Your roots are showing

The roots of the Iraq war, that is. And they are black roots. Oil black. The Inter Press Service (Italy) noted last week that

[t]he United States is helping the interim Iraqi government continue to make major economic changes....

[O]fficials of the U.S.-backed administration detailed some of the economic moves planned for Iraq, many of them appearing to give U.S. corporations greater reach into the occupied nation's economy.

For example, the current leadership is looking at privatising the Iraqi National Oil Company, said Finance Minister Adil Abdel Mahdi.

The interim government also expects to further open Iraq's oil reserves to multinational corporations, with US firms expected to get by far the largest share, and to

reconsider deals signed between French and Russians oil firms and the regime of former President Saddam Hussein. It is still not clear whether those contracts will be cancelled altogether or just reduced. ...

Since it invaded Iraq, the United States has worked to reshape the Arab nation in its image. All the economic programmes, including the most liberal tax scheme in the Middle East and nearly non-existent trade tariffs, instituted by the CPA are being continued by the interim government.

Washington has installed hundreds of U.S. economic advisors in all Iraqi government ministries, who have a decisive say on most economic decisions. It has also sponsored the bulk of the nation's economic changes, based on a neo-liberal model that emphasises privatisation of government entities and cuts to social spending.

Something else the US has done is toss Iraq into the lion's den of the IMF. Iraq has a system of food subsidies on which many families depend. But under an October agreement with the IMF, the interim government agreed to slash those subsidies in exchange for $420 million in loans with more to follow if Iraq meets even more stringent conditions. It's a measure of how much devastation has been visited on Iraq over the last 10-12 years that even while sitting on the world's second largest proven oil reserves it still has to kowtow to the banks.

But why the hurry? Why the rush? Why is the interim government trying to push through these changes when, supposedly, in less than four weeks there's going to be an election to create a permanent government? As the saying goes, some questions need only be asked: Just like the CPA locked in certain changes (like that "liberal," i.e., low, tax rate) that the interim government could not change, so too, the US-dominated interim government in its turn is trying to "establish facts on the ground," to present the government that follows with a fait accompli, where Iraq is so embedded in the corporate-dominated economic order, it's economy so in thrall to transnational (mostly American) corporations, that it will never get out, its future firmly in the grip of US economic and political interests.

I wrote about the US prying open Iraq's economy for the benefit of the multinationals last March, on the first anniversary of the war. In that post I quoted something I had written a year before that, March 23, 2003. In light of the developments noted by IPS, it seems even more relevant now:

[T]he notion that this war is unconnected to oil is ignorant, fatuous crap. The idea of the US occupying and controlling the oil of the Persian Gulf has been around for nearly 30 years, since the oil boycott of 1973-74. It was first proposed in 1975 (in a "deep backgrounder") by Henry Kissinger and policy has been moving in that direction since. But there is one way in which the slogan [declarations of "No War for Oil" was the particular topic at hand] has it not wrong but not complete: The issue isn't oil profits (most oil companies have shied away from the war, fearing the repercussions) but oil control. Control of oil means control over major portions of the world economy. Taking over (excuse me, reconstructing) Iraq means icing the French and the Russians, heavily involved in Iraqi oil, out. It means American power, American dominance, American preeminence, exactly those things the people around (and including) Bush are after. So is the war about oil? Not directly. It's about what war is always about: Power and control.

Sociopathology in service to ideology. A very dangerous and bloody combination.

Footnote: The White House is also brokering talks to make Iraq a member of the WTO. The talks began in early December. Any bets on reaching a "preliminary agreement" before the end of this month?