Author: Stephen Sachs (Page 18 of 25)

Sullivan Obsessed: Ross Douthat wonders: “What the heck is Andrew Sullivan’s deal?” In other words, why does Sullivan’s coverage of Gen. Wesley Clark show an unhealthy obsession with Rhodes Scholars? As in:

“If I were to imagine a parody of what a Rhodes Scholar would come up with in such a moment, I’d be hard pressed to come up with something more perfect. His insistence throughout the piece is on process, process, process.” (“Clark on the War,” Sept. 19)

“To my mind, the most important thing about Clark is that he was a Rhodes Scholar. Almost to a man and woman, they are mega-losers, curriculum-vitae fetishists, with huge ambition and no concept of what to do with it.” (“Clark Again,” Sept. 20)

“Look, [Clark] was a Rhodes Scholar. They suck upwards and kick downwards.” (“Clark’s Joke,” Sept. 24)

“If [Clark]’s genuine – and you have to remember he’s a Rhodes Scholar and they tend to say anything to suck up to whomever they’re talking to, in this case, Republicans…” (“Second Thoughts on Clark,” Sept. 26, 2:01 a.m.)

[From a reader’s letter, excerpted on the main page:] “As for Clark’s debate appearance, and saying the right things on the deficit, etc., that’s what Rhodes Scholars, like Bill C., do the best! It’s part of the suck up technique that got them to the top.” (“Third Thoughts on Clark,” Sept. 26, 1:24 p.m.)

“So how to explain Clark’s exuberant praise so soon? The Rhodes Scholar key: he wanted a job. He still does. And maybe he’ll say anything to get one.” (“Correction,” Sept. 26, 1:41 p.m.)

At first, I thought Sullivan was just using the Rhodes label as a club for beating Clark over the head. But then I read what he wrote on Dec. 9, 2002, well before Clark made moves toward the race:

“[Chesa] Boudin deserves praise for winning a Rhodes (although Rhodes scholars are among the most irritating mediocrities on earth)…”

Strangely, as OxBlogger Josh Chafetz points out, Sullivan has strongly praised other Rhodes Scholars in the past (check out David Adesnik‘s take too). Even more strangely, Sullivan’s bio notes that he “came to the United States on a Harkness Fellowship, the British equivalent of the Rhodes Scholarship.” (One wonders why he would compare himself to a bunch of “irritating mediocrities.”)

Personally, I think that Americans’ stereotypes of Rhodes Scholars have become intertwined with their perceptions of Bill Clinton; either silver-tongued and destined for high office, or slippery brown-nosers with a talent for resume-polishing. But given that Sullivan doesn’t exactly fit the stereotype of a Republican, either, he ought to do better than to deal in cariacatures.

Alternatively, maybe Sullivan is just taking his cues from Mel Gibson, as per this 1995 interview in Playboy Magazine:

GIBSON: … [Bill Clinton] was meant to be the president 30 years ago, if you ask me.

PLAYBOY: He was just 18 then.

GIBSON: Somebody knew then that he would be president now.

PLAYBOY: You really believe that?

GIBSON: I really believe that. He was a Rhodes scholar, right? Just like Bob Hawke. Do you know what a Rhodes scholar is? Cecil Rhodes established the Rhodes scholarship for those young men and women who want to strive for a new world order. Have you heard that before? George Bush? CIA? Really, it’s Marxism, but it just doesn’t want to call itself that. Karl had the right idea, but he was too forward about saying what it was. Get power but don’t admit to it. Do it by stealth. There’s a whole trend of Rhodes scholars who will be politicians around the world.

I call dibs on a black helicopter.

More generous than the Marshall Plan: I’ve been swamped with work for the past few weeks, which is why I haven’t been posting. But when I saw this quote from Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) cited in the NYT, I was simply flabbergasted:

Some have compared the Iraq reconstruction effort to the Marshall Plan that led to the reconstruction of Europe after World War II. In fact, the differences between the current proposal and the Marshall Plan are dramatic. For instance, the Marshall Plan required countries receiving assistance to contribute a matching amount to their own reconstruction, and also included loans that were eventually paid back. Neither of these important requirements are present in the Iraqi reconstruction request of the Administration.

