But...but....he's such a good teacher

[Plane]

<<Last I heard Iraq was produceing more Oil than ever before . .  . >>

Sure but they're not gonna keep much of the revenue from sales; only between 50 to 90 per cent.  They've been robbed.

<< . . .during an uptick in prices>>

Completely irrelevant.

<< and an elected Legislature . . . >>

Elected my ass.  No Ba'ath Party candidates were allowed to run and most of the Sunnis boycotted the election.  The whole system of "elections" was a foreign concept forced down their throats by violence.

<< . . . attempting to allocate the resulting surplus of funds.>>

And still attempting to do so.  Under Saddam, they not only kept all their own revenues, the allocated them, a simple action which the present government seems to be unable to accomplish.

"They" is a plural word . Do mean to apply the royal "we" to Saddam?

They meaning the Iriqui People would not be true.

[sirs]

The Fed and its President IS mandated to protect this country.  It has no such mandate on DNA studies

Then:

And again, goes to priorities.  Had we not gone in, we could replace the 2 young women, with a multitude of other horrors thousands of other women would have likely had to endure, under Saddam's regime & his sons...READ: THAT's NOT WHY WE WENT IN, only pointing out the distinct likelyhood of 1 scenario over another, had we not

So where, precisely, are we mandated to invade another country, ovethrow its leader, and establish a government more to our liking?

Asked and answered already H.  We invaded based on national security, based on making damn sure Saddam's WMD wouldn't fall into the hands of Militant Islamic terrorists, who had just murdered 3000+ of our citizens, on our soil, with mere boxcutters.  Fits the mandate quite precisely, if you ask me.  You are apparently under the mandate that once we accomplished our mission of taking out Saddam and the WMD potential, we should have left the Iraqi people in one big gaping hell hole.  I tend to side with Colin Powell on this one...once we broke it, we needed to fix it.

[hnumpah]

We invaded based on national security...

How so?  The reasons you keep giving for the invasion that might in any way concern our national security have all been proven false. Actually, I feel they were proven false before we ever invaded, though the administration chose to ignore the information that ran counter to what they wanted to justify their invasion. So how did a toothless old tyrant making empty threats threaten our national security?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, 'based on the best intelligence', blah blah, et cetera and so on and so forth. Which is crap, because the best intelligence, the correct intelligence, we had from the 'boots on the ground', the UN inspectors who were there, was ignored and shunted aside, and they were told to get out of the country because the invasion was a'comin' and they were in harm's way.

[Michael Tee]

<<"They" is a plural word . Do mean to apply the royal "we" to Saddam?

<<They meaning the Iriqui People would not be true.>>

Uhh, yes, actually, it WOULD be true.  The Iraqi people, as I've already pointed out, under the Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party, enjoyed cradle-to-grave free medical care, free education to the end of post-graduate studies even if the post-grad studies were pursued at foreign universities, cheap food and gas all paid for from state oil revenues, none of which had to be shared with foreigners, since the Iraqi government was perfectly capable on its own of developing its own natural resources.

I know that it pleases you to infer that Saddam and his thirty or forty palaces (the number seems to grow with every re-telling of the story) drained all the oil wealth from the poor Iraqis, but the simple fact is that four thousand palaces would have represented a small fraction of the year's revenues.  Saddam and his clan and buddies lived very well off his country's oil revenues (which could be said of the leaders of every Middle Eastern oil-producing country) but there was plenty left for the rest of the people, which was clearly evident from the standard of living they enjoyed.

What's currently underway now, and very little publicized, is one of the greatest rapes in history, as well-armed American and British troops prepare to exact "Petroleum Laws" and concessions favouring the "multi-national" (read "British and American") oil companies, who at the end of the day, will be skimming off (in my humble prediction) between fifty and ninety per cent of the country's oil revenues.  IF they can get away with it.

[Amianthus]

Sure but they're not gonna keep much of the revenue from sales; only between 50 to 90 per cent.  They've been robbed.

You expect companies to drill and ship oil for free? Just turn over the total proceeds to Iraq, with no funds being used to pay for the drilling and shipping?

And, BTW, aren't you one who says that 10% profit is an outrageous amount? If so, what do you call 50-90%?

[Amianthus]

all paid for from state oil revenues, none of which had to be shared with foreigners, since the Iraqi government was perfectly capable on its own of developing its own natural resources.

One would have to wonder, then, why so many foreign oil companies were working the oil fields under Saddam? The French, Russian, and German companies were just there "observing" or something? Those fat contracts they had to develop the oil fields for Saddam were just smoke and mirrors?

(Hint: that's a big reason for both Russia and France to veto any action in the UN regarding Saddam, they had billions of dollars worth of contracts with his government for oil exploitation.)

[Michael Tee]

They were probably paid a fee for services.  They were probably also assuming some degree of risk that the Iraqi government itself wasn't prepared to take.  As I understand it, the new, American-made Iraqi Constitution provides for private, foreign ownership of the wells and the current "negotiations" (gun-point negotiations, obviously) are over the maximum share that foreigners can acquire.  The original draft said 90% but that was most likely a trial balloon sent up to condition Iraqis to accept something a little or a lot lower.  Under the Ba'ath constitution, the percentage was set at zero.

[Amianthus]

They were probably paid a fee for services.&nbsp; They were probably also assuming some degree of risk that the Iraqi government itself wasn't prepared to take.&nbsp; As I understand it, the new, American-made Iraqi Constitution provides for private, foreign ownership of the wells and the current "negotiations" (gun-point negotiations, obviously) are over the maximum share that foreigners can acquire.&nbsp; The original draft said 90% but that was most likely a trial balloon sent up to condition Iraqis to accept something a little or a lot lower.&nbsp; Under the Ba'ath constitution, the percentage was set at zero.

In 1994, under the leadership of Loik Le Floch-Prigent, the French oil company negotiated lucrative contracts with Iraqi Oil Minister Safa al-Habobi, giving Elf-Acquitaine exclusive rights to the Majnoon oil fields on the border with Iran. Another French government owned company, Total SA--which would later merge with Elf-Acquitaine--was given rights to another oil field. The contracts were worth $100 billion over seven years but were conditioned on the U.N. sanctions being lifted. The major share of oil pumped during the oil-for food regime was done by the now merged Elf-Total SA & Russia's Gazprom.

http://freerepublic.info/focus/f-chat/1622264/posts

[Michael Tee]

Well, what was extracted under the pressure of the embargo ( a seven-year contract, apparently) HAD to be lucrative.  Embargo-running always is, by necessity.

Doesn't change a word of what I wrote - - the former constitution forbade foreign ownership, the one the Americans forced down their throats at gun-point permits it.  The biggest rape in history of a Middle East oil producer is underway as we speak.

[sirs]

We invaded based on national security...

How so?  The reasons you keep giving for the invasion that might in any way concern our national security have all been proven false.

False ONLY by way of having invaded in the 1st place, and made said assessment.  That doesn't negate they were the reasons we went in in the 1st place, H. 

Actually, I feel they were proven false before we ever invaded, though the administration chose to ignore the information that ran counter to what they wanted to justify their invasion.

Well, you go with that "feeling".  I'll go with the cold hard data, that the NIE, CIA, and global intelligence networks actually believed, and provided to Bush.  Yea, they got it wrong, but AT THE TIME, it appeared to be a "slam dunk" assessment