BAGHDAD — Four US contractors were killed
last month when their convoy took a wrong turn, drove into a town north
of Baghdad and was attacked by a mob, a senior US military official said
yesterday.
The attack, which occurred Sept. 20 in the town of Duluiyah, about 45 miles
north of Baghdad, was first reported yesterday by Britain’s Daily Telegraph.
The senior US military commander confirmed the account. There was no explanation
for why the military did not report the deaths earlier.
The commander said the four men — identified by the Telegraph as employees
of the Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root — realized
they had taken a wrong turn and were desperately trying to escape from
the town when insurgents attacked their vehicle.
The Telegraph said ”dozens of Sunni Arab insurgents wielding rocket
launchers and automatic rifles" pursued the truck and shot at it.
from the Boston
Globe
So this is what it has come to. The country we came
to save has become a death trap for Americans, military and civilian
alike. Take a wrong turn, and hundreds of vicious, revenge-minded natives
are waiting to rip you to shreds. Perhaps an apt metaphor for the entire
adventure.
Although it may seem naive to hope for honesty from
government, the only hope the Bush administration has to rally support
for his continued occupation of Iraq is to tell the truth. We are
not in Iraq because of Weapons of Mass Destruction. We are not
in Iraq to create a democratic Garden of Eden in Babylon. We are
not in Iraq to rebuild a nation torn apart by ethnic strife and despotic
rule. We are there for the oil.
We absolutely, desperately need the oil. Especially
now, with our erstwhile allies in Saudi Arabia on increasingly thin ice
at home and abroad, with Crazy Hugo sitting on our top source in the
neighborhood, and with Fu Man Chu over in Asia gazing hungrily over dwindling
world resources.
We are addicted to the stuff, absolutely, stone-cold
strung out, and even a 5 or 10 percent reduction in our habit would entail
economic, political and lifestyle changes that would make American society
unrecognizable to people today.
Since it became clear that petroleum would be the lifeblood
of the 20th century, since the world’s existing reserves were identified
and located, since friendly regimes were placed in charge of those regions,
wherever possible, Plan "A" has sufficed.
Plan "A" is to befriend, bribe, seduce, subvert, extort
and incorporate the governments of the oil states, adopting them into
the world elite in return for relatively unrestricted access to the oil
resources.
But if push comes to shove, if "bad guys" get control
of the vital oil fields, whether by coup, like Saddam, or by election,
like Chavez, and threaten to cut us off, it is time to call on Plan “B”. In these cases of last resort, we MUST intervene, or find out
first hand what 21st century energy cold turkey is all about. Think rationing, recession
and rioting. Unfortunately, the days of slick and silent CIA-induced
"regime change" are a thing of the past, so Plan “B” usually entails invasion
and occupation.
Yes, you can bet that the US military have contingency
plans to invade Venezuela. In a real crisis they are ready, in close
cooperation with the Israelis, to occupy the critical oil fields in the
Middle East. You can bet your last gallon of gas that they know
just which areas they would need to occupy in order to keep enough oil
flowing to avoid economic collapse.
And personally, the Dowbrigade is glad those plans are
in place. We would rather avoid dying in food riots when the fuel
shortage stops produce from reaching the cities and the government declares
martial law. By now it should be clear to everyone that occupying a sovereign
nation, even one as tenuous and gerrymandered as Iraq, is no day at the
beach. But
hell, do you expect the greatest power the world has ever known to just
roll over
and play dead?
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