ARTICLES
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ARTICLES |
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| Genesis
of the Iraq War: A Chilling Theory
By
Allen J Duffis |
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“There isn’t a page one headline story that didn’t start as a barely noticed item on the back pages of a major newspaper, or as an article in an obscure periodical, months or years earlier.” What he was speaking of was the beginning scenario of a major event: in essence its genesis. To accept that this tragic, so-called preemptive war, in Iraq started with the invasion of this sovereign nation (that never attacked us or posed a credible threat) on March 2, 2001, would be to submit to a gross error of judgment. In reality, like any other evil, the conflict started long before that date. The following is my structured theory as to the how and why this war ‘really’ came about:
The author is a highly respected and registered geologist, geophysicist, engineer and oceanographer, with 50 years domestic and international experience in petroleum exploration. “After the oil crisis of the 1970s, petroleum prices stabilized. The world stopped worrying about oil, but the grim fact remain that the world’s petroleum reserves are limited, and they are rapidly being used up…But a much more serious problem looms in the future. Most of the world’s large, economically viable oil fields have already been found………The question is not whether, but when, world crude oil productivity will start to decline……….Some believe we have enough to last another 50 years at present rates. I disagree: Most of the large exploration targets for oil supply have been found, at the same time the world’s population is exploding.”
Based upon estimates of major oil companies who had access to Iraq oilfields before the coming of Saddam Hussein and Iraq’s Baath Party, and also the highly respected Petroleum Economist Magazine, Iraq has the 2nd largest oil reserves in the entire world (second only to Saudi Arabia). It is estimated that these reserves may run as high as 200 plus billion barrels of high-grade crude that is extraordinarily cheap to produce. Background to Chaos In his recently published book, “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy”, author Matthew Simmons, a well respected oil industry analyst and CEO of Simmons & Amp Company International, contends that Saudi Arabia in coming decades will be unable to maintain its current level of oil production. This, he say’s, will cause major economic repercussions around the developed world. In the book, Simmons also examines in intricate detail the political and social climate of that oil rich nation, and its desires to conceal the potential coming shortfalls from its global consumers.
As part of his interview, O’Neil gave the author 19,000 internal documents, much of it signed by the President. “Everything’s there,” says Suskind. “Memoranda to the President, hand written ‘thank you’ notes, 100 page documents. All sensitive stuff.” Adding that in some cases the cache included transcripts of private, high level National Security Council meetings. “You don’t get much higher than that,” says Suskind. According to O’Neil, at President Bush’s first National Security Policy meeting, Iraq and Saddam Hussein was the center topic. O’Neill reflects the following: “From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neil, who adds that going after Saddam was topic “A” ten days after the inauguration – eight months before 9-11. “From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change his regime, “ says Suskind. “Day one these things were laid out and sealed.” “It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The President saying, ”Go find me a way to do this,” says O’Neil. “For me the notion of preemption, the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decided to do, was a huge leap.” And that came up at this first meeting, says O’Neil, who adds that the discussion of Iraq continued at the next National Security Council meeting two weeks later. Of the documents handed over to Suskind by O’Neil, were memos. One of them marked "Secret", says "Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq". They discussed an occupation of Iraq in January and February of 2001, says Suskind. Based on his interviews with O’Neil and several other officials at the meetings, Suskind writes that the planning envisioned peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals, and even divvying up Iraq’s oil wealth. Suskind had obtained one Pentagon document, dated march 5, 2001, entitled “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts”, which included a detailed map for potential areas of exploration. “It talks about contractors from around the world, encompassing 30-40 countries. And which ones have what intentions,” says Suskind, “On oil in Iraq.”
What is common knowledge, but which few appear to be aware of, is that President Bush was moved to form this Energy Task Force at the urging of his close friend and confidant, Kenneth Lay, then CEO of Enron Corporation; who was also the largest contributor to the Bush campaign. And it was Lay who later strongly urged Bush to choose Vice President Dick Cheney, the former CEO of Halliburton Corporation, to head this strategic group. On March 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney called together the first of the Energy Task Force meetings, to supposedly plan for long-term U.S. energy requirements. By law, only federal employees are allowed to attend such meetings. But of course, without a list of those in attendance, the public has no way of knowing if this rule was adhered to. To date, the White House and the vice president’s office has vigorously resisted any and all attempts by various public minded organizations, to gain access to a list of the attendees. Even the General Accounting Office (GAO) has been unable to pry loose from the Bush administration the requested list. It is important to note that the GAO was created in 1921 during the Harding administration, and has from its inception been an independent and nonpartisan agency of the Congress, charged with studying the programs and expenditures of the federal government. Washington (CNN) January 27, 2002: Emerging from the relatively low profile he has consistently maintained since the 9-11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney defended his refusal to hand over information to congress, or the GAO, about his closed-door energy task force meetings. “I’m, as part of the office of the president and the vice president of the United States. I’m a constitutional officer, and the authority of the GAO does not extend in that case to my office, “ said Cheney. “Time and time again, administrations have traded away the authority of the president to do his job. We’re not going to do that in this administration.” The GAO and two public ‘watch-dog’ groups (Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club) took the Vice President to court in an attempt to get the requested information. It was the first time in its 80-year history that the GAO ever had to press suit against a sitting Vice President to obtain pertinent documentation. In 2002, the District Court ruled that Cheney must turn over a list of all in attendance at his Energy Task Force Meetings, but Cheney refused and took his case up to the Supreme Court. In July of 2003, working through the Freedom of Information Act, Judicial Watch did manage to get some documents from the task force. Those documents included maps of Iraqi and other mideast oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, two charts detailing various Iraqi oil and gas projects, and a March 2001 list entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts". Just three weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to hear his case, the Vice President accompanied the Chief Justice of the Court, Antonin Scalia, on a duck-hunting trip at a private camp in southern Louisiana, during the week of January 5, 2004. Several experts in legal ethics said the trip raised doubts about Scalia’s ability to judge the case impartially, and called for him to recuse himself. Scalia refused to do so. Diamond Services, an oil service company, sponsored the trip. On June 24, 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court gave the Vice President a partial victory in a 5-4 decision, by sending the case back to the District Court. The move effectively stalled the effort to obtain the requested data. It should be noted, in the dissenting opinion, Justice Scalia sided with the Vice President. In the end the White House did not have to release the list of those in attendendence at the Energy task Force meetings. The Wall Street Journal- January 2003: The Wall Street Journal reported that representatives from Halliburton, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Conoco-Phillips, among others, had met with Vice President Cheney’s staff to plan the post-war revival of Iraq’s oil industry. However, both Cheney and the companies deny the meeting took place.
