| -Caveat Lector-
Sez experts on the subject like Anthony
Sampson, Jim Lobe, James Baker and many others. I've just posted several
well-documented articles on the subject. Do you know who Anthony Sampson
is?
The oil industry cannot profitably extract
and sell oil from nations whose citizens are seething with violence and hatred
against an occupying power. Oil industry executives are NOT stupid, and
they are not crazed dreamers like the neocons.
See for instance also this, from the
estimable Jim Lobe, published back in February:
To most on the left, oil seems entirely persuasive, particularly
when, as British writer Robert Fisk recently noted, you assert the fact that
the US is quickly running out of oil and that Iraq sits on the world's second
largest oil reserves. Combine that with the well-established connections of
Bush, Bush's father and Vice President Dick Cheney, and you have a very strong
case.
As Klare, who also favors this thesis, points out, the US since
World War II has always considered the Gulf a "vital interest", precisely
because of its status as the world's greatest underground sea of
petroleum.
But this thesis suffers some weaknesses. First, there is no
evidence that US oil companies favor an Iraqi adventure; indeed, some top oil
executives have expressed alarm that an invasion may destabilize other key
oil-producers, notably Saudi Arabia, which may greatly compromise their access
in both the short and long runs.
And if the theory is correct, one
would expect Bush's father and his former top advisers, who are also major
figures in the oil industry, to back military action, unilaterally if
necessary. Yet, not only has Bush senior been unenthusiastic about the
mission, but his former secretary of state, James Baker, whose oil connections
are legion, has gone to the trouble of publishing a report that warned
explicitly against any action that would lend credence to the idea that
"imperialist reasons" were behind an invasion, least of all in the oil
sector.
Finally, some have argued that Hussein represents no obstacle
to US access to Iraqi oil; indeed, US oil companies have been buying Iraqi
oil, like everyone else, under the United Nations oil-for-food program. And,
while Saddam's removal could bring badly needed new investment in Iraq's oil
sector that could then increase the global oil supply, an invasion also risks
disrupting those new supplies, either through sabotage or destabilization of
other nearby sources. "If oil is the question, Iraq is not the answer," noted
oil historian Daniel Yergin recently.
|
. ![]()
Of Intimidation And
Israel
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Why is the
administration of US President George W Bush preparing to go to war
against Iraq?
It has put forward three reasons, none of which is
taken particularly seriously by policy veterans. They include eliminating
Hussein's presumed arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), reducing
the threat of international terrorism and promoting democracy and human
rights in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.
As Michael Klare of
Hampshire College argued recently in a paper, none of these rings very
true. Yes, Iraq undoubtedly has WMD - although not nuclear - but so do
many countries in the wider region, including Israel, Pakistan and Iran
(not to mention North Korea, whose destructive capabilities not only are
far greater than Iraq's, but also can be delivered at much longer range
with much greater accuracy).
As for international terrorism,
Washington has been insisting for years that Iran is far more active than
Iraq, and, despite extraordinary efforts, administration hawks have yet to
come up with any persuasive evidence that Saddam has any ties at all to
al-Qaeda or other active terrorist groups.
Indeed, according to the
CIA, Saddam is considered most unlikely to use WMD against the United
States, let alone hand them over to terrorists for their use, unless he
were face-to-face with his own elimination - precisely what the
administration is now planning.
As for promoting democracy, critics
note that this theme has been pushed by neo-conservatives who rose to
power in the Reagan administration by attacking Jimmy Carter's human
rights policies, which they claimed unfairly undermined friendly
"authoritarian" regimes like the Shah of Iran and Somoza's Nicaragua, and
have since argued that Arabs and Muslims respect only power and
force.
"There is ... something hypocritical about the belief in
democratization when it is propounded by people who also hold the belief
in the 'clash of civilizations', [and] who were insisting a few months ago
that there are regions of the world, particularly the Islamic regions, in
which culture makes freedom impossible," noted The New Republic magazine
last fall.
That hypocrisy is compounded by the fact that the
administration has shown no reservation about aligning itself since the
September 11, 2001 attacks on the US with some of the broader area's worst
dictatorships, including Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan and Saudi Arabia,
among others.
"Already, this has looked too much like a war in
search of a justification," Washington Post columnist E J Dionne, wrote
last August when the democracy-promotion argument first became
prominent.
So, if the administration's public justifications are
unpersuasive, what lies behind the drive to war? On this question, the
experts are divided. But most believe there are three possible major
explanations: oil, intimidation and Israel.
