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

Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain "a prisoner of its energy dilemma" as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.

That April 2001 report, "Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century," 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.

At the time of the report, Cheney was leading an energy task force made up of powerful industry executives who assisted him in drafting a comprehensive "National Energy Policy" for President George W. Bush.

A Focus on Oil

It was believed then that Cheney's secretive task force was focusing on ways to reduce environmental regulations and fend off the Kyoto protocol on global warming.

But Bush's first treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, later described a White House interest in invading Iraq and controlling its vast oil reserves, dating back to the first days of the Bush presidency.

In Ron Suskind's 2004 book, "The Price of Loyalty," O'Neill said an invasion of Iraq was on the agenda at the first National Security Council. There was even a map for a post-war occupation, marking out how Iraq's oil fields would be carved up.

Even at that early date, the message from Bush was "find a way to do this," according to O'Neill, a critic of the Iraq invasion who was forced out of his job in December 2002.

The New Yorker's Jane Mayer later made another discovery: a secret NSC document dated February 3, 2001 - only two weeks after Bush took office - instructing NSC officials to cooperate with Cheney's task force, which was "melding" two previously unrelated areas of policy: "the review of operational policies towards rogue states" and "actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields." [The New Yorker, February 16, 2004]

By March 2001, Cheney's task force had prepared a set of documents with a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as two charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and a list titled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," according to information released in July 2003 under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch.

A Commerce Department spokesman issued a brief statement when those documents were released stating that Cheney's energy task force "evaluated regions of the world that are vital to global energy supply."

There has long been speculation that a key reason why Cheney fought so hard to keep his task force documents secret was that they may have included information about the administration's plans toward Iraq.

"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.

Generally, business news outlets were much more frank about the real-politick importance of Iraq's oil fields.

For instance, Ray Rodon, a former executive at Halliburton, the oil-service giant that Cheney once headed, said he was dispatched to Iraq in October 2002 to assess the country's oil infrastructure and map out plans for operating Iraq's oil industry, according to an April 14, 2003 story in Fortune magazine.

"From behind the obsidian mirrors of his wraparound sunglasses, Ray Rodon surveys the vast desert landscape of southern Iraq's Rumailah oilfield," Fortune's story said. "A project manager with Halliburton's engineering and construction division, Kellogg Brown & Root, Rodon has spent months preparing for the daunting task of repairing Iraq's oil industry."

"Working first at headquarters in Houston and then out of a hotel room in Kuwait City, he has studied the intricacies of the Iraqi national oil company, even reviewing the firm's organizational charts so that Halliburton and the Army can ascertain which Iraqis are reliable technocrats and which are Saddam loyalists."

At about the same time as Rodon's trip to Iraq - October 2002 - Oil and Gas International, an industry publication, reported that the State Department and the Pentagon had put together pre-war planning groups that focused heavily on protecting Iraq's oil infrastructure.

The next month, November 2002, the Department of Defense recommended that the Army Corps of Engineers award a contract to Kellogg, Brown & Root to extinguish Iraqi oil well fires.

The contract also called for "assessing the condition of oil-related infrastructure; cleaning up oil spills or other environmental damage at oil facilities; engineering design and repair or reconstruction of damaged infrastructure; assisting in making facilities operational; distribution of petroleum products; and assisting the Iraqis in resuming Iraqi oil company operations."

In January 2003, as President Bush was presenting the looming war with Iraq as necessary to protect Americans, the Wall Street Journal reported that oil industry executives met with Cheney's staff to plan the post-war revival of Iraq's oil industry.

"Facing a possible war with Iraq, US oil companies are starting to prepare for the day when they may get a chance to work in one of the world's most oil-rich countries," the Journal reported on January 16, 2003.

"Executives of US oil companies are conferring with officials from the White House, the Department of Defense and the State Department to figure out how best to jump-start Iraq's oil industry following a war, industry officials say.

"The Bush administration is eager to secure Iraq's oil fields and rehabilitate them, industry officials say. They say Mr. Cheney's staff hosted an informational meeting with industry executives in October [2002], with ExxonMobil Corp., ChevronTexaco Corp., ConocoPhillips and Halliburton among the companies represented.

"Both the Bush administration and the companies say such a meeting never took place. Since then, industry officials say, the Bush administration has sought input, formally and informally, from executives and industry experts on how best to overhaul Iraq's oil sector."

Guarding the Oil Ministry

Despite the Bush administration's denials about oil as a motivation for war, the Bush administration's focus on Iraqi oil was firmly set.

On April 5, 2003, Reuters reported that the State Department's "Future of Iraq" project headed by Thomas Warrick, special adviser to the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, held its fourth meeting of the oil and energy-working group.

Documents obtained by Reuters showed that "a clear consensus among expert opinion favoring production-sharing agreements to attract the major oil companies."

"That is likely to thrill oil companies harboring hopes of lucrative contracts to develop Iraqi oil reserves," the news agency reported. "Short-term rehabilitation of southern Iraqi oil fields already is under way, with oil well fires being extinguished by US contractor Kellogg Brown and Root ...

"Long-term contracts are expected to see US companies ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips compete with Anglo-Dutch Shell, Britain's BP, TotalFinaElf of France, Russia's LUKOIL and Chinese state companies."

After US troops captured Baghdad in April 2003, they were ordered to protect the Oil Ministry even as looters ransacked priceless antiquities from Iraq's national museums and stole explosives from unguarded military arsenals.

Unacceptable Options

In April 2001, the report laid out a series of unacceptable options, including helping Iraq under Saddam Hussein extract more oil by easing embargoes that were meant to hem Hussein in.

