[20] News from Absurdistan - It Has Nothing To Do With Oil

One does not know where to start in commenting on the list of shifting rationales presented to defend and, indeed, commend the American War in Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction - did not work. Democratisation at the barrel of a gun - did not work. In fact, the crusaders of democracy show little respect for democratic outcomes when the elected regime is not complicit. Nation building - did not work, little wonder. Ah, we had to do it (attacking Iraq) because our oil supplies are threatened (America does not depend on Iraqi oil - unimportant nicety). And also, there are terrorists all over the place who threaten us...Well, terrorists have always been around and will continue to be around forever. But the answer to that is not to break a fly on the wheel - or in the thematically more powerful German imagery: to shoot with canons at sparrows. You are a lot more likely to be struck by lightning than to get killed by a terrorist. But we have to make the target the size of our military prowess. That is how Al Qa'ida, a bunch of dispersed fighters, if it is a definable entity at all, is being blown up in the media to take on the proportions of a Super-Power. That is one of the reasons why no one went seriously after Osama Bin Laden. Had we have caught him, there would have been no occasion to conduct a nice little war in Afghanistan. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, of course, are a great way to increase the number of terrorists (many of whom would appear a lot more congenial to you and me, if we were more in the habit of asking ourselves what is actually being done to them and how we would feel and react if our homes, kin, friends and fellow-countrymen were subjected to the daily terror they have to endure), which is good news to the state, because it creates excuses to extend its powers and to perpetuate international aggression. It is a different issue that cannot be covered extensively in this post, just how egregious the racism is that the mainstream Western views on Afghanistan and Iraq imply. Germans, for instance, with the generous support of the media, tend to divide the population of Afghanistan in two parts: the good ones deserving foreign aid, and the bad ones deserving to be ferreted out by German Tornados and killed by American soldiers (the Germans are absolutely in favour of the killing but decline for some mysterious reason to actually perform it themselves). The concept of the "Untermensch" ("the sub-human") is alive and kicking in Germany, so much so that my fellow countrymen often feel I am being obtrusive when confronting them with the 500 000 Iraqis that have perished as a result of Western embargo measures and bombardments (prior to the present war), those very dead that Albright openly considers a price "worth it". As if Iraqi lives ever matter to the West. And when confronted with a study that puts the Iraqi casualties (killed by American forces) at 10 000 a month, my fellow Germans turn into accountants of death, asking me not to worry, for the true figure cannot be higher than 2 000. The list of reasons given to justify the war in Iraq should contain: tyranicide. But that did not work either. Though Saddam (our foster child and long-standing good friend) is dead, the purpose of killing him was to make life better for the people of Iraq, an end hardly achieved, if one looks at the living conditions of Iraqis since the War broke out and the fact that more Iraqis have died as a consequence of this war than as a result of Saddam's oppressive regime. What else have we got on the list of heroic excuses to make Western soldiers practice their trade on foreign soil? Ah, long after "mission accomplished", we encounter the need to stabilise by war a region utterly destabilised by - war. If matters were not so serious, one could speak of a grand comedy. The "surge" was meant to buy domestic politicians time for reconciliation, this aim being the yardstick initially announced as the criterion for success or failure. Of course, no progress has been made along these predefined lines, to the contrary, and, of course, at the time of reckoning, no one talks about the utter failure of the "surge". General Betrayus, stylised to act as a deus ex machina and ultimate fountain of wisdom, even admits that he does not know whether the ongoing efforts make America(ns) safer. Which is not his job anyway, being a politician wearing the uniform of a spineless career soldier. Why should he care, with the public (especially the politically mandated public) completely unperturbed by the most blatant acts of corruption. Congress has abrogated its constitutional duty to declare war and to end it, as the case may be, delegating all power in the matter to the President, who predictably goes looking for the next fuse to light. The President, happily accepting the invitation, construes his role as the commander-in-chief as extending to all matters American, rather than as confined to conducting military action in the context of a war declared and defined in terms of its goals, purposes and conditions of termination by Congress. Being the boss of General Betrayus, he had little reluctance to overcome before instating the slimy underling as the arbiter on the issue of whether the war should be continued in the fashion willed by the "Decider" or in ways more in line with his opponents. (Look at the so far penultimate post in this blog, containing a report on the sorry fact that the most powerful and most richly endowed governmental agencies are allowed to proliferate virtually unaudited. Democracy (better: pluralistic, strictly anti-constitutional monarchy) as a general justification to do anything one wishes to once in power has reached the point that Lord Acton captured in his famous dictum: "Power corrupts, Absolute power corrupts absolutely.") Now, mix this kind of seriousness in monitoring the actions of the President with the "imperialist reflex" (see below) alertly alive even among his critics and you will get...anything the King of America deigns to have - diverging nuances to it being part of the quid pro quo of corruption that keeps the system running and the presidential dictator on top of it. One of the many shocking aspects of the facile, spurious, damnably retroactive and logically erratic efforts to legitimise the genocidal aggression against Iraq is a tendency in many to effectively take the position: Well, if the war is to secure our supplies of oil, then waging it does make sense, after all. (We have to be realists, don't we, and