 |
The Perennial Battle For Iraq's Oil
www.nlpwessex.org/docs/iraqoil.htm
And That Of Its Gulf Neighbours
Why They Really Hate Us
Anglo-American Access To Middle East Oil
Is What It Has Always Been About Since At Least 1913
'Democratic' Britain, Not Saddam Hussein, Was The
First To Gas The Kurds
As Favoured By Winston Churchill
"I rarely speak in public. I prefer to avoid the limelight and get on with my job. I speak not as a
politician, nor as a pundit, but as someone who has been an intelligence professional for
32 years..... There has been much speculation about what motivates young men and women to
carry out acts of terrorism in the UK. My service needs to
understand the motivations behind terrorism to succeed in
countering it, as far as that is possible. Al-Qaeda has developed an ideology which claims
that Islam is under attack, and needs to be defended. This is a powerful narrative
that weaves together conflicts from across the globe, presenting the West's response to
varied and complex issues, from long-standing disputes such as Israel/Palestine and
Kashmir to more recent events as evidence of an across-the-board determination to
undermine and humiliate Islam worldwide. The video wills of
British suicide bombers make it clear that they are motivated by perceived worldwide and long-standing
injustices against Muslims - an extreme and minority
interpretation of Islam promoted by some preachers and people of influence. And their interpretation as anti-Muslim of UK foreign policy, in particular the UK's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Speech by Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, Head Of Britains Interior Intelligence
Service MI5
BBC Online, 10
November 2006
| Since the
attacks of 9/11 the western world has been fighting a so-called 'war on terror' which has
included removing civil liberties in its own countries as a
supposedly self-defensive move in response. However, the move is essentially an exercise
in self-defeating futility as it does not tackle the source of the conflict. Moreover,
such moves demonstrate how successful terrorism can be in creating damaging results in
western countries in the form of reduced personal freedoms, further incentivising the
conduct of such attacks. Islamic terrorism has spread substantially beyond the central Arab-Israeli dispute in the Middle East largely as a result of actual or perceived western occupations of other Muslim lands such as Saudi Arabia (until 2003), Iraq (from 2003) and Afghanistan (from 2001). Those occupations have taken place largely as a result of the western need to protect access to oil and gas resources in the Middle East and Caspian Sea regions. This simple expediency is the principal underlying cause of the ongoing conflict between the west and the Muslim world. From the very outset of the 2003 war the United States showed every sign of wishing to maintain a permanent occupation of Iraq. Consequently until the west develops a coherent energy strategy whereby energy supplies are no longer critically dependent on oil and gas continuing to flow from those territories, particularly with the rise of Asia as a major rival energy consumer, the 'war on terror' is likely to remain unresolved and civil liberties are likely to continue to be removed in the 'free world'. |
"It was the wartime petroleum shortage
of 1917 and 1918 that really drove home the necessity of oil to British interests and
pushed Mesopotamia [Iraq] back to center stage. Prospects for oil development within the
empire were bleak, which made supplies from the Middle East of paramount importance. Sir Maurice Hankey, the extremely powerful secretary of the War Cabinet,
wrote to Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour that, 'oil in the next war will occupy the place
of coal in the present war, or at least a parallel place to coal. The only big potential supply that we can get under British
Control is the Persian [Iranian] and Mesopotamian [Iraqi] supply.' Therefore, Hankey said,
'control over these oil supplies becomes a first-class British war aim.' But the newly born 'public diplomacy' had to be considered..... Foreign
Secretary Balflour worried that explicitly pronouncing Mesopotamia a war aim would seem
too old-fashionably imperialistic. Instead, in August 1918, he told the Prime Ministers of
the Dominions that Britain must be the 'guiding spirit' in Mesopotamia, as it would
provide the one natural resource the British empire lacked. 'I do not care under what
system we keep the oil,' he said, 'but I am quite clear it is all-important for us that
this oil should be available.' To help make sure this would happen, British forces,
already elsewhere in Mesopotamia, captured Mosul after the armistice was signed with
Turkey."
Daniel Yergin - The Prize, 1991
First
published in Great Britain by Simon and Schuster Ltd, 1991
"The US justice department is
investigating the soaring building costs for a huge American embassy in Baghdad.
Postponing its scheduled opening last month, the state department said it didn't 'have an
answer' as to when it would be finished. The embassy was supposed to have opened by now
but has suffered from repeated postponements because work has either been judged to be
below standard or because of design changes. The original budget for the embassy, the biggest US one in the world, was $592m (£296m) but this has jumped by a further $144m. The size and cost of the embassy is a signal of US intentions to
stay in Iraq. The embassy, in Baghdad's
heavily-fortified Green Zone, will be hidden behind blast walls and have 27 separate
buildings, housing 615 people."
Inquiry begins into soaring cost of US embassy in Iraq
Guardian, 16 November 2007
"Iraq may have been a British
creation, from the ruins of the Ottoman empire, but Churchill remembered all too well how
Britain's involvement had begun with a disaster. Over the 43 years of British influence,
from that first invasion in 1915 to the revolution of 1958, a remarkable array of Britons
had a hand in running the country. Churchill installed the first King of Iraq and his
advisers drew up its borders. Gertrude Bell, the archaeologist and traveller, who founded
the country's antiquities department, became known as the 'uncrowned Queen of Iraq'. T E
Lawrence took part in the invasion and advised Churchill on Iraq policy while Arthur
'Bomber' Harris tried out his theories of aerial bombardment.... By the close of 1918,
Britain had occupied all three Mesopotamian provinces - Basra in the south, Mosul in the
north and Baghdad in between.....Britain gave Iraq notional independence in 1932. By then, the country's oilfields had become of vital strategic
importance and the British remained dominant until
King Faisal II and his family were butchered in a 1958 revolution. After that, a
bewildering succession of coups and counter-coups bedevilled Iraq. Alternately America,
France and the Soviet Union displaced Britain as the power behind the scenes."
Meddling in Mesopotamia was always risky
Daily
Telegraph, 18 March 2003
"Plans to include the Iraq war in a
new GCSE history syllabus have been criticised as 'crazy' by a leading historian. The new
course from the Oxford Cambridge and Royal Society of Arts examinations board (OCR) will
give pupils the chance to assess the rights and wrongs of the Iraq war, to study the
terror attack of 9/11 and to consider why people become terrorists. The course, which has
been submitted to the exams regulator Ofqual for approval, covers the debate on weapons of
mass destruction, Saddam Hussein’s human rights record, claims about his links to
al-Qaeda, the oil industry and the roles of
George Bush and Tony Blair in the conflict. Tristram Hunt, a history lecturer at Queen
Mary, University of London, said that too little time had elapsed since the conflict began
for it to be included on the curriculum for 14-year-olds..... As pupils would be unlikely
to know about the British imperial presence in Iraq
in the early 20th century, they would not understand
the historical context of the war, he added. Dr Hunt said the only context in which it
would make sense to teach the Iraq war to GCSE history students would be as an appendix to
oil wars that began in the 1970s."
Iraq war and IRA terror included on syllabus in major GCSE review
London
Times, 19 April 2008
| On This Page |
| Post 9/11 Era Oil And Evidence That London 7/7 Attacks Were Due To Occupations Of Iraq And Afghanistan |
| Gulf Oil Post Berlin War Era |
| Gulf Oil Cold War Era |
| Gulf Oil Early 20th Century Era |
| How Britain, Not Saddam, Was The First To Gas The Kurds |
“I am saddened that it is politically
inconvenient to acknowledge
what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about
oil.”
Alan Greenspan, Chairman Of The US Federal Reserve 1987 - 2006
Sunday Times, 16 September 2007
"A top-level United States policy
document has emerged that explicitly confirms the
Defence Department's readiness to fight an oil war.
According to the report, Strategic Assessment 1999, prepared for the US Joint Chiefs of
Staff and the Secretary of Defence, 'energy and resource issues will continue to shape
international security'. Oil conflicts over
production facilities and transport routes, particularly in the Persian Gulf and Caspian
regions, are specifically envisaged. Although the
policy does not forecast imminent US military conflict, it vividly highlights how the
highest levels of the US Defence community accepted the waging of an oil war as a
legitimate military option. Strategic Assessment also forecasts that if an oil 'problem'
arises, 'US forces might be used to ensure adequate supplies'.... Strategic Assessment was
prepared by the Institute for National Strategic Studies, part of the US Department of
Defence's National Defence University. The institute lists its primary mission as policy
research and analysis for the Joint Chiefs, the Defence Secretary, and a variety of
government security and defence bodies. According to the report, national security depends
on successful engagement in the global economy, so national defence no longer means
protecting the nation from military threats alone, but economic challenges, too. The fall
of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s brought an end to the US's ideological basis for
potential conflict. In 1992 Bill Clinton urged that 'our economic strength must become a
central defining element of our national security policy'. Since then, members of the Bush
Administration have promoted the need for the consolidation of the Cold War victory. In
what many may see as an apparent parallel to present events, Strategic Assessment 1999
drew attention to pre-World War II Britain's pursuit of an approach where control over
territory was seen as essential to ensuring resource supplies."