In other words, the Iraq proposal differs from the Marshall Plan in that it’s even more generous.

Levin goes on to say that the Marshall Plan was also the result of eight months of work, and he may be right that an $87 billion grant deserves more than two weeks’ consideration. But does anyone really want to saddle Iraq with even more debt? At the very least, from now on, no one can accuse the Bush administration of trying to do nation-building on the cheap.

Thought for the day: A choice quote from J.R.R. Tolkien, comparing the worlds of fantasy with modern architecture:

Even more alarming: goodness is itself bereft of its proper beauty. In Faërie one can indeed conceive of an ogre who possesses a castle hideous as a nightmare (for the evil of the ogre wills it so), but one cannot conceive of a house built with a good purpose–an inn, a hostel for travellers, the hall of a virtuous and noble king–that is yet sickeningly ugly. At the present day it would be rash to hope to see one that was not–unless it was built before our time.

(From “On Fairy-Stories,” the Andrew Lang Lecture delivered at the University of St. Andrews, March 8, 1939. Reprinted in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien.)

There and back again: Well, I returned from my trip last week, but haven’t had much time to post. Unfortunately, my main email address was on the fritz from about Aug. 7 to Aug. 12; I didn’t notice because I was on vacation and didn’t check it very often. It should be working now, so if you’ve emailed me recently and received an error message in reply, please try again…

Back in mid-August: I’ll be leaving for a summer vacation on Monday, so expect more posts in a little over two weeks!

Joe Lieberman, nativist? I suppose it should warm my heart that a candidate could visit a New Hampshire manufacturing plant and give a speech opposed to protectionism. But I have to say that I didn’t expect “Joe’s Jobs Tour” to involve China-bashing. From the news release:

Lieberman pledged that one of his first priorities a President would be to confront the grave challenge from China, which is bending and breaking the rules of free trade and costing American workers jobs. Lieberman said that, while it is to America’s benefit–and China’s–to maintain a strong relationship, “that relationship has to be based on honesty and fairness. And right now, it’s not.”

Lieberman, continuing his recently-launched “Joe’s Jobs Tour,” cited three flagrant areas of violation that are costing American jobs, which he vowed to combat as President:

Counterfeiting. Intellectual property theft costs American businesses at least $200 billion a year–and China is the main offender. “That’s wrong, and it’s got to stop,” said Lieberman.

Workers’ Rights. Child labor and forced labor are reportedly rampant in China–exploiting Chinese workers and giving their producers an unearned advantage on the world market.

Currency. China ties the value of its currency to the dollar instead of letting it find its fair value in global currency markets, allowing Chinese products to unfairly undercut their competitors on the world market.

“President Bush must know all this is going on, but he is doing nothing about it,” Lieberman said. “I don’t know why, unless it’s his ideological aversion to having our government do anything to intervene in our economy–even if it is to help American manufacturers and workers. For us, Bush’s laissez-faire means “I don’t care.'”

Okay–cracking down on WTO violations and forced labor abroad would be a good thing. Not only would it encourage efficiency (and end an abuse for those unjustly forced into labor camps), it would also quell some of the protectionist pressure at home. And devaluing a currency, by making a country’s exports cheaper, can be a way of pushing economic weakness onto others. But since when is pegging a currency to the dollar an example of unfair competition? Isn’t this what the banks have been encouraging for countries at risk of inflation? (Is Ecuador the next target?)

Maybe China’s currency has gotten lower than it should be, and it’s hurting other countries’ exports as a result. But surely one proximate cause of this imbalance is that we’ve let the dollar slide. And in any case, the countries that get hurt are those competing for China’s export markets, such as Singapore and Thailand–not the US. American producers stand in the same relation to Chinese producers as they did before; China hasn’t devalued its currency with regard to us, for the simple reason that they haven’t changed their peg.