look after ourselves.) This is actually the stance taken by Alan Greenspan, who commenting on his recently published book, defends the war against Iraq, citing a scenario that never existed (Saddam using nuclear weapons, cutting off the Hormuz Straits and controlling Kuwait and Saudi Arabia) and equally fantastically arguing (in response to the question below by an interviewer) that the Administration may conceivably have thought oil was not an issue in the war : "...In other words, the administration went to war saying it was all about weapons of mass destruction." "I believe that they believed that," Greenspan said. "I'm not saying that they believed it was about oil. I'm saying it is about oil and that I believe it was necessary to get Saddam out of there." Frankly, I do not understand Greenspan beyond the point I made about his position - but who ever did understand him, and was he ever supposed to be intelligible, as former head of the most secretive Federal Reserve? He seems to be saying that the Administration did not believe they were going to war because of oil - while, in fact, the war was nonetheless about oil. The poor Administration, with not a clue of the goings-on in the world, idealistically tried to rid the region of WMD that never existed, thereby launching a war that unbeknownst to them in actual fact "was about oil". So there, the public must be idiots. Is this what Greenspan is trying to say? Well, sometimes conspicuousness is the best camouflage - maybe Greenspan is quite simply an idiot. At any rate, here you have it from the horse's mouth: Something as deadly serious as war is dealt with as if logic did not matter. Here we have the case of a man inebriated with power and his own importance. http://rawstory.com//news/2007/Greenspan_Lefty_bloggers_totally_unfair_with_0917.html What I call the "imperialist reflex" has taken root in our minds pervasively. In essence it is an attitude holding that all it takes to be involved in a "just" war of aggression is to feel strongly enough about this interest or the other. Like our need for oil. This is not the place to explain that it will never be possible to control oil supplies short of conquering all major oil producing countries of the world, a task that is as impossible as it is reprehensible and, indeed dumb - as there is no country in the world with a substantial oil base that would not be happy to thrive on that resource by peaceful trade, while keeping oil flowing under conditions of war is practically impossible or prohibitively expensive. Unfortunately, the "imperialist reflex" is so deep seated that even the "doveish" succumb to it, more or less unthinkingly. Recently, a commentator of The New Yorker suggested in a radio interview on NPR ("Talk of the Nation") that those intending to withdraw from Iraq are a facile lot, forgetting that it remains paramount to the US/the West to protect its interest in the region. That takes us back to square one, i.e. all that it takes to have a right to meddle abroad militarily and otherwise is the perception of an interest. This is a recipe for permanent warfare and the abandonment of any principles that would preclude unjust war. The war against Iran is a foregone conclusion. Indeed, any war that Washington might wish to lead will take place essentially unresisted. All that we are left with to end or not to instigate war in the first place is the physical inability of the West to wage war. We are committed to a killing frenzy that will only stop when the West collapses eventually. The West has ceased to be a civilization. Greenspan Misses Cheney's Memo: Spills the Beans on Oil

by Ray McGovern

For those still wondering why President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney sent our young men and women into Iraq, the secret is now "largely" out. No, not from the lips of former secretary of state Colin Powell. It appears we shall have to wait until the disgraced general/diplomat draws nearer to meeting his maker before he gets concerned over anything more than the "blot" that Iraq has put on his reputation. Rather, the uncommon candor comes from a highly respected Republican doyen, economist Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, whom the president has praised for his "wise policies and prudent judgment." Sadly for Bush and Cheney, Greenspan decided to put prudence aside in his new book, The Age of Turbulence, and answer the most neuralgic issue of our times – why the United States invaded Iraq. Greenspan writes: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Everyone knows? Would that it were so. But it’s hardly everyone. Sometimes I think it’s hardly anyone. There are so many, still, who "can’t handle the truth," and that is all too understandable. I have found it a wrenching experience to be forced to conclude that the America I love would deliberately launch what the Nuremburg Tribunal called the "supreme international crime" – a war of aggression – largely for oil. For those who are able to overcome the very common, instinctive denial, for those who can handle the truth, it really helps to turn off the Sunday football games early enough to catch up on what’s going on. 60 Minutes On January 11, 2004, viewers of CBS’ 60 Minutes saw another of Bush’s senior economic advisers, former treasury secretary Paul O’Neill discussing The Price of Loyalty, his memoir about his two years inside the Bush administration. O’Neill, a plain speaker, likened the president’s behavior at cabinet meetings to that of "a blind man in a roomful of deaf people." How does he manage? Cheney and "a praetorian guard that encircled the president" help Bush make decisions off-line, blocking contrary views. Cheney has a Rumsfeldian knack for aphorisms that don’t parse in the real world – like "deficits don’t matter." To his credit, O’Neill picked a fight with that and ended up being fired personally by Cheney. In his book, Greenspan heaps scorn on that same Cheneyesque insight. O’Neill made no bones about his befuddlement over the president’s diffident disengagement from discussions on policy – except, that is, for Bush’s remarks betraying a pep-rally-cheerleader fixation with removing Saddam Hussein and occupying Iraq. Why Iraq? 