Oil wars Pentagon's policy since 1999
Syndey Morning
Herald, 20 May 2003
"The
global market will need increasing volumes of oil from members of the Organisation of
Petroleum Exporting Countries after non-OPEC
production reaches a maximum of about 50 million b/d between 2007 and 2011... A question crucial to future oil supply, therefore is: Can
OPEC's old fields deliver.... Most of the supergiant oil fields have had water or
gas injection installed to maintain pressure for 20-30 years. Handling produced injection
fluids is a growing problem in Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and in older fields in Iraq
(Kirkuk, Zubair, and Rumailah).... The oil fields of Iraq are the least depleted and least
developed of any of the Persian Gulf oil producing countries, and Iraq has the potential
to rapidly increase oil output.... Combined with earlier results, these predictions for
OPEC yield an estimate of the world's ultimate recoverable oil reserves of 2.5-2.9
trillion bbl, with 1.29-1.66 trillion bbl remaining (1.224 trillion bbl produced to end
2003)..... It seems unlikely that OPEC can increase production at the rate that was
possible in the 1960s and 1970s, when the fields were fresh and initial well production
rates were higher... Only Iraq has
undeveloped supergiant oil fields (West Qurna, Majnoon, and East Baghdad) and the
potential to rapidly increase production to 8-10 million b/d...... The five Persian Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran,
Kuwait and the UAE) are crucial to raising OPEC production. The political situation in
Iraq is unlikely to be conducive to major investment in new oil production capacity for
some years. Saudi Arabia has serious internal problems, which threaten to destabilize the
ruling royal family. Iran remains under unilateral US sanctions. US military intervention
in the Gulf and its failure to effectively and fairly engage in resolving the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict conspire to provide a hostile backdrop to western interests
in the Middle East. The combination of burgeoning future oil revenues and growing
hostility to the US in the region is not conducive to major capacity expansion and will
not provide a stable investment environment or offer easy opportunities to the major
international oil companies to assist in any capacity expansion projects. Based on
these considerations and the maturity of OPEC’s major fields, it seems more likely
that OPEC’s considerable reserves will be expressed as a long plateau rather than a
sharp peak. It is quite possible that the Persian Gulf countries will not raise production
capacity high enough or quickly enough, either for political reasons, the slowness of
internal decision-making, or the hostile security environment. The consequences of this for world oil supply are immense, with the likelihood of further military interventions and
conflicts within the Middle East .... a series of crises in oil supply is likely over the
coming decades. The first, related
to the peak and decline of non-OPEC production, is practically upon us and underpins the
currently high oil prices...... The
imminent inability of non-OPEC production to meet incremental demand and its decline after
2010 precipitates the second crisis as OPEC’s diminishing spare capacity (even with Iraq’s
production back to preinvasion levels) becomes less and less able to accommodate
short-term fluctuations.....The third crisis, due to OPEC’s incremental supply being unable to meet
incremental demand, follows in the first half of the next decade. This assumes that
OPEC’s reserves are as published. .....These
crises will have global economic and geopolitical significance: The oil price will be high
and volatile, and demand growth will have to be curtailed..."
Oil Supply Challenges - 2: What Can OPEC Deliver?
Oil and Gas Journal, 7 March 2005
It's The Occupations Stupid
"I rarely speak in public. I prefer
to avoid the limelight and get on with my job. I speak not as a politician, nor as a
pundit, but as someone who has been an intelligence professional for 32 years..... There
has been much speculation about what motivates young men and women to carry out acts of
terrorism in the UK. My service needs to understand
the motivations behind terrorism to succeed in
countering it, as far as that is possible. Al-Qaeda has developed an ideology which claims
that Islam is under attack, and needs to be defended. This is a powerful narrative
that weaves together conflicts from across the globe, presenting the West's response to
varied and complex issues, from long-standing disputes such as Israel/Palestine and
Kashmir to more recent events as evidence of an across-the-board determination to
undermine and humiliate Islam worldwide. The video
wills of British suicide bombers make it clear that they are motivated by perceived worldwide and long-standing
injustices against Muslims - an extreme and minority
interpretation of Islam promoted by some preachers and people of influence. And their interpretation as anti-Muslim of UK foreign policy, in
particular the UK's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.” |
"David Cameron is to devote his
energies to the by-election in Henley on June 26 rather than the unwanted contest in
Yorkshire forced by [the resignation over the 'war on terror' erosion
of civil liberties by Conservative shadow Home Secretary] David Davis, it emerged
yesterday.... Mr Davis's successor was embroiled in controversy last night when Labour
raised comments that he made after the London suicide attacks in 2005. Dominic Grieve,
then the Shadow Attorney-General, said that the
attacks were 'totally explicable' because of the deep anger felt by many British Muslims
over Iraq."
David Davis, Kelvin MacKenzie and a Raving Loony prepare for battle
London Times,
14 June 2008
"Waheed
Zaman stared fixedly into the camera lens and told anyone who might one day watch his
'martyrdom video' that he had not been brainwashed. Dressed in a black shirt, wearing a
Palestinian-style scarf tied around his forehead and sitting in front of a black flag
bearing Arabic script, he declared that he knew exactly what he was doing. 'I have not
been brainwashed, I am educated to a very high standard. I am old enough to make my own
decision,' Mr Zaman, who studied biomedical science, said. Then the former president of
the Islamic Society at London Metropolitan University warned the Western world that death
and destruction would sweep through it like a tornado. He said: 'You will not feel any
peace or security in your lands until you stop interfering
in our lands . . . As you kill us you will be killed. As you bomb us you
will be bombed.' Extracts from the film of Mr Zaman
were among seven alleged martyrdom videos played or read to a jury at Woolwich Crown Court
yesterday. The videos were found by police in August 2006 after the arrests of Mr Zaman
and seven other men who are on trial accused of plotting to carry out suicide attacks on
transatlantic airliners....The films were found in
an unedited state, and in a number of them someone off-camera asks the men how they feel
about claiming innocent lives. Each replies that no one in the West is innocent as long as its armies are in Muslim countries....In his
videoclip, Mr Islam said: 'We will not leave this path until
you leave our lands, until you feel what we are feeling. This is revenge
for the actions of the USA in the Muslim lands
and their accomplices such as the British and the Jews. '... In another clip, Mr Ali said:
'I’m doing this . . . to punish and to humiliate the kuffar [unbeliever], to
teach them a lesson that they will never forget. It’s to tell them that we Muslim
people have pride, our people of Allah, the people of Islam, we are brave. We are not
cowards. Enough is enough.' He added: 'Sheikh Osama [bin
Laden] warned you many times to leave our lands or you will be destroyed
and now the time has come for you to be destroyed.'” "The leader of an alleged terrorist
gang accused of planning mid-air carnage dismissed a plot to set off a bomb at Westminster
as a 'publicity stunt'. Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 27, admitted conspiring to explode a bomb at
the Houses of Parliament as a political protest, but he told Woolwich Crown Court that
neither he nor two other men involved in the plan wanted to kill or hurt anyone. He said
that martyrdom videos found by police, in which he and others threatened violent attacks
on the West, were propaganda for an anti-government documentary. Giving evidence in his
defence, Mr Ali said that the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan had driven him to act.... He said: 'The
root problem we thought was to try and change foreign
policy. We thought we are not American so forget
America, we should deal with being a British citizen.'.... Mr Ali, who said that he and Mr
Sarwar also considered power stations and Canary Wharf as targets, added: 'It is nothing
to do with Islamic funda-mentalism or radical Islam, it is purely
down to foreign policy.' ” |
"The West is losing the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan because it does not understand the true motives of terrorists and is thus
taking wrong strategies against them, a former analyst of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) said Sunday. The reason for Osama bin Laden and his followers to fight the West is
not because of their different values, or because they hate freedom, democracy or gender
equality, but rather lies in Western countries' policies in the Middle East, Michael
Scheuer, a retired 22-year CIA veteran told Canadian Television during an interview. American and the West's unqualified support for Israel, support
for tyrannical regimes in the Middle East, and dependence on oil in the region are the
real factors behind the terrorist acts of Islamic fundamentalist, he pointed out. Western countries so far have not realized or
acknowledged these true reasons for terrorism, and so 'we're fighting an enemy that
doesn't exist,' he said, adding 'if you don't fight the enemy in the way that he's
motivated, you're going to lose.' "
CIA analyst says West losing in Iraq, Afghanistan
Xinhua, 17
September 2007
"American military intervention in
Muslim countries has bred a generation of 'angry young men' vulnerable to al-Qa'eda
recruitment, a report from a leading security analysis group has said. A survey conducted
in Iraq last month found that 46% of young men said they were 'angry all the time'.
