President Trump has issued a statement extending the May 22, 2003 National Emergency created by President Bush on the situation in Iraq. Trump’s statement cited the “unusual and extraordinary threat” posed by Iraqi instability.
The Bush emergency, Executive Order 13303, was meant to facilitate Iraqi reconstruction in theory. In practice, it gave US oil companies blanket immunity from lawsuits related to selling Iraqi oil.
This was criticized as Bush’s attempt to facilitate the US taking Iraqi oil after the invasion and occupation. That’s very on-brand for Trump too, so 17 years later he is just going to kick the state of emergency down the road.
Iraqi instability certainly means a very different thing in 2020 than it did in 2003, and trying to encourage Iraqi oil investment makes a lot less sense now than it did then. With the US pushing Iraq and other nations to cut oil production to shore up prices, its highly unlikely any company wants to invest heavily in Iraq, even if they get legal immunity.
“unusual and extraordinary threat” of instability – of course, they are instable – we have bombed the crap out of them for 17 some years. What did DC expect – Switzerland?
that minor bombing only wiped out some old infrastructure that need to be torn down anyway. nary a single citizen was injured by us in all 17 years. what a bunch of cry babies over there. didn’t they all duck and cover correctly.
Maybe you should go over there and show em how.
ROFL. Yeah, some really old infrastructure…
https://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/nineveh/
30 years.
Government – always coming up with “solutions” to fix the problems created by the last “solution.” Government is the greatest evil ever created by man.
Forever staying to fix what they broke so it stays broke…