Here’s a little something you may want to read. It’ll give you a really good understanding of what the Iraqi Oil deal is all about and who it REALLY benefits. -JS

By BEN LANDO
UPI Energy Correspondent

WASHINGTON, June 14 (UPI) — A military leader fresh from Iraq is the latest U.S. government official to push a common but false claim that the controversial draft oil law will lead to a just division of the proceeds from oil sales and pave the way for reconciliation in the war-torn nation.

Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, former commander of the Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq, forwarded claims made by the Bush administration and Congress that if Iraq passes an oil law, the fighting factions there will come together because revenue from oil sales will be distributed to all.

The oil law (also known as the hydrocarbons law), however, does no such thing. A separate revenue’sharing law would decide how the oil revenue is spread around the country. It is currently being negotiated, though far behind the hydrocarbons law in the Iraqi legislative process.

Dempsey, who just returned from his in-Iraq duties, told reporters at a Pentagon briefing Wednesday, “There’s an interim step toward reconciliation that might better be described as accommodation,” finding “ways to become dependent on each other.”

The hydrocarbons law is one way, he said, “where you equitably distribute the resources of the nation, thereby encouraging these three groups to depend on each other for some common commodity.”

Only a small portion of the law mentions revenue, and explicitly states that, according to the Iraqi Constitution, a separate “federal revenue law” is required to dictate how the revenue is spent.

President Bush, during remarks with visiting Iraqi President Jalal Talabani on May 21, said, “We’re working very hard, for example, on getting an oil law with an oil revenue’sharing code that will help unite the country.”

Such a law was included in Bush’s “benchmarks for reconciliation” in Iraq.

Other U.S. officials, including the vice president during a visit to Baghdad, have expressed U.S. desires for Iraq to pass an oil law, the one with non-existent influence on the oil revenue.

Members of Congress as well push the “oil law” as important, also not distinguishing it from revenue assumptions.

“Iraqi progress on an oil law is good news and an important step forward,” Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., said in a Feb. 27 statement after Iraqi negotiators initially approved the hydrocarbons law. “Fair’sharing of Iraq’s oil revenue is key to a sustainable political solution, but an oil law by itself will not end the sectarian warfare in Iraq,” added Biden, who is in favor of breaking Iraq into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish states.

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