With all the hellish day-to-day experiences that anyone living in Iraq, particularly Baghdad, has to deal with, imagining what the job of the country's parliament is like is pretty difficult.
Dealing with the job of government (where they are allowed to by the coalition forces) collides with the ongoing lawlessness and attacks on civilians and government staff, property and processes makes it a terrifying time to try to forge a new governing body amidst all this.
However there is one piece of legislation which is close to being signed off by the parliament before the end of May. A bill agreeing how to divide up the country's oil and gas reserves to each region as fairly as possible is in it's final stages.
Much criticism has been levelled at the decades long concessions that will allow foreign oil companies to invest in Iraq's oil and gas fields.
It's true that publicly before the invasion and afterwards the US and allied forces didn't mention oil at all, but there have been detailed internal US defence plans to gain control of Persian Gulf oil for at least a decade as a way of gaining a significant foothold in global oil stocks. This would allow the US the chance to weaken OPEC's position on World oil supply and prices.
The US has been in favour of this bill being pushed through as quickly as possible as they think it will reduce violence. How noble a thought.
The Truthiness Blog Says ; Is the reality that it's hoped gas prices at the pumps will tumble down and we can be addicted to big, home owned, but foreign extracted oil for more decades as we boil under climate change?
Someone made a great comment, if the Iraq oil reserves belong to the Iraqi people (as Tony Blair said at the beginning of the invasion), then who do the Amercian oil reserves belong to?
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