'Largely Oil' O’Neill began to understand better after Bush’s inauguration when the discussion among his top advisers abruptly moved to how to divvy up Iraq’s oil wealth. Just days into the job, President Bush created the Cheney energy task force with the stated aim of developing "a national energy policy designed to help the private sector." Typically, Cheney has been able to keep secret its deliberations and even the names of its members. But a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit forced the Commerce Department to turn over task force documents, including a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries, terminals, and potential areas for exploration; a Pentagon chart "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts;" and another chart detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects – all dated March 2001. On the 60 Minutes, program on December 15, 2002, Steve Croft asked then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, "What do you say to people who think this [the coming invasion of Iraq] is about oil?" Rumsfeld replied: "Nonsense. It just isn’t. There – there – there are certain... things like that, myths that are floating around. I’m glad you asked. I – it has nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil." Au Contraire Greenspan’s indiscreet remark adds to the abundant evidence that Iraq oil, and not weapons of mass destruction, was the priority target long before the Bush administration invoked WMD as a pretext to invade Iraq. In the heady days of "Mission Accomplished," a week after the president landed on the aircraft carrier, then-deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz virtually bragged about the deceit during an interview. On May 9, 2003, Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason..." That was seven weeks after the invasion; no weapons of mass destruction had been found; and Americans were growing tired of being told that this was because Iraq was the size of California. Eventually, of course, Wolfowitz’ boss Rumsfeld was forced to concede, as he did to me during our impromptu TV debate on May 4, 2006: "It appears that there were not weapons of mass destruction there." But three years before, during that heady May of 2003 when all else seemed to be going along swimmingly, the inebriation of apparent success led to another glaring indiscretion by Wolfowitz. During a relaxed moment in Singapore late that month, Wolfowitz reminded the press that Iraq "floats on a sea of oil," and thus added to the migraine he had already given folks in the White House PR shop. But wait. For those of us absorbing more than FOX channel news, the primacy of the oil factor was a no-brainer. The limited number of invading troops were ordered to give priority to securing the oil wells and oil industry infrastructure immediately and let looters have their way with just about everything else (including the ammunition storage depots!). Barely three weeks into the war, Rumsfeld famously answered criticism for not stopping the looting: "Stuff happens." No stuff happened to the Oil Ministry. Small wonder that, according to O’Neill, Rumsfeld tried hard to dissuade him from writing his book and has avoided all comment on it. As for Greenspan’s book, Rumsfeld will find it easier to dodge questions from the Washington press corps from his sinecure at the Hoover Institute at Stanford. Eminence Grise...or Oily The other half of what Col. Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff at the State Department, calls the "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" is still lurking in the shadows. What changed Cheney’s mind toward Iraq from his sensible attitude after the Gulf War when, as defense secretary, he defended President George H. W. Bush’s decision not to attempt to oust Saddam Hussein and conquer Iraq? Here is what Cheney said in August 1992: "...how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth?...not that damned many. So I think we got it right...when the president made the decision that we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq." Cheney’s rather transparent remarks as CEO of Halliburton in autumn 1999 suggest what lies behind the cynical exploitation of genuine patriotism to recruit throwaway soldiers to trade for the chimera of control over the oil in Iraq: "Oil companies are expected to keep developing enough oil to offset oil depletion and also to meet new demand...So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of 90 percent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. The Middle East with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost is still where the prize ultimately lies." Not only Cheney, but also many of the captains of the oil industry were looking on Iraq with covetous eyes before the war. Most people forget that the Bush/Cheney administration came in on the heels of severe shortages of oil and natural gas in the U.S., and the passing of a milestone at which the United States had just begun importing more than half of the oil it consumes. One oil executive confided to a New York Times reporter a month before the war: "For any oil company, being in Iraq is like being a kid in F.A.O. Schwarz." Canadian writer Linda McQuaig, author of It's the Crude, Dude: War, Big Oil, and the Fight for the Planet (2004), has noted that decades from now it will seem to everyone a real no-brainer. Historians will calmly discuss the war in Iraq and identify oil as one of the key factors in the decision to launch it. They will point to growing US dependence on foreign oil, the competition with China, India, and others for a share of the diminishing world supply of this precious, nonrenewable resource, and the fact that Iraq "floats on a sea of oil." It will all seem so obvious as to provoke little more than a yawn. Other Factors Behind the Invasion There were, to be sure, other factors behind the ill-starred attack on Iraq – the Bush administration’s determination to acquire large, permanent military bases in the area outside of Saudi Arabia, for one. But that factor can be viewed as a subset of the energy motivation – the need to have substantial influence over the extraction and disposition of the oil in Iraq. In other words, the felt need for what the Pentagon prefers to call "enduring" military bases in the Middle East is a function of its strategic importance which, in turn, is a function – you guessed it – of its natural resources. Not only oil, but natural gas and water as well. I find the evidence persuasive that the other major factor in the Bush/Cheney decision to make war on Iraq was the misguided notion that this would make that part of the world safer for Israel. Indeed, the so-called "neoconservatives" still running U.S. policy toward the Middle East continue to have great difficulty distinguishing between what they perceive to be the strategic interests of Israel and those of the United States. And in my view, they show themselves extremely myopic on both counts.