It deserve reading.
Bush Didn't Bungle Iraq, You Fools
THE MISSION WAS INDEED ACCCOMPLISHED
by Greg Palast
for The Guardian
20 March 2006
Get off it. All the carping, belly-aching and complaining about George Bush's incompetence in Iraq, from both the Left and now the Right, is just dead wrong.
On the third anniversary of the tanks rolling over Iraq's border, most of the 59 million Homer Simpsons who voted for Bush are beginning to doubt if his mission was accomplished.
But don't kid yourself -- Bush and his co-conspirator, Dick Cheney, accomplished exactly what they set out to do. In case you've forgotten what their real mission was, let me remind you of White House spokesman Ari Fleisher's original announcement, three years ago, launching of what he called, "Operation Iraqi Liberation." O.I.L.
How droll of them, how cute. Then, Karl Rove made the giggling boys in the White House change it to "OIF" -- Operation Iraqi Freedom. But the 101st Airborne wasn't sent to Basra to get its hands on Iraq's OIF.
"It's about oil," Robert Ebel told me. Who is Ebel? Formerly the CIA's top oil analyst, he was sent by the Pentagon, about a month before the invasion, to a secret confab in London with Saddam's former oil minister to finalize the plans for "liberating" Iraq's oil industry. In London, Bush's emissary Ebel also instructed Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, the man the Pentagon would choose as post-OIF oil minister for Iraq, on the correct method of disposing
Iraq's crude.
And what did the USA want Iraq to do with Iraq's oil? The answer will surprise many of you: and it is uglier, more twisted, devilish and devious than anything imagined by the most conspiracy-addicted blogger. The answer can be found in a 323-page plan for Iraq's oil secretly drafted by the State Department. Our team got a hold of a copy; how, doesn't matter. The key thing is what's inside this thick Bush diktat: a directive to Iraqis to maintain a state oil company that will "enhance its relationship with OPEC."
Enhance its relationship with OPEC??? How strange: the government of the United States rdering Iraq to support the very OPEC oil cartel which is strangling our nation with outrageously high prices for crude.
Specifically, the system ordered up by the Bush cabal would keep a lid on Iraq's oil production -- limiting Iraq's oil pumping to the tight quota set by Saudi Arabia and the OPEC cartel.
There you have it. Yes, Bush went in for the oil -- not to get MORE of Iraq's oil, but to prevent Iraq producing TOO MUCH of it.
You must keep in mind who paid for George's ranch and Dick's bunker: Big Oil. And Big Oil -- and their buck-buddies, the Saudis -- don't make money from pumping more oil, but from pumping LESS of it. The lower the supply, the higher the price.
It's Economics 101. The oil industry is run by a cartel, OPEC, and what economists call an "oligopoly" -- a tiny handful of operators who make more money when there's less oil, not more of it. So, every time the "insurgents" blow up a pipeline in Basra, every time Mad Mahmoud in Tehran threatens to cut supply, the price of oil leaps. And Dick and George just LOVE it.
Dick and George didn't want more oil from Iraq, they wanted less. I know some of you, no matter what I write, insist that our President and his Veep are on the hunt for more crude so you can cheaply fill your family Hummer; that somehow, these two oil-patch babies are concerned that the price of gas in the USA is bumping up to $3 a gallon.
No so, gentle souls. Three bucks a gallon in the States (and a quid a litre in Britain) means colossal profits for Big Oil, and that makes Dick's ticker go pitty-pat with joy. The top oily-gopolists, the five largest oil companies, pulled in $113 billion in profit in 2005 -- compared to a piddly $34 billion in 2002 before Operation Iraqi Liberation. In other
words, it's been a good war for Big Oil.
As per Plan Bush, Bahr Al-Ulum became Iraq's occupation oil minister; the conquered nation "enhanced its relationship with OPEC;" and the price of oil, from Clinton peace-time to Bush war-time, shot up 317%.
In other words, on the third anniversary of invasion, we can say the attack and occupation is, indeed, a Mission Accomplished. However, it wasn't America's mission, nor the Iraqis'. It was an Mission Accomplished for OPEC and Big Oil.
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8 comments:
An interesting article. I don't doubt that some of George Bush's best friends are laughing all the way to the bank. But, their profits are truly blood money!
The article in question is pure speculation, of course. One might judge it's worth honestly by comparing it's nature and origin to a document prepared by the United Nations and approved by that body, for instance the following:
Arabic Version: http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/arz.htm
English Version: http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
One document presents the viewpoint of one man, and it's message is a cynical and gloomy one which might provoke little good. The other presents opinions agreed on by representatives from many nations and it's message is affirmative and idealistic.
If I guide my actions by either document I would prefer the one from the UN. Ultimately the choice is mine as an individual, as is the rsponsibility to judge how I will gide my actions.
Sometimes it's hard for folks to get together and agree on anything. I see the current deadlock of the Iraqi government in choosing a prime minister as such a problem. Disagreements that have appeared in the comments to this blog might be another.
When people seek a productive path to the future it may help to focus on the things on which they agree rather than on the points where they disagree, or so I have read from time to time.
Please pardon my idealism in believing this might be possible.
I have to agree that it would be bad for the country to split up. I have the impression that most Iraqis don't want that and recognize it's disadvantages. Still, it seems the folks elected to run the country are having a hard time overcoming their differences. To me it seems obvious that if this Jafarri fellow can't get the votes in Parliament he needs for approval then another guy agreeable to a majority of Parlament needs to be nominated in his place. I wonder why they don't just do that.
albartoz
"It seems that our usual warmongers have all disappeared. Have they ran out of arguments or have they been ordered to withdraw?"
I think they have been ordered to withdraw.
I noticed ther are changes in the US policy toward Iraq and the current Iraqi gonernment.
Does this mean that the Americans learn some thing from their mistakes?
waldschrat
:I have to agree that it would be bad for the country to split up. I have the impression that most Iraqis don't want that and recognize it's disadvantages."
Most Iraqis are so ignorants that they don't know what is happenning around them, they follow their leaders as sheeps, the leaders are either puppets in the hands of the Iranians or the CIA or the mossad.
Our problem that we don't have a real patriot leader, all the politicians who came with the occupation are in some way or another are traiters or at the best act to their own interest. No body think about Iraq and the Iraqis.
Three years after occupation or call it liberation and we still not find electricity, drinking water, the food rations, Kerosine, Gasoline ...etc... etc. and the politicians are fighting for positions to collect more money or to serve their masters some where.
They are going in for the oil!
They are going in cos they don't want the oil!
AAHHHHHHHHH!!!
Mr Palast is going to sell a lot of books anyway. Topstuff.
Anyone who believes what the delusional America hater, Palast says is ignorant of the facts.
In the article Palast mentions that "323-page plan for Iraq's oil secretly drafted by the State Department. Our team got a hold of a copy; how, doesn't matter."
Actually, being that the Guardian is a UK paper, it matters GREATLY just HOW they got their hands on a "secret", or otherwise known as classified document drafted by a foreign country.
Naturally, I believe Palast's rather biased and all together slip shot reporting here makes his footloose accusation in itself false...especially when it hinges on some "secret" dossier that they stole from another country but cannot show us.
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