Bobby Kennedy and Greg Palast on Iraq

[Guest guest]

Thu, 3 Aug 2006 05:12:24 -0400

" Greg Palast " <palast

Bobby Kennedy and Greg Palast on Iraq

 

 

 

 

Greg Palast

 

August 3, 2006

 

" THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD FOR BIG OIL "

… Bobby Kennedy and Palast on why Saddam had to go.

 

" This war in Iraq has been the best thing in the world for Big Oil and

OPEC. They've made the largest profits in the history of the world.

The interesting thing about your book is you show how it was all

planned from the beginning. The story is like a spy thriller. " --

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

 

Listen to RFK and Greg Palast on Iraq, a 20-minute conversation about

blood and oil, the podcast of 'Ring of Fire' from Air America.

http://www.gregpalast.com/podcasting/radiointerviews/PalastonRingofFire_7-29-06.\

mp3

 

The following is part of the story referenced in their discussion:

 

THE JERK: WHY SADDAM HAD TO GO

by Greg Palast

Excerpt from 'Armed Madhouse'

 

The 323-page multi-volume " Options for Iraqi Oil " begins with the

expected dungeons-and-dragons warning:

 

The report is submitted on the understanding that [the

State Department] will maintain the contents confidential.

 

More...

 

For two years, the State Department (and Defense and the White House)

denied there were secret plans for Iraq's oil. They told us so in

writing. That was the first indication the plan existed. Proving that,

and getting a copy, became the near-to-pathologic obsession of our team.

 

Our big break came when James Baker's factotum, Amy Jaffe, first

reached on her cell in Amsterdam, then at Baker's operation in

Houston, convinced herself that I had the right to know about the

plan. I saw no reason to correct her impression. To get the plan's

title I used a truly dumb trick, asking if her copy's headings matched

mine. She read it to me and listed its true authors from the industry.

 

The plan carries the State Department logo on the cover, Washington

DC. But it was crafted in Houston, under the tutelage of the oil

industry -- including, we discovered, Donald Hertzmark, an advisor to

the Indonesia state oil company, and Garfield Miller of Aegis Energy,

advisors to Solomon Smith Barney, all hosted by the James A. Baker III

Institute.

 

After a year of schmoozing, Jaffe invited me to the Baker lair in Houston.

 

The James A. Baker III Institute is constructed a bit like a church or

mosque, with a large echoing rotunda under a dome at its center,

encircled by memorabilia and photos of the Great Man himself with the

world's leaders, about evenly split between dictators and democrats.

 

And there is the obligatory shot of a smiling Nelson Mandela shaking

Baker III's hand. (Mandela is not so impolite as to remind Jim that he

was Reagan's Chief of Staff when Reagan coddled the regime that kept

Mandela imprisoned.)

 

For tax purposes, it's an educational institute, and looking through

the alarm-protected display cases along the wall was unquestionably an

education. You could virtually write the recommendations of the

'Options for Iraqi Oil' report by a careful inspection of the trinkets

of Baker's travels among the powerful.

 

There is the golden royal robe given Baker by Kazakh strongman

Nazerbaev, the one who shared in the $51 million payment from

ExxonMobil -- a James A. Baker client -- and alongside it a jeweled

sword with a note from Nazerbaev, " Jim, there will always be a slice

for you. " (I made that up.)

 

Who is this James A. Baker III that he rates a whole institute, and

one that will tell Iraq its oil future? Once Secretary of State to

Bush Sr., Baker was now promoted to consigliere to ExxonMobil, the

Republican National Committee and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

 

In Houston, I found in Jaffe a preppy, talky Jewish girl with a Bronx

accent like a dentist's drill who, stranded in a cowboy world,

poignantly wanted to be one of The Boys. She thinks she can accomplish

this through fashion accoutrements -- she showed me her alligator

cowboy boots and rolled her eyes -- " for Rodeo Day! "

 

Lucky for me and my (hidden) recorder, she did not learn from Baker

and the boys' Rule #1 for rulers: shut up.

 

So while Amy was in the mood to say too much, and before I got into

the details of Big Oil's plan for Iraq, I needed Amy's help in finding

the answer to the question that was just driving me crazy: why did

Saddam have to go? Why did the oil industry promote an invasion of

Iraq to get rid of Saddam?

 

The question is basic but the answer is not at all obvious.

 

We know the neo-cons' answer: Their ultimate target of the invasion

was Saudi Arabia, which would be cut low by a Free Iraq's busting the

OPEC oil cartel. But Big Oil wouldn't let that happen. The neo-cons'

scheme ended up an unnoted smear under

Amy's alligator boot heels.

 

And we can rule out Big Oil's desire for Iraq's oil as the decisive

motive to invade. The last thing the oil industry wanted from Iraq in

2001 was a lot more oil.

 

Neither Saddam's affection for euro currency nor panic over oil supply

'peaking' ruffled the international oil industry. What, then, made

Saddam, so easy to hug in the 1980s, unbearable in the 1990s?

 

Saddam had to go, but why?

 

Amy told me they held meetings about it.