I suppose this might be just some political red meat, thrown to a voting bloc that’s not normally sympathetic to free-traders. But doesn’t it sound just a little odd when a candidate blames job losses on “Chinese currency manipulation”?

A Tale of Two Stories: Jessica Lynch recently returned home to West Virginia, according to a rather sober account by the Associated Press:

Former POW Jessica Lynch returns to West Virginia today, four months after ordeal in Iraq

GAVIN McCORMICK and APRIL VITELLO

Associated Press Writers

Former POW Jessica Lynch is coming home to West Virginia today after nearly four months of recuperation from multiple broken bones and other injuries, and hospital stays in Iraq, Germany and Washington, D.C.

Lynch and her parents will board a Black Hawk helicopter at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington at late morning for a flight to Elizabeth, W.Va. A unit from the Parkersburg National Guard, which includes Lynch’s cousin, Dan Little, will bring her home.

Little, who has spoken twice with Lynch in the past week, said her spirits have been buoyed by the imminent homecoming.

A couple of pretty standard paragraphs–who, what, where, when, etc. Compare with this, however, the first three paragraphs of the same story as reported by Deanna Wrenn of Reuters:

Hyped hero Jessica Lynch due home

By Deanna Wrenn

PALESTINE, West, Virginia [sic.] (Reuters) – Jessica Lynch, the wounded Army private whose ordeal in Iraq was hyped into a media fiction of U.S. heroism, is set for an emotional homecoming today in a rural West Virginia community bristling with flags, yellow ribbons and TV news trucks.

But when the 20-year-old supply clerk arrives by Blackhawk helicopter to the embrace of family and friends, media critics say the TV cameras will not show the return of an injured soldier so much as a reality-TV drama co-produced by U.S. government propaganda and credulous reporters.

“It no longer matters in America whether something is true or false. The population has been conditioned to accept anything: sentimental stories, lies, atomic bomb threats,” said John MacArthur, the publisher of Harper’s magazine.

Now, which of these accounts sounds to you like the product of the politicized news media? If you ask me, the “media fiction of U.S. heroism” has a decidedly editorial ring to it. Besides, what do we know to be fictional about the case of Jessica Lynch? As the Washington Post has admitted (however reluctantly), the initial reports of her fighting back at her captors were incorrect. Moreover, the soldiers who rescued her did not take fire from the hospital itself. However, her rescuers were fired upon from elsewhere in the hospital grounds, and therefore claims that the rescue was purposefully dramatized (or that the soldiers were firing blanks) are mistaken. Although it’s always possible that the initial stories were the result of deliberate misinformation, it’s just as possible that they resulted from simple human error. And in any case, does this really justify a judgment that the entire episode was a “media fiction”?

(At the very least, won’t the footage of her return home be true to life? Is Reuters really claiming that “the embrace of family and friends” is “a reality-TV drama co-produced by U.S. government propaganda”?)

The real concern with Reuters’ coverage is its willingness to cede absolute editorial authority to such “media critics” as Harper’s publisher John MacArthur or U. Penn. professor Carolyn Marvin. In the article, MacArthur and Marvin are allowed to draw extroardinarily vast conclusions–“The failure here,” says Marvin, “was that the news media got to thinking the government could be trusted to reflect reality”–without a single quote in response. Reuters’ only attempt at soliciting such a response was the following:

A spokesman for U.S. Central Command in Florida had no comment when asked about assertions that the heroism tale was government propaganda.

Well, duh. If I were asked point-blank whether my website were full of government propaganda, I’d probably refuse to comment too. If Reuters’ sources were alleging that the rescue was staged, couldn’t it at least have cited some of the government’s earlier denials?

This isn’t the first time Reuters has given MacArthur a platform to spout his views unchallenged. Back in March, he had an entire article to himself:

Media Accused of Aiding U.S. Propaganda

David Morgan – Reuters

2 May 2003

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – It is one of the most famous images of the war in Iraq — a U.S. soldier scaling a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and draping the Stars and Stripes over the black metal visage of the ousted despot.

