Iraqis come to US to protest oil theft law

The Iraqis are fighting a Bush war crime, and most Democrats in Congress are looking the other way.

If Bush succeeds in getting this Hydrocarbon Law passed, it will not only prove to Iraqis and the Arab world that we went there to steal their oil and earn decades more hatred, it will also mean that our troops have to stay to enforce the law, which is what Bush meant when he said stay like we did in Korea.

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_6072029?nclick_check=1

Iraqi unions fight to keep oil out of corporate hands
By David Bacon
Article Launched: 06/06/2007 01:32:14 AM PDT

The Bush administration calls the Iraq occupation an exercise in democracy building. Yet from the beginning, many of the Iraqis who want democracy most are treated as its enemies - Iraq's unions. Iraq has a long labor history. Union activists, banned and jailed under the British and its puppet monarchy, organized a labor movement that was the admiration of the Arab world when Iraq became independent after 1958. Saddam Hussein later drove its leaders underground, killing and jailing the ones he could catch.

When Saddam fell, Iraqi unionists came out of prison, up from underground and back from exile, determined to rebuild their labor movement. Miraculously, in the midst of war and bombings, they did. The oil workers union in the south is now one of the largest organizations in Iraq, with thousands of members on the rigs, pipelines and refineries. The electrical workers union is the first national labor organization headed by a woman, Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein.

Together with other unions in railroads, hotels, ports, schools and factories, they've gone on strike, held elections, won wage increases, and made democracy a living reality. Yet the Bush administration, and the Baghdad government it controls, has outlawed collective bargaining, impounded union funds and turned its back (or worse) on a wave of assassinations of Iraqi union leaders.

President Bush doesn't believe what he preaches. He says he wants democracy, yet he will not accept the one political demand that unites Iraqis above all others: They want the country's oil (and its electrical power stations, ports and other key facilities) to remain in public hands. The fact that Iraqi unions are the strongest voice demanding this makes them anathema. Selling the oil off to large corporations is far more important to the Bush administration than a paper commitment to the democratic process.

I'm to late to be the 5th recommend. This is a hella important story. I hope it doesn't sink. I'm bookmarking it.