: "this [military] operation will have to be a unique combination of Western and Middle East countries. Given Syria's extreme isolation within the Arab League, it should be possible to gain strong support from most Arab countries, led by Saudi Arabia and Turkey. U.S. leadership is indispensable, since most of the key countries will follow only if Washington leads."

The article calls for continued arming of the Syrian Free Army (FSA) as well carrying out air raids directed against Syria. No ground operations are to be envisaged. The air campaign would be used --as in the case of Libya-- to support the FSA foot soldiers integrated by mercenaries and Al Qaeda affiliated brigades:

"Whether an air operation should just create a no-fly zone that grounds the regimes' aircraft and helicopters or actually conduct air to ground attacks on Syrian tanks and artillery should be the subject of immediate military planning. ...

The larger point is that as long as Washington stays firm that no U.S. ground troops will be deployed, à la Kosovo and Libya, the cost to the United States will be limited. Victory may not come quickly or easily, but it will come. And the payoff will be substantial. Iran would be strategically isolated, unable to exert its influence in the Middle East. The resulting regime in Syria will likely regard the United States as more friend than enemy. Washington would gain substantial recognition as fighting for the people in the Arab world, not the corrupt regimes." (Rubin, op cit)

While the participation of Israel in military operations is not mentioned, the thrust of Rubin's article points to active cooperation between Washington and Tel Aviv in military and intelligence affairs, including the conduct of covert operations in support of the opposition rebels. This coordination would also be carried out in the context of the bilateral military-intelligence cooperation agreement between Israel and Turkey.

"Coming to the rescue of the Syrian people" under a fake "humanitarian" R2P mandate is intended to destabilize Syria, weaken Iran and enable Israel to exert greater political control and influence over neighboring Arab states including Lebanon and Syria.

A war on Syria is also a war on Palestine. It would weaken the resistance movement in the occupied territories. It would reinforce the Netanyahu government's ambitions to create a "Greater Israel", initially, through the outright annexation of the Palestinian territories:

"With the Islamic Republic deprived of its gateway to the Arab world, the Israelis' rationale for a bolt from the blue attack on its nuclear facilities would diminish. A new Syrian regime might eventually even resume the frozen peace talks regarding the Golan Heights. In Lebanon, Hezbollah would be cut off from its Iranian sponsor, since Syria would no longer be a transit point for Iranian training, assistance, and missiles. All these strategic benefits combined with the moral purpose of saving tens of thousands of civilians from murder at the hands of the Assad regime ... make intervention in Syria a calculated risk, but still a risk worth taking." (Rubin, op cit)

War Crimes in the name of human rights: What we really need is "Regime Change" in the United States of America.... and Israel.

Michel Chossudovsky is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31320

Canada and Israel Forge Deeper Alliance


Even as relationships between the Israelis and the USA have been strained (to say the least) during President Obama’s administration, it should be noted that relationships between Canada and the Israelis have never been better. Indeed, Canada’s and Israel’s Defense Ministers had a very warm meeting recently and, as one link below states, they “refused…. to rule out a mutual-defence agreement that would oblige Canada to come to Israel’s defence should the latter be attacked.” That would be a very significant step if such a defense pact became a reality. Another link below reports that Canada was the only nation that stood with Israel in a vote taken by the UN Human Rights Panel. Canada is even issuing a stamp which commemorates its friendship with the Israeli nation. What do you think the odds are of the USA issuing such a stamp during Obama’s presidency?

I’ll bet the Israelis are hoping for a GOP victory in the November US elections so US-Israeli relations can revert to their previously very warm status. Given that Zechariah 12:3 allows for the possibility that all nations on earth could abandon the modern house of Judah (the Israelis/Jews), it is heartwarming and encouraging to see that some nations do still firmly stand as allies of the Israelis. I have little doubt that God will bless Canada for this action. As readers of my books and articles know, I identify Canada as one of the modern “company of nations” (Genesis 48:19) that comprise the modern Israelite tribe of Ephraim.