But for Harper’s magazine publisher John MacArthur, that same image of U.S. military victory is also indicative of a propaganda campaign being waged by the Bush administration.

“It was absolutely a photo-op created for (U.S. President George W.) Bush’s re-election campaign commercials,” MacArthur said in an interview. “CNN, MSNBC and Fox swallowed it whole.”

In 1992, MacArthur wrote “Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War,” a withering critique of government and media actions that he says misled the public after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

In MacArthur’s opinion, little has changed during the latest Iraq war, prompting him to begin work on an updated edition of “Second Front”. U.S. government public relations specialists are still concocting bogus stories to serve government interests, he says, and credulous journalists stand ready to swallow it up…

As Harper’s publisher, MacArthur oversees a 153-year-old political and literary magazine he helped save from financial ruin 20 years ago with money from the foundation named after his billionaire grandparents, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur.

While MacArthur accuses news outlets generally of avoiding opposition stands, his own magazine has been vitriolic towards Bush, describing the president in its May issue as a leader who “counts his ignorance as a virtue and regards his lack of curiosity as a sign of moral strength.”

On what basis does MacArthur believe that the fall of the statue was staged? The now-debunked claim that it was manipulated by CNN? Unless MacArthur has some special sources in Iraq we haven’t heard of–and which the Reuters report doesn’t reveal–there’s no evidence whatsoever to support his allegations. Yet the government’s response is given only two perfunctory paragraphs:

White House spokesman Scott McClellan denied the existence of any administration propaganda campaign and predicted the American public would reject such notions as ridiculous.

A Pentagon spokesman also denied high-level planning in the appearance of the American flag in Baghdad. “It sure looked spontaneous to me,” said Marine Lieutenant Colonel Mike Humm.

Given that the clear implication of MacArthur’s statements is that some of the most memorable images of the entire war represent a fraud, one would expect the article to take a somewhat skeptical approach. But MacArthur is never challenged on this, or on any other of his pronouncements (e.g., “On the propaganda side, the New York Times is more responsible for making the case for war than any other newspaper or any other news organisation”). Because he’s a “media critic,” he’s immune.

I find this approach to news reporting simply mind-boggling. Anyone who writes about public affairs can be a “media critic” if necessary. What’s more, this critic happens to be the publisher of a political magazine. If William Randolph Hearst were attacking his competitors as promoting Spanish propaganda, do you think Reuters would give him a pass?

Just because someone criticizes the media doesn’t mean that they don’t have their own set of political assumptions that should be tested. For instance, it might interest the reader to know that Professor Marvin signed a strongly-worded anti-war statement back in November. (She’s also co-written a rather bizarre piece on the totemic nature of sacrifice in war, with reflections on Iraq (“During the Persian Gulf war, notable for the ephemerality of its unifying effect, only 147 Americans died, a poor totem sacrifice”) and Christianity (“Those who worship the son who died at the heavenly father’s command revere the totem principle, that only our own god has the right to kill our own, just as surely as those who revere the soldier son, who dies at the command of patriarchal generals”).) This doesn’t disqualify her as a commentator, but Reuters considers her political views entirely irrelevant to the story. After all, she’s a media critic; she has to be objective…

Worst of all, Deanna Wrenn has now come forward to say that she didn’t even write the piece (link via Volokh):

Here’s what I sent last week to Reuters, a British news agency that compiles news reports from all over the world:

“ELIZABETH — In this small county seat with just 995 residents, the girl everyone calls Jessi is a true heroine — even if reports vary about Pfc. Jessica Lynch and her ordeal in Iraq.

” ‘I think there’s a lot of false information about her story,’ said Amber Spencer, a clerk at the town’s convenience store.

“Palestine resident J.T. O’Rock was hanging an American flag and yellow ribbon on his storefront in Elizabeth in preparation for Lynch’s return.

“Like many residents here, he considers Lynch a heroine, even if newspaper and TV reports say her story wasn’t the same one that originally attracted movie and book deals.”

