We Need the Oil, Right? So What's the Problem?

[Guest guest]

Even this argument doesn't address the worst part. The argument here

is based on the USA getting oil, but the real deal is that it isn't for the US.

The US is paying for it in trillions of dollars and lots of lives gone both

our's and Irag's, but the whole ploy is really to aquire oil for the

international oil companies. That way the U.S. taxpayers and youth pay to aquire

it illegally and then will pay again dearly to get it from the mutinationals.

 

 

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/021405Y.shtml

 

We Need the Oil, Right? So What's the Problem?

By Ray McGovern

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

 

Monday 14 February 2005

 

Such openness is rare; it set me back on my heels. The question

came last Monday as I finished a lecture in Pewaukee, Wisconsin–the

first of a handful of talks I gave for " Great Decisions 2005, " a

program of the Institute of World Affairs, University of

Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

 

With the " weapons of mass destruction " of recent memory having

evaporated as casus belli for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, I

had decided to experiment with a tutorial on what I believe to be the

real reasons behind the war—first and foremost, oil. Passing by a

phalanx of late-model gas-guzzlers on my way in, I found myself

wondering how my observations on the oil factor would be received. In

the end, I was more than a little surprised that none of the 250 folks

in that very conservative audience seemed to have much of a problem.

 

The Most Recent Death

 

I had thought I was in for a much more difficult time. Among other

things, the news had just broken that 22 year-old Lance Cpl. Travis M.

Wichlacz of the Milwaukee-based Fox Company had become the fifth from

that company, and the 33rd from Wisconsin overall, to be killed in

action in Iraq. His stepmother told a reporter, " Travis was kicking

down doors. They were going into houses and finding weapons caches and

dismantling bombs. " Cpl. Wichlacz died in a roadside bombing southwest

of Baghdad on February 5.

 

We began with a moment of silence in his memory, and then imagined

ourselves into the scene with the newspaper reporter who had spoken

with Wichlacz' father, Dennis. We tried to anticipate questions Mr.

Wichlacz might ask us:

 

Q. " How could our country have had such bad intelligence that

President Bush was misled into starting this war? "

 

A. " I'm afraid it's not that simple, Dennis. The Bush

administration decided to attack Iraq many months before any

`intelligence' was adduced to `justify' such an attack. Yes, the

intelligence conjured up was bad. But its target was Congress; even

Colin Powell has admitted that. And the aim was to deceive our

lawmakers into forfeiting to the Executive Congress' constitutional

prerogative to authorize war. "

 

Q. " But what about my son?... and the others who died? Why? "

 

A. " Oil. "

 

Oil

 

Canadian writer Linda McQuaig, author of " It's the Crude, Dude " ,

has noted that decades from now it will all seem a 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 world oil supply with terminal illness, and

the fact that (as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has put

it) Iraq " swims on a sea of oil. " It will all seem so obvious as to

provoke little more than a yawn.

 

But that will be then. Now is now. How best to explain the abrupt

transition from early-nineties prudence to the present day

recklessness of this administration? How to fathom the continued

cynicism that trades throwaway soldiers for the chimera of controlling

Middle East oil?

 

The Earlier Cheney on Our Soldiers

 

In August 1992, Dick Cheney, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney

under a very different President Bush, was asked to explain why US

tanks did not roll into Baghdad and depose Saddam Hussein during the

Gulf War. Cheney said:

 

" I don't think you could have done that without significant

casualties... And the question in my mind is how many additional

casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not that damned many...

And we're not going to get bogged down in the problems of trying to

take over and govern Iraq. "

 

" Where the Prize Ultimately Lies "

 

Later, then-CEO Dick Cheney of Halliburton found himself focusing

on different priorities. In the fall of 1999 he complained:

 

" Oil companies are expected to keep developing enough oil to

offset oil depletion and also to meet new demand...So where is this

oil going to come from? Governments and national oil companies are

obviously in control of 90 percent of the assets... The Middle East

with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost is still where

the prize ultimately lies. "

 

What had changed in the seven years between Cheney's two statements?

