On 11/30/05, Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >That Cheney did not meet with the oil company executives before the > >war began to divvy up oil contracts for Iraq? > > I don't think that happened.
Responding to this point. The nationally praised Project Censored called this one of the top under-reported stories. (#8) Secrets of Cheney's Energy Task Force Come to Light JUDICIAL WATCH, July 17,2003 Title: Cheney Energy Task Force Documents Feature Map of Iraqi Oilfields Author: Judicial Watch staff FOREIGN POLICY IN FOCUS, January 2004 Title: "Bush-Cheney Energy Strategy:Procuring the Rest of the World's Oil" Author: Michael Klare Documents turned over in the summer of 2003 by the Commerce Department as a result of the Sierra Club's and Judicial Watch's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as two charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts." The documents, dated March 2001, also feature maps of Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates oilfields, pipelines, refineries and tanker terminals. There are supporting charts with details of the major oil and gas development projects in each country that provide information on the project's costs, capacity, oil company and status or completion date. Documented plans of occupation and exploitation predating September 11 confirm heightened suspicion that U.S. policy is driven by the dictates of the energy industry. According to Judicial Watch President, Tom Fitton, "These documents show the importance of the Energy Task Force and why its operations should be open to the public." When first assuming office in early 2001, President Bush's top foreign policy priority was not to prevent terrorism or to curb the spread of weapons of mass destruction—or any of the other goals he espoused later that year following 9-11. Rather, it was to increase the flow of petroleum from suppliers abroad to U.S. markets. In the months before he became president, the United States had experienced severe oil and natural gas shortages in many parts of the country, along with periodic electrical power blackouts in California. In addition, oil imports rose to more than 50% of total consumption for the first time in history, provoking great anxiety about the security of the country's long-term energy supply. Bush asserted that addressing the nation's "energy crisis" was his most important task as president. The energy turmoil of 2000-01 prompted Bush to establish a task force charged with developing a long-range plan to meet U.S. energy requirements. With the advice of his close friend and largest campaign contributor, Enron CEO, Ken Lay, Bush picked Vice President Dick Cheney, former Halliburton CEO, to head this group. In 2001 the Task Force formulated the National Energy Policy (NEP), or Cheney Report, bypassing possibilities for energy independence and reduced oil consumption with a declaration of ambitions to establish new sources of oil. They recommend also the books "Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency", "Out of Gas," by David Goodstein (W.W. Norton); "The End of Oil," by Paul Roberts (Houghton Mifflin); and "The Party's Over," by Richard Heinberg (New Society Publishers). FYI - Here are several of the oil maps used in Cheney's secret energy meeting with oil company executives. http://www.judicialwatch.org/071703.c_.shtml Judicial Watch is an independent organization that has gone after both democrats and republicans quite hard in exposing matters classified secret or that it considers unethical.. It is a conservative leaning organization that exists to expose cover ups and what it considers ethical breaches. http://www.judicialwatch.org/victories.shtml. Those are high level independent sources but how about a very high official in the Bush administration? In October former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson dropped a bombshell. "What I saw," he said, discussing the inner workings of the Bush administration and its run-up to war, "was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made." For such a high-level official to speak so bluntly shocked many. To hear these charges leveled at the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense shocked perhaps even more. Those who haven't been paying close enough attention these last five years, that is. More illuminating was when Wilkerson spoke to one of the dark, and largely hidden secrets of the Bush administration. He discussed earlier "policy planning about actually mounting an operation to take the oilfields in the Middle East." While Wilkerson didn't mention the specific timing of these policy planning discussions, he didn't really have to. Many of you will remember the first Bush administration fighting like the devil to withhold information around Cheney's secret closed-door energy policy meetings. Dubbed the "Energy Task Force," Bush tasked Cheney with the duty of establishing a comprehensive U.S. energy policy merely nine days after taking office in 2001. How about another high level administration official? Revelations by former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill inform us that the new administration started planning for an invasion of Iraq almost immediately. According to O'Neill, Iraq was "Topic A" at the very first meeting of the Bush National Security Council, just ten days after the inauguration. "It was about finding a way to do it," reports O'Neill, "That was the tone of the President, saying 'Go find me a way to do this.'" Just a few weeks later, the hastily-organized National Energy Policy Development Group, chaired by Vice President Cheney, which I mentioned above, studied the challenge posed by French, Russian and other companies. One of the documents produced by the Cheney group, made public after a long court case, is a map of Iraq showing its major oil fields and a two-page list of "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts." The list showed more than 40 companies from 30 countries with projects agreed or under discussion, but not a single US or UK deal. The list included agreements or discussions with companies from Germany, India, Italy, Canada, Indonesia, Japan and other nations, along with the well-known French, Russian and Chinese deals. The Cheney Group's report, released in May, warned ominously of US oil shortfalls that might "undermine our economy, our standard of living, our national security." How about the BBC? BBC March 17, 2005 The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed. Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protestors claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered. In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists." "Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants. Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks" of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US. An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant Falah Aljibury says he took part in the secret meetings in California, Washington and the Middle East. He described a State Department plan for a forced coup d'etat. Mr. Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed potential successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration. Secret sell-off plan The industry-favored plan was pushed aside by yet another secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan, crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas. The sell-off was given the green light in a secret meeting in London headed by Ahmed Chalabi shortly after the US entered Baghdad, according to Robert Ebel. Mr. Ebel, a former Energy and CIA oil analyst, now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, flew to the London meeting, he told Newsnight, at the request of the State Department. Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's "back-channel" to Saddam, claims that plans to sell off Iraq's oil, pushed by the US-installed Governing Council in 2003, helped instigate the insurgency and attacks on US and British occupying forces. "Insurgents used this, saying, 'Look, you're losing your country, your losing your resources to a bunch of wealthy billionaires who want to take you over and make your life miserable," said Mr Aljibury from his home near San Francisco. "We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, pipelines, built on the premise that privatization is coming." Privatization blocked by industry Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US Government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme. Mr Carroll told us he made it clear to Paul Bremer, the US occupation chief who arrived in Iraq in May 2003, that: "There was to be no privatization of Iraqi oil resources or facilities while I was involved." The chosen successor to Mr Carroll, a Conoco Oil executive, ordered up a new plan for a state oil company preferred by the industry. Ari Cohen, of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation, told Newsnight that an opportunity had been missed to privatize Iraq's oil fields. He advocated the plan as a means to help the US defeat Opec, and said America should have gone ahead with what he called a "no-brainer" decision. Mr Carroll hit back, telling Newsnight, "I would agree with that statement. To privatize would be a no-brainer. It would only be thought about by someone with no brain." New plans, obtained from the State Department by Newsnight and Harper's Magazine under the US Freedom of Information Act, called for creation of a state-owned oil company favored by the US oil industry. It was completed in January 2004, Harper's discovered, under the guidance of Amy Jaffe of the James Baker Institute in Texas. Former US Secretary of State Baker is now an attorney. His law firm, Baker Botts, is representing ExxonMobil and the Saudi Arabian government. -- Gary Denton http://www.apollocon.org June 23-25, 2006 "The budget should be balanced; the treasury should be refilled; public debt should be reduced; and the arrogance of public officials should be controlled." -Cicero. 106-43 B.C. Easter Lemming Liberal News Digest - http://elemming2.blogspot.com
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