What I typed and filed for Reuters last week goes on in that vein. They asked me if they could use my byline, which I had typed at the beginning of the story I sent, and I said that would be no problem….

I’m not sure what reporter or editor actually wrote the story that has my byline attached.

Reuters did use one quote from the story I wrote last week in the final paragraphs of one of their earliest Lynch stories, which was sent out for publication early Tuesday morning.

By Tuesday afternoon, the quote was reduced to one sentence. Still, my byline appeared.

By Tuesday night, the quote was gone and Reuters was siphoning information from television reports. The beginning of the story was toned down. The part about “media fiction” was removed. But even then, my byline remained.

I understand that news wire services often edit, add, remove or write new leads for stories. What amazed me was that a story could have my byline on it when I contributed only a few sentences at the end — and in later versions I didn’t contribute anything at all.

The stories contained apparently fresh material attributed to sources I did not interview.

Maybe that’s the way that wire service works.

I would like to make it abundantly clear that somebody at Reuters wrote the story, not me….

Apparently, when Reuters asked me last week if they could use my byline, they weren’t talking about the story I wrote for them last week. They were talking about a story I never wrote.

That was the misunderstanding.

By the way, I asked Reuters to remove my byline. They didn’t….

So which editor at Reuters rewrote the story without changing the byline? Who’s playing the editorial version of Jayson Blair? Who’s going to get fired for this? Sounds like we need a media critic on the case.

Putting Away the Bad Guys: As the proud owner of an Internet domain and a customer of Register.com, I was surprised to find in the mail the other day a “Domain Name Expiration Notice” from an outfit called “Domain Registry of America” (DROA). The letter stated that “You must renew your domain name to retain exclusive rights to it on the Web,” warning that “Failure to renew your domain name … may result in a loss of your online identity.” To prevent this, I should “transfer and renew” my domain name with DROA–which, although the letter didn’t explicitly say so, would effectively switch my business to them and away from Register.com. The letter also requested a reply by August, even though my domain name won’t expire until December.

In other words, the letter looked like a fraud. It also appeared to violate a preliminary injunction issued in December by the Southern District of New York (Register.com, Inc., v. Domain Registry of America, Inc., 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24795 (2002)), which enjoined the defendants from “Representing or committing any act which is calculated to or likely to cause third parties to believe that DROA is their existing Internet domain name registrar or registration service provider if that is not in fact the case” or “Falsely describing or misrepresenting the status or functionality of a third-party’s Internet domain name registration or the information/ data associated therewith.”

The opinion accompanying the injunction was interesting reading. As you might have expected, the people behind DROA have a slightly shady background:

Finally, several of defendants’ managers have questionable pasts. Alan Benlolo, previously described by Klemann as “management of DROA,” see Sept. 26, 2002 Klemann Decl. P 11 and Ex. F, was convicted of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud in Pennsylvania in 1997, subsequently deported to Canada in 1999, and found liable of criminal securities fraud during a Securities and Exchange Commission action in 2000. See Hirschler Oct. 2, 2002 Reply Decl. Ex. L. Alan Benlolo and two others, including Elliot Benlolo, were arrested by Canadian authorities in 2001 for making false or misleading representations in deceptive mailers for an Internet business directory and Peter Kuryliw was convicted in 2002 on similar charges. See id. J-K. Most recently, company President Klemann was charged criminally under Canada’s Competition Act, along with Domain Registry’s predecessor corporation “Internet Registry of Canada,” because of that company’s misleading direct mail solicitations. See App. to Pl’s. Nov. 15, 2002 Mem. of Law.

So, having received their letter, I did what any responsible citizen would do; I filed a mail fraud complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and sent a copy to Register.com to help with the lawsuit.

Stealing bread to feed your family is one thing, but it’s pretty hard to commit mail fraud without knowing that you’re doing something wrong. I hope these guys get what they deserve.

