Even as all the shifting rationales the Bush administration has offered for the Iraq debacle have been debunked, I have still been skeptical of the claim that it was really all about oil.  This story makes me think twice.   

To summarize: After losing their oil concession to nationalization 36 years ago, four Western oil companies – Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP – are set to receive no bid contracts to develop Iraq’s oil fields.  The companies prevailed over other offers by more than 40 companies, including companies from Russia, China and India.  They were awarded by the “sovereign” government of Iraq’s oil ministry, which is still being advised by Americans.  The oil ministry said the contracts were awarded to the companies because they had been assisting the ministry without charge for two years.  However, a total of 46 companies had memorandums of understanding with the ministry yet were not awarded contracts.  In one instance, the Russian company Lukoil had been providing free training to Iraqi engineers, but the contract was awarded to a consortium of Chevron and Total.  Although the contracts are relatively brief, they give the companies a huge leg up when development rights are handed out later.    

Is this the vision of Iraq as a showpiece for democracy that would transform the Middle East?  The Iraq envisioned by Bush and McCain looks more like a dystopian nightmare.  A country segregated into semi-feudal ethnic cantons each with its own militia, riven by low level sectarian violence the lid of which is precariously kept on by American troops hunkered down in gigantic mega-bases being fed by Burger King and supplied by Halliburton, while American companies extract the oil that feeds our economy and destroys our environment operating under the protection of contractors hired by Blackwater and the like who are unaccountable to both the military and the Iraqi government.