Oil groups dream of day they can enter Iraq

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/75d9be86-8621-11db-86d5-0000779e2340.html

American troops stood by as government offices in Baghdad were torched and looted after the city’s fall in April 2003, a chaotic beginning to the flawed US-led campaign in Iraq. But one imposing concrete building was accorded special treatment.

Ringed with barbed wire, with dozens of US tanks guarding the entrance and American soldiers perched on roofs, the oil ministry emerged unscathed from the post-invasion mayhem. US officials insisted at the time that their objective was to safeguard the centre of Iraq’s vital resources. The US military’s actions, however, fed the conspiracy theory that the toppling of Saddam Hussein was itself designed to gain control of Iraqi oil.

Whatever the motives, the turmoil now sweeping the country has caught up with Iraq’s oil industry. The sector has been devastated by violence, a lack of investment and rampant corruption. Production has not regained pre-invasion levels.

While the stability of Iraq under the former regime had been buttressed by oil revenues, today the struggle for control over these resources – the third largest petroleum reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia and Iran – is threatening to tear the country apart. An uneven distribution of reserves has exacerbated discord among Iraq’s three main communities – the majority Shia and minority Sunni Arabs and Kurds – over the political destiny of Iraq.

they sat around the table and divvied up Iraq as part of Cheney's top secret energy task force.

and we will expect their soft, lilly-white engineers to pick up AK47s and go help shoulder the burder of protecting *their* oil interests.

The Texas/American Petroleum Cartel is THE REASON we invaded Iraq. Anything else is plain ol' Texas bullshit.