Ray McGovern: Greenspan Spills the Beans on Oil

[seafan]

Greenspan Spills the Beans on Oil

By Ray McGovern
September 16, 2007

.....

Greenspan writes:

“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

Everyone knows? Would that it were so. But it’s hardly everyone.

There are so many, still, who “can’t handle the truth,” and that is understandable. I have found it a wrenching experience to conclude that the America I love would deliberately launch what the Nuremburg Tribunal called the “supreme international crime”—a war of aggression—largely for oil.
For those who are able to overcome the very common, instinctive denial, for those who can handle the truth, it really helps to turn off the Sunday football games early enough to catch up on what’s going on.

There they could have seen another of Bush’s senior economic advisers, former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill on Jan. 11, 2004, discussing The Price of Loyalty, his memoir about his two years inside the Bush administration.
O’Neill, a plain speaker, likened the president’s behavior at cabinet meetings to that of “a blind man in a roomful of deaf people.” Cheney and “a praetorian guard that encircled the president” would help Bush make decisions off-line, blocking contrary views.
Cheney has a Rumsfeldian knack for aphorisms that don’t parse in the real world— like “deficits don’t matter.” To his credit, O’Neill picked a fight with that and ended up being fired personally by Cheney. In his book, Greenspan heaps scorn on the same Cheneyesque insight.

O’Neill made no bones about his befuddlement over the president’s diffident disengagement from discussions on policy, except, that is, for Bush’s remarks betraying a pep-rally-cheerleader fixation with removing Saddam Hussein and occupying Iraq.

.....

O’Neill began to understand right after Bush’s inauguration when the discussion among his top advisers abruptly moved to how to divvy up Iraq’s oil wealth.
Just days into the job, President Bush created the Cheney energy task force with the stated aim of developing “a national energy policy designed to help the private sector.” Typically, Cheney has been able to keep secret its deliberations and even the names of its members.

But a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit forced the Commerce Department to turn over task force documents, including a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries, terminals, and potential areas for exploration; a Pentagon chart “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts”; and another chart detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects—all dated March 2001.
On the 60 Minutes program on Dec. 15, 2002, Steve Croft asked then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, “What do you say to people who think this is about oil?” Rumsfeld replied:

“Nonsense. It just isn’t. There—there—there are certain............. things like that, myths that are floating around. I’m glad you asked. I—it has nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil.”

.....

In the heady days of “Mission Accomplished,” a week after the president landed on the aircraft carrier, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz virtually bragged about the deceit during an interview.

On May 9, 2003, Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair:

“The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason...”
During a relaxed moment in Singapore later that same month, Wolfowitz reminded the press that Iraq “floats on a sea of oil,” and thus added to the migraine he had already given folks in the White House PR shop.
But wait. For those of us absorbing more than Fox channel news, the primacy of the oil factor was a no-brainer.
The limited number of invading troops were ordered to give priority to securing the oil wells and oil industry infrastructure immediately and let looters have their way with just about everything else (including the ammunition storage depots!).
Barely three weeks into the war, Rumsfeld famously answered criticism for not stopping the looting: “Stuff happens.” No stuff happened to the Oil Ministry.

.....

Why Are Americans Silent?

Could it be that many Americans remain silent because we are unwilling to recognize the Iraq war as the first of the resource wars of the 21st century; because we continue to be comfortable hogging far more than our share of the world’s resources and will look the other way if our leaders tell us that aggressive war is necessary to protect that siren-call, “our way of life,” from attack by those who are just plain jealous?

Perhaps a clue can be found in the remarkable reaction I received after a lecture I gave two and a half years ago in a very affluent suburb of Milwaukee. .....

.....

Ray McGovern is a treasure.

[slipslidingaway]

1. K&R thanks, why aren't the Dems keeping this issue in the media?

:mad:

"O’Neill began to understand right after Bush’s inauguration when the discussion among his top advisers abruptly moved to how to divvy up Iraq’s oil wealth.

Just days into the job, President Bush created the Cheney energy task force with the stated aim of developing “a national energy policy designed to help the private sector.” Typically, Cheney has been able to keep secret its deliberations and even the names of its members."

[mark414]

2. so when's the trial?

...a guy can dream, can't he...?

[Karenina]

3. K&R!

:kick:

[Disturbed]

4. It all would've worked out except for the pesyk Insurgency &

al Q moving into Iraq. Maybe given another 10 years of brutal Occupation it will still work out. After all, the Kurds are making oil deals with Hunt Oil, buddy of busholini already.

[malaise]

5. The DU archives are full of our posts

stating this from the beginning of the illegal invasion.

[seafan]

6. And because we've paid attention, we are branded unpatriotic, traitors, conspiracy nuts.

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."
-- Mahatma Gandhi

[Supersedeas]

7. and Ray L. Hunt should be a household name: Hunt Oil is barely mentioned in the context of this

story