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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ish who wrote (95262)	4/20/2003 11:15:57 PM
From: Dayuhan	Respond to of 281500

I'm way behind being in Illinois and you being a day ahead. Last I heard President Bush wanted the oil proceeds to go to the Iraqi people. Some people maybe, but President Bush has the last word. Everybody who has made a public statement has announced grandly that the proceeds will go to the people, but the actual nuts and bolts end of how the Iraqi oil industry will look is still very much in dispute. There's an influential bloc in DC, many of whom are often categorized as "neocons", that would like to see the industry privatized. They say that they'd like to see Iraqi companies involved, but no Iraqi companies exist that would be able to compete with the major multinationals, and American dominance would be almost inevitable. Most of the talk is hot air, of course, since no democratically elected Iraqi government will privatise the industry. It does raise an interesting question, though, about the extent to which we can expect the Iraqis to support us. It's inevitable that the Iraqis will want to develop their own policies, many of which will probably conflict with American preferences. That won't mean they are ingrates; it's a natural feature of democracy. We can have a democratic Iraq or a consistently pro-American Iraq, but probably not both at the same time.