I wish to thank a reader for bringing these links to my attention. They are well worth passing on to readers of this blog.

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012/01/31/3091429/baird-canada-stands-with-israel

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/569872

http://www.nationalpost.com/Canada+Israel+bolster+militaries/5723320/story.html

http://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/personal/collecting/stamps/2010/2010_Canada_Israel.jsf


What’s up Dave? too bad Canada is now the same as the states huh or are you willing to admit that its the Jewish lobby that has Harpo sucking Jewish dick? ROLMFAO

"What’s up Dave? too bad Canada is now the same as the states huh or are you willing to admit that its the Jewish lobby that has Harpo sucking Jewish dick? ROLMFAO"

Both US and Canadian politicians are sucking corporate oil company dick and defence contractor dick and the Jews are getting blamed for everything - just like WW2. And fools like you are falling for it. One would think that people would be smarter this time around ... but I guess you believe what you want to believe.

That's nonsense DML. No defense contractor or oil company dick made Republican Presidential candidate Romney say Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
Romney said it because he's controlled by the Jewish lobby AIPAC and he's made other outrageous statements for the lobby.

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/f...-or-so-it-seems



Palestinian freedom counts for nothing - or so it seems
By Mustafa Barghouthi, member, Palestinian Parliament - 08/02/12 10:07 AM ET

Gov. Romney’s visit to Israel – and occupied East Jerusalem – very nearly succeeded in erasing Palestine from the agenda. Save for a short visit with Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, Palestine was largely a non-matter. And Romney did not publicly raise Palestinian rights a single time.

During his speech Sunday, Gov. Romney claimed, “We (Israel and the United States) both believe in the rule of law, knowing that in its absence, willful men may incline to oppress the weak.” What precisely does he think Israel is doing to Palestinians with its dual system of law, one for Israelis and an inferior one for Palestinians living under occupation?

J. Philip Rosen, one of the principal organizers of the fundraiser for Gov. Romney, regards Palestinian society as “pathological” and President Mahmoud Abbas as “evil.” So it’s little wonder that Gov. Romney made an argument while here for the cultural superiority of Israelis over Palestinians as an explanation for Israel’s greater economic success – the figures for which he dramatically misstated.

Chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, responded: “It is a racist statement and this man doesn’t realize that the Palestinian economy cannot reach its potential because there is an Israeli occupation.” Erekat added, “It seems to me this man lacks information, knowledge, vision and understanding of this region and its people.” I concur, though he was overly kind to Israeli officials in claiming that Israelis have not made the same bigoted argument. Tragically, too many have.

It’s alarming that Gov. Romney can think our disconnected Bantustans can be compared meaningfully in any way with Israel’s economy while Israel controls movement in our territory and illegally removes water and other natural resources from our land. Israel’s economy is further enhanced with $3 billion per year in American military aid. Palestinians, meanwhile, would gladly take no economic aid if Israel’s control over our lives and freedom were simply removed. We are looking for no handout, just a measure of control over our lives.

Palestinians were also troubled, though not surprised, by Romney’s effort to gain favor with Evangelical and Jewish voters by backing Israel’s claim that Jerusalem is its capital. But the international community, including the United States, has never recognized the annexation of East Jerusalem and the status of Jerusalem has long been recognized as an issue to be resolved in final status negotiations. Those negotiations have stopped, however, because Palestinians recognized the absurdity of continuing ever-lasting negotiations while Israel settled occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank. One cannot be expected to negotiate over a pie while the other side is eating that pie as quickly as possible and using negotiations as a cover for that process.

The larger question here is the utter inability of many politicians in the United States to play an even-handed, fair-minded intermediary role between Israelis and Palestinians. They have decided to come down squarely on Israel’s side. Palestinian freedom counts for nothing beyond an occasional weak endorsement and even then it seems quite possible our “state” will be little more than a series of disconnected Bantustans.

