This morning’s IraqSlogger points out a story by the UPI’s energy correspondent Ben Lando, about the Iraq Oil Law, which has been stalled in Parliament, somewhere between cabinet approval and committee consideration. This is the law governing the giveaway of about 70% of future profits from the production and sale of Iraq’s mineral resources to Western oil companies. The law, which in its original form was written in English in Washington and not in Iraq, also provides a form of revenue sharing among the country’s 18 provinces – in fact the primary revenue source for the country, since the supply of US-provided weapons is expected to be limited in the future. A country cannot survive on the sale of rifles in the black market. Many people understand that it was one of the prime reasons the US invaded and conquered Iraq.

The Bush administration has focused on Iraq's oil since at least 2001. Remodeling the nationalized oil sector has been part of the U.S. occupation's effort to rework Iraq's economy overall. Washington has pushed the oil law because it views it as legislative and economic progress. And President Bush, as well as Congress, included the oil law as a benchmark for Iraq's government, supposedly marking success and reconciliation.[emph added]

Perhaps unsurprisingly many Iraqis seem to be strongly against this law, considering the destruction of much of their country’s infrastructure, including no more than one or two hours per day electricity, raw sewage overflowing in the streets, over 2 million internal refugees and another 2 million that have fled the country, something around 1 million killed between “shock and awe,” religious and sectarian killings and ethnic cleansing to have been a poor trade for being rid of Saddam Hussein and getting foreign management of their nation’s oil.

The law languished for months before Prime Minster Maliki’s cabinet, despite frequent prodding by Americans, including Mr Bu$h, Mr Cheney, Ms Rice, Asst Secretary of State John Negroponte, Defense Secretary Gates, and Generals Abizaid, Casey, Petraeus and probably several others. Mr Maliki got it out of cabinet just before several of his ministers resigned, and it arrived in the legislature just in time to be tabled before their August vacation, lasting from July 28th to somewhere around September 4th.

Many groups of Iraqis who are knowledgeable about the industry have spoken out against the law, including a coterie of Iraqi oil professionals, the oil workers’ union, and quite a few government ministers, legislators, and a number of political parties, as well as several different groups of insurgents, resisters, dead enders, Ba’athists, terrorists, and groups controlled by the evil Iranians.

United Press International has found a recurring theme over recent months during coverage of the Iraq oil law: creating a law governing the bloodline to Iraq's economy should be less of a priority than stopping the bloodletting of Iraq's citizens.

"There is no hurry whatsoever," said Muhammad-Ali Zainy, senior energy economist and analyst at the London-based Center for Global Energy Studies. "Iraq really, now, is bleeding and losing its people in this horrible way and there is terrorism and all that and lack of the provisional basic services.

"Everything bad, there is in Iraq. Why should the government leave all these urgent needs to be addressed and then go to the hydrocarbon law?"

Most experts familiar with the national security situation agree that the US and Iraqi armies, and the Iraq National Police would not be able to effectively protect the various oil fields, production sites, refineries and pipelines against sabotage. Ironically, the nation that sits on an ocean of oil, containing at least 15% of the world’s proven reserves, has had to raise the retail cost of gasoline several times during the US occupation. This is caused at least in part because electricity supply has been so uncertain, and the pipelines disrupted so many times, that gasoline has to be imported from Kuwait by HalliCheneyBurton, at ruinous costs paid by the US taxpayer. Gasoline has become so scarce and so expensive in Iraq that people must wait online for up to nine hours in order to buy some.

"There are certain priorities that one must look at," said former Iraq Oil Minister Issam al-Chalabi, now living in Amman, Jordan. "The situation is so chaotic, people there -- nobody can even walk on the streets. Forget about what you've been told by the press, by the media, by the government, by the United States.

"But we're talking about what the people are seeing with their own eyes in a country that people are afraid to send their children to school, people are afraid to go to work, hundreds of Iraqis are being killed every day.

"What's so important about issuing a law that cannot even be implemented?" Chalabi asked.

He is a leader in a coalition of Iraqi oil, economic and legal experts opposing the current manifestation of the law.

In some undisclosed location Mr Cheney must be sobbing in frustration.