"The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know."
--Harry S. Truman
This evening, we're hearing of a breaking story from across the pond, courtesy of Great Britain's Independent, concerning a book by author Greg Muttitt, "Oil On Fire," that's hitting stores next week which provides extensive evidence, culled from over 1,000 secret British documents, that big oil companies and "...governments were negotiating over rights to oil..." in Iraq a year before the 2003 invasion of that country.
As UMass/Boston Political Science Professor Thomas Ferguson tells us, this evening, via a crosspost at Naked Capitalism, originating from New Deal 2.0, "...the story buries forever all claims that the US, the UK, and other governments did not have oil on their minds as they prepared to invade Iraq."
Tom Ferguson: Oil-Soaked Politics – Secret U.K. Docs on Iraq
Naked Capitalism
Tuesday, April 19th, 2011 11:05 PM
...This just in: big oil companies and government ministers had discussions one year before invasion.
Revolution in the Middle East, nuclear meltdown in Japan, war in Libya, the U.S. budget crisis, the looming problems of the Eurozone — some days it’s all just too much. But today there’s something no one can afford to ignore: The Independent, one of Britain’s leading newspapers, broke a story that no one, no matter how jaded, can afford to ignore. In a nutshell, the story buries forever all claims that the US, the UK, and other governments did not have oil on their minds as they prepared to invade Iraq.
The story reports on a forthcoming book that draws on more than a thousand secret government documents. The excerpts the paper prints detailing meetings between the UK government and British oil companies in the run up to the war are devastating. They demonstrate that all the denials in London and Washington that policymakers were not concerned about oil as they invaded were as false as the famous cover story about weapons of mass destruction.
The passages quoted in The Independent show that all the governments were negotiating over rights to oil long before the invasion and that they were working closely with their companies. But it is impossible from a single newspaper article to assess the full extent of oil’s role in precipitating the invasion of Iraq. The book, obviously, will need a careful review; presumably the author realizes that he will need to make the materials he drew upon available on some website. But enough has already been revealed to make a compelling case for a Congressional committee to demand that all the relevant U.S. government documents now be revealed. Ever since a court ordered the release of some government documents in response to a suit Judicial Watch filed under the Freedom of Information Act, we have known that Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force was reviewing documents on Iraqi oil – well before the attack on 9/11. See here, for example.
It’s time the rest of the story came out — not because it is history, but because it is not...
Here's the link to the article along with the first few paragraphs from The Independent...
Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq
By Paul Bignell
The Independent
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.
The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain's involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair's cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.
The documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the UK's involvement in the Iraq war. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as "highly inaccurate". BP denied that it had any "strategic interest" in Iraq, while Tony Blair described "the oil conspiracy theory" as "the most absurd".
But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture...
Mr. Bignell's article continues on to note that five months before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, Baroness Symons, Great Britain's Trade Minister at the time, "...told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime change."
We learn that the secret documents demonstrate that Symons agreed to lobby the Bush White House on BP's behalf "...because the oil giant feared it was being 'locked out' of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms."
There's much more substance to this story than what I've posted in this diary. I'd strongly recommend a read of today's article in the Independent. (HERE'S another link to it.)
Yes, this is a story your grandchildren will be reading in their history books. The Military-Industrial-Wall Street monopoly rules all. From the looks of it, author Muttitt has compiled some amazing detail on these, apparently, quite factual and inconvenient realities.
(Diarist's Note: Checkout Kossack La Feminista's coverage of this story, in a diary which she posted earlier. As she said, herself, it's filled with "snarkasm!")