http://www.gregpalast.com/how-george-bush-won-the-war-in-iraq-really/
How Bush won the war in Iraq - really!
Friday, March 29, 2013
By Greg Palast
[link to interesting graphic in on-line article
(http://www.gregpalast.com/bffdownload/IraqOilSecretHistoryGP.pdf)]
If you thought it was "Blood for Oil"--you're wrong. It was far, far worse.
Because it was marked "confidential" on each page, the oil industry
stooge couldn't believe the US State Department had given me a complete
copy of their secret plans for the oil fields of Iraq. Actually, the
State Department had done no such thing. But my line of bullshit had
been so well-practiced and the set-up on my mark had so thoroughly
established my fake identity, that I almost began to believe my own lies.
I closed in. I said I wanted to make sure she and I were working from
the same State Department draft. Could she tell me the official name,
date and number of pages? She did.
Bingo! I'd just beaten the Military-Petroleum Complex in a lying
contest, so I had a right to be stoked.
After phoning numbers from California to Kazakhstan to trick my mark, my
next calls were to the State Department and Pentagon. Now that I had the
specs on the scheme for Iraq's oil – that State and Defense Department
swore, in writing, did not exist – I told them I'd appreciate their
handing over a copy (no expurgations, please) or there would be a very
embarrassing story on BBC Newsnight.
Within days, our chief of investigations, Ms Badpenny, delivered to my
shack in the woods outside New York a 323-page, three-volume program for
Iraq's oil crafted by George Bush's State Department and petroleum
insiders meeting secretly in Houston, Texas.
I cracked open the pile of paper – and I was blown away.
Like most lefty journalists, I assumed that George Bush and Tony Blair
invaded Iraq to buy up its oil fields, cheap and at gun-point, and cart
off the oil. We thought we knew the neo-cons true casus belli: Blood for
oil.
But the truth in the confidential Options for Iraqi Oil Industry was
worse than "Blood for Oil". Much, much worse.
The key was in the flow chart on page 15, Iraq Oil Regime Timeline &
Scenario Analysis:
"...A single state-owned company ...enhances a government's relationship
with OPEC."
Let me explain why these words rocked my casbah.
I'd already had in my hands a 101-page document, another State
Department secret scheme, first uncovered by Wall Street Journal
reporter Neil King, that called for the privatization, the complete
sell-off of every single government-owned asset and industry. And in
case anyone missed the point, the sales would include every derrick,
pipe and barrel of oil, or, as the document put it, "especially the oil".
That plan was created by a gaggle of corporate lobbyists and neo-cons
working for the Heritage Foundation. In 2004, the plan's authenticity
was confirmed by Washington power player Grover Norquist. (It's hard to
erase the ill memory of Grover excitedly waving around his soft little
hands as he boasted about turning Iraq into a free-market Disneyland,
recreating Chile in Mesopotamia, complete with the Pinochet-style
dictatorship necessary to lock up the assets – while behind Norquist,
Richard Nixon snarled at me from a gargantuan portrait.)
The neo-con idea was to break up and sell off Iraq's oil fields, ramp up
production, flood the world oil market – and thereby smash OPEC and with
it, the political dominance of Saudi Arabia.
General Jay Garner also confirmed the plan to grab the oil. Indeed,
Garner told me that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld fired him, when
the General, who had lived in Iraq, complained the neo-con grab would
set off a civil war. It did. Nevertheless, Rumsfeld replaced Garner with
a new American viceroy, Paul Bremer, a partner in Henry Kissinger's
firm, to complete the corporate takeover of Iraq's assets – "especially
the oil".
But that was not to be. While Bremer oversaw the wall-to-wall transfer
of Iraqi industries to foreign corporations, he was stopped cold at the
edge of the oil fields.
How? I knew there was only one man who could swat away the entire
neo-con army: James Baker, former Secretary of State, Bush family
consiglieri and most important, counsel to Exxon-Mobil Corporation and
the House of Saud.
(One unwitting source was industry oil-trading maven Edward Morse of
Lehman/Credit Suisse, who threatened to sue Harper's Magazine for my
quoting him. Morse denied I ever spoke with him. But when I played the
tape from my hidden recorder, his memory cleared and he scampered away.)
Weirdly, I was uncovering that the US oil industry was using its full
political mojo to prevent their being handed ownership of Iraq's oil
fields. That's right: The oil companies did NOT want to own the oil
fields – and they sure as hell did not want the oil. Just the opposite.
They wanted to make sure there would be a limit on the amount of oil
that would come out of Iraq.
There was no way in hell that Baker's clients, from Exxon to Abdullah,
were going to let a gaggle of neo-con freaks smash up Iraq's oil
industry, break OPEC production quotas, flood the market with six
million barrels of Iraqi oil a day and thereby knock its price back down
to $13 a barrel where it was in 1998.
Big Oil simply could not allow Iraq's oil fields to be privatized and
taken from state control. That would make it impossible to keep Iraq
within OPEC (an avowed goal of the neo-cons) as the state could no
longer limit production in accordance with the cartel's quota system..
The problem with Saddam was not the threat that he'd stop the flow of
oil – he was trying to sell more. The price of oil had been boosted 300
percent by sanctions and an embargo cutting Iraq's sales to two million
barrels a day from four. With Saddam gone, the only way to keep the damn
oil in the ground was to leave it locked up inside the busted state oil
company which would remain under OPEC (i.e. Saudi) quotas.
The James Baker Institute quickly and secretly started in on drafting
the 323-page plan for the State Department. In May 2003, w ith authority
granted from the top (i.e. Dick Cheney), ex-Shell Oil USA CEO Phil
Carroll was rushed to Baghdad to take charge of Iraq's oil. He told
Bremer, "There will be no privatization of oil – END OF STATEMENT."
Carroll then passed off control of Iraq's oil to Bob McKee of
Halliburton, Cheney's old oil-services company, who implemented the
Baker "enhance OPEC" option anchored in state ownership.
Some oil could be released, mainly to China, through limited, but
lucrative, "production sharing agreements".
And that's how George Bush won the war in Iraq. The invasion was not
about "blood for oil", but something far more sinister: blood for no
oil. War to keep supply tight and send prices skyward.
Oil men, whether James Baker or George Bush or Dick Cheney, are not in
the business of producing oil. They are in the business of producing
profits.
And they've succeeded. Iraq, capable of producing six to 12 million
barrels of oil a day, still exports well under its old OPEC quota of
three million barrels.
The result: As we mark the tenth anniversary of the invasion this month,
we also mark the fifth year of crude at $100 a barrel.
As George Bush could proudly say to James Baker: Mission Accomplished!
_______________________________________________
Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list
Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org
http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel