Greg Palast: Bush Didn't Bungle Iraq, You Fools

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Mon, 20 Mar 2006 21:51:04 -0800 (PST)

Bush Didn't Bungle Iraq, You Fools

 

 

 

 

 

Greg Palast <palast wrote:

 

Bush Didn't Bungle Iraq, You Fools

THE MISSION WAS INDEED ACCCOMPLISHED

by Greg Palast

for The Guardian

 

20 March 2006

 

Get off it. All the carping, belly-aching and complaining

about George Bush's incompetence in Iraq, from both

the Left and now the Right, is just dead wrong.

 

On the third anniversary of the tanks rolling over Iraq's border,

most of the 59 million Homer Simpsons who voted for Bush

are beginning to doubt if his mission was accomplished.

 

But don't kid yourself -- Bush and his co-conspirator, Dick Cheney,

accomplished exactly what they set out to do. In case you've forgotten

what

their real mission was, let me remind you of White House spokesman Ari

Fleisher's original announcement, three years ago, launching of what

he called,

 

" Operation

Iraqi

Liberation. "

 

O.I.L. How droll of them, how cute. Then, Karl Rove made the giggling boys

in the White House change it to " OIF " -- Operation Iraqi Freedom. But the

101st Airborne wasn't sent to Basra to get its hands on Iraq's OIF.

 

" It's about oil, " Robert Ebel told me. Who is Ebel? Formerly the CIA's top

oil analyst, he was sent by the Pentagon, about a month before the

invasion, to a secret confab in London with Saddam's former oil

minister to

finalize the plans for " liberating " Iraq's oil industry.

In London, Bush's emissary Ebel also instructed Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum,

the man the Pentagon would choose as post-OIF oil minister for Iraq,

on the correct method of disposing Iraq's crude.

 

And what did the USA want Iraq to do with Iraq's oil?

The answer will surprise many of you: and it is uglier,

more twisted, devilish and devious than anything imagined

by the most conspiracy-addicted blogger.

 

The answer can be found in a 323-page plan for Iraq's oil secretly drafted

by the State Department. Our team got a hold of a copy; how, doesn't

matter.

The key thing is what's inside this thick Bush diktat:

a directive to Iraqis to maintain a state oil company

that will " enhance its relationship with OPEC. "

 

Enhance its relationship with OPEC???

How strange: the government of the United States ordering Iraq

to support the very OPEC oil cartel which is strangling our nation

with outrageously high prices for crude.

 

Specifically, the system ordered up by the Bush cabal would keep

a lid on Iraq's oil production -- limiting Iraq's oil pumping

to the tight quota set by Saudi Arabia and the OPEC cartel.

 

There you have it. Yes, Bush went in for the oil -- not to get

MORE of Iraq's oil, but to prevent Iraq producing TOO MUCH of it.

 

You must keep in mind who paid for George's ranch and Dick's bunker:

Big Oil. And Big Oil -- and their buck-buddies, the Saudis -

- don't make money from pumping more oil, but from pumping LESS of it.

The lower the supply, the higher the price.

 

It's Economics 101. The oil industry is run by a cartel, OPEC,

and what economists call an " oligopoly " -- a tiny handful of operators

who make more money when there's less oil, not more of it.

So, every time the " insurgents " blow up a pipeline in Basra,

every time Mad Mahmoud in Tehran threatens to cut supply,

the price of oil leaps. And Dick and George just LOVE it.

 

Dick and George didn't want more oil from Iraq, they wanted less.

I know some of you, no matter what I write, insist that our President

and his Veep are on the hunt for more crude so you can cheaply fill

your family Hummer; that somehow, these two oil-patch babies

are concerned that the price of gas in the USA

is bumping up to $3 a gallon.

 

No so, gentle souls. Three bucks a gallon in the States

(and a quid a litre in Britain) means colossal profits for Big Oil,

and that makes Dick's ticker go pitty-pat with joy.

The top oily-gopolists, the five largest oil companies,

pulled in $113 billion in profit in 2005 -- compared to a piddly

$34 billion in 2002 before Operation Iraqi Liberation.

 

In other words, it's been a good war for Big Oil.

 

As per Plan Bush, Bahr Al-Ulum became Iraq's occupation oil minister;

the conquered nation " enhanced its relationship with OPEC; " and the

price of oil, from Clinton peace-time to Bush war-time, shot up 317%.

 

In other words, on the third anniversary of invasion, we can say the

attack and occupation is, indeed, a Mission Accomplished.

However, it wasn't America's mission, nor the Iraqis'.

It was an Mission Accomplished for OPEC and Big Oil.

 

**********

On June 6, Penguin Dutton will release GREG PALAST'S NEW BOOK,

" ARMED MADHOUSE:

DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONT LINES OF THE CLASS WAR. "

Order it today -- and view his investigative reports for Harper's Magazine

and BBC television's Newsnight -- at www.GregPalast.com.

 

Palast returns to the pages of the Guardian today with this column.

Catch his commentaries weekly.