Kerry's promise to bring more allies to the table seemed to be a particularly empty one. He more or less dodged the question in the second debate. Key allies, such as France and Germany, have come out publicly and said they will not commit troops whether or not Kerry is elected.
But let's look at a key part of McQuaig's article:
Certainly any suggestion that private oil interests were in any way involved is hooted down with charges of conspiracy theory.
Yet the documents suggest that those who took part in the Cheney task force including senior oil company executives were very interested in Iraq's oil and specifically in the danger of it falling into the hands of eager foreign oil companies, rather than into the rightful hands of eager U.S. oil companies.
As the documents show, prior to the U.S. invasion, foreign oil companies were nicely positioned for future involvement in Iraq, while the major U.S. oil companies, after years of U.S.-Iraqi hostilities, were largely out of the picture. Indeed, the U.S. majors would have been the big losers if U.N. sanctions against Iraq had simply been lifted. "The U.S. majors stand to lose if Saddam makes a deal with the U.N. (on lifting sanctions)," noted a report by Germany's Deutsche Bank in October 2002.
When I read this it occurred to me that if Kerry is willing to do a complete "re-do" with respect to who really gets to divide the spoils of war, then there is a chance that allies will in fact be drawn back to the table. One would hope that Iraq itself would get a much fairer deal than described in Naomi Klein's "Bagdad Year Zero" article.
Perhaps this is the real message behind Kerry's promise, one which he cannot explicitly say to an American public that is not ready to hear it, but a message that is crystal clear to certain world leaders.
The Iraq quagmire may not simply be a military one, but an economic one as well. Perhaps re-doing the post-war plan in this way is not even possible without legal battles against companies who already have deals in place. If the situation in Iraq is really as dire as some of the reports indicate, however, then it may be possible that these companies are losing their stomach for doing business under the current plan, and might be willing to re-negotiate.
In any event, it seems that quite a few planets will have to align before the mess in Iraq can begin to be undone. It is not hard to imagine a Kerry presidency that makes little or no progress beyond the grim situation the U.S. is now facing.
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