In May 2009, I wrote in the Los Angeles Times that it appeared to me during a February 2009 visit to Washington, DC that the “Obama administration… planned to be in neither the Israelis' nor the Palestinians' pocket. That is all we Palestinians have ever asked.”

Those are now distant days. The Obama Administration has stepped away from asking Prime Minister Netanyahu to end Israel’s domination of Palestinians and is walking away from earlier policies that exerted even the mildest pressure on Israel. Americans are being told that President Obama misjudged the situation rather than that he came under enormous political pressure, buckled, and listened to Congressional voices and AIPAC rather than those who insisted the United States has a role to play in upholding Palestinian rights in the face of an ongoing Israeli land grab.

For Palestinians, the consequences of Israel/Palestine being a domestic American political issue are tragic. Politicians see no electoral advantage in pressing for Palestinian political rights with anything near the determination that Democrats eventually mustered in pressing for the end of apartheid in South Africa.

For a presidential candidate to be able to travel to Israel and not have to confront hard-hitting questions about Israeli domination of Palestinian lives suggests that American politicians will be under no pressure any time soon to explain why they support policies that dispossess, impoverish, and politically marginalize Palestinians and at the same time hurt the American image in the region and worldwide. This is a loss for all those Palestinians and Israelis who believe in peace and justice.

Yet no one should be surprised when dysfunctional American and Israeli politics contribute to overlooking a changing Palestinian reality that moves us from support for two states to support for one state with equal rights for all. I am on that road and tens of thousands of young Palestinians are on it as well. Gov. Romney and President Obama may not yet be aware of changing Palestinian perspectives, but it hasn’t been for lack of alarm bells rung by Palestinians.

Barghouthi, a doctor and member of the Palestinian Parliament, is secretary general of the Palestinian National Initiative, a political party.

History proves that when AIPAC and the defence industry or the oil industry have competing interests - AIPAC loses - ALWAYS loses:


"M-W focus on AIPAC and the evangelicals, but they recognize that the Lobby includes most of the political-intellectual class -- at which point the thesis loses much of its content. They also have a highly selective use of evidence (and much of the evidence is assertion). Take, as one example, arms sales to China, which they bring up as undercutting US interests. But they fail to mention that when the US objected, Israel was compelled to back down: under Clinton in 2000, and again in 2005, in this case with the Washington neocon regime going out of its way to humiliate Israel. Without a peep from The Lobby, in either case, though it was a serious blow to Israel. There's a lot more like that. Take the worst crime in Israel's history, its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 with the goal of destroying the secular nationalist PLO and ending its embarrassing calls for political settlement, and imposing a client Maronite regime. The Reagan administration strongly supported the invasion through its worst atrocities, but a few months later (August), when the atrocities were becoming so severe that even NYT Beirut correspondent Thomas Friedman was complaining about them, and they were beginning to harm the US "national interest," Reagan ordered Israel to call off the invasion, then entered to complete the removal of the PLO from Lebanon, an outcome very welcome to both Israel and the US (and consistent with general US opposition to independent nationalism). The outcome was not entirely what the US-Israel wanted, but the relevant observation here is that the Reaganites supported the aggression and atrocities when that stand was conducive to the "national interest," and terminated them when it no longer was (then entering to finish the main job). That's pretty normal.

Another problem that M-W do not address is the role of the energy corporations. They are hardly marginal in US political life -- transparently in the Bush administration, but in fact always. How can they be so impotent in the face of the Lobby? As ME scholar Stephen Zunes has rightly pointed out, "there are far more powerful interests that have a stake in what happens in the Persian Gulf region than does AIPAC [or the Lobby generally], such as the oil companies, the arms industry and other special interests whose lobbying influence and campaign contributions far surpass that of the much-vaunted Zionist lobby and its allied donors to congressional races."

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20060328.htm


MITT ROMNEY (R)
Top Contributors


Goldman Sachs $636,080
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http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contrib.php?id=N00000286

"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains." -Thomas Jefferson to Horatio Gates Spafford, 17 Mar. 1817, cited in Papers 14:221

Jews & AIPAC have control or interest in oil companies and the defense industry. Jew billionaires and Jewish banks and Jewish controlled Federal Reserve banks have vast interest and control and jobs in the defense industry and big oil.

