April 4, 2007

I've been writing on the "War for Oil," piecemeal, for years (e.g., Claiming the Prize: Bush Surge Aimed at Securing Iraqi Oil), but Richard Behan has provided one of the best, most succinct summaries of the Bush Administration's true aims in their war of aggression against Iraq in "George Bush's Land Mine: If the Iraqi People Get Revenue Sharing, They Lose Their Oil to Exxon.

As Behan notes, the new "Iraqi oil law" (originally written, in English, by Bush's own oily cronies) will essentially transfer up to 80 percent of Iraq's oil revenues into the coffers of American and British oil companies, for decades to come. This plan was conceived long before the war -- and long before the 9/11 attacks used to justify the war. As Behan notes: "This bizarre circumstance is the end-game of the brilliant, ever-deceitful maneuvering by the Bush Administration in conducting the entire scenario of the 'global war on terror.'"

Victory is indeed at hand, and is being offered to Bush on a plate by the Democrats, in the war appropriations bill they passed with such self-congratulatory fanfare last week in a supposed slap in the face for Bush. As Behan notes, Bush, for all his veto-threatening bluster, could well sign the bill in the end, because it does give him what he really wants: the enshrinement of the "oil law" as the ultimate "benchmark." In this measure, the Democrats have joined Bush in pressuring the Iraqi government into passing the law -- or else the Americans will stop propping up the Maliki regime -- and find a more pliable puppet.

We must disagree with Mr. Behan on one point here: the enshrinement of the oil law is very likely precisely what Congress intended. As noted often here, America's imperial right to secure the lion's share of the world's resources – by any means necessary – has long been a basic, bipartisan assumption of U.S. foreign policy for decades. After all, was it not the saintly Jimmy Carter who first openly declared that America would go to war in the Middle East if "our" oil supplies there were threatened? But it's true that the Bushists have taken this policy to new heights of naked gangsterism. Behan describes it well:

Planning for the two wars was underway almost immediately upon the Bush Administration taking office–at least six months before September 11, 2001. The wars had nothing to do with terrorism. Terrorism was initially rejected by the new Administration as unworthy of national concern and public policy, but 9/11 gave them a conveniently timed and spectacular alibi to undertake the wars. Quickly inventing a catchy "global war on terror" theme, the Administration disguised the true nature of the wars very cleverly, and with enduring success.

The "global war on terror" is bogus. The prime terrorist in Afghanistan and the architect of 9/11, Osama bin Laden, was never apprehended, and the President’s subsequent indifference is a matter of record. And Iraq harbored no terrorists at all. But both countries were invaded, both countries suffer military occupation today, both are dotted with permanent U.S. military bases protecting the hydrocarbon assets, and both have been provided with puppet governments.

And a billion dollar embassy in Baghdad is under construction now. It will be the largest U.S. embassy in the world by a factor of ten. It consists of 21 buildings on 104 acres, six times larger than the United Nations compound in New York city, larger than Vatican City. It will house a delegation of more than five thousand people. It will have its own water, electric, and sewage systems, and it is surrounded by a fortress wall of concrete fifteen feet thick. For an Administration committed to fighting terrorism with armies and bombs, that’s far more anti-terror diplomacy than a tiny country needs. There must be another purpose for it.

In the first two months of the Bush Administration two significant events took place that preordained the Iraqi war. Vice President Cheney’s Energy Task Force was created, composed of federal officials and oil industry people. By March of 2001, half a year before 9/11, the Task Force was poring secretly over maps of the Iraqi oil fields, pipe lines, and tanker terminals. It studied a listing of foreign oil company "suitors" for exploration and development contracts, to be executed with Saddam Hussein’s oil ministry. There was not a single American or British oil company included, and to Mr. Cheney and his cohorts that was intolerable. The final report of the Task Force was candid: "… Middle East oil producers will remain central to world security. The Gulf will be a primary focus of U.S. international energy policy." The detailed meaning of "focus" was left blank.

The other event was the first meeting of President Bush’s National Security Council, and it filled in the blank. The Council abandoned abruptly the decades-long attempt to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and set a new priority for Middle East foreign policy instead: the invasion of Iraq. This, too, was six months before 9/11. "Focus" would mean war.

By the fall of 2002, the White House Iraq Group-a collection not of foreign policy experts but of media and public relations people-was cranking up the marketing campaign for the war. A contract was signed with the Halliburton Corporation-even before military force in Iraq had been authorized by Congress-to organize the suppression of oil well fires, should Saddam torch the fields as he had done in the first Gulf War. Little was left to chance.

The oil industry is the primary client and top-ranked beneficiary of the Bush Administration. There can be no question the Administration intended to secure for American oil corporations the rich petroleum resources of Iraq: 115 billion barrels of proven reserves, twice that in probable and possible resources, potentially far more than Saudi Arabia. The Energy Task Force spoke to this and the National Security Council answered…

A year before the war the State Department undertook the "Future of Iraq" project, expressly to design the institutional contours of the postwar country. The Oil and Energy Working Group" looked with dismay at the National Iraqi Oil Company, the government agency that owned and operated the Iraqi oil fields and marketed the products. 100% of the revenues went directly to the central government, and constituted about 90% of its income. Saddam Hussein benefited, certainly-his lavish palaces-but the Iraqi people did so to a far greater extent, in terms of the nation’s public services and physical infrastructure. For this reason nationalized oil industries are the norm throughout the world.

The Oil and Energy Working Group designed a scheme that was oblique and sophisticated, indeed. The oil seizure would be less than total. It would be obscured in complexity. The apparent responsibility for it would be shifted, and it would be disguised as benefiting, even necessary to Iraq’s well being. Their work was supremely ingenious, undeniably brilliant.

The plan would keep the National Iraqi Oil Company in place, to continue overseeing the currently producing fields. But those fields represent only 19% of Iraq’s petroleum reserves. The other 81% would be flung open to "investment" by foreign oil interests, and the companies in favored positions today-because of the war and their political connections-are Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, BP/Amoco, and Royal Dutch/Shell.

The nationalized industry would be 80% privatized…

The Iraqi oil industry does very much need a great deal of investment capital, to repair, replace, and upgrade its infrastructure. But it does not need Exxon/Mobil or any other foreign company to provide it. At a reduced level, Iraq is still producing oil and hence revenue, and no country in the world, perhaps, has better collateral against which to float bond issues for public investment. Privatization of any sort and in any degree is utterly unnecessary in Iraq today.

The features of the State Department plan were inserted by Paul Bremer’s Provisional Coalition Authority into the developing structures of Iraqi governance. American oil companies were omnipresent in Baghdad then and have been since, shaping and shepherding the plan through the several iterations of puppet governments-the "democracy" said to be taking hold in Iraq.

The package today is in the form of draft legislation, the hydrocarbon law. Only a handful of Iraqi officials know its details. Virtually none of them had a hand in its construction. (It was first written in English.) And its exclusive beneficiaries are the American and British oil companies, whose profits will come directly from the pockets of the Iraqi people.

This is what more than 3,000 American soldiers have died for. This is what tens of thousands more have given their limbs, their eyes, their burned flesh, their scarred psyches for. This is what more than 600,000 innocent Iraqis have been murdered for. This, and only this: the vast profits that flow from oil, and the strategic and political power that comes from controlling that flow.