Similar levels of discontent have been detected in Afghanistan, where America has led the
Nato coalition for six years and Somalia, which has not recovered from the chaos that led
to a brief US intervention in 1991.... Norine MacDonald, the lead Senlis reseacher, said
the resentment of the Muslim young had exposed a 'structural weakness' in the American-led
campaign to quash Islamic-based terrorism."
US wars have helped al-Qa'eda, says report
Daily
Telegraph, 6 June 2008
"If someone hates us so much that he
is prepared to sacrifice his own life in order to commit mass murder, then we want to find
a rational explanation in his personality or his background to separate him from the rest
of us. He would ideally have grown up in deprivation, with a dysfunctional family, few
friends, minimal education, a poverty of expectation and a world view that can be easily
moulded by the Islamist zealots whose nihilistic creed offers a simple, deadly solution to
all of life’s problems. The reality,
disturbingly, is very different. A study of 172
al-Qaeda terrorists conducted four years ago by Marc Sageman, a forensic psychiatrist and
former CIA case officer in Pakistan, found that 90 per cent came from a relatively stable,
secure background. Three quarters were from middle-class or upper-class families, two
thirds went to college and two thirds were professionals or semi-professionals, often
engineers, physicians, architects or scientists.....Because the West is seen as engaged in
a global war against Islam, jihad in the name of Allah is seen as the duty of every
Muslim. That jihadist terrorism is abhorrent to the vast majority of Muslims, and Muslim
doctors, living in Britain was emphasised yesterday when a coalition of groups calling
itself Muslims United took out advertisements in national newspapers to condemn the car
bomb attacks. 'Not in our name,' they said, quoting a verse from the Koran: 'Whoever kills
an innocent soul, it is as if he killed the whole of mankind. And whoever saves one, it is
as if he saved the whole of mankind.' Your educated, middle-class jihadist will point out
that the full verse actually prohibits the killing of another human being 'except as a
punishment for murder and other villainy in the land'. The Koran’s fifth chapter
continues: 'Those that make war against God and his apostle and spread disorder in the
land shall be slain . . .' For some Muslims, especially
those who have lived in or near Iraq, it does not
demand a great leap of faith, whatever their profession, to include the United States and
Britain among those 'that make war against God'."
The unexpected profile of the modern terrorist: 26, from a caring family, married, with
children, graduate
London Times,
7 July 2007
"In Leaderless
Jihad, the latest book by the author of 2004's Understanding
Terror Networks, forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman attempts to unravel the
psychological profile of Islamist terrorists. Like his earlier book, Leaderless Jihad discredits conventional wisdom about
terrorists by eschewing anecdotes and conjecture in favor of hard data and statistics. And
statistically, the enemy is us. 'It is easy to view terrorists as alien creatures who
exist outside normal patterns of social interaction,' he writes. But the sobering reality
is that they don't. Sociopaths do not make capable terrorists — they seldom take
orders and are rarely willing to sacrifice their lives for a larger goal. Many terrorists
on the other hand, share qualities with ordinary, law-abiding people: they can be
cooperative, goal-orientated and intelligent, even if emotionally wrought. Often, the
start of their radicalization can be traced to a scrupulously moral outrage — not an irrational hatred or base
prejudice. Radical Muslims become bombers, Sageman argues, when the causes of their anger
— the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the U.S.
invasion of Iraq — come to be perceived as part
of a general war against Islam. The feeling of being under attack may be amplified by
personal experience of discrimination, and then validated by exchanges with like-minded
friends, family members and Internet users, before being converted into action by
'al-Qaeda.' Not, as Sageman puts it, 'al-Qaeda Central' (made up of those who have sworn
an oath of loyalty to Osama bin Laden), but al-Qaeda the informal network, mobilizing
radicalized Islamists around the world without any contact with bin Laden at all....The
solution to Islamic terrorism, as the author sees it, is genuine peace in Palestine and an
immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, depriving jihadis of their ability to wage a moral
war. 'The presence of even one American soldier ... will trump any goodwill policy the
United States attempts to carry out in the Middle East.' He also recommends an end to the
offering of rewards, publication of 'most wanted' lists and staging of press conferences
to proclaim the capture of top terrorists, since jihadis regard all these as badges of
honor. It would be better, Sageman says, to treat terrorists like common criminals."
The Jihadi Next Door
TIME, 31 March
2008
"Many Muslims have been alienated from
British society by the Iraq war and by public hostility based on the fear that they may be sympathetic to
Islamic terrorists. But there are also many Muslims who think terrorism is evil, who are
not fundamentalists, who want to create a satisfactory life here. They may well be
reluctant to report the nice young man down the road who may, or may not, have joined a
terrorist group, but they would be horrified to think that one of their own children could
become a bomber.....Many Muslims resent what they
regard as injustices to Islam, but few of them support the massacre of the innocent; most
of them want to enjoy the pluralist opportunities of modern Britain."
Lord Rees-Mogg
This time we were lucky. This time . . .
London
Times, 2 July 2007
"For years, suicide bombings in the
Middle East have caused death, destruction and chaos. In turn, they have generated news
headlines and analyses that often frame the attacks, like those perpetrated by
Palestinians or Iraqi insurgents, as weapons in a holy war. But Pape, author of the
provocative new book 'Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,' contends
those reports fuel significant misperceptions about the bombers, their motivations and
specifically the role religion plays in their actions. 'There is little connection between
suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world's religions,' he
says. Before September 11, Pape's main academic focus was the impact of air power in
military conflicts. After the attacks, he shifted his attention to suicide terrorism.
Finding out what motivated these bombers and their groups proved challenging, as he
discovered little in the way of comprehensive data. So Pape began building a database and
then mined it for details. After studying 315 suicide attacks from 1981-2004, the
University of Chicago political science professor concludes that suicide bombers' actions
stem from logical military strategies, not their religion -- and especially not Islam.
While American news-watchers may hear more about Israel and Iraq, Pape calls the Tamil Tigers the leading purveyors of suicide attacks over the last two
decades -- until now. An adamantly secular group with Hindu roots, the Tamil Tigers are
engaged in a struggle for independence and power with the Sri Lankan government. So what
is the suicide bomber's main rationale? It is that the attacks work, Pape found. 'What nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a
specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military
forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland.' Which means, in the case of al Qaeda
and like-minded groups, getting the United States out of the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq.... Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, was 'very impressed and very interested' after reading Pape's book and being
briefed by him, according to a Lugar aide."
Suicide bombings as military strategy
CNN, 30 June 2005
"At a time when
Islamist terrorism seems to have returned to the centre of London, it is easy to
forget that during the 20th century terror was used on a vast scale by secular regimes.
Today suicide attacks are automatically linked with a belief in martyrdom followed by
paradise in the afterlife. Yet suicide bombing of the kind we now confront is a terrorist
technique that was developed by people with no such beliefs. Though they claim to reject
all things modern and Western, Islamist terrorists are continuing a modern Western
tradition of using systematic violence to transform society. The roots of contemporary
terrorism are in radical Western ideology – especially Leninism – far more than
religion..... It might be thought that with the rise of Islamism, secular terrorism has
died out. This is far from the truth. Suicide bombing
may now be the Islamist technique of choice, but it was the Tamil Tigers – a
Marxist-Leninist group that recruits mostly from Hindus in Sri Lanka, but which is
militantly hostile to all forms of religion – that devised it. It was the Tamil
Tigers that developed the explosive belt worn by Hamas and Islamic Jihad suicide bombers,
and up to the Iraq war the Tigers had committed more such attacks than any other
organisation. The first wave of suicide attacks in Lebanon in the Eighties was also mainly
the work of secular groups. Of 41 attacks between
1982 and 1986, including the attack in 1983 that killed more than 100 US Marines, 27 were
carried out by members of leftist groups such as the Lebanese communist party and the Arab
Socialist Union. Only eight were Islamists, and three were Christians (including a woman
high school teacher)."