Responsibility and the “Body Count.” According to the “Iraq Body Count” project, between 6,073 and 7,782 civilians have been killed by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. As Josh Chafetz has ably argued, the methodology of the “Body Count” project is highly suspect, and there’s good reason to think that considerably fewer civilians were killed in allied military actions.

But there’s something deeper at issue here. I had naively assumed that these were deaths for which the U.S. and its allies bore some direct measure of responsibility–or, as the website itself put it, “media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq resulting directly from military actions by the USA and its allies in 2003.”

As it turns out, I was wrong. Just look at incident “x118,” on July 20, in which an Iraqi civilian was killed “near Hillah” in an attack on a U.N. convoy. Quoth the Associated Press:

Iraq’s daily barrage of attacks killed two more American soldiers and an Iraqi employee of a U.N.-affiliated relief agency Sunday…

In another troubling sign, a two-car convoy carrying members of the International Organization for Migration were ambushed near the southern city of Hilla when a pickup truck pulled up alongside one car and opened fire.

The car collided with a bus. Personnel in a World Health Organization convoy traveling behind the IOM vehicles treated three injured and took the Iraqi driver to a hospital, where he died, said Omer Mekki, the WHO deputy director in Iraq.

Both convoys were clearly marked as U.N. vehicles.

“We’re a bit shaken. Everybody is a bit shocked,” said Mekki. “But when we were recruited and we came to Iraq, we knew there were risks. An incident like this is not unexpected.

In other words, when Ba’athist thugs kill an innocent civilian driving a clearly marked U.N. vehicle, that “a civilian death resulting directly from military actions by the USA and its allies.” This is a somewhat different interpretation of “resulting directly” than I’m used to. If anything, the death of this Iraqi should be seen as one of the last crimes of Saddam Hussein and his followers, rather than an incident of “collateral damage” in a U.S. operation.

Of course, I can understand why the U.S. might be held responsible for the reasonably foreseeable actions of others that result from American actions. But it’s hard to say what, precisely, is foreseeable about the death of this driver. And on any view of the world that pays attention to what one does, and not merely what its consequences are, there comes a point where the actions of others are simply not one’s fault. If Saddam were to become so disheartened by losing power that he started spraying a crowded room with bullets, it’s hard to identify a basis on which his actions could be said to have “directly resulted” from America’s actions. For if the responsibility does not lie on his shoulders, the same argument could be employed to search for the causal factors behind America’s actions, and the ultimate causes behind those factors, and so on ad infinitum–removing responsibility from everyone, not just the Ba’athists. At some point, a murder is simply the responsibility of the person who did it.

Perhaps the “Body Count” project takes a more consequentialist or utilitarian view of things; perhaps we should hold the U.S. responsible for all the civilian deaths in Iraq that would not have occured but for the military intervention. In this case, the inclusion of a man who was killed by Ba’athist guerillas would make sense; had the U.S. not invaded, that U.N. convoy wouldn’t have been there to be attacked, the driver wouldn’t have been hit, and the death would have been avoided. But such a total is meaningless from a consequentialist standpoint unless we subtract away all the people who would have been killed, but for military intervention. For instance, if airbags were the but-for cause of 5 deaths per year, but were also the but-for reason why 500 people per year survive car crashes, it would be absurd for a utilitarian to describe them as lethal as opposed to life-saving. So how many lives did the invasion save? How many people would have been tortured, or “disappeared,” or kept hidden in a wall if Saddam had been allowed to stay in power? What would these guerillas have been up to if they had still exercised absolute power over their fellow citizens, instead of running from the occupation authority and taking occasional pot shots at relief agencies? Isn’t any utilitarian calculation of the but-for deaths worse than irrelevant without some attempt at comparison to the but-for lives saved?

If the “Body Count” project is to include all the evil consequences of Saddam’s fall from power, it cannot ignore the great good that this fall represents. In the absence of military intervention, what would have been necessary to replace Saddam’s regime? Think about the mass graves, the tens and hundreds of thousands of deaths that followed the abortive 1991 uprising. If, instead of the invasion, Iraq had undergone a popular revolution that overthrew Saddam’s government at the cost of roughly 8,000 lives, we’d all be putting on party hats. The revolutionaries might have endured that many casualties in liberating a few square blocks of Basra. And as I’ve argued before, such a revolution would have had a far worse chance of promoting an Iraqi democracy over the long run.