What is formerly known is that the Energy Task Force did meet 10 times between January 29, and May 16, 2001. During those meetings with members of several oil and energy companies (the ‘heavy hitters’ of the contributors to the Bush campaign - including Enron), it is my opinion they discussed payback for their investment. More than likely, based upon the subsequent scrapping and watering-down of federal environmental protection laws by the Bush administration, the energy industry received an early Christmas present of their greatest wishes. I would guess that included in this group were representatives from Vice President Cheney’s former company, Halliburton, the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Assistant Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz. As part of an overall plan to, virtually, rape the American landscape by being freed of federally imposed environmental restrictions, they also conspired to take control of the oilfields of Iraq. This group had virtually everything they required to achieve their nefarious end. The office of the vice presidency, a Republican controlled congress held captive by a 'fanatical extreme Right Wing' of the party, and an intellectually inept president who strongly believes in his motives, reinforced through staunch religious convictions. But more importantly, one who was easily led by associates whom he trusted. And he trusted Vice President Dick Cheney. The big question was – how to best accomplish this feat? On September 11, 2001, 19 Muslim fanatics handed this cabal the perfect excuse and opportunity. If there was a stumbling block in their way, it was Secretary of State Colin Powell; as a highly decorated and experienced military man, who had been head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Pentagon. He could not be bought, cajoled or bullied into such an ill advised military campaign that had disaster written all over it. In fact, according to Carl Bernstein’s book, “Plan of Attack”, when pressed about the wisdom of going to war in Iraq, he reportedly informed President Bush, “You break it, you own it!” So after employing Powell as far as he would go (making the case for WMD before the U.N.), he was replaced by the far easier to handle Condoleezza Rice. Under the cover of the hyped search for “Weapons of Mass Destruction” fueled by the intensive ‘cherry picking’ of available intelligence, and cloaked in the guise of a “War on Terror” with the premise of preventing another 9-11s as a backdrop, they threw almost 150,000 ill-equipped U.S. troops into a war they could not win. They didn’t anticipate there would be any major resistance from people, so long held under the yoke of a brutal dictatorship. But as we now know, they miscalculated tragically. With in depth and reliable knowledge that the Saudi oilfields were running out, the plan from the very beginning was to get their hands on the most fertile and harvestable oil field in the world, Iraq. Once securely under their control as chosen cartel, these mega corporations would be in a position to, virtually, dictate the destiny of the developed world for a century or more: all to the gain of incredible individual wealth. And to do so, they were more than willing to field the lives of however many Americans and Iraqis it took to achieve their goal. That’s what this war was really all about. Excerpts
from an Op Ed Editorial in the Los Angeles Times- “The
White House Cabal” “In President Bush’s first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security - including vital decisions about post war Iraq – were made by a secretive, little known cabal. It was made up of a very small group, led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld……I believe that the decisions of this cabal were sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president, and sometimes with something less. More often than not, then- national security advisor Condoleezza Rice was simply steamrolled by this cabal.” “Its insular secret workings were efficient and swift-not unlike the decision making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy. This furtive process was camouflaged by neatly by the dysfunction and inefficiency of the formal decision-making-process, where decisions, if they were reached at all, had to wend their way through the bureaucracy, with their dissenters, obstructionists and “guardians of the turf.” “But the secret process was ultimately a failure. It produced a series of disastrous decisions and virtually insured that the agencies charged with implementing them would not or could not execute them well.”………..“It’s a disaster. Given a choice, I’d choose a frustrating bureaucracy over an efficient cabal every time.” There are many who will not buy the case I have made for as to how we got into the war in Iraq: most for reasons of selective political partisanship over clear reasoning. While others, for academic reasons, will do their level best to poke holes in what they may regard as a controversial theory. When they do, however, I am confident that given a fair, unbiased and nonpartisan appraisal based upon the known facts, what will pour from those holes will be the blood of many American, untold numbers of Iraqi men, women and children and, most of all…oil. Postscript Document says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force Washington
Post - November 16, 2005 A newly uncovered White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force in 2001 -something long suspected by environmentalists, but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress. The document obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobile Corp, Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with Cheney aids who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law, and parts of which are still being debated.
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| © Copyright 2005-2009 Allen J. Duffis.All rights reserved. | |||||||||||||