A trail of terror stretching 200 years
London
Times, 30 June 2007
"The War on Terror has radicalised
Muslims around the world to unprecedented levels of anti-American feeling, according to
the largest survey of Muslims ever to be conducted.....Gallup’s Centre for Muslim
Studies in New York carried out surveys of 10,000 Muslims in ten predominantly Muslim
countries. One finding was that the wealthier and better-educated the Muslim was, the more
likely he was to be radicalised. The surveys were carried out in 2005 and 2006. Along with
an earlier Gallup survey in nine other countries in 2001, they
represent the views of more than 90 per cent of the world’s Muslims. A further 1,500 Muslims in London, Paris and Berlin are involved in a
separate poll to be published in April.... The Gallup
findings indicate that, in terms of spiritual values and the emphasis on the family and
the future, Americans have more in common with Muslims than they do with their Western
counterparts in Europe. A large number of Muslims supported the Western ideal of
democratic government. Fifty per cent of radicals supported democracy, compared with 35
per cent of moderates. Religion was found to have little to do with radicalisation or
antipathy towards Western culture. Muslims were
condemnatory of promiscuity and a sense of moral decay. What they admired most was
liberty, its democratic system, technology and freedom of speech.... Researchers set out
to examine the truth behind the stock response in the West to the question of when it will
know it is winning the war on terror. Foreign policy experts tend to believe that victory
will come when the Islamic world rejects radicalism. 'Every
politician has a theory: radicals are religious fundamentalists; they are poor; they are
full of hopeless-ness and hate. But those theories are wrong,' the researchers reported. 'We find that Muslim radicals have more in
common with their moderate brethren than is often assumed. If the West wants to reach the
extremists, and empower the moderate majority, it must first recognise who it’s up
against.' Gallup says that because terrorists often hijack Islamic precepts for their own
ends, pundits and politicians in the West sometimes portray Islam as a religion of
terrorism. 'They often charge that religious fervour triggers radical and violent views,'
said John Esposito, a religion professor, and Dalia Mogahed, Gallup’s Muslim studies
director, in one analysis. 'But the data say otherwise. There is no significant difference
in religiosity between moderates and radicals. In fact, radicals are no more likely to
attend religious services regularly than are moderates.' They continue: 'It’s no secret that many in the Muslim world suffer from
crippling poverty and lack of education. But are radicals any poorer than their fellow
Muslims? We found the opposite: there is indeed a key difference between radicals and
moderates when it comes to income and education, but it is the radicals who earn more and
stay in school longer.' In fact, the surveys found that the radicals were more satisfied
with their finances and quality of life than moderates."
Anti-American feelings soar among Muslims, study finds
London
Times, 21 February 2007
Why The
Occupations?
It's The Oil Stupid
"Robert Baer, a former CIA spy who presents a
television documentary on the history of suicide bombing, says he knew the practice
would come to the UK. And it’s not the West’s values, but its foreign policies,
that are to blame.... 'The other one thing is, ‘they hate us’, which is just
total bullsh**.' [he says] Is it? 'Yes,' he says, 'it is.' In a school run by Hezbollah, he asked a class
dominated by the daughters of 'martyrs' if they watched US television. 'Everybody raised
their hand. And what did they watch? Oprah. I said, ‘How can you watch this
cr**?’ And they said, ‘No, she’s great. We love Oprah.’..... So, it
wasn’t our values. It wasn’t Western values. It’s Western presence. They
want us to get out.'..... There is, however, a
three-letter reason why the US will not impose a peace plan on Israel and leave the
region. Baer, the author of Sleeping
With The Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi
Crude, well knows what it is. 'I don’t
think any American politician, however at fault we are in Iraq or anywhere else, can say,
‘All right, let the crazies have the oil fields’, because oil at $200 a barrel would put us into a
depression.' So because the American economy is at
stake, we can’t get out even to save our skins? 'That, I believe, is your classic
paradox.' " "... we've been in the Middle East
more than 50 years. We've been in the Middle East ever since the -- however you would like
to call the dependency upon oil has developed. And our forces have been there either as naval, air or
land forces in one way or another for an awful long time. And once the British pulled out
the Arabian gulf, it became more and more necessary for us to provide more and more force
in the region..... And ultimately, it comes down to the free flow of goods and resources on which the prosperity of our own
nation and everybody else's depends upon.... We need to maintain a presence that protects
the small nations and ensures the continued stability of the region and the flow of those resources that are essential to our well-being." |
"The
super-giant fields of southeastern Iraq are the largest concentration of super-giants to
be found anywhere in the world....unlike neighbor Saudi Arabia, Iraq has been unable to
deploy the latest technology, such as 3-D seismic, to find its reserves. Present reserve
estimates of Iraq's oil are based on 2-D seismic technology from the 1980s. Still, the
estimated success rate in Iraq ranges from one in two in the Mesopotamian Basin to one in
four in the western and northwestern stable platform, with the overall success rate
exceeding 72 percent - perhaps the highest success rate achievable anywhere in the world. Oil exploration costs are among the
cheapest globally, with the current cost estimated at around 50 cents per barrel....To
date, petroleum geologists have delineated and mapped over 526 prospects - drilling 131
prospects to discover 73 major fields. They have identified some 239 as having a high
degree of certainty, but those prospects remain undrilled. Thirty fields have been
partially developed and only 12 fields are actually onstream. Undrilled structures and undeveloped
fields could represent the largest untapped hydrocarbon resource anywhere in the world.....Clearly, large parts of Iraq are
still virgin - its large hydrocarbon reserves are still waiting to be developed to their
full potential, while most
other Middle East countries are fully exploiting their reserves. The main challenges facing the new Iraqi
authority are to establish law and order as well as security. Once these issues are resolved, Iraq will
perhaps be the most exciting place on Earth with regard to oil development and exploration....International oil companies are
looking forward with great anticipation to the opening of Iraq, as they have been waiting
for the past 40 years. Hopefully, Iraq will soon be able to offer them acreage, thereby
allowing proper development of its huge potential. Open and fair competition will enable
oil companies to apply the latest technologies in the search for, and development of, the
country's hydrocarbon resources - thus helping Iraq realize its full hydrocarbon
potential."
Assessing Iraq’s Oil
Potential
Geotimes, October 2003
"Brigadier-General James Ellery CBE,
the Foreign Office’s Senior Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad
since 2003, confirmed the critical role of Iraqi oil reserves in potentially alleviating a
'world shortage' of conventional oil. The Iraq War has helped to head off what Brigadier
Ellery described as 'the tide of Easternisation' – a shift in global political and
economic power toward China and India, to whom goes 'two thirds of the Middle East’s
oil'. After the 2004 transfer of authority to an interim Iraqi civilian administration,
Brigadier Ellery set up and ran the 700-strong security framework operation in support of
the US-funded Reconstruction of Iraq. His remarks were made as part of a presentation at
the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), University of London, sponsored by
the Iraqi Youth Foundation, on 22nd April.... 'The reason that oil reached $117 a barrel
last week', he said, 'was less to do with security of supply… than World shortage.'
He went on to emphasise the strategic significance of Iraqi petroleum fields in relation
to the danger of production peaks being breached in major oil reserves around the world.
'Russia’s production has peaked at 10 million barrels per day; Africa has proved slow
to yield affordable extra supplies – from Sudan and Angola for example. Thus the only near-term potential increase will be from Iraq,' he said. Whether Iraq began 'favouring East or West' could therefore be
'de-stabilizing' not only 'within the region but to nations far beyond which have an
interest.'.... Brigadier Ellery’s career in the British Army has involved stints in
the Middle East, Africa, Bosnia, Germany and Northern Ireland. 'Iraq holds the key to
stability in the region,' he said, 'unless that is you believe the tide of
‘Easternisation’ is such that the USA and the West are in such decline, relative
to the emerging China and India, that it is the East – not the West – which is
more likely to guarantee stability. Incidentally, I do not.' Iraq’s pivotal
importance in the Middle East, he explained, is because of its 'relatively large,
consuming population' at 24 million, its being home to 'the second largest reserve of oil
– under exploited', and finally its geostrategic location 'on the routes between
Asia, Europe, Arabia and North Africa - hence the Silk Road.'.... Brigadier-General James
Ellery is currently Director of Operations at AEGIS Defence Services Ltd., a private
British security firm and US defence contractor since June 2004. In April this year, the
same month as Ellery’s SOAS lecture, AEGIS won the renewal of its US defence
department (DoD) contract for two more years, which at $475 million is the single largest
security contract brokered by the DoD. The contract is to provide security services for
reconstruction projects in Iraq conducted by mostly American companies..... During his
April presentation at SOAS, AEGIS director Ellery declared, 'Iraq promises a degree of
prosperity in the region as it embarks on massive Iraqi-funded reconstruction, a part of which will raise Iraqi’s oil
production from 2.5 million bpd today to 3 million by next year and maybe ultimately 6
million barrels per day.'”
Ex-British Army Chief Confirms Peak Oil Motive for War; Praises Fraudulent Reconstruction
Programs
Atlantic Free Press, 18 June
2008
"The invasion of Iraq by Britain and
the US has trebled the price of oil, according to a leading expert, costing the world a
staggering $6 trillion in higher energy prices alone. The oil economist Dr Mamdouh
Salameh, who advises both the World Bank and the UN Industrial Development Organisation
(Unido), told The Independent on Sunday that the price of oil would now be no more than
$40 a barrel, less than a third of the record $135 a barrel reached last week, if it had
not been for the Iraq war.... Dr Salameh, director of the UK-based Oil Market Consultancy
Service, and an authority on Iraq's oil, said it is
the only one of the world's biggest producing countries with enough reserves substantially
to increase its flow. Production in eight of the others – the US, Canada, Iran,
Indonesia, Russia, Britain, Norway and Mexico – has peaked, he says, while China and
Saudia Arabia, the remaining two, are nearing the point at of decline. Before the war, Saddam Hussein's regime pumped some 3.5 million barrels
of oil a day, but this had now fallen to just two million barrels. Dr Salameh told the
all-party parliamentary group on peak oil last month that Iraq had offered the United
States a deal, three years before the war, that would have opened up 10 new giant oil
fields on 'generous' terms in return for the lifting of sanctions. 'This would certainly
have prevented the steep rise of the oil price,' he said. 'But
the US had a different idea. It planned to occupy Iraq and annex its oil.'"