You always negate the Jewish control and claim they are without power.

"Jews & AIPAC have control or interest in oil companies and the defense industry."

1) The biggest players in each industry are not Jewish, they are Protestant ... like Rockefeller.

http://www.quoteoil.com/oil-companies.html

Exxon Mobil
Royal Dutch Shell
BP
Chevron
ConocoPhillips

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Tillerson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Voser

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl-Henric_Svanberg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_S._Watson_(Chevron)

http://www.conocophillips.com/EN/about/leadership%20team/Pages/lance.aspx

So there are the five CEO's of the five largest oil companies in the world. Are any of them Jewish? No.

Now ... defence contractors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_contractor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_J._Stevens

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Olver

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_McNerney

Wesley G. Bush
Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, President and Member of Corporate Policy Council, Northrop Grumman Corporation
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=1131458&ticker=NOC:US

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_D._Chabraja

Are any of them Jewish? No.

Of course these facts run contrary to your hate-on for Jews, so you ignore them.

Can you even bother to find Jewish CEO's in the top 100 oil or defence corporations? I doubt it. You've always been light on research for your assumptions, just like your pal Adolph Hitler was.



2) I quoted Jefferson because I knew you would argue that racial loyalty trumps loyalty to one's own bank account. Jefferson and I disagree with you:

"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains." -Thomas Jefferson to Horatio Gates Spafford, 17 Mar. 1817, cited in Papers 14:221


Go shoot yourself in the head just like your pal Adolph Hitler you Jew-hating fuktard. Hating on Jews is so 20th Century.

I said they have control through their investments (Banks, Investment Banks, Federal Reserve Banks, Jewish billionaires) .

You don't have to sit on the boards of any company to control the BOD. The BOD are controlled by the majority stockholders (Jewish billionaires)

No Oil company or Defense contractor would ever cross Israel or the Jewish controlled media or Jewish controlled USA Congress.

For they'd end up on a 60 Minutes expose.

Big oil/defense follows the lead of Israel (architects of a new America) cause that's where the money is.

Besides you changed the subject.

Romney just gave Jerusalem to Israel which is for the Jews not big oil or defense.

Yah yah we know they make money off ANY war but it's to benefit Israel.

You always use your fall guy Hitler but you never talk about the Jews that colluded with Hitler in the Holocaust and sold their Jewish brethren to the death chambers.

Or that not a single Jew was brought to Nuremberg trials for their crimes related to Hitler.

DML pulls his rabbit trick using the oil companies but The Iraq War was to protect Israel as disclosed by the architects of "Project for a New American Century"

Oil contracts for exploring are available to the highest bidder. Launching a war does not get preferential treatment for contracts, as there is a bidding process with the most favorable terms for the host country.
==========

"Not a single U.S. company secured a deal in the auction of contracts that will shape the Iraqi oil industry for the next couple of decades."

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1948787,00.html

Saturday, Dec. 19, 2009
U.S. Companies Shut Out as Iraq Auctions Its Oil Fields
By Vivienne Walt

Those who claim that the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 to get control of the country's giant oil reserves will be left scratching their heads by the results of last weekend's auction of Iraqi oil contracts: Not a single U.S. company secured a deal in the auction of contracts that will shape the Iraqi oil industry for the next couple of decades. Two of the most lucrative of the multi-billion-dollar oil contracts went to two countries which bitterly opposed the U.S. invasion — Russia and China — while even Total Oil of France, which led the charge to deny international approval for the war at the U.N. Security Council in 2003, won a bigger stake than the Americans in the most recent auction. "[The distribution of oil contracts] certainly answers the theory that the war was for the benefit of big U.S. oil interests," says Alex Munton, Middle East oil analyst for the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, whose clients include major U.S. companies. "That has not been demonstrated by what has happened this week." (Read "The Reasons Behind Big Oil Declining Iraq's Riches")

