"The form of contracts being promoted is the most expensive and undemocratic option available," said Platform researcher Greg Muttitt on Tuesday

"Iraq's oil should be for the benefit of the Iraqi people, not foreign oil companies."...

"Iraqi public opinion is strongly opposed to handing control over oil development to foreign companies," it said.

"But with the active involvement of the US and British governments, a group of powerful Iraqi politicians and technocrats is pushing for a system of long-term contracts with foreign oil companies which will be beyond the reach of Iraqi courts, public scrutiny or democratic control."...

But Platform's report alleged that financing oil development could be done instead through government budgetary expenditure, using future oil flows as collateral to borrow money, or using international oil companies through shorter-term and less lucrative contracts.

Louise Richards, chief executive of aid charity War on Want, said: "People have increasingly come to realise that the Iraq war was about oil, profits and plunder."

"Iraq's oil profits, far from being used to alleviate some of the suffering the Iraqi people now face, are well within the sights of the oil multinationals."

So, I wonder what all the liberal hawks think about this? After a decade of sanctions and the destruction of much of Iraq's infrastructure before, during, and after the war, don't the Iraqi people need all the help they can get? Wasn't the war supposed to be about the spread of democracy? It's hard to build a democracy when you don't have any money to build with. And in terms of spreading democracy, no one will believe us: they'll think it's all about the oil (and the natural gas too). So Thomas Friedman, Ken Pollack, and all the other 'liberal' hawks, what do you think now?

We told you. We warned you. We said that this war was not motivated by dreams of democracy, but by Republican avarice for power.  But you built up an image of those who opposed the war as a bunch of idiotic, reflexive freaks, as Saddam's useful idiots.

You arrogant fools. You were the useful idiots, not us.

(this has also been cross-posted here)