Oil: A global crisis
Independent
On Sunday, 25 May 2008
Persian Gulf Oil and Gas Exports Fact Sheet Strait of Hormuz Bab al-Mandab Suez/Sumed Complex Other Export Routes |
The Potential Importance Of Syria As A Transit Route
| <<<---- To USA and Europe |
 |
Blue
= Pre-War Iraqi Oil Transit Route To Meditteranian Via Arabian Peninsula
And Suez Canal (Suez Cannot Take Largest Tankers) |
"As I went back through the Pentagon
in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we
were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being
discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven
countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon,
Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan....He said it with
reproach--with disbelief, almost--at the breadth of the vision. I moved the conversation
away, for this was not something I wanted to hear. And it was not something I wanted to
see moving forward, either. ...I left the Pentagon that afternoon deeply concerned."
'Winning Modern' Wars (page 130), General Wesley Clark
"Rice will not leave Washington until
later today, and it was clear from her pronounced lack of urgency that President George W
Bush had torn up previous manuals for Middle East crisis intervention. The White House
played down the seriousness of the Lebanon crisis, characterising the death and
destruction as the 'birth pangs of a new Middle East'. Officials argued that it was pointless to negotiate with Hezbollah and
that only its eradication could create the necessary conditions for a durable political
settlement. The crisis was 'an opportunity, not a setback', insisted one senior US official."
Hell in the Holy Lands
Sunday Times, 23
July 2006
"Israel stands to benefit greatly
from the US led war on Iraq, primarily by getting rid of an implacable foe in President
Saddam Hussein and the threat from the weapons of mass destruction he was alleged to
possess. But it seems the Israelis have
other things in mind. An intriguing pointer
to one potentially significant benefit was a report by Haaretz on 31 March that minister
for national infrastructures Joseph Paritzky was considering the possibility of reopening
the long-defunct oil pipeline from Mosul to
the Mediterranean port of Haifa. With Israel lacking
energy resources of its own and depending on highly expensive oil from Russia, reopening
the pipeline would transform its economy....
All of this lends weight to the theory that Bush's war is part of a masterplan to reshape
the Middle East to serve Israel's interests. Haaretz quoted Paritzky as saying that the
pipeline project is economically justifiable because it would dramatically reduce Israel's
energy bill. US efforts to get Iraqi oil to Israel are not surprising. Under a 1975
Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the US guaranteed all Israel's oil needs in the event
of a crisis. The MoU, which has been quietly renewed every five years, also committed the
USA to construct and stock a supplementary strategic reserve for Israel, equivalent to
some US$3bn in 2002. Special legislation was enacted to exempt Israel from restrictions on
oil exports from the USA. Moreover, the USA agreed to divert oil from its home market,
even if that entailed domestic shortages, and guaranteed delivery of the promised oil in
its own tankers if commercial shippers were unwilling or not available to carry the crude
to Israel. All of this adds up to a potentially massive financial commitment. The USA has another reason for supporting Paritzky's
project: a land route for Iraqi oil direct to the Mediterranean would lessen US dependence
on Gulf oil supplies. Direct access to the world's second-largest oil reserves (with the
possibility of expansion through so-far untapped deposits) is an important strategic
objective."
Oil from Iraq : An Israeli pipedream?
Jane's
Foreign Report, 16 April 2003
"The
United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the
oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a
telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in
Jerusalem. The Prime Minister's Office, which views the pipeline to Haifa as a 'bonus' the
U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led
campaign in Iraq, had asked the Americans for the official telegram. The new pipeline
would take oil from the Kirkuk area, where some 40 percent of Iraqi oil is produced, and
transport it via Mosul, and then across Jordan to Israel. The U.S. telegram included a
request for a cost estimate for repairing the Mosul-Haifa pipeline that was in use prior
to 1948. During the War of Independence, the Iraqis stopped the flow of oil to Haifa and
the pipeline fell into disrepair over the years. The National Infrastructure Ministry has
recently conducted research indicating that construction of a 42-inch diameter pipeline
between Kirkuk and Haifa would cost about $400,000 per kilometer. The old Mosul-Haifa
pipeline was only 8 inches in diameter. National Infrastructure Minister Yosef Paritzky
said yesterday that the port of Haifa is an attractive destination for Iraqi oil and that
he plans to discuss this matter with the U.S. secretary of energy during his planned visit
to Washington next month. Paritzky added that the plan depends on Jordan's consent and
that Jordan would receive a transit fee for allowing the oil to piped through its
territory. The minister noted, however, that 'due to pan-Arab concerns, it will be hard
for the Jordanians to agree to the flow of Iraqi oil via Jordan and Israel.' Sources in
Jerusalem confirmed yesterday that the Americans are looking into the possibility of
laying a new pipeline via Jordan and Israel. (There is also a pipeline running via Syria
that has not been used in some three decades.) Iraqi oil is now being transported via
Turkey to a small Mediterranean port near the Syrian border."
U.S. checking possibility of pumping oil from northern Iraq to Haifa, via Jordan
Haaretz,
1 August 2007
"Iraqi and Syrian oil ministers agreed
on Wednesday to repair and subsequently reopen a key pipeline between their two countries
that connects Iraq's oil-rich Kirkuk region and a Syrian port. The agreement between Iraqi
Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani and his Syrian counterpart Sufian Allaw came at the
end of a three-day visit here by a top Iraqi delegation, headed by Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki. The 880-kilometer (550 mile) pipeline links Iraq's northern oil fields to the
Syrian port of Baniyas, and reopening it would allow Iraq to use a second export terminal
on the Mediterranean Sea. Currently, Iraq exports nearly all its oil through the Persian
Gulf. The main export pipeline from Kirkuk to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan has
been mostly closed due to sabotage. The pipeline to
Baniyas was built in the 1950s but was bombed by U.S. forces during the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein."
