Rick Siegel Prespectives on Freedom and Liberty

Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in Iraq to hail the “phenomenal changes” in Iraq.

"Especially significant is to be able to return this week to mark the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the campaign that liberated the people of Iraq from Saddam Hussein's tyranny" Cheney asserted. Everyone thought it was about weapons of mass destruction is now corrected. Cheney claimed the changes were “dramatic” since the troop build up went from 120,000 to 190,000 over the last year. As he spoke roadside bombs and a suicide minibus explosion killed or maimed 14 people in the city whose daily death toll still remains high.

But the big deal is not the troop buildup for Dick Cheney. It is the stalled hydrocarbon law that the United States is forcing down the Iraqi throat. The Iraqi’s are having great difficulty in swallowing this. The law is stalled in their puppet government because it is such an outrage the people will revolt if they read it.

The law will “share revenues from Iraq’s vast oil reserves” which Washington claims is a reconciliation benchmark. The Iraqi’s and most observers understand the meaning to be quite different. The “law” would make Iraq oil revenues part of the US income. US interests would get a cut of all oil the Iraqi’s sold forever and would be able to adjust the price. It is a horrible intrusion on sovereignty and theft of national wealth. It also seems unfathomable that the United States would claim war repatriations from Iraq for a pre-emptive invasion based on lies.

In fact the United States owes retribution to Iraq for the fraudulent invasion, the installation of a US style backed dictatorship, the continued military occupation of their lands, and the daily deaths of their citizens. With 200,000 Us troops and 100,000 mercenaries it took a year to murder or arrest anyone who dissented from the policy of the invaders. The remaining people have capitulated to the invading armies desires in the hopes that one day they may get their country back. Dick Cheney is trying to make sure that they have signed legal commitments to give their oil wealth to the United States government interests no matter what they do. The United States continues boning the beaten dog.