Last night, President Barack Obama announced that he was authorizing American airtstrikes in Iraq. He described
his intervention as a “humanitarian effort to help save thousands of
Iraqi civilians who are trapped on a mountain” and as an effort “to
protect our American personnel.” One word that he didn’t mention is
“oil,” but it lies near the center of American motives for intervention.
The United States is conducting airdrops to aid the Yazidis who have fled the advance of Islamic State militants, but it is conducting airstrikes around Erbil, which is to the west. There are American consular personnel in Erbil, but they could be evacuated if necessary. What Obama left unsaid was that Erbil, a city of 1.5 million, is the capital of the Kurdish regional government and the administrative center of its oil industry, which accounts for about a quarter of Iraq’s oil. The Kurds claim that if they were to become an independent state, they would have the ninth-largest oil reserves in the world. And oil wells are near Erbil.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119035/us-attack-islamic-militants-all-about-iraqs-oil
The United States is conducting airdrops to aid the Yazidis who have fled the advance of Islamic State militants, but it is conducting airstrikes around Erbil, which is to the west. There are American consular personnel in Erbil, but they could be evacuated if necessary. What Obama left unsaid was that Erbil, a city of 1.5 million, is the capital of the Kurdish regional government and the administrative center of its oil industry, which accounts for about a quarter of Iraq’s oil. The Kurds claim that if they were to become an independent state, they would have the ninth-largest oil reserves in the world. And oil wells are near Erbil.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119035/us-attack-islamic-militants-all-about-iraqs-oil
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