Hey QT3 Lawyers!!!: Executive Order re: Iraqi oil

[chumpface]

From Plastic.com:

http://www.plastic.com/article.html;sid=03/08/10/18332478;cmt=6

"Executive Order 13303, which has received remarkably little press, and which was signed into law by our brave president just over two months ago, is rather remarkable in its scope," The Real Dr Evil writes. "It states:
"Judicial process[es]" are "prohibited and shall be deemed null and void" with regards to "all Iraqi oil...interests...that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons."
According to Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project, a Democratic think tank:
"[The order] cancels the concept of corporate accountability and abandons the rule of law . . . (It) is a blank cheque for corporate anarchy. Its sweeping, unqualified language places the industry above domestic and international law for anything related to commerce in Iraqi oil."


Comments or thoughts from the lawyers on QT3?

[mdowdle]

I hate Bush with a passion, but I think Devine exaggerates the case. The point of the order appeas to be to prevent persons with real or threated legal claims against Iraq from using those claims or threats to seize the Iraqi oil being sold by the Iraqi Development Fund. Given that America's efforts to restore civil authority there are supposed to be funded primarily from this fund, and given the fact that it would probably not be too difficult for the American bar to find a federal judge somewhere willing to seize Iraqi oil to preserve these claims, the order seems reasonable. In fact, FRD issued a similar order with regards to Pre-Revolutionary Russian property in the US in the 1930s.

[Brad Grenz]

There's a corosponding UN resolution as well, I believe. The Executive order is broader in scope, but we are a litigious society. People try to spin this as some sort of blank check protection for America's oil industry, which is absurd given the limiting nature of the actual order.

Also, you can't feel to good about quotes so obviously edited, just from the curious inclusion of a number of "...."s in the text. I'm sure the omitted words had not utility and their omission in no way colors the meaning of the passage.

[Jason McCullough]

It's a non-event. If you click through and read the texts, 13290 seizes all Iraqi domestic assets because we're at war with 'em, and 13303 keeps all parties (expatriates, people with human rights judgements against Saddam, American companies whose contracts Saddam voided, blah, blah, blah) from suing to get the seized assets.

The Plastic objections are nonsense; it's just a wartime measure to keep everyone from making off with Iraq's seized assets.

[Brad Grenz]

If me and Jaon can agree on this, then we should talk about something else.

Umm... I'm thinking about having my radiator flushed next time I get my oil changed. Any thoughts?

[Brian Koontz]

If me and Jaon can agree on this, then we should talk about something else.

Next topic of conversation!... Hell has frozen over!

[Tyjenks]

Umm... I'm thinking about having my radiator flushed next time I get my oil changed. Any thoughts?

I would just wait and replace it when it starts to leak. I think the Democrats are about to have to do that with Gore as well.