BuzzFlash Reviews
Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World's Vanishing Oil Resources (Paperback)
By Dilip Hiro
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From Nation Books:
"China is now the world's second largest energy consumer, trailing only behind America. And India has moved up into the fourth place behind Russia, after overtaking Japan in 2001. Dramatically changing the geopolitics of oil in the new century, China and India are rapidly expanding their navies as they become increasingly dependent on lines of oil tankers from the Middle East, posing the beginning of an eventual challenge to American hegemony in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.
But while competition for oil sharpens--the world is approaching the projected peak oil output in 2012--the number of countries able to export the commodity is shrinking. Those countries will be largely Muslim, or like Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, hostile to Western interests. [Hiro's book] sets the stage for the coming oil wars of the 21st century."
And Iraq, of course, is the first big oil war of the New Millenium, whatever shifting veneer of fighting for democracy -- or whatever phony reason of the day -- the Busheviks want to bestow upon "the battle for the world's vanishing oil resources."
Even the Iraq Study Group went to lengths to ensure that Iraqi oil would end up in the hand of American and British companies, even if the U.S. left the nation in chaos.
"Given the continued tightness of the energy market, the battle for hydrocarbon reserves will intensify, with some commentators comparing it to the Europoeans nations' violent scramble for colonies in the nineteenth century," Hilo writes. "The crucial difference this time will be that the impending struggle will go beyond a handful of European powers and will include China and India as independent players."
Bush may be persisting in his delusions of "victory" in Iraq out of a need to compensate for his life long record of failure. But the Big Oil guys in the backroom -- including Cheney -- know that victory in Iraq means one major thing: an Exxon/Mobil flag flying over the Iraqi oil fields, along with British Petroleum and a few other insiders.
This is a war for the fuel that makes the American economy hum.
If Iraq were Sri Lanka, the Busheviks could care less about its fate.
It's not about the deaths occuring above the ground; it's about the oil under the ground.
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