In one of the biggest auctions held anywhere in the 150-year history of the oil industry, executives from across the world flew into Baghdad on Dec. 11 for a two-day, red-carpet ceremony at the Oil Ministry, broadcast live in Iraq. With U.S. military helicopters hovering overhead to help ward off a possible insurgent attack, Oil Minister Hussein Al-Shahrastani unsealed envelopes from each company, stating how much oil it would produce, and what it was willing to accept in payment from Iraq's government. Rather than giving foreign oil companies control over Iraqi reserves, as the U.S. had hoped to do with the Oil Law it failed to get the Iraqi parliament to pass, the oil companies were awarded service contracts lasting 20 years for seven of the 10 oil fields on offer — the oil will remain the property of the Iraqi state, and the foreign companies will pump it for a fixed price per barrel.

Far from behaving like the war-ravaged, bankrupt country that it is, Iraq heavily weighted the contracts in its own favor, demanding a low per-barrel price and signing bonuses of up to $150 million. Only one U.S. company, Occidental Petroleum Corp., joined the bidding last weekend, and lost. (ExxonMobil had hoped to land the lucrative Rumaila field, but lost out to an alliance between the Chinese National Petroleum Company and BP because it declined the Iraqi government's $2-a-barrel fee.)

Russia's Lukoil, CNPC, and RoyalDutchShell accepted fees of between $1.15 and $1.40 for every barrel they produce — that's about 2% of Friday's oil futures price of $73 a barrel. "No one thinks it will be easy to make money on these contracts," says Samuel Ciszuk, Middle East energy analyst at IHS Global Insight, an economic forecasting company in London. "Companies have been willing to come in very, very low just to get their foot in the door in Iraq."

The lure is obvious: Iraq's 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves are outmatched only by Saudi Arabia, Canada and Iran, and geologists believe vast amounts more lie unexplored in the Western Desert. With 2.4 million barrels a day in production, the country was until this week up for grabs for foreign oil companies, in contrast to other big oil nations, where Big Oil is shut out: Iran is off limits because of sanctions, and Saudi Arabia's government controls its oil fields, as does Kuwait. (Watch a video about the gas shortage in Iraq.)

Still, there are daunting challenges: Iraq's lethal risks will require companies to spend millions on security. Political uncertainty continues, with the oil law governing the sharing of revenues remaining stalled and disputes over oil contracts raising the tension between Baghdad and the autonomous Kurdish enclave in the north. An election scheduled for next March could see a change of government in Iraq, and on Friday Iranian troops reportedly seized control of an oil field along a disputed section of border. Some analysts believe that Iran is deliberately attempting to shake the oil industry's confidence in Iraq, by reminding investors that several oil fields traverse disputed border areas with Iran. Iran — like other big oil producers — might also fear that a dramatic increase in Iraqi output could send world oil prices plummeting.

Clearly, there's no shortage of uncertainties facing investors in Iraqi oil. And then there are the problems of decrepit wells, aging pipelines, storage facilities, and export ports incapable of handling large volumes. Still, says Ciszuk: "Most oil people think it is better to be part of those challenges than not being part of it."

The auction represents an astonishing transformation for Iraq. In just a few months, it has become a major oil power with the potential to overtake the world's biggest producer, Saudi Arabia. In a previous bid round last June, Iraq handed control to the giant Rumaila field near Basra to Britain's BP, while ExxonMobil later took an 80% stake in another huge field, West Qurna Phase 1, and plan to eventually pump 2.5 million barrels a day. Now, Baghdad officials say they aim to harness the know-how and technology of their foreign partners to pump about 12 million barrels a day by 2017. "It is difficult for any major oil company not to be in Iraq," Total's global exploration and production chief Yves-Louis Darricarrére told TIME last month. Despite intense negotiations, the French company was outbid by an alliance of Shell and Malaysia's Petronas for Iraq's giant Majnoon field. Total CEO Christophe de Margerie told TIME last Sunday that he had put in a "fair bid," and that he doubted his competitors would make solid profits in Iraq, given the stiff terms.

