Another example of industry hiring overseas.
In case any of you still felt there were noble intentions to motivate
the US and UK to invade Iraq, check out what's below.
Let's just hope FOI rights aren't revoked. As it stands, these memos can
take over a decade to acquire, and then, if you're lucky, it won't be
almost entirely blacked out. Unfortunately, prosecuting the real evil
doers is usually past the point of public outrage, too expensive, and
political will is never there to pursue fellow crooks. In this case,
there is no real Iraqi government left that would want to take action if
it could. I wish I were wrong about that. US and UK taxpayers and
military alike will remain amply deceived as the story gets bumped from
most mainstream venues. It's these issues that really speak to the
imbalance of power, when those who actually pay for vile
industrial/military ambitions grow too old, tired and debt ridden to care.
Natalia
From the Independent, UK, April 19th:
The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil
executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil
companies and Western governments at the time.
The documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot
Inquiry into the UK's involvement in the Iraq war. In March 2003, just
before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held
talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as "highly inaccurate". BP
denied that it had any "strategic interest" in Iraq, while Tony Blair
described "the oil conspiracy theory" as "the most absurd".
But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very
different picture.
Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the
Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy
firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as
a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime
change.
The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration
on BP's behalf because the oil giant feared it was being "locked out" of
deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian
governments and their energy firms.
Minutes of a meeting with BP, Shell and BG (formerly British Gas) on 31
October 2002 read: "Baroness Symons agreed that it would be difficult to
justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had
itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the
crisis."
The minister then promised to "report back to the companies before
Christmas" on her lobbying efforts.
The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about
opportunities in Iraq "post regime change". Its minutes state: "Iraq is
the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that
political deals should not deny them the opportunity."
After another meeting, this one in October 2002, the Foreign Office's
Middle East director at the time, Edward Chaplin, noted: "Shell and BP
could not afford not to have a stake in [Iraq] for the sake of their
long-term future... We were determined to get a fair slice of the action
for UK companies in a post-Saddam Iraq."
Whereas BP was insisting in public that it had "no strategic interest"
in Iraq, in private it told the Foreign Office that Iraq was "more
important than anything we've seen for a long time".
BP was concerned that if Washington allowed TotalFinaElf's existing
contact with Saddam Hussein to stand after the invasion it would make
the French conglomerate the world's leading oil company. BP told the
Government it was willing to take "big risks" to get a share of the
Iraqi reserves, the second largest in the world.
Over 1,000 documents were obtained under Freedom of Information over
five years by the oil campaigner Greg Muttitt. They reveal that at least
five meetings were held between civil servants, ministers and BP and
Shell in late 2002.
The 20-year contracts signed in the wake of the invasion were the
largest in the history of the oil industry. They covered half of Iraq's
reserves -- 60 billion barrels of oil, bought up by companies such as BP
and CNPC (China National Petroleum Company), whose joint consortium
alone stands to make £403m ($658m) profit per year from the Rumaila
field in southern Iraq.
Last week, Iraq raised its oil output to the highest level for almost
decade, 2.7 million barrels a day -- seen as especially important at the
moment given the regional volatility and loss of Libyan output. Many
opponents of the war suspected that one of Washington's main ambitions
in invading Iraq was to secure a cheap and plentiful source of oil.
Mr Muttitt, whose book Fuel on the Fire is published next week, said:
"Before the war, the Government went to great lengths to insist it had
no interest in Iraq's oil. These documents provide the evidence that
give the lie to those claims.
"We see that oil was in fact one of the Government's most important
strategic considerations, and it secretly colluded with oil companies to
give them access to that huge prize."
Lady Symons, 59, later took up an advisory post with a UK merchant bank
that cashed in on post-war Iraq reconstruction contracts. Last month she
severed links as an unpaid adviser to Libya's National Economic
Development Board after Colonel Gaddafi started firing on protesters.
Last night, BP and Shell declined to comment.
*/www.fuelonthefire.com <http://www.fuelonthefire.com/>/*
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/secret-memos-expose-link-between-oil-firms-and-invasion-of-iraq-2269610.html
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