Bush's Occupation Of Iraq Is About Oil

     Here are some interesting details about the United States invasion of Iraq and its quest to control all of the oil in the country.

   This comes from Michael Schwartz at TomDispatch

Eyes Eternally on the Prize
By Michael Schwartz

The struggle over Iraqi oil has been going on for a long, long time. One could date it back to 1980 when President Jimmy Carter -- before his Habitat for Humanity days -- declared that Persian Gulf oil was "vital" to American national interests. So vital was it, he announced, that the U.S. would use "any means necessary, including military force" to sustain access to it. Soon afterwards, he announced the creation of a Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, a new military command structure that would eventually develop into United States Central Command (Centcom) and give future presidents the ability to intervene relatively quickly and massively in the region.

Or we could date it all the way back to World War II, when British officials declared Middle Eastern oil "a vital prize for any power interested in world influence or domination," and U.S. officials seconded the thought, calling it "a stupendous source of strategic power and one of the greatest material prizes in world history."

The date when the struggle for Iraqi oil began is less critical than our ability to trace the ever growing willingness to use "any means necessary" to control such a "vital prize" into the present. We know, for example, that, before and after he ascended to the Vice-Presidency, Dick Cheney has had his eye squarely on the prize. In 1999, for example, he told the Institute of Petroleum Engineers that, when it came to satisfying the exploding demand for oil, "the Middle East, with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies." The mysterious Energy Task Force he headed on taking office in 2001 eschewed conservation or developing alternative sources as the main response to any impending energy crisis, preferring instead to make the Middle East "a primary focus of U.S. international energy policy." As part of this focus, the Task Force recommended that the administration put its energy, so to speak, into convincing Middle Eastern countries "to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment" -- in other words, into a policy of reversing 25 years of state control over the petroleum industry in the region.

The Energy Task Force set about planning how to accomplish this historic reversal. We know, for instance, that it scrutinized a detailed map of Iraq's oil fields, together with the (non-American) oil companies scheduled to develop them (once the UN sanctions still in place on Saddam Hussein's regime were lifted). It then worked jointly with the administration's national security team to find a compatible combination of military and economic policies that might inject American power into this equation. According to Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, the National Security Council directed its staff "to cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the 'melding' of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy: 'the review of operational policies towards rogue states,' such as Iraq, and 'actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.'"                Read More Here

Tags: oil Cheney Iraq Bush ExxonMobile BP

George Bush and Harry Truman

   Today is the 123rd birthday of Harry Truman, whom President Bush likes to compare himself to, as he did a year ago during a West Point   commencement address.

 From Daily Kos

by Bill in Portland Maine  Tue May 08, 2007

A year ago this month, in his West Point commencement address, President Bush compared himself to Harry Truman. On this, Truman's 123rd birthday, we take this opportunity to replay last year's C&J-sponsored debate in which the 33rd president mopped the floor with the 43rd:

Bush: I glance at the headlines, just to get kind of a flavor. I rarely read the stories.
Truman: A president either is constantly on top of events or, if he hesitates, events will soon be on top of him.
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Bush:  Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
Truman: In the circumstances, alarm is justified. The man who isn't alarmed simply doesn't understand the situation---or he is crazy. But alarm is one thing, and hysteria is another. Hysteria impels people to destroy the very thing they are struggling to preserve.
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Bush: We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories...for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them.  <<>>  [T]here's theories as to where the weapons went. They could have been destroyed during the war. Saddam and his henchmen could have destroyed them as we entered into Iraq. They could be hidden. They could have been transported to another country, and we'll find out.
Truman: He's one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides.
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Bush: The FISA law was written in 1978. We're having this discussion in 2006. It's a different world. And FISA is still an important tool. It's an important tool. And we still use that tool. But also...and we...look, I said, look, is it possible to conduct this program under the old law? And people said, it doesn't work in order to be able to do the job we expect us to do.
Truman: It's plain hokum. If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em. It's an old political trick.
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Bush: Because the...all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those...changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be...or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled.
Truman: Why, this fellow don't know any more about politics than a pig knows about Sunday.
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Bush:  There are some who feel like that if they attack us that we may decide to leave prematurely. They don't understand what they are talking about if that's the case. Let me finish. There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring `em on.
Truman: Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you'll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes and perhaps a supporter below.

Score:  Bush 0   Truman 6

Tags: George Bush Harry Truman