"The US could consider reducing restrictions on oil investment inside Iraq," the report said. But if Hussein's "access to oil revenues was to be increased by adjustments in oil sanctions, Saddam Hussein could be a greater security threat to U.S. allies in the region if weapons of mass destruction, sanctions, weapons regimes and the coalition against him are not strengthened."

Iraq is a "key swing producer turning its taps on and off when it has felt such action was in its strategic interest," the report said, adding that there was even a "possibility that Saddam Hussein may remove Iraqi oil from the market for an extended period of time" in order to drive up prices.

"Under this scenario, the United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma, suffering on a recurring basis from the negative consequences of sporadic energy shortages," the report said. "These consequences can include recession, social dislocation of the poorest Americans, and at the extremes, a need for military intervention."

The report recommended Cheney move swiftly to integrate energy and national security policy as a means to stop "manipulations of markets by any state" and suggested that his task force include "representation from the Department of Defense."

"Unless the United States assumes a leadership role in the formation of new rules of the game," the report said, "US firms, US consumers and the US government [will be left] in a weaker position."

Two years after the Baker report, the United States - along with Great Britain and other allies - invaded Iraq. Now, more than six years later, the US oil industry finally appears to be in a strong position relative to Iraq's oil riches.

However, the price that has been paid by American troops, Iraqi civilians and the US taxpayers has been enormous.

Source: Truthout

Memo confirms Bush and Blair knew claims Iraq had WMDs were lies

A confidential memo obtained by the Observer, detailing a meeting between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, confirms their determination to press ahead with the invasion of Iraq in 2003 without any evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and without United Nations approval.

The five-page memo, written by Blair’s foreign policy adviser Sir David Manning, is dated January 31, 2003, some two months before the invasion began. It records the thinking of Bush and Blair as it became increasingly obvious that United Nations weapons inspectors would not find the advanced weaponry, including a nuclear capability, that both leaders were using to justify military action.

According to the memo, Bush discussed various possible provocations that might trigger a second UN resolution to justify war in the absence of any WMD. One plan being considered by the White House was "to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours over Iraq with fighter cover" provoking Iraqi forces into opening fire and thereby putting them in breach of a UN resolution.

Bush also discussed his hopes that an Iraqi defector might still be "brought out" to talk about WMD, or that someone might assassinate Saddam Hussein. The memo confirms that the decision had already been taken to go to war. Bush expressed his readiness for war, even if their provocations failed to produce the second UN resolution.

The US, in order to offset its economic decline relative to its rivals, was determined to use its military strength to seize strategically crucial energy resources in the Middle East. Bush, accordingly, had already decided on a date for the start of the war. Manning records, "The start date for the military campaign was now pencilled in for 10 March. This was when the bombing would begin."

"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," wrote Manning.

British imperialism hoped to gain some share of the spoils from the plunder of Iraq. Blair told Bush he was "solidly with the president" in his thinking.

At this point, Blair had not yet received any legal advice on the war from the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith. Publicly, his government had doctored and manufactured intelligence reports on the supposed WMD. In the face of overwhelming popular hostility to the war, Blair announced that the test of government was its ability to ignore the popular will.

Manning’s memo was copied to Sir Jeremy Greenstock, British ambassador to the UN, Jonathan Powell, Blair’s chief of staff, Admiral Lord Boyce, the chief of defence staff, and Sir Christopher Meyer, the British ambassador to Washington.

The Manning memo underlines the character of the invasion of Iraq. It was a calculated act of imperialist aggression. The memo demonstrates again the limitations of yet another government-sponsored whitewash. It makes the case for a war crimes tribunal to prosecute Bush, Blair and their fellow conspirators for their murderous actions in the Middle East.

Nevertheless, the memo’s release has added to the deepening sense of crisis over Iraq in the UK, with events in danger of spiralling out of control.

Sir John Chilcott was chosen by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to head a panel of privy counsellors to inquire into the Iraq war. They were to meet behind closed doors and were charged, according to Brown, with identifying "lessons learned." They could not, he stressed, "apportion blame or consider issues of civil or criminal liability."

Chilcott was also a member of the 2004 Butler Inquiry that examined the intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq and which produced a whitewash.

With Brown’s government weakened, however, the Conservatives, who fully supported the Iraq war, have opportunistically demanded that proceedings be made more open. They put a motion to parliament Wednesday calling for a change to the inquiry’s remit, on openness and whether witnesses would be questioned under oath. This was defeated by 299 votes to 260 after a six-hour debate in which a small number of Labour MPs called for more openness and threatened to vote with the Opposition.

For the Tories, Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague said that declaring the inquiry would not report before a general election was "utterly cynical and politically motivated" and demanded that the committee should include people with military and ministerial experience.

Broader sections of the establishment are also prepared to make public material that is highly damaging, even dangerous to the government—and particularly to Blair. Lord Guthrie, a former chief of defence staff under Blair, said the memo underlined that the Chilcott Inquiry must not be "a whitewash as these inquiries often are."

Brown’s insistence that the inquiry be held behind closed doors has been rejected by Chilcott himself, who wrote to Brown, "It will be essential to hold as much of the proceedings of the inquiry as possible in public, consistent with the need to protect national security and to ensure and enable complete candour in the oral and written evidence from witnesses."

Brown released the letter two days ahead of Wednesday’s debate and was forced to welcome Chilcott’s position. During the debate, Foreign Secretary David Miliband also conceded to Chilcott that the inquiry "can praise or blame whoever it likes. It is free to write its own report at every stage." It may also be possible to interview witnesses under oath, he said, but insisted again that the inquiry had not been set up "to establish civil or criminal liability."

A Dutch government’s inquiry into the Netherlands’ support for the war will look at all MI5 and MI6 intelligence that was shared with its intelligence services. That inquiry is due to report in November, and this could mean that information about the US and British role will be published ahead of Chilcott’s report next year.