Industry Execs Suggested Invasion, Eager to Tap Iraq’s Vast Oil Reserves

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Conspiracies aren’t theories.   They happen all the time.  All it takes for a conspiracy to occur is for a few people to get together and decide to do something.

Which is what the Bush administration was all about.

It is now no secret that Enron, for example, along with some other energy companies, conspired to cause the California “energy crisis” in 2001.   Bush and Cheney should have been impeached for that alone, and would have been, had not 9/11 come along to “change everything”.     You can read about that here if you’d like.

It’s also quite well known that Cheney never did, and never would, release the minutes of his big energy “task force” right after they took power in 2001.   They would have had to pry his cold dead fingers off that thing to find out who was there, and what was discussed.

Well it turns out that as many of us have long suspected, what oil industry executives advocated was an invasion of Iraq, to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s control of Iraq’s oil.

Jason Leopold has the story here at Truthout.org.

That April 2001 report, “Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century,” (pdf) was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the US Council on Foreign Relations at the request of then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

   In retrospect, it appears that the report helped focus administration thinking on why it made geopolitical sense to oust Hussein, whose country sat on the world’s second largest oil reserves.

   “Iraq remains a destabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East,” the report said.

   “Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets. Therefore the US should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments.”

   The advisory committee that helped prepare the report included Luis Giusti, a Shell Corp. non-executive director; John Manzoni, regional president of British Petroleum; and David O’Reilly, chief executive of ChevronTexaco.

   James Baker, the namesake for the public policy institute, was a prominent oil industry lawyer who also served as secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush, and was counsel to the Bush/Cheney campaign during the Florida recount in 2000.

   Ken Lay, then-chairman of the energy trading Enron Corp., also made recommendations that were included in the Baker report.

The Corporatocracy runs this country.   It’s not the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, they are both owned by the Corporatocracy with an extremely few exceptions.  When corporations can decide whether or not we invade another country, well then you know who’s wearing the pants.

What’s especially galling about this report is that in the very first paragraph, mention is made of “California” as a reason for a “new” energy policy:

For many decades now, the United Sates has been without an energy policy. Now, the consequences of not having an energy policy that can satisfy our energy requirements on a sustainable basis have revealed themselves in California. Now, there could be more Californias in America’s future. President George W. Bush and his administration need to tell these agonizing truths to the American people and thereby lay the basis for a new and viable U.S. energy policy.

“There could be many more Californias in America’s future.”   Today, the irony of that statement is clear.   That sentence stands out as an overt threat to the people of the United States.   “We will blackmail you if you don’t let us invade Iraq, we will CUT YOU OFF”.

The war in Iraq has quite possibly bankrupted the United States and killed over a million Iraqis and thousands of United States service personnel.  

It was nothing but an act of theft, of piracy, the result of a true conspiracy.  

“But we didn’t really steal Iraq’s oil” you might say.   Well, check this out, from 2007:

NYT to report billions in oil missing in Iraq.   Nobody seemed to care then, and nobody seems to care now.   We “kicked their ass and took their gas” and everybody’s happy, right?

Except we didn’t exactly benefit.  What’s the price of gas these days?    But Exxon, now they made out like the bandits they are.  They and the other oil companies that were responsible for this.  And did they even use their money to invade Iraq?   No.   They used ours.  

We were the suckers, and we continue to be the suckers.

Will Obama prosecute any of these gangsters?   Of course not.   He’s on their side, not ours.  

And how were those of us who knew what was really going on treated?   As “conspiracy theorists”:

“Conspiracy Theory”

However, both before and after the invasion, much of the US political press treated the notion that oil was a motive for invading Iraq in March 2003 as a laughable conspiracy theory.

Nothing theoretical about it.   Nothing at all.