This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Insiders Reveal Oil Role
Bush's first Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was fired in late 2002 after disagreeing with Bush on tax cuts and Iraq, was one of the first insiders to detail the administration's Iraqi oil obsession, tracing it back to the days after Bush's inauguration as Bush's advisers planned how to divvy up Iraq's oil wealth.
O'Neill told author Ron Suskind for his 2004 book, The Price of Loyalty, that Bush's first National Security Council meeting just days into his presidency included a discussion of invading Iraq. O'Neill said even at that early date, the message from Bush was "find a way to do this."
Subsequent disclosures have corroborated O'Neill's account about the importance of oil in Bush's calculation. Though Freedom of Information requests in the United States have been nowhere near as successful as those in London, one did hit pay dirt.
A FOIA lawsuit forced the Commerce Department to fork over some documents of Cheney's Energy Task Force documents from March 2001, including a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries, terminals, and potential areas for exploration. There also was a Pentagon chart titled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," and one chart detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects.
Al Qaeda's Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks gave Bush and Cheney the political opening they needed to turn their designs on Iraqi oil into reality. And the two also began linking Saddam Hussein and his fictional stockpiles of WMD to al Qaeda.
Suskind wrote...
"Documents were being prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency, Rumsfeld's intelligence arm, mapping Iraq's oil fields and exploration areas and listing companies that might be interested in leveraging the precious asset."The desire to 'dissuade' countries from engaging in 'asymmetrical challenges' to the United States ... matched with plans for how the world's second largest oil reserve might be divided among the world's contractors made for an irresistible combination, O'Neill later said."
One oil executive confided to a New York Times reporter a month before the war on Iraq, "For any oil company, being in Iraq is like being a kid in F.A.O. Schwarz."
As the years wore on and the Bush administration struggled to control the violent resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, other prominent Americans began acknowledging the obvious importance of oil in the U.S. calculation for war.
Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan in his 2007 book, The Age of Turbulence wrote: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."
In a talk at Stanford on Oct. 13, 2007, former CENTCOM commander Gen. John Abizaid seconded Greenspan. "Of course it [Iraq] is all about oil," Abizaid said.
Not Exclusively Oil
But the motivation to attack Iraq was not solely oil. Nor was it solely to acquire permanent or "enduring" military bases. Nor was it only to make the Middle East safer for Israel.
In my view it was an amalgam of ALL OF THE ABOVE plus a few others like vengeance and what the Chinese used to call "great-power chauvinism." I am always surprised at those who take the position that just one of these motives was operative and insist on excluding others. Neither life, nor policy making, is that simple.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