 

Beginning just after Bush's Florida 'victory' in December 2000, the

shepherds of the planet's assets got together to plan our energy

future under the weighty aegis of the " Joint Task Force on Petroleum

of the James A. Baker III Institute and the Council on Foreign

Relations. " The master plan makers included Paul Bremer's and

Kissinger's partner, Mack McLarty, CEO of Kissinger McLarty

Associates; John Manzoni of British Petroleum; Luis Giusti, former CEO

of the Venezuelan state oil company (until Hugo Chavez kicked him

out); Ken Lay of Enron (pre-indictment); Philip Verleger of the

National Petroleum Council, and other movers and shakers crucial to

such bi-partisan multi-continental group gropes -- all chaired by Dr.

Edward Morse, the insider's insider, from Hess Oil Trading.

 

Their final report detailed Saddam's crimes. Gassing Kurds and

Iranians? No. James A. Baker was the Reagan Chief of Staff when the

U.S. provided Saddam the intelligence to better target his chemical

weapons. Weapons of Mass Destruction? Not since this crowd stopped

selling him the components.

 

In the sanitary words of the Council on Foreign Relations' report

(written up by Jaffe herself), Saddam's problem was that he was a

" swinger " :

 

Tight markets have increased U.S. and global vulnerability

to disruption and provided adversaries undue potential in-

fluence over the price of oil. Iraq has become a key

" swing " producer, posing a difficult situation for the U.S.

government.

 

Now hold on a minute: Why is our government in a " difficult " position

if Iraq is a " swing producer " of oil?

 

The answer was that Saddam was jerking the oil market up and down. One

week, without notice, the man in the moustache suddenly announces he's

going to " support the Palestinian intifada " and cuts off all oil

shipments. The result: Worldwide oil prices jump up. The next week,

Saddam forgets about the Palestinians and pumps to the maximum allowed

under the Oil-for-Food Program. The result: Oil prices suddenly

dive-bomb. Up, down, up, down. Saddam was out of control.

 

" Control is what it's all about, " one oilman told me. " It's not about

getting the oil, it's about controlling oil's price. "

 

So, within days of Bush's election in November 2000, the James Baker

Institute issued this warning:

 

In a market with so little cushion to cover unexpected

events, oil prices become extremely sensitive to perceived

supply risks. Such a market increases the potential lever-

age of an otherwise lesser producer such as Iraq...

 

I met with Falah Aljibury, an advisor to Goldman Sachs, the Baker/CFR

group and, I discovered, host to the State Department's invasion

planning meetings in February 2001. The Iraqi-born industry man put it

this way: " Iraq is not stable, a wild card. " Saddam cuts production,

or suddenly boosts it, playing games with the U.N. over the

Oil-for-Food Program. The tinpot despot was, almost alone, setting the

weekly world price of oil and Big Oil did not care for that. In the

CFR's sober language:

 

Saddam is a " destabilizing influence... to the flow of oil

to international markets from the Middle East. "

 

With Saddam out of control, jerking markets up and down, the price of

controlling the price was getting just too high. Saddam drove the oil

boys bonkers. For example, Saddam's games pushed the State Department,

disastrously, to launch, in April 2002, a coup d'etat in Venezuela.

 

This could not stand. Saddam delighted in playing cat-and-mouse with

the USA and our oil majors. Unfortunately for him, he wasn't playing

with mice, but a much bigger and unforgiving breed of rodents.

 

Saddam was asking for it. It was time for a " military assessment. " The

CFR concluded:

 

Saddam Hussein has demonstrated a willingness to

threaten to use the oil weapon to manipulate oil mar-

kets... United States should conduct an immediate pol-

icy review toward Iraq, including military, energy,

economic, and political/diplomatic assessments.

 

The true motive to invade Iraq, Saddam's " manipulation of oil

markets, " was there, but not yet, in April 2001, the official excuse.

 

Not surprisingly, the desires of the " Project for a New American

Century, " the neo-con field of dreams, of remaking Arabia, was not in

the Baker Institute-CFR plan. However, the conclusion, Saddam must go,

matched the neo-con's policy demand, if for highly different reasons.

The Baker-CFR panel had a limited concern: Get rid of the jerk, the

guy yanking the market.

 

Morse was close-lipped about who saw and used the 2001 Baker-CFR

report, but Amy Jaffe could not help telling me that Morse reported

its conclusions in a briefing at the Pentagon.

 

More important, back in early 2001, the initial Baker-CFR report

(another participant tipped me) was handed directly to Vice President

Dick Cheney. Cheney met secretly with CFR task force members

(including Ken Lay) to go over the maps of Iraq's oil fields. That,

apparently, sealed it. Cheney took the CFR/Baker recommendations as

his own plan for dissecting Iraq, I'm told, beginning with the

none-too-thinly-veiled take-out-Saddam " assessment. "

 

And whose plan was it? I knew the membership of the Baker-CFR group

was Big Oil and its retainers. But I was curious to know who put up

the cash for drafting the extravagant report that was so protective of

OPEC and Saudi interests. This document was, after all, the outline on

which the Bush administration drew its grand design for energy, from

Iraq to California to Venezuela. According to Jaffe, the cost of this

exercise in Imperialism Lite was funded by " the generous support of

Khalid al-Turki " of Saudi Arabia.

 

**********

Excerpt adapted from Greg Palast's just-released New York Times

bestseller, " ARMED MADHOUSE: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats

Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and other

Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War. "

http://www.GregPalast.com.

 

May be reproduced without permission.

Special thanks to investigator Leni von Eckardt for preferring

documentation over sleep.

***