That might have been the thinking of U.S. oil giants, which largely stayed away from last week's bidding, and which have failed to negotiate oil deals with Iraq's government outside of the public auction process. Iraqi officials say they are not awarding contracts based on political considerations, but simply a straight comparison of prices and production targets. "The bidding was extremely tough," said one official in Baghdad, in an email. "My guess is that [the U.S. companies] could not match the offers from others." In Iraq, at least, the victor has no special claim on the spoils of war.

Read "Pump It Up: The Development of Iraq's Oil Reserves"

See pictures of the Exxon Valdez disaster.

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"No Oil company or Defense contractor would ever cross Israel or the Jewish controlled media or Jewish controlled USA Congress."

You can only say that if you ignore the evidence found in my most recent posts:


"Take, as one example, arms sales to China, which they bring up as undercutting US interests. But they fail to mention that when the US objected, Israel was compelled to back down: under Clinton in 2000, and again in 2005, in this case with the Washington neocon regime going out of its way to humiliate Israel. Without a peep from The Lobby, in either case, though it was a serious blow to Israel. There's a lot more like that. Take the worst crime in Israel's history, its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 with the goal of destroying the secular nationalist PLO and ending its embarrassing calls for political settlement, and imposing a client Maronite regime. The Reagan administration strongly supported the invasion through its worst atrocities, but a few months later (August), when the atrocities were becoming so severe that even NYT Beirut correspondent Thomas Friedman was complaining about them, and they were beginning to harm the US "national interest," Reagan ordered Israel to call off the invasion, then entered to complete the removal of the PLO from Lebanon, an outcome very welcome to both Israel and the US (and consistent with general US opposition to independent nationalism). The outcome was not entirely what the US-Israel wanted, but the relevant observation here is that the Reaganites supported the aggression and atrocities when that stand was conducive to the "national interest," and terminated them when it no longer was (then entering to finish the main job). That's pretty normal."

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20060328.htm


"You always use your fall guy Hitler but you never talk about the Jews that colluded with Hitler in the Holocaust and sold their Jewish brethren to the death chambers."

I do. Just not with you. I bring them up when I see cannabis activists doing the same thing.

You're right to call Hitler a "fall guy". He was - and so were the Jewish bankers like the Warburgs - they were small potatoes compared to Duisberg - head of Bayer, and Rockefeller, head of Standard Oil ... they were the ones really calling the shots.

I devoted the 19th issue of my magazine - Potshot - to this topic:

http://www.potshot.ca/pm/index.php?n=Main.Potshot19

I read every book I could on the subject of war profiteering over the last 100 years. The Rothschilds and Warburgs kept their heads down and tried to avoid the gas chambers, while the rich white protestants called all the shots and made all the money - it's the same thing today:

"Carl Duisberg’s greatest success was the foundation of IG Farben in 1925, where he was appointed head of the supervisory board. Duisberg had organized the merger of companies within the German chemical industry to form the largest European corporation at the time over many decades.

Duisberg’s stance towards the Weimar Republic was hostile. He organized industry donations to conservative and nationalistic parties, including to the Nazis, from 1930 onwards. In 1931 Duisberg demanded: “The German people constantly cries out for a Führer who will liberate it from its unbearable situation. If a man comes along now who has proved to have no inhibitions, we must follow him unconditionally." In the same year Duisberg demanded, in a speech before the Chamber of Commerce in Dusseldorf, the creation of a European economic area under German domination.

In return for the millions in donations, the Nazis guaranteed to buy synthetic fuel and rubber from IG Farben. From then onwards no other corporation collaborated so closely with the Third Reich. Carl Duisberg crowed on the occasion of his retirement: "I am looking forward to my retirement under our Führer Adolf Hitler." Hitler in return offered his condolences on Duisberg's death in 1935: "With him the German chemical industry has lost one of its first pioneers and a successful leader, and the German industry one of its great organisers. His name will live on honorably in Germany.”

