President Bush has evaded Cindy Sheehan’s question, “What was the
noble cause that my son died for?” But he provided a partial answer on the
day that the New Orleans levees gave way.
The media coverage was scant and fleeting -- but we should not
allow the nation’s Orwellian memory hole to swallow up a revealing
statement in Bush’s speech at a naval air station near San Diego.
In the Aug. 30 speech, moments after condemning “a brutal campaign
of terror in Iraq,” the president said: “If Zarqawi and bin Laden gain
control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future
terrorist attacks. They’d seize oil fields to fund their ambitions.” In
other words, the U.S. war effort in Iraq must continue because control of
Iraqi oil is at stake.
Would U.S. troops be in Iraq if that country didn’t have a drop of
oil under its sand? Most politicians dodge that kind of question. And for
years, the U.S. news media -- with few exceptions -- have elided the oily
obvious. Such denials go back a long way.
* * * * * * * * * *
On Aug. 15, 1990 -- two weeks after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait --
President George H.W. Bush expressed great concern about oil as the
Pentagon moved to deploy troops and weaponry to the Persian Gulf. Of
course the confrontation was about “our own national security interests”
along with ensuring “peace and stability,” but there was something more.
“We are also talking about maintaining access to energy resources
that are key -- not just to the functioning of this country, but to the
entire world,” the president said. “Our jobs, our way of life, our own
freedom and the freedom of friendly countries around the world would all
suffer if control of the world’s great oil reserves fell into the hands of
Saddam Hussein,” he declared.
But by autumn the official story had shifted. Confronted by
protesters while speaking at a fundraiser in Des Moines, the president had
this rejoinder: “You know, some people never get the word. The fight isn’t
about oil. The fight is about naked aggression that will not stand.”
Addressing a Republican crowd in Vermont a week later, the first President
Bush flatly said that “it isn’t oil that we’re concerned about. It is
aggression. And this aggression is not going to stand.”
Papering over corporate interests with humanitarian ones is
standard media operating procedure for presidents and their
administrations along with many pundits. On the last day of November 2003,
with U.S. troops occupying Iraq, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman
gushed that “this war is the most important liberal,
revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan.” He
lauded the war as “one of the noblest things this country has ever
attempted abroad.” Friedman did not mention the estimated 112 billion
barrels of untapped oil in Iraq.
The publicized arguments in favor of war do not usually include
zeal to serve corporate interests. But once in a blue moon, politicians
opt to openly illuminate such motives, as when -- during congressional
debate in January 1991, a few days before the Gulf War began -- Senator
Warren Rudman grounded the prevailing lofty arguments with a factor more
crude. “Can anyone reasonably assert,” he asked, “that it would serve our
interests to mortgage the production and pricing levels of nearly one-half
of the world’s proven oil reserve to the whims of an ambitious tyrant? I
think not.”
A dozen years later, weeks before the invasion of Iraq, liberal
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen launched a barrage of invective
against a member of Congress who had dared to identify oil as “the
strongest incentive” for the impending war. Cohen was vitriolic. The first
word of his column was “liar.” From there, he peppered his piece with
references to Representative Dennis Kucinich as an “indomitable demagogue”
and a “fool” who was “repeating a lie.”
But Cohen would have done well to reread a front page of his own
newspaper. Five months earlier, on Sept. 15, 2002, a page-one Post story
carried the headline “In Iraqi War Scenario, Oil Is Key Issue; U.S.
Drillers Eye Huge Petroleum Pool.” In the article, Ahmad Chalabi, the
exile leader of the U.S.-backed Iraqi National Congress, said that he
favored the creation of a U.S.-led consortium to develop oil fields in a
post-Saddam Iraq: “American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil.”
The same Post article quoted former CIA Director James Woolsey -- a
Chalabi supporter who, according to a Legal Times story, had been on the
payroll of Chalabi’s group. Woolsey said: “France and Russia have oil
companies and interests in Iraq. They should be told that if they are of
assistance in moving Iraq toward decent government, we’ll do the best we
can to ensure that the new government and American companies work
closely with them. If they throw in their lot with Saddam, it will be
difficult to the point of impossible to persuade the new Iraqi
government to work with them.”
As business pages had sometimes indicated, it was actually quite
reasonable to identify oil as very important in U.S. policy toward Iraq.
But in political news coverage, and among all but a few mainstream
political pundits, such talk was in general disrepute.
On Wall Street, financial analysts were inclined to be much more
candid than politicians or political reporters. “Think of Iraq as a
military base with a very large oil reserve underneath,” said Fadel Gheit,
an expert on the oil industry for Oppenheimer & Company. He added: “You
can’t ask for better than that.” After more than a quarter century of
tracking the oil business, Gheit commented: “Think of Iraq as virgin
territory. ... It is the superstar of the future. That’s why Iraq becomes
the most sought-after real estate on the face of the earth.”
A Toronto Star columnist and author, Linda McQuaig, cited internal
documents that the Bush administration had used for policy formulation
(papers not intended for public viewing but released due to a successful
lawsuit). In spring 2001, high-ranking Bush officials and oil firm execs
pored over a map showing details of “Exploration Blocks” and other
intricacies of Iraq’s oil fields. Meeting in secret, the energy task force
-- chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney -- had also examined a chart that
featured information about 63 oil companies from 30 nations under the
heading “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfields.”
The documents, McQuaig wrote, “suggest that those who took part in
the Cheney task force -- including senior oil company executives -- were
very interested in Iraq’s oil and specifically in the danger of it falling
into the hands of eager foreign oil companies, rather than into the
rightful hands of eager U.S. oil companies. As the documents show, prior
to the U.S. invasion, foreign oil companies were nicely positioned for
future involvement in Iraq, while the major U.S. oil companies, after
years of U.S.-Iraqi hostilities, were largely out of the picture.” Of
course, for oil corporations based in the USA, that picture would
drastically change after the invasion.
* * * * * * * * * *
On Aug. 30, 2005, less than a minute after declaring that if
terrorists “gain control of Iraq” they would “seize oil fields to fund
their ambitions,” President Bush vowed: “We will stay on the offensive. We
will stand with the people of Iraq. And we will prevail.”
The next day, the Associated Press reported that “President Bush
answered growing antiwar protests yesterday with a fresh reason for U.S.
troops to continue fighting in Iraq: protection of the country’s vast oil
fields, which he said would otherwise fall under the control of terrorist
extremists.” The end of another AP dispatch noted: “A one-time oilman,
Bush has rejected charges that the war in Iraq is a struggle to control
the nation’s vast oil wealth. The president has avoided making links
between the war and Iraq’s oil reserves, but the soaring cost of gasoline
has focused attention on global petroleum sources.”
For years, war supporters have pooh-poohed slogans like “No Blood
for Oil.” But let the record show: In a scripted speech, the president of
the United States has cited Iraqi oil as a key reason for the U.S.
military to keep killing in Iraq.
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This article is adapted from Norman Solomon’s new book “War Made Easy: How
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For information, go to:
www.WarMadeEasy.com