|
CounterPunch
February
17, 2003
The Oil Companies Driving Bush's
War
Planning a Post-War
Oil Bonanza
By RALPH NADER
As the drive to war in Iraq races toward a precarious
endgame, the lead-footed Bush Administration shows no signs of
heeding to the caution flags flying in from all sides.
Urgings to go slow are not just a phenomena
of "Old Europe." At home, retired General Anthony Zinni,
a consultant to Colin Powell, and many other retired generals,
admirals, and officers have warned about the potential for "blowback."
They argue convincingly that this pending war diverts and distracts
from the war on terror and is likely to catalyze further acts
of terror against the citizens and security of the United States.
Retired general Wesley Clark told the Senate Armed Services Committee
that a war would "super-charge recruiting for Al Qaeda."
With U.N. Security Council Members France,
Russia, and China still unconvinced of the need for immediate
military action, international support for "preemptive strike"
seems unlikely to materialize. Even governments that support
a U.S.-led war in Iraq, such as Britain, Turkey, Spain, do not
have the support of their people. If the U.S. chooses to go it
alone or with the help of only a few allies, the already present
strains of international anti-Americanism will become even more
virulent.
Meanwhile, the Bush Administration has
been less than forthcoming in providing the public estimates
of the actual costs of a war, both in terms of troops and money.
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences estimates that over
10 years, war and the reconstruction of Iraq could cost as much
as $2 trillion--almost the equivalent of the entire annual federal
budget. In the New York Review of Books, Yale Professor William
D. Nordhaus puts thelow estimate at $120 billion and a high estimate
at $1.6 trillion, given a combination of "different adverse
effects." Despite the costs and dangers to innocent civilians,
one powerful administration constituency stands to benefit from
a unilateral war in Iraq that results in a U.S.-led regime change.
That constituency is the oil industry, whose slick influence
and crude ambitions permeate the administration from top to bottom.
Both the President and the Vice President are former oil executives.
National Security Adviser Condaleeza Rice is a former director
of Chevron. President Bush took more than $1.8 million in campaign
contributions from the oil and gas industries in the 2000 election.
All told, 41 members of the administration had ties to the oil
industry.
U.S. oil companies, banned from Iraq
for more than a decade, would like nothing more than to control
the production of Iraqi oil. With reserves of 112.5 billion barrels,
Iraq sits on top of 11% of the world's oil. Vice President Dick
Cheney and Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ill.) are two of the many
politicians who have the question of who will control Iraq's
petroleum on their minds.
Plans for control of the oil fields are
already being laid. The Wall Street Journal reported on January
16 that officials from the White House, State Department and
Department of Defense have been meeting informally with executives
from Halliburton, Slumberger, ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips
to plan the post-war oil bonanza. But no one wants to talk about
it. Larry Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research
Foundation told the Journal, "If we go to war, it's not
about oil. But the day the war ends, it has everything to do
with oil." The American people have a right to know what
role the oil industry is playing in Bush's increasingly frenetic
drive to war. What is being discussed in these meetings regarding
the oil industry's designs on this gigantic pool of petroleum?
The American people also have a right
to know what was discussed in the numerous secret meetings Vice
President Cheney's national energy task force held with oil and
gas executives. Cheney has been adamantly secretive about these
meetings, despite repeated attempts by Congress and public interest
groups to learn what was discussed.
Cheney's energy policy casts as inevitable
that we will have to import 17 million barrels of oil a day (two-thirds
of our supply) by 2020 and subsequently recommends "that
the President make energy security a priority of our trade and
foreign policy." It does not recommend specific goals for
conservation anytime in the near future. Just as Cheney refused
to meet with anybody but industry cronies in formulating the
national energy policy, Bush is now refusing to entertain the
counsel of anyone but war hawks. Repeated entreaties by national
peace groups, including veterans, clergy, and business groups,
for meetings with the President have fallen on ears deaf to anything
but the constant beating of war drums.
While it would be naive to label this
purely as a war for oil, the apparent connections are enough
to raise some serious questions. And when coupled with the Administration's
frighteningly stubborn insistence on ignoring the caution signs
pouring in from all sides, those questions become even more serious.
Yesterday's
Features
CounterPunch News Service
Slow
Lerner: It May Not Help Kids in Iraq, But It Sure Got Michael
Lerner Airtime
Andrew Murray
Tony
Blair Versus the British People
Ben Tripp
President
A**hole
Peggy Thomson
My
Close Encounter with Saddam
Gary Leupp
Meet Mr. Blowback:
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, CIA Op and Homicidal Thug
Saul Landau
Bush and Corporate Fraud
Adam Engel
A Civilian Occupation:
The Politics of Israeli Architecture
Anthony Gancarski
Jacksonville in Crisis
Rick Giombetti
Specific Threats to Democracy
Jean-David Levitte
A Warning on Iraq from France:
Make War the Last Option
Ian Gurney
Whose Side is Bush On?
Maria Engqvist
Did
the FARC Shoot Down a US Military Plane in Colombia?
Ron Jacobs
This Madness Must Cease
Josh Frank
Call to Washington:
Stonewall Bush
Website of the Day
Rock
Out Against War
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- CounterPunch Special:
The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
February 8
/ 9, 2003
Bill Christison
The
US Gameplan for Iraq
Intelligence Officers for
Sanity
Memo to Bush on Iraq
Olive Lowell
Homeland Insecurity
Champaign-Urbana Shaken by New INS Rules
Michael Neumann
Nonviolence: Its Histories and
Myths
Alison Weir
A Thousand Professors
David Krieger
On the Brink of War
Muqtedar Khan
The Logic of the Hawks
Anthony Gancarski
Pakistan on the Brink?
Jason Leopold
GAO Surrenders to Cheney
Anis Shivani
A Post-Liberal Theory of Consciousness for the Starbucks Habitué
David Vest
Dive Bomber
Norman Madarasz
The New Brazilian Cinema
Poets' Basement
Handleman, Smith, Engel
Website of the Weekend
Cities for Peace
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
|