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/cambridge/2011/09/485277.html

During the planning of the occupation of Czechoslovakia and the invasion of Poland, IG Farben cooperated closely with Nazi officials and directed which chemical plants should be secured and delivered to IG Farben.[12]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben

"These companies, not the lunatic Nazi fanatics, are the main war criminals. If the guilt of these criminals is not brought to daylight and if they are not punished, they will pose a much greater threat to the future peace of the world than Hitler if he were still alive." Their indictment stated that due to the activities of IG Farben "the life and happiness of all peoples in the world were adversely affected." Charges as grave as fomenting war and killing slave labourers were also added. In his opening statement the Nuremberg Chief Prosecutor pointed out that, "The indictment accuses these men of major responsibility for visiting upon mankind the most searing and catastrophic war in human history. It accuses them of wholesale enslavement, plunder and murder."

According to the Nuremberg prosecutors, "We have seen Farben integrating itself with the Nazi tyranny, turning its technical genius to the furnishing of... commodities vital to the reconstruction of the German war machine, and emerging in Hermann Goering's entourage at the highest level of economic planning and mobilization for war. We have seen Farben poised for the kill, and subsequently swollen by economic conquest in the helpless occupied countries. Faced with a shortage of workers, we have seen Farben turn to Goering and Himmler, and persuading these worthies to marshal the legions of concentration-camp inmates as tools of the Farben war machine. We have seen these wretched workers dying by the thousands, some on the Farben construction site, many more in the Auschwitz gas chambers after Farben had drained the vitality from their miserable bodies... Literally millions of people were put to death in the very backyard of one of Farben's pet projects - a project in which Farben invested 600 million reichsmarks of its own money."

http://www.gmwatch.org/gm-firms/11153-bayer-a-history

http://resources.ushmm.org/film/display/detail.php?file_num=3270

http://www.nachfolgeprozesse.nuernberg.de/english/trials/trials7.html

http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/PHARM...al_industry.htm

http://www.profit-over-life.org/rolls.php?roll=95&pageID=225&expand=no




Adjusting for inflation, he is often regarded as the richest person in history.[3][4][5][6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller


"John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) laid claim to the title of being the "most ruthless American." He was a war profiteer during the Civil War selling unstamped Harkness liquor to Federal troops at a high profit, gaining the initial capital to embark on his drive for monopoly in the oil business."
http://www.seekgod.ca/rockefeller.htm

"By 1941 Standard Oil of New Jersey was the largest oil company in the world, controlling 84 percent of the U.S. petroleum market. Its bank was Chase and its owners were the Rockefellers. After the Rockefellers, the next largest stockholder in Standard Oil was I.G. Farben. (68) The Rockefeller - Farben relationship went back as far as 1927. (69)

The planes that made up the Luftwaffe needed tetraethyl lead gasoline in order to fly. Before World War II, only Standard Oil, Du Pont, and General Motors had the ability to produce this vital substance. In 1938, Walter C. Teagle, then president of Standard Oil, helped Hermann Schmitz of I.G. Farben to acquire 500 tons of tetraethyl lead from Ethyl, a British Standard subsidiary. A year later, Schmitz returned to London and obtained an additional 15 million dollars worth of tetraethyl lead which was to be turned into aviation gasoline back in Germany.

After the war began in Europe, the English became angry about U.S. shipments of strategic materials to Nazi Germany. Standard Oil immediately changed the registration of their entire fleet to Panamanian to avoid British search or seizure. These ships continued to carry oil to Tenerife in the Canary Islands, where they refueled and siphoned oil to German tankers for shipment to Hamburg. (70)

Soon-to-be-president Harry S. Truman said the Rockefeller-Farben relationship "approaches treason." (71) "Approaches"? It seems to be sitting on treason's lap to me.

