Who said: US invasion of Iraq has failed?

"Iraq has 115 million barrels of known oil reserves and estimates of its unconfirmed reserves range from 220-300 million barrels. These would represent up to a quarter of the world’s oil resources. Iraq is also one of the least exploited of major oil producing countries."

by Saybhan Samat in Colombo, for Sri Lanka Guardian

(December, 27, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) On the 20th of March 2003, the government of the US sent its full range of armed forces into Iraq, obliterating its infrastructure and smashing its civil life. Since then almost one million men, women and children have been killed and uncounted others have been wounded in addition a million or more have been displaced internally and displaced in foreign lands. The country is facing a catastrophe of unimaginable proportion. The invasion was carried out without the approval of the United Nations under the pretext that Saddam Hussien possessed weapons of mass destruction. Thousands of people throughout the world staged mass demonstration to protest against the US and its allies attacking Iraq.

It is an open secret that the whole exercise was largely about oil, although the US and its allies denied this outright. More credence was given to the US intention of robbing oil from Iraq as the motivation for the invasion in Alan Greenspan’s recently published memoirs which cut through a great deal of the official American bluster about its involvement in Iraq, going straight to the heart of the matter. “I am saddened”, he wrote, “that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil”.

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"The invasion was carried out without the approval of the United Nations under the pretext that Saddam Hussien possessed weapons of mass destruction. Thousands of people throughout the world staged mass demonstration to protest against the US and its allies attacking Iraq."

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The neo-con Bush administration is being clobbered daily for its handling of the war in Iraq because of its failure to establish peace and stability because of the mounting US casualties, and the deepening budget deficit and the falling dollar. Unknown to the masses of US citizens the neo-con administration who have vested interests in oil and the military industrial complex see that the real objectives of the invasion show every sign of being achieved. They are also aware that the key objectives of the war might prove harder to achieve if there was peace, stability and a strong and popular democratic government in Baghdad, rather than disorder that currently prevails.

Iraq has 115 million barrels of known oil reserves and estimates of its unconfirmed reserves range from 220-300 million barrels. These would represent up to a quarter of the world’s oil resources. Iraq is also one of the least exploited of major oil producing countries. Writing in the “London Review of Books” in November 2007, Jim Holt pointed out that there are only 2000 oil wells in Iraq, compared to over a million in Texas alone. At today’s prices, this reserve would be worth about $ 30 trillion, compared to about $ 1 trillion spent by the US on its invasion and occupation of the country.

For the US’s capitalist power elite, the question is even better, as the American tax payer is paying the bill while they rake in the profits. A part from this the bulk of the $ 1 trillion cost of the war is going to the military – industrial complex that they dominate. Setting aside the cost in the lives of American soldiers, mainly from the poorest sections of society and of minimal concern to those in power, and the political damage being suffered by the Republican Party (offset by the fact that they control the Democratic Party as well), it is a truly win-win situation for them.

The success of the agenda depends on two things: the passage of Iraq’s draft oil and gas law, which would cede control of 63 of Iraq’s existing oil fields, as well as all undiscovered reserves, to foreign control for 30 years, which would be harder to force on a strong and popular government than the current one; and a permanent military presence to protect these rights from an Iraqi Mossadeq in the future. For the latter purpose, the US is known to be building five permanent, self-sufficient “super bases” far from the urban areas, where there is the greatest resistance, and with little attention from the western media. Each is capable of housing 25-30,000 men. Despite call for US withdrawal, the Bush administration increasingly talks of a permanent presence to support a friendly future government, and ensure that the sacrifices of recent years are not in vain.

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"The neo-con Bush administration is being clobbered daily for its handling of the war in Iraq because of its failure to establish peace and stability because of the mounting US casualties, and the deepening budget deficit and the falling dollar. Unknown to the masses of US citizens the neo-con administration who have vested interests in oil and the military industrial complex see that the real objectives of the invasion show every sign of being achieved."

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Such control over Iraq and its oil will enable the US to dominate OPEC, put pressure on its troublesome allies in Saudi Arabia and push through its anti-Iran agenda. At the end of the day the invasion of Iraq would prove to be an absolute success for the planners of the US invasion of Iraq.

Continued US presence in Iraq will certainly increase and inflame Iraqi resistance as the Iraqis are bound to be influenced by the growing regional power Iran, who will give their utmost moral support to the Iraqi masses to throw out the US.