Iraqi, Syrian oil ministers agree to reopen key pipeline
Associated
Press, 22 August 2007
Guardian -
Comment Is Free [extracts]The rape of Iraq's oilThe Baghdad government has caved in to a damaging plan that will enrich western companies. March 22, 2007 1:30 PM | Printable version The recent cabinet agreement in Baghdad on the new draft oil law was hailed as a landmark deal bringing together the warring factions in the allocation of the country's oil wealth. What was concealed was that this is being forced through by relentless pressure from the US and will sow the seeds of intense future conflict, with serious knock-on impacts on the world economy. The draft law, now before the Iraqi parliament, sets up "production sharing partnerships" to allow the US and British oil majors to extract Iraqi oil for up to 30 years. While Iraq would retain legal ownership of its oil, companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP that invest in the infrastructure and refineries would get a large share of the profits. No other Middle Eastern oil producer has ever offered such a hugely lucrative concession to the big oil companies, since Opec has always run its oil business through tightly-controlled state companies. Only Iraq in its present dire condition, dependent on US troops for the survival of the government, lacks the bargaining capacity to resist. This is not a new plan. According to documents obtained from the US State Department by BBC Newsnight under the US Freedom of Information Act, the US oil industry plan drafted early in 2001 for takeover of the Iraqi oilfields (after the removal of Saddam) was pushed aside by a secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, calling for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oilfields. This secret plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas. However, Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA, who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme. As Ariel Cohen of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation later told Newsnight, an opportunity had been missed to privatise Iraq's oilfields. Now the plan is being revisited, or as much of it as can be salvaged after the fading of American power on the battlefield made enforced sell-off impossible. This revision of the original plan has been drafted by BearingPoint, a US consultancy firm, at the request of the US government. Significantly, it was checked first with Big Oil and the IMF and is only now being presented to the Iraqi parliament. But if accepted by the Iraqis under intense pressure, it will lock the country into weakness and dependence for decades. The neo-cons may have lost the war, but they are still manipulating to win the most substantial chunk of the peace when and if it ever comes.... ....in neo-conservative eyes Iraq was also required as an alternative to Saudi Arabia to provide a military base for the US to police the whole of Gulf oil. It was no longer possible for the US to maintain troops in Saudi Arabia for that purpose without risking the collapse of the dictatorial Saudi regime and its giant oil assets falling into the hands of Islamic extremists. The removal of US troops from Saudi Arabia was the principal demand contained in Osama bin Laden's fatwa of 1996. This was why, shortly after invading Iraq, the US announced that it was pulling its combat troops out of Saudi Arabia, thereby meeting Bin Laden's principal pre-9/11 political demand. But unfortunately for the US, al-Qaida is now seeking the removal of US troops from Iraq as well. Above all, the policy is flawed by its extreme short-sightedness. Even if the US were to win its war in Iraq, which now looks virtually impossible, its incremental gain before the oil runs out would be short-term, while its exposure to intensified and unending insurgency because of perceived US seizure of Iraqi oil rights, especially if extended to Iran, would be disproportionately enormous both in the Middle East and maybe also at home. It is diametrically the opposite of the policy to which the whole world will be forced ineluctably by the accelerating onset of climate change. Perhaps the single greatest gain of the west learning this lesson of weaning itself off its oil addiction is that it would end this interference in the internal affairs of Muslim countries simply because they happen to have oil - the central cause of world conflict today. |
"Oil ruled the 20th century; the shortage of oil will rule the 21st.... Last Tuesday the lead story in The Financial Times was the latest report from the International Energy Agency. The FT quoted the IEA as saying: 'Oil looks extremely tight in five years’ time,' and that there are 'prospects of even tighter natural gas markets at the turn of the decade'. For an international agency, that is inflammatory language.... 27 of the 51 oil-producing nations listed in BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy reported
output declines in 2006. One projection of world crude oil production actually forecasts a 10 per cent reduction in total world output between 2005 and 2015. That would be a revolution..... Some analysts think that the peak oil moment has already been reached; some still think that it will not come until 2020 – which is itself only 12 years away. Market trends and the statistics both support the IEA’s view that consumption is accelerating and supplies falling faster than expected. Of course, if the 'crunch' point is only five years’ away for oil, and closer for natural gas, it has, for practical purposes, already arrived....The shortage of oil and natural gas, relative to demand, had already changed the balance of world power. Historians may well conclude that the US decision to invade Iraq was primarily motivated by the desire to gain physical control of Iraq’s oil and to provide defence support to other Middle Eastern oil powers. Political motivations are always mixed, but oil is an essential national interest of the United States. If the US is now deciding to withdraw from Iraq, the price will have to be paid in terms of loss of access to oil.... The world is coming to the end of the age of oil, which produced its own technology, its balance of power, its own economy, its pattern of society. It does not greatly matter whether the oil supply has peaked already or is going to peak in five or 12 years’ time. There is a huge adjustment to be made. There will be some benefits, including higher efficiencies and perhaps a better approach to global warming. But nothing will take us back towards the innocent expectation of indefinite expansion of the first months of the new millennium.""I fear we're going to be at war for
decades, not years ..... one major component of that war is oil."
James Woolsey, Former Director of The
CIA
Report On The Annual Policy
Forum Of The American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE)
Washington, 6-7 December 2004
RenewableEnergyAccess.com, 14 December
2004
"Iraq can be seen as the first battle
of the fourth world war. After two hot world wars and one cold one that all began and were
centered in Europe, the fourth world war is going to be for the Middle East."
Former Director of the CIA, James
Woolsey
NATO
conference, Prague, November 2002
"[BP's] Lord Browne's said that most
exploration for new supplies had halted [in Iraq] when the Iraqis nationalised their
industry.... he believed there was a plenty of oil and gas waiting to be discovered in
Iraq and that BP should be in prime position to capitalise [after a war with Iraq] because
it had found most of the country's oil before being thrown out in the 1970s.... Lord
Browne will be listened to carefully in Downing Street because the BP executive team has
such close links with the UK government that it was once dubbed Blair Petroleum."
BP chief fears US will carve up Iraqi oil riches
Guardian, 30 October 2002
"Saddam Hussein sits and smiles as the price
of his oil - as well as that of his neighbors' (which, he doubtless believes, he may again
be able to seize) -- skyrockets, giving him more to spend on his military forces,
including longer range ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction. He can be
confident that within the next decade or two - the period during which most independent
assessments of reserves suggest that world petroleum production will begin to decline -
the world's sharply increasing demand for petroleum will increasingly have to be satisfied
by him and his neighbors, to their great profit.... Although all these serious
[economic, environmental and social] problems may at first seem unconnected, Mr. Chairman,
they in fact all have essentially the same cause - over-dependence by the rest of the
world on petroleum-derived products that will increasingly have to come from the very
troubled and unstable Middle East."
James Woolsey, former Director of the CIA
Statement
to Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, Unites States Senate, 11 April 2000
"... the mideast will increasingly
become the source of the world's oil, and this is a strategic problem for us and for many other
countries."
James Woolsey, Former Director of the CIA
Interview with
the Council on Foreign Relations and the Washington Post: June 7, 2000
"At the time of the US invasion,
Vice-President Dick Cheney and other senior US officials boldly predicted that production would
exceed three million barrels a day within eight months, generating more than enough money
to rebuild Iraq. They underestimated the desperate state of Iraq’s oil infrastructure
after 23 years of war, sanctions and postinvasion looting. 'It was held together with bits
of string and chewing gum,' said one US official. Even now the facilities that The Times
visited in Kirkuk this week were shockingly corroded and dilapidated. The Bush
Administration also failed to foresee the virulence of the insurgency. The website Iraq
Pipeline Watch records 466 attacks on oil infrastructure or employees since 2003, and that
is probably a fraction of the real total. US officials reckon as many as half the
industry’s most skilled workers fled Iraq, or were killed, as Iraq descended into
mayhem. The insurgents have used the oil that was supposed to finance the country’s
reconstruction to fund their efforts to destroy it. They and other criminals have
routinely tapped into the pipelines to steal oil, hijacked tankers and diverted huge
amounts of oil from production facilities with the help of corrupt employees.... The Oil
Ministry will soon invite bids from international oil companies to increase output from
Iraq’s half-dozen poorly-managed, investment-starved 'super-giant' fields from early
next year. That would more than double production to
six million barrels a day within three or four years,
Hussain al-Sharistani, the Oil Minister, told The Times. Thereafter,
multinationals will be invited to develop new fields.
Competition will be intense, with no guarantee that Western companies will prevail.
'Everybody in the world, more than 45 companies, have approached us . . . the Chinese,
Russians, Indians, Brazilians,' Mr al-Sharistani said. "
Beneath the desert sands flows lifeblood of economic recovery
London
Times, 1 February 2008
"The Bush Administration began
making plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops, within days of President Bush's inauguration in January
of 2001 -- not eight months later after the
9/11 attacks, as has been previously reported. That's what former Treasury Secretary Paul
O'Neill says in his first interview about his time as a White House insider.... In the
book, O'Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one in a National Security
Council meeting questioned why Iraq should be invaded. 'It was all about finding a way to
do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go
find me a way to do this,' says O'Neill in
the book.... "
Saddam Ouster Planned Early '01?
CBS News,
10 January 2004
BBC, March 2005 - Bush Administration Made Plans For War And Iraq's Oil Before 9/11 Attacks
"In a world of looming shortage, Iraq
represented a unique opportunity. With 115bn barrels, it had the world's third biggest
reserves, and after years of war and sanctions they were the most underexploited. In the
late 1990s, production averaged about 2m barrels, but with the necessary investment its
reserves could support three times that..... Cheney knew, fretting about global oil
depletion in a speech in London the following year, where he noted that 'the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and lowest
cost is still where the prize ultimately lies'. Blair too had reason to be
anxious: British North Sea output had peaked in 1999, while the petrol protests of 2000
had made the importance of maintaining the fuel supply excruciatingly obvious. Britain's
and the US's fears were secretly formalised during the planning for Iraq. It is widely
accepted that Blair's commitment to support the attack dates back to his summit with Bush in Texas in April 2002. What is less well known is that at the same summit, Blair proposed
and Bush agreed to set up the US-UK Energy Dialogue, a permanent liaison dedicated to
'energy security and diversity'. Its existence
was only later exposed through a freedom of information inquiry. Both governments refuse
to release minutes of Dialogue meetings, but one paper dated February 2003 notes that to
meet projected demand, oil production in the Middle East would have to double by 2030 to
more than 50m barrels a day. So on the eve of the invasion, UK and US officials were
discussing how to raise production from the region - and we are invited to believe this is
coincidence. The bitterest irony is, of course, that the invasion has created conditions
that guarantee oil production will remain hobbled for years to come, bringing the global
oil peak that much closer. So if that was plan A, what on earth is plan B?"
The real casus belli: peak oil
Guardian, 26 June
2007
"Fuel is our economic lifeblood. The
price of oil can be the difference between recession and recovery. The western world is
import dependent. ....So: who develops oil and gas, what the new potential sources of
supply are, is a vital strategic question...The
Middle East, we focus on naturally."
Prime Minister's speech at the George Bush Senior Presidential
Library, Texas
10
Downing St, Press Release, 7 April 2002
AFTER THE INVASION OF
"The
British Prime Minister, House of Commons, 14 April 2003
BEFORE THE INVASION OF
".... our
energy system faces new challenges.... Our energy supplies will increasingly depend on
imported gas and oil..... we need access to a wide range of energy sources."