At war's end, when the American doughboys sloughed into Germany and reached the industrial city of Frankfurt, they were amazed to find intact all of I.G.'s buildings and their huge plant. American aviators, pinpointing their targets, had demolished every other structure in town.

What the doughboys didn't know as that the Secretary of War, one Robert P. Patterson, was a Rockefeller lawyer, appointed by President Roosevelt upon Rockefeller orders, fresh out of Dillon, Read and Company. The Dillon-Read concern was a Rockefeller subsidiary - and the banking house that financed I.G. Farben. (72)

CBS News war correspondent Paul Manning reported that on August 10, 1944, the Rockefeller-Farben partners moved their "flight capital" through affiliated American, German/French, British and Swiss banks. Bayer and Hoechst were reorganized in 1951 under the direction of the Allied High Commission, largely influenced by U.S. High Commissioner John J. McCloy - a lawyer and banker from Philadelphia, with intimate ties to Rockefeller banking and oil interests. (73)

http://www.potshot.ca/pm/index.php?n=Main.Rockefeller-FarbenTies

"ExxonMobil, Shell and BP and some of their smaller cousins see control of Iraqi oil as critical not only to their profits but their long-term survival as the world’s largest privately-held oil companies. They are also one of the main forces pushing for an oil law in Iraq, if the law is finally passed by parliament, it will mark a milestone in Iraqi history – a shift of Iraq’s massive reserves from public to private hands. Private companies will develop and profit from Iraq’s oil for 15-30 year periods with virtually no possibility for the Iraqi state to renegotiate terms and conditions."

http://www.wri-irg.org/node/264


Rockefellers Oil-war Pundits

Kissinger and the Rockefeller's go way back. During WW2, Kissinger was working his way up the "intelligence community" hierarchy, belonging to both the Counter Intelligence Corps (236) and the Office of Strategic Services. (237) Perhaps he bumped into OSS member David Rockefeller. (238)
By the 1950's, Kissinger and the Rockefellers were working closely. In those days, the Psychological Strategy Board - part of the CIA, coordinated U.S. military Psychological operations. The architect of the Board was Gordon Gray. Gray used Kissinger as a consultant, as did the Rockefeller family. Gray, Kissinger, and various members of the Rockefeller cartel belonged to the Council on Foreign Relations. (239)
Kissinger was behind a push by the CFR to proliferate nuclear weapons to the four corners of the earth (240) - shortly after Laurence Rockefeller built McDonnell Aircraft Corporation up during and after WW2. (241) McDonnell Douglas now makes nuclear weapons. (242)
Henry Kissinger is on both ends of the Unocal pipeline deal to transport oil and natural gas from the Central Asian republics to the Pakistani coast for sale to China and Japan. (243) No wonder the power elite wanted this guy to head the commission looking into 9-11. No wonder "conflict of interest" and "Exxon" were mentioned (244) - he's making money all over the place on this thing.
In 1973, Zbigniew Brzezinski dreamed up and became the first director of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission, a group of prominent political and business leaders and academics from the United States, Western Europe and Japan. Its stated purpose was to strengthen relations among the three regions. Kissinger and George Bush were also members. (245)
In 1997, Brzezinski published "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives." In it, he writes of a war in Central Asia, and the Pearl Harbor-esque trigger needed to set the final conquest in motion. (246)
With war in the region looming, the progeny of Rockefeller's Standard Oil seem to be ready to make their final moves for total mid-east oil domination. Considering all the unanswered questions (247) regarding the origin of the attack on 9-11 and the subsequent "Hunt Osama until we control Afghanistan and then forget about Osama and then invent excuses to take over Iraq" response, is there any doubt that the new war is about anything other than oil ? - aside from an attack on our rights and freedoms, of course.
http://www.potshot.ca/pm/index.php?n=Main.RockefellersOil-warPundits


If anyone was to believe your theory, there would be some evidence of their influence being greater than the influence of Duisberg and Rockefeller. So far you haven't provided any. I doubt you ever will.