Personally, I disagree with the U.S. military’s decision not to attempt an official count; the public has a legitimate interest in assessing the consequences of our policies, as well as measuring how careful and effective our troops have been. And as the example of the “Body Count” shows, the attempts to fill the gap may be based on methods–and moral assumptions–that are deeply flawed.

This war is all about oil… When I mentioned this article in conversation the other day, no one else had seen it–so I thought I’d post it here. In the first oil sales after the invasion, the big winner was none other than France. Turkey, which famously denied U.S. troops access to its bases before the war, also received a significant piece of the action from Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organization. The June 13 Times of London carried the headline “UK misses out as Total gets Iraq oil“:

TOTAL, the French oil company, has been awarded a large share in the first sale of Iraqi oil since the recent war.

Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organisation (Somo) has confounded expectations by its decision to include only one US company, Chevron Texaco, and not a single British company among the six that have won a share of the ten million barrels on offer.

The tender, informally announced last week by the Iraqi oil company, drew a huge response, with 52 companies making bids for the eight million barrels of Kirkuk oil stored in Turkey and two million barrels of Basra Light.

Oil traders had speculated that American companies, excluded from Iraq for over a decade by Saddam Hussein’s edict, would be high on the list of buyers from a Somo purged of Saddam’s cronies.

In the end, the list includes Repsol and Cepsa, the Spanish companies, and ENI, the Italian oil major. Each is believed to have been awarded one million barrels of oil. Tupras, the Turkish oil company may have taken as much as three million of the Kirkuk barrels, which are already in storage at the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

Total has been awarded two million barrels of Kirkuk crude, a decision that will reassure the French company that it is not being shunned in a post-Saddam Iraq.

ChevronTexaco is to take the entire stock of Basra Light.

The absence of British companies and weak US presence is a pointer to the oil market that Somo is not taking instructions from its American advisers but is instead taking a pragmatic approach to business.

The tender was initially in confusion as oil traders struggled to contact Somo, which had no working phones or computer links. One said that logistics might have been the key -those companies able to supply tankers at short notice may have been preferred.

The second block of oil sales included such eager hawks as the Swiss and the Dutch. From the July 9 edition of International Oil Daily (no link):

European supermajors BP and Royal Dutch/Shell on Wednesday were confirmed as buyers of postwar Iraqi oil when Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organization announced the official results of its latest tender to sell 8 million barrels of Basrah Light crude.

Shell and BP were awarded 2 million barrels each of Jul. 15-31 loading Basrah Light, while US major ChevronTexaco and Swiss-based trader Taurus were awarded the other two cargoes.

It should be added, however, that the majority of the second block of sales will be refined in the U.S.:

Initial indications that Petrobras won one of the cargoes proved to be incorrect. Industry sources said traders at the Brazilian state concern had believed that the company, a regular buyer of Iraqi oil before the war, was successful with what it considered a “very aggressive bid” (IOD Jul.9,p1). BP is scheduled to load on Jul.13-15. It is expected to take its cargo to the US West Coast, though some traders speculated that the company would be willing to sell the cargo on the US Gulf Coast if the price was right. ChevronTexaco, which is to load its cargo between Jul. 20 and Jul. 23, will refine its barrels on the US West Coast, a company source said.

Taurus, the first non-refiner to buy postwar Iraqi oil, plans to flog its lot on the US Gulf market, while Shell is keeping its options open, industry sources said. The Anglo-Dutch giant has yet to fix a ship for its Jul. 26-28 loading dates and may even opt to switch destinations from Europe to the US Gulf provided Somo approves.

But it this appears to be a decision being made in large part on price. I don’t see how a Swiss company’s decision to have oil refined in the United States would represent the illegitimate spoils of an invasion. Now, if this war is all about oil refining…