British Prime Minister, Foreword to DTI Energy White Paper,
February 2003
"The shortage of oil and natural gas,
relative to demand, had already changed the balance of world power. Historians may well conclude that the US decision to invade Iraq
was primarily motivated by the desire to gain physical control of Iraq’s oil and to
provide defence support to other Middle Eastern oil powers. "
Lord William Rees-Mogg
Are these the last days of the Oil Age?
London Times, 16 July 2007
"The
super-giant fields of southeastern Iraq are the largest concentration of super-giants to
be found anywhere in the world....unlike neighbor Saudi Arabia, Iraq has been unable to
deploy the latest technology, such as 3-D seismic, to find its reserves. Present reserve
estimates of Iraq's oil are based on 2-D seismic technology from the 1980s. Still, the
estimated success rate in Iraq ranges from one in two in the Mesopotamian Basin to one in
four in the western and northwestern stable platform, with the overall success rate
exceeding 72 percent - perhaps the highest success rate achievable anywhere in the world. Oil exploration costs are among the
cheapest globally, with the current cost estimated at around 50 cents per barrel....To
date, petroleum geologists have delineated and mapped over 526 prospects - drilling 131
prospects to discover 73 major fields. They have identified some 239 as having a high
degree of certainty, but those prospects remain undrilled. Thirty fields have been
partially developed and only 12 fields are actually onstream. Undrilled structures and undeveloped
fields could represent the largest untapped hydrocarbon resource anywhere in the world.....Clearly, large parts of Iraq are
still virgin - its large hydrocarbon reserves are still waiting to be developed to their
full potential, while most
other Middle East countries are fully exploiting their reserves. The main challenges facing the new Iraqi
authority are to establish law and order as well as security. Once these issues are resolved, Iraq will
perhaps be the most exciting place on Earth with regard to oil development and exploration....International oil companies are
looking forward with great anticipation to the opening of Iraq, as they have been waiting
for the past 40 years. Hopefully, Iraq will soon be able to offer them acreage, thereby
allowing proper development of its huge potential. Open and fair competition will enable
oil companies to apply the latest technologies in the search for, and development of, the
country's hydrocarbon resources - thus helping Iraq realize its full hydrocarbon
potential."
Assessing Iraq’s Oil
Potential
Geotimes, October 2003
"When Tony Blair became Leader of the Opposition in 1994, he — like Margaret Thatcher — knew little about foreign policy. What he did have was a series of instincts about how the Major Government and the international community had handled affairs in Bosnia, and he wasn’t impressed. Ever the anti-fatalist, once in office he was inclined to see such problems as requiring a solution. And passing across his desk in autumn 1997 were a series of intelligence reports concerning the dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and his weapons of mass destruction. 'We cannot let him get away with it,' he told Paddy Ashdown that November..... As the Kosovo crisis developed, Blair had delivered a major foreign policy speech in Chicago that spring. This address outlined a doctrine of liberal interventionism, arguing that there were circumstances when, though its interests were not directly threatened, the international community might intervene in the domestic affairs of sovereign states. The speech singled out two major villains: Milosevic and Saddam..... By Christmas 2001 the Taleban were defeated and Bin Laden was on the run. Now, the question was, what came next? The American answer, by early 2002, was Saddam. Our man at the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, was, he told me, very surprised because he couldn’t see the relevance of Iraq to 9/11. What had changed, Greenstock thought, was the calculus of opportunity — Bush could now get support for action against Iraq that would previously have been opposed by the American people. In London, Tony Blair was thinking about Iraq in a slightly different way. To him, according to Sir David Manning, his foreign policy adviser, it was the calculus of risk that had altered with the attack on America. The nightmare was the confluence of WMD with terrorism; nuclear programmes were believed to be up and running in Libya, Iran and North Korea, and Saddam’s continued defiance of UN resolutions seemed to confirm intelligence reports of continuing WMD capacity. Worse, the existing sanctions regime against Iraq was crumbling. 'What you could get away with before 9/11,' explained David Manning, 'was no longer acceptable.'.... When war came it was the 'coalition of the willing'. Bush had phoned Blair two days earlier to tell him that Britain could stand aside if it meant saving Blair’s premiership. 'I said rather than lose your Government,' Bush told me, 'be passive, you know we’ll go without you if need be.' Blair refused. I asked him why. His answer was impassioned. 'Because I think this is the most fundamental struggle of our time and there is only one place to be which is in the thick of it and trying to sort it out.' Some, including Colin Powell, have subsequently criticised Blair for never really facing Bush down. I put Powell’s words to Blair. 'It wasn’t a bargaining chip for me,' he replied. 'I wasn’t in a position where I was negotiating with him (Bush) in order to get him to do something different. In my view if it wasn’t clear that the whole nature of the way Saddam was dealing with this issue had changed I was in favour of military action. And, I am afraid, in one sense it is worse than people think in so far as my position is concerned. I believed in it. I believed in it then, I believe in it now.'”
"Tony Blair has admitted for the first time that he ignored the pleas of his aides and ministers to deter President Bush from waging war on Iraq because he believed that America was doing the right thing. And he has acknowledged that he turned down a last-ditch offer from Mr Bush to pull Britain out of the conflict. He has also revealed that he wishes he had published the full reports from the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) instead of the infamous September dossier about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction that so damaged him, and was almost certainly one of the factors that contributed to him leaving office sooner than he wanted. In frank remarks in a BBC documentary, Mr Blair confirmed openly the belief of many of his closest supporters that he never used his position as America’s strongest ally to try to force Mr Bush down the diplomatic rather than the military route....In return for promising Mr Blair that he would try to help get a second resolution at the UN, he also won Mr Blair’s pledge that if he got 'stuck' in the UN, war would be the only way out. Mr Blair later suggested that Mr Bush tried for a second resolution as a 'favour' to him."
"Former House Speaker [and Republican] Newt Gingrich said Thursday the Bush administration is waging
a 'phony war' on terrorism, warning that the country is losing ground against the kind of Islamic radicals who attacked the country on Sept. 11, 2001. A more effective approach, said Gingrich, would begin with a national energy strategy aimed at weaning the country from its reliance on imported oil....""For the world as a whole, oil companies are expected to keep finding and developing enough oil to offset our seventy one million plus barrel a day of oil depletion, but also to meet new demand. By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively
a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."Ex-CIA Chief Predicted 'Peak' Oil Crisis In 1999 CFR Paper
"Now most Americans accept seven
damning facts: (1) President Bush did little or nothing about terrorism before 9/11, (2)
there was no Iraqi threat to the United States, (3) the Bush
administration began plotting to invade Iraq early in their term, well before 9/11, (4) there is no evidence of an Iraqi hand in 9/11, or of any
significant support to al Qaeda, (5) there were no weapons of mass destruction and the
White House and Pentagon justified their claims about WMD by citing phony evidence from
Iraqi exiles to whom they paid millions of dollars, (6) the Bush administration had no
real plan to administer Iraq after the invasion, and (7) Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld ignored professional military advice and sent too few troops to Iraq to protect
our forces.... There is at least one momentous error that is
inescapable: President Bush has sowed the
seeds of current and future terrorism against the
United States by his needless, counterproductive, deceitful invasion of Iraq.... It pains me that so much of what I wrote in this book is
coming to pass.... It is a war we are losing,
as more and more of the Islamic world develops antipathy toward the United States and some
even develop a respect for the jihadist movement."
Richard Clarke - White House Head Of Counterterrorism 1992 - 2003
Foreword To The Paperback Edition
'Against All Enemies' -
Edition first published in Great Britain by The Free Press in 2004
"On the morning of the 12th [September
2001], DOD's [Department of Defense] focus was already beginning to shift from al Qaeda.
CIA was explicit now that al Qaeda was guilty of the attacks, but Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's
deputy, was not persuaded. It was too sophisticated and complicated an operation, he said,
for a terrorist group to have pulled off by itself, with out a state sponsor - Iraq must
have been helping them. I had a flashback to Wolfowitz saying the very same thing in April
when the administration had finally held its first deputy secretary-level meeting on
terrorism. When I had urged action on al Qaeda then, Wolfowitz had harked back to the 1993
attack on the World Trade Center, saying al Qaeda could not have done that alone and must
have had help from Iraq. The focus on al Qaeda was wrong, he had said in April, we must go
after Iraqi-sponsored terrorism. He had rejected my assertion and CIA's that there had
been no Iraqi-sponsored terrorism since 1993. Now this line of thinking was coming back.
By the afternoon on Wednesday, Secretary Rumsfeld was talking about broadening the
objectives of our response and 'getting Iraq.'... Later in the day, Secretary Rumsfeld complained that there were
no decent targets for bombing in Afghanistan and that we should consider bombing Iraq, which, he
said, had better targets. At first I thought he was joking. But he was serious and the
President did not reject out of hand the idea of attacking Iraq. Instead, he noted that
what we needed to do with Iraq was to change the government, not just hit it with more
cruise missiles, as Rumsfeld had implied."
