Oil And US

An editorial appeared in The Hindu speculating as to what would happen next after Saddam's execution. It was very clear : After Saddam it will be oil. It predicted:

Now that Saddam Hussein is gone, in the coming weeks and months one can look to see events that will help consolidate oil security for the U.S. Even at the cost of Iraq's balkanisation.

Now we hear:

Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.

The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.

Meanwhile, people continue to draw parallels between what Saddam did and what the US/UK are doing in Iraq today:

If Saddam could be held criminally accountable for torture despite the absence of any written order, any honest court would not think twice before convicting Mr. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld for what went on in Abu Ghraib.

Of course, what Bush has done is far worse in scale. So I would like to think: after Saddam, one gone, one more to go.