Economist.com | Iraq's oil and Saddam's charm offensive

This article describes that Saddam is busily trying to sell drilling rights to Russian and some European (France, Spain, Italy) oil companies - leaving American oil companies completely out of the game of exploring the 2nd largest oil reserves of the world. American oil companies hope that those contracts are not worth the paper they are written on once Saddam is an ex-dictator. But that seem's to be questionable given similar cases in the past. It may be easier for them if the US is the only invader of Iraq, i.e. if it's not an international action. On the other hand Russian oil companies try to make sure that Putin gives his OK to a US Iraq invasion only if their contracts are still valid in post-Saddam Iraq ...