 

* The US kept importing more and more oil to meet its energy needs.

* Energy shortages drove home the need to ensure/increase energy

supply.

* Oil specialists concluded that " peak oil " production was but a

decade away, while demand would continue to zoom skyward.

* The men now running US policy on the Middle East appealed to

President Clinton in January 1998 to overthrow Saddam Hussein or " a

significant portion of the world's supply of oil will be put at hazard. "

* In October 1998 Congress passed and Clinton signed a bill

declaring it the sense of Congress that " it should be the policy of

the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by

Saddam Hussein. "

* International sanctions left a debilitated Iraq with greatly

weakened armed forces headed by an " evil dictator. "

 

Shortly after George W. Bush entered the White House in January

2001, Vice President Cheney's energy task force dragged out the maps

of Iraq's oil fields. (We now have some of the relevant documents,

courtesy of a bitterly contested Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

But the courts have upheld the White House decision to keep the task

force proceedings, and even the names of its members, secret.)

 

To be fair, taking over Middle East oil fields was not a new idea.

In 1975 Henry Kissinger, using a pseudonym, wrote an article for

Harpers titled " Seizing Arab Oil, " outlining plans to do just that,

preventing Arab countries from having absolute control over the modern

world's most vital commodity. But in those days there was a USSR to

put the brakes on such adventurism.

 

Prize Lies

 

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has claimed that the conflict

with Iraq " has nothing to do with oil, " but those who do not limit

their news intake to FOX are aware that his credibility is somewhat

tarnished. After all, it was Rumsfeld who assured us, among other

things, that he knew where Iraq's " weapons of mass destruction " were

located. And for a war supposedly not about oil, US military planners

certainly gave extremely high priority to securing the oil fields—and

even the Oil Ministry in Baghdad.

 

It will bring no consolation to young widow Angela Coakley, whom

Cpl. Wichlacz married last May just before shipping out to Iraq, or to

his parents to know that they are not the first to suffer immeasurable

loss on false pretenses.

 

If any question why we died,

Tell them because our fathers lied.

Rudyard Kipling

 

No Static

 

In Pewaukee I fully expected such observations to cause some

static, at least during the formal post-lecture Q & A session before

most of the audience drifted off into a light snow. I was later

advised not to misread the lack of demurral as concurrence, but rather

to chalk it up to Mid-West reticence.

 

Some twenty folks did linger in a small circle that was dominated

by a persistent, well dressed man (let's call him Joe), who just would

not let go:

 

" Surely you agree that we need the oil. Then what's your problem?

Some 1,450 killed thus far are far fewer than the toll in Vietnam

where we lost 58,000; it's a small price to pay... a sustainable rate

to bear. What IS your problem? "

 

I asked Joe if he would feel differently were it to have been his

son that was killed, rather than Cpl. Wichlacz, but the suggestion

seemed so farfetched as to be beyond Joe's ken. (And therein lies yet

another important story). So I resorted to a utilitarian approach.

" Joe, we're just not going to be able to control the oil in Iraq. The

war is unwinnable. There are 1.3 billion Muslims, and they are very

upset with us; they will not let us prevail. "

 

But this too made little impact on Joe.

 

How about Because It's Wrong

 

I sized Joe up as one who would press for having the Ten

Commandments prominently displayed in the courthouses of America. So I

took a new tack, asking him, " Isn't one of those commandments about

stealing... and one about killing... one about lying... and even one

about coveting your neighbor's possessions? Would you think we might

lop off those four and whittle the tablets down to the remaining six

so as to spare ourselves potential embarrassment? "

 

Joe walked off to drive his gas-guzzler home.

 

Ray McGovern is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence

Professionals for Sanity. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst spanned

administrations from John F. Kennedy to George H. W. Bush.

 

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