Richard Clarke - White House Head Of Counterterrorism 1992
- 2003
Chapter 1, Evacuate The White House
'Against All Enemies' -
Edition first published in Great Britain by The Free Press in 2004
"Later, on the evening of the 12th, I
left the Video Conferencing Center and there, wandering alone around the Situation Room,
was the President. He looked like he wanted something to do. He grabbed a few of us and
closed the door to the conference room. 'Look', he told us, 'I know you have a lot to do
and all .... but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything.
See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way....' 'Look into Iraq, Saddam,' the
President said testily and left us. Lisa Gordon-Hagerty stared after him with her mouth
hanging open. Paul Kurtz walked in, passing the President on the way out. Seeing our
expressions, he asked, 'Geez, what happened here.' 'Wolfowitz got to him, ' Lisa said shaking her head."
Richard Clarke - White House Head Of
Counterterrorism 1992 - 2003
Chapter 1, Evacuate The White House
'Against All Enemies' -
Edition first published in Great Britain by The Free Press in 2004
Iran Too
"Q: And what are the stakes
here? The diplomatic effort has been going on for a long time and it has not worked. In
fact, Iran has gone in the other direction. So what are the stakes here? |
"For the world
as a whole, oil companies are expected to keep finding and developing enough oil to offset
our seventy one million plus barrel a day of oil depletion, but also to meet new demand.
By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil
demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in
production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an
additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from?
Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of about ninety per
cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of
the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is
still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress
continues to be slow."
Dick Cheney, Chief Executive of Halliburton,
now Vice President of the United States
Speech at London
Institute of Petroleum, Autumn Lunch 1999
"Optimists about world oil reserves,
such as the Department of Energy, are getting increasingly lonely. The International
Energy Agency now says that world production outside the Middle Eastern Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries (opec) will peak in
1999 and world production overall will peak between 2010 and 2020. This projection is supported by influential
recent articles in Science and Scientific American. Some knowledgeable academic and
industry voices put the date that world production will peak even sooner—within the
next five or six years. The optimists who project large reserve quantities of over one
trillion barrels tend to base their numbers on one of three things: inclusion of heavy oil
and tar sands, the exploitation of which will entail huge economic and environmental
costs; puffery by opec nations lobbying for higher production quotas within the cartel; or
assumptions about new drilling technologies that may accelerate production but are
unlikely to expand reserves. Once production peaks, even though exhaustion of world
reserves will still be many years away, prices will begin to rise sharply. This trend will
be exacerbated by increased demand in the developing world....."
Richard G. Lugar and R. James Woolsey (Former Director of the
CIA)
The New
Petroleum - Foreign Affairs January/February 1999
"The United
States cannot afford to wait for the next energy crisis to marshal its intellectual and industrial resources.... Our growing
dependence on increasingly scarce Middle Eastern oil is a fool's game—there is no way
for the rest of the world to win. Our losses may come suddenly through war, steadily
through price increases, agonizingly through developing-nation poverty, relentlessly
through climate change—or through all of the above."
Richard G. Lugar and R. James Woolsey (Former Director
of the CIA)
The New
Petroleum - Foreign Affairs January/February 1999
"Years before George W. Bush entered the White House, and years before the Sept. 11 attacks set the direction of his presidency, a group of influential neo-conservatives hatched a plan to get Saddam Hussein out of power... The group was never secret about its aims. In its 1998 open letter to Clinton, the group openly advocated unilateral U.S. action against Iraq.... Of the 18 people who signed the letter, 10 are now in the Bush administration. As well as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, they include Deputy Secretary of State
Richard Armitage ... ""We are writing you because we are convinced that current American
policy toward Iraq is not succeeding..... It hardly
needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass
destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the
safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the
moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of
the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard."
Open Letter To President Bill Clinton, 26 January 1998
Signed by: Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey
Bergner, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad,
William Kristol, Richard Perle, Peter W. Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, William Schneider, Jr.,
Vin Weber., Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, Robert B. Zoellick
"I think this is a very hard choice,
but the price - we think the price is worth it."
US Ambassador to the UN Madeline Albright,
in response to a question about the killing of 500,000 Iraqi children
as a result of US/UK pressured international sanctions against Iraq
CBS-TV '60 Minutes',
15 May 1996
The Occupation Of Saudi Arabia
"....[After the 1990 Iraqi invasion of
Kuwait] President Bush was hesitant about how America should respond. His foreign policy
alter ego, Secretary of State Jim Baker, and his Defense Secretary, Dick Cheney, were
reluctant to act. National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, however, thought that Iraq
had just changed the strategic equation in a way that could not be permitted. So did
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The two
argued that nothing stood between the advance of units of the Iraqi army in Kuwait and the
immense Saudi oil fields. If we did nothing in response to Iraq's seizing Kuwait, Saddam
Hussein would think that he could get away with seizing the Saudis' eastern oil fields. If
that happened, Baghdad would control most of the world's readily available oil. They could
dictate to America. Reluctantly, Bush and his team decided that they needed to
defend the Saudi oil fields, and do so quickly. They
needed Saudi permission for the defensive deployment, but there were some in the Pentagon
and White House who thought U.S. forces needed to
protect the Saudi oil with or without Saudi
approval. The mission to persuade the Saudi King to accept U.S forces was given to Defense
Secretary Dick Cheney. He assembled a small team, including Under Secretary of Defense
Paul Wolfowitz, Central Command head Norman Schwarzkopf, Sandy Charles of the NSC, and me,
then the Assistant Secretary of State for Politico-Military Affairs... Cheney concluded
the presentation, promising that U.S forces would come only to defend the Kingdom.
President Bush wanted the King to know that he had the President's word that the U.S.
forces would leave as soon as the threat was over, or whenever ordered to do so by the
King. ..... Unknown to the Americans at the time, the intelligence chief, Prince Turki,
had been approached by the Saudi who had recruited Arabs to fight in the Afghan War
against the Soviets, Usama Bin Laden........ When Kuwait was invaded, he offered to make
them available to the King to defend Saudi Arabia, to drive Saddam out of Kuwait. After we
left the palace, perhaps bin Laden was told of the King's decision. His help would not be
required. He could not believe it; letting
nonbelievers into the Kingdom of the Two Holy Mosques was against the beliefs of the
Wahhabist branch of Islam. Large numbers of American military in the Kingdom would violate
Islam, the construction magnate's son thought. They would
never leave."
Richard Clarke - White House Head Of Counterterrorism 1992 - 2003
Chapter 3, Unfinished Mission, Unintended Consequences
'Against All Enemies' - Edition first published in Great
Britain by The Free Press in 2004
"For just so long Kuwait, a small
country at the head of the Persian Gulf, had been set free and independent from its
long-time British protector. And during that time Kuwait had developed its oil fields and
become immensely rich. Saddam Hussein claimed that Kuwait was part of Iraq. To have and to
hold it would put him on the way to achieving something that the Soviets had yearned for
right after the Second War and been denied by the intervention of the United Nations,
which was to be sovereign of the Gulf - and so, as Churchill foresaw and warned about,
soon to be able to conquer Europe without a war by possessing 60% of the oil Western
Europe lived by and so be able to dictate to countries like Britain, France, Germany, that
they should abandon their precious democratic ways and get themselves governments friendly
to Iraq.....[Following Saddam's invasion of Kuwait] President Bush - the first that is -
called a dawn meeting of the National Security Council at which the likely commander of
any military action, one General Schwarzkopf, expressed the general feeling that the
United States might fight for Saudi Arabia but hardly for Kuwait. President Bush told the
press there was no thought of American intervention. The United Nations anyway had voted
to impose a total embargo on Iraq. Two days after the invasion President Bush took a half
day out to keep a promise to the British prime minister who was addressing a conference in
Aspen, Colorado, a resort town in the Rockies. He found Mrs Thatcher in finer fighting
fettle than all but one of his own advisers. She stressed that fighting for Kuwait now
might be a necessary step to saving Saudi Arabia from invasion later on. ..... What so
swiftly transformed the views and policy of the United States and the onlooking
allies-to-be was the recognition, first pressed on President Bush by Mrs Thatcher and then
rather late in the day realised by the King of Saudi Arabia, that once he held Kuwait
there was nothing to stop Saddam from seizing the Saudi oil fields."
Alistair Cooke's Letter From America
BBC
Online, 24 June 2002
"Energy is vital to a country's security and material well-being. A state unable to provide its people with adequate energy supplies or desiring added leverage over other people often resorts to force. Consider Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, driven by his desire to control more of the world's oil reserves, and the international response to this threat. The underlying goal of the U.N. force [in the 1991 G
