Not Your Sweetie

Iraq will Pay for the Privilege of Being Occupied

Newsday reports, "Using Iraqi oil to fund an occupation would reinforce a prevalent belief in the
Mideast that the conflict is all about control of oil, not rooting out weapons of mass
destruction, according to Halim Barakat, a recently retired professor of Arab studies at
Georgetown University. 'It would mean that the real ... objective of the war is not the
democratization of Iraq, not getting rid of Saddam, not to liberate the Iraqi people, but a
return to colonialism,' he said. 'That is how they [Mideast nations] would perceive it'... 'It [the
oil] is going to fund the U.S. military presence there,' [a Pentagon official said]. '... They're not
just going to take the Iraqi oil and use it for Iraq's purpose. They will charge the Iraqis for the
U.S. cost of operating in Iraq. I don't think they're planning as far as I know to use Iraqi oil to
pay for the invasion, but they are going to use it to pay for the occupation.'"