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How did you get the impression that a hydrocarbon law was a precondition for US withdrawal? >>
The Bush administration seems to have set out benchmarks for withdrawal which include the passage of a hydrocarbons law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_withdrawal_benchmarks===========================================================
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Personally I don't worry whether American companies get a lot of this work or not , they should get some , but shouldn't need an advantage.>>
Bechtel, Halliburton and the rest of them were apparently wise not to depend on you to protect their interests. They apparently sensed somehow that you wouldn't worry about them, and accordingly they lined up some more interested champions of their interests in the Bush White House, starting at the top. Frankly, I think they gauged the situation correctly. The huge increase in their share prices and annual profits speak for themselves.
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So far we haven't established a link between oil and American presence in Iraq . . . >>
No? ROTFLMFAO. "
WE" might not have established a link between oil and American presence in Iraq, but
I and just about every other thinking, sentient human being on the planet seems to have made the connection without too much difficulty.
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I was under the impression that only the friends of Saddam were allowed wealth during the Saddam regime. >>
Well then you were under a false impression. Iraq under the Ba'ath Party rule was able to provide free JK to university grad school education for all its students, including study abroad for university students, had one of the highest standards of living in the Arab world and also provided good-quality universal medical care. The Ba'ath Arab
Socialist Party wasn't called "Socialist" for nothing.
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That repression and killing accompanied tremendous waste, and that Iraq was a miserable place for the past thirty years.>>
Iraq's material problems only began with the Iran-Iraq War, which the U.S.A. encouraged Iraq to launch against its neighbour, the Islamic Republic,and kept going with assistance to Iraq for as long as the parties were able to participate. Following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which the U.S. first indicated it would not oppose, the Iraqi Army was driven back into Iraq and the country was subjected to a U.S.-inspired embargo which killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. The misery can be laid squarely at the feet of the U.S. and Saddam's reliance upon their word, the repression was a feature of Middle Eastern rule under any U.S. satellite government, to which Iraq was no exception, and was hardly wasteful as only the enemies or perceived enemies of the regime fell victim to it and none of them was irreplaceable. Saddam ruled by torture and terror, as did every U.S. satrap then and now, but those of his citizens who avoided arousing the regime's suspicion (not an easy thing to accomplish) did not suffer any material deprivation before the Iran-Iraq War began.