To most on the left,
oil seems entirely persuasive, particularly when, as British writer Robert
Fisk recently noted, you assert the fact that the US is quickly running
out of oil and that Iraq sits on the world's second largest oil reserves.
Combine that with the well-established connections of Bush, Bush's father
and Vice President Dick Cheney, and you have a very strong case.
As
Klare, who also favors this thesis, points out, the US since World War II
has always considered the Gulf a "vital interest", precisely because of
its status as the world's greatest underground sea of
petroleum.
But this thesis suffers some weaknesses. First, there is
no evidence that US oil companies favor an Iraqi adventure; indeed, some
top oil executives have expressed alarm that an invasion may destabilize
other key oil-producers, notably Saudi Arabia, which may greatly
compromise their access in both the short and long runs.
And if the
theory is correct, one would expect Bush's father and his former top
advisers, who are also major figures in the oil industry, to back military
action, unilaterally if necessary. Yet, not only has Bush senior been
unenthusiastic about the mission, but his former secretary of state, James
Baker, whose oil connections are legion, has gone to the trouble of
publishing a report that warned explicitly against any action that would
lend credence to the idea that "imperalist reasons" were behind an
invasion, least of all in the oil sector.
Finally, some have argued
that Hussein represents no obstacle to US access to Iraqi oil; indeed, US
oil companies have been buying Iraqi oil, like everyone else, under the
United Nations oil-for-food program. And, while Saddam's removal could
bring badly needed new investment in Iraq's oil sector that could then
increase the global oil supply, an invasion also risks disrupting those
new supplies, either through sabotage or destabilization of other nearby
sources. "If oil is the question, Iraq is not the answer," noted oil
historian Daniel Yergin recently.
That leaves intimidation and
Israel, which, to some analysts, are closely linked. Intimidation
underlies much of the hawks' rhetoric and comes across very strongly in
the administration's National Security Strategy document published in
September, which makes clear that the United States favors a uni-polar
world in which its military power is unrivalled. In that respect, invading
Iraq is meant above all as a "demonstration" of what will happen to "rogue
states" with WMD, links to terrorism or anyone else, for that matter, who
challenges US supremacy.
"The fastest way to impress one charter
member of the axis of evil," argued the Wall Street Journal, a major
cheerleader for the hawks, earlier this month, "is to depose another, and
sooner rather than later."
Klare offers an interesting, oil-related
variant of this view by citing 1990 remarks by Cheney to the effect that
whoever controls Gulf oil enjoys a "stranglehold" not only on our economy,
but also "on that of most of the other nations of the world as well". By
overwhelming Iraq, he argues, Washington will be sending an unmistakable
message to potential future rivals, namely China, whose economy will
depend increasingly on Gulf oil.
Significantly, the imperial
worldview that underpins the intimidation rationale was first articulated
by neo-conservative policy analysts and writers who have long championed
the positions of the right-wing Likud Party in Israel and now occupy key
positions in the Bush administration, particularly in the offices of
Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, and the latter's defense policy
board, chaired by Richard Perle.
Some critics argue that Iraq
policy is driven primarily by these individuals, who, like Likud, believe
that Saddam's obsession with obtaining WMD marks the greatest threat to
Israel's regional military dominance and security.
Indeed, the
strongest advocates for attacking Iraq both inside and outside the
administration - Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Perle and other
defense policy board members, respectively - have been the
neo-conservatives.
"Absent their activities, the United States
would be focusing on containing Iraq, which we have done successfully
since the Gulf War, but we would not be trying to overthrow Saddam
Hussein," says Stephen Walt, a dean of the Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard University, who also points to Washington's unexpectedly sharp
tilt toward Likudist positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as
evidence of the neo-conservatives' influence.
In their view, the
interests of Israel and the United States are virtually identical, or, as
one of them, former Education Secretary William Bennett, noted last year,
"America's fate and Israel's fate are one and the same."
(Inter
Press Service) |
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2003 1:59
AM
Subject: Re: [CTRL] Bush's Oil Move
Backfires (Flashback)
-Caveat Lector-
On 5 Oct 2003 at 1:37, Sean McBride
wrote:
> Most oil industry executives hold the neocons in contempt
and consider them to be
> unreliable schemers and
blabbermouths.
Sez who? 'Sean Mc Bride' or whatever your real identity
is. I have contacts in the oil
industry that were chomping at the bit to
get into Iraq. It would be a 'cakewalk' they
said. The contacts are idiots
but high up in the industry. Most people in the oil
industry are dinosaurs
but it's profitable being an industry based on dead
reptiles.
Steve
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