Decaying Venezuelan oil pipeline: Bloomberg
Decaying Venezuelan oil pipeline: Bloomberg
We know one thing for sure from the incredibly ill-advised adventure in Iraq that left us in debt for about two trillion dollars: Whatever we get up to in Venezuela won’t pay for itself.
Republished with permission from Lucian K. Truscott IV
What could go wrong down there in Venezuela? Your Chief Adviser on Everything in the World, Stephen Miller, tells you that power is the only thing you need to get whatever you want. The world will cower in the shadow of your power, says Stephen Miller. He even went on TV on Sunday and explained to Jake Tapper how you did what you did in Venezuela:
“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time. We set the terms and conditions. We have a complete embargo on all of their oil and their ability to do commerce. So, for them to do commerce, they need our permission. For them to be able to run an economy, they need our permission. So the United States is in charge. The United States is running the country.”
See, that’s all it takes. You pick up the phone, you go on Truth Social, you say some stuff in ALL CAPS, and the world bends to your will.
Except for those pesky people who live in the countries from which you want to take the oil, and some of the pesky people who don’t even live in those countries.
Look at what happened in Iraq when Bush took over the country from Saddam Hussein. He hired some big U.S. companies such as KBR and Halliburton and Bechtel to go to Iraq and rebuild the country’s “infrastructure.” The Congress passed a $70 billion supplemental funding bill in November of 2003 to pay for the occupation and rebuilding of Iraq’s infrastructure. I was in Iraq when that bill was passed. A West Point classmate of mine was in charge of USAID in Baghdad. All the infrastructure money was to go through USAID to help rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure so the big U.S. companies could get the oil fields pumping and the oil pipelines running. My friend, the USAID guy, told me all of the rebuilding money was going to the oil infrastructure. Not for sanitation and roads and rail systems and the electrical grid, except as those systems served the Iraqi oil business.
This was not reported in the press. One of the big U.S. companies, the Bechtel Corporation, issued a press release announcing its contract with USAID to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure. The press release was a lie. For one thing, Bechtel was hired with rebuilding oil infrastructure in northern Iraq, but the Americans working for the company got shot at and mortared and attacked by insurgents so much, they pulled out.
Attacks in northern Iraq on pipelines that carried oil from the Kurdish region around Kirkuk to a pipeline that ran north towards Turkey and south towards Baiji and Baghdad took place nightly. The 101st Airborne Division, one brigade of which was stationed near Al-Qayyarah, was tasked with defending the pipeline that ran near the Tigris River. Well, they didn’t have enough soldiers to defend more than 100 miles of pipeline. Insurgents would watch where the U.S. soldiers went on their defensive patrols, then they would go to where the soldiers weren’t, and they would blow up a section of the pipeline, which ran above ground, and was vulnerable to attacks with as simple a weapon as an IED made from a 155 mm Howitzer round, of which there were thousands in Iraq.
The Bechtel guys weren’t working on the infrastructure; the U.S. Army couldn’t defend the oil pipeline from Kirkuk, or the pipeline that ran north and south along the Tigris. So, what was happening? A comparatively small number of Iraqi insurgents were stymying American efforts to “take the oil.”
Click here to read the complete article.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
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