Those people who have not yet been brainwashed by the “Obey” message of the right-wing media outlets, have long been suspecting that the so-called War on Terror is just a fig leaf to justify US neo-colonialism in the Middle East, in order to bring the world’s largest remaining oil supplies under US control in preparation for what the Cheney/Baker report “Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century” called a future of “severve oil shortages” and “unprecedented energy price volatility.”

The papertrail proving that “war for oil” has become official US government policy leads back almost 10 years:

Oil wars Pentagon’s policy since 1999
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”.

So, there’s a papertrail proving that “war for oil” is a very real government policy, and that Cheney and co believe (or claim to believe) that the oil situation has become so dire that it is time to act and get that oil by any and all means neccessary. And voila… just a few months later they sent troops to Iraq, installed a Vichy-like puppet government, and imposed laws that will place Iraqi oil under the control of US oil companies, just as the more recent Baker report suggested:

A centerpiece of the Iraq Study Group’s report is its advocacy for securing foreign companies’ long-term access to Iraqi oil fields.

While the Bush administration, the media and nearly all the Democrats still refuse to explain the war in Iraq in terms of oil, the ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such reticence.

Page 1, Chapter 1 of the Iraq Study Group report lays out Iraq’s importance to its region, the U.S. and the world with this reminder: “It has the world’s second-largest known oil reserves.” The group then proceeds to give very specific and radical recommendations as to what the United States should do to secure those reserves. If the proposals are followed, Iraq’s national oil industry will be commercialized and opened to foreign firms.

The report makes visible to everyone the elephant in the room: that we are fighting, killing and dying in a war for oil. It states in plain language that the U.S. government should use every tool at its disposal to ensure that American oil interests and those of its corporations are met.

It’s spelled out in Recommendation No. 63, which calls on the U.S. to “assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise” and to “encourage investment in Iraq’s oil sector by the international community and by international energy companies.” This recommendation would turn Iraq’s nationalized oil industry into a commercial entity that could be partly or fully privatized by foreign firms.

This is an echo of calls made before and immediately after the invasion of Iraq.

The U.S. State Department’s Oil and Energy Working Group, meeting between December 2002 and April 2003, also said that Iraq “should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war.” Its preferred method of privatization was a form of oil contract called a production-sharing agreement. These agreements are preferred by the oil industry but rejected by all the top oil producers in the Middle East because they grant greater control and more profits to the companies than the governments. The Heritage Foundation also released a report in March 2003 calling for the full privatization of Iraq’s oil sector. One representative of the foundation, Edwin Meese III, is a member of the Iraq Study Group. Another, James J. Carafano, assisted in the study group’s work.

And sure enough, Baker’s “recommendation” was put into effect and the Iraqi oil has been handed to US oil companies against the will of the Iraqi people:

Bush’s Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq’s Oil

Even as Iraq verges on splintering into a sectarian civil war, four big oil companies are on the verge of locking up its massive, profitable reserves, known to everyone in the petroleum industry as “the prize.”

We all (at least those of us who’ve been paying attention) know by now that the republican leadership has a long history of lying about pretty much everything, from sex scandals and botched Hurricane aid to non-existant WMD, manipulated intelligence, flagrant violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions, firing attorneys who were deemed not loyal enough, frequent violations of the Constitution, the treasonous outing of a CIA agent, deliberate lies about non-existant links between Saddam and Al Queda, lies about Saddam and 9/11, illegal detainment without trial, suspension of civil rights and habeas corpus, torture, illegal wiretapping, etc. etc. all in an attempt to cover up their own motives and methods.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart frequently has great video montages juxtaposing statements by Bush or Cheney or some other republican functionary where they claim one thing, and then making the exact opposite statement shortly thereafter.

Anyone with even a bit of common sense can see that there’s something very fishy going on here.

War itself is an act of terror and the population of Iraq has been exposed to the carnage of constant bombing raids and trigger happy US troops and over 125,000 hired mercenaries (also known as America’s lawless shadow army) roaming the streets for years now, leading to widespread desperation among the Iraqi people. Far from being “liberated” they are being terrorized day and night. So it’s no wonder 90% of Iraqis feel things were better when Saddam was still in charge.

Countless international studies agree:

Iraqis Endure Worse Conditions Now Than Under Saddam

Iraqi Health Care Was Better Under Saddam

Iraqi Children Fared Better Under Saddam

Iraqi Womens’ Rights Were Better Under Saddam

How can anyone in their right mind honestly believe that what’s going on in Iraq is a War on Terror?

But wait, there’s more…

Recently reports have surfaced, that the US is secretly aiding a pakistani terror group who has killed lots of people in Iran:

US Aiding Al Qaeda Affiliated Group In Iran?

Pakistani Intel sources and Iranian parliament claims CIA aiding anti-Iranian militants

A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005 according to Pakistani Intelligence and Iranian officials.

Well, if you’re a good little lemming, you’ll take your cue from the brainwashing right-wing liars on TV and you’ll just dismiss this report as “islamo-fascist propaganda.”

“Patriotic” right-wing nationalist extremists are so convinced of their own country’s superiority and so xenophobic towards foreigners that they never believe anything the foreign media reports, if it is in any way shape or form critical of the US.

But, guess what?! US government officials have confirmed that this story is true:

U.S. officials say the U.S. relationship with Jundullah is arranged so that the U.S. provides no funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or “finding” as well as congressional oversight.

Tribal sources tell ABC News that money for Jundullah is funneled to its youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states.

Jundullah has produced its own videos showing Iranian soldiers and border guards it says it has captured and brought back to Pakistan.

The leader, Regi, claims to have personally executed some of the Iranians.

“He used to fight with the Taliban. He’s part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist,” said Alexis Debat, a senior fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant who recently met with Pakistani officials and tribal members.

“Regi is essentially commanding a force of several hundred guerrilla fighters that stage attacks across the border into Iran on Iranian military officers, Iranian intelligence officers, kidnapping them, executing them on camera,” Debat said.

Most recently, Jundullah took credit for an attack in February that killed at least 11 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard riding on a bus in the Iranian city of Zahedan.

As mentioned previously, the latest State Department statistics show that terrorism has gone up by 30% last year. So the “War on Terror” is an abject failure (something the republicans will never admit of course) - unless the goal never really was to reduce terrorism anyway, but to get Iraq’s oil under US control. In that case the Iraq war has been a resounding success.

Take your pick: Either we live in a country under a right-wing extremist (read: fascist) government that deliberately misleads the American people in order to wage very successful oil wars for profit, or we live in a country ruled by bumbling idiots who have been “staying the course” on a war path that has been a complete and utter failure from day one.

Now they even support honest-to-goodness terrorist groups killing people in Iran. Is that a sign of total incompetence or ruthless hypocrisy?

The answer of course lies in those papertrails I mentioned earlier. They show that oil has been the real reason for the so-called “War on Terror” all along. The Iraq war is not a war of liberation (does anyone even still use that excuse for the invasion?) but an aggressive war of conquest.

Tags: iraq iran war on terror war for oil oil peak oil

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 12:06 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.