Statement by Mike Gravel

U.S. SENATOR MIKE GRAVEL
(Democrat, Alaska, 1969-1981)

The nation has awaited breathlessly for the “Oracle of Houston” – James Baker – to advise us how to extricate the nation from the disaster of the ‘Bush War’ in Iraq.

Since the elections on November 7, the carnage in Iraq has only gotten worse, in an ever deepening spiral of civil war and violent retribution and ethnic cleansing. Even so, the Bush Administration stubbornly refuses to accept the election mandate from the people and change course.Instead of the mandate for peace the American people desire, the Iraq Study Group, and their enablers in the Democratic Party Establishment, offer us a future of more of the same, only more so.

Indeed, President Bush’s true personal measure of victory is buying the time needed to complete the production-sharing agreements – the so-called ‘PSA’s – that will lock in the Iraqi Government, and its successors in Baghdad, for long-term agreements of up to 50 years to share oil revenues and restrict the rights of Iraqi governments to enact new laws that might affect the profits of Big Oil.

Blood for Oil. Treasure for Oil. Honor for Oil. That is the measure of the Bush policy, and it’s sadly the same for the report we have just received – from the ‘Prince of Oil’ for the House of Bush.