As astounding as it is, that "torture interrogators" were demanding the link between Saddam and bin Laden -- the question still remains: WHY???
It's still about oil in Iraq
A centerpiece of the Iraq Study Group's report is its advocacy for securing foreign companies' long-term access to Iraqi oil fields.
By Antonia Juhasz - LATimes - Dec 8, 2006
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.
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.
http://www.latimes.com/...
continuing ...
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.
http://www.latimes.com/...
Amazing! Extreme times, call for Extreme Measures?
Or was it just the potential for "Extreme Profits" that was the real incentive for all those Lawyer-mill Memos?
The battle for Iraq's oil
Major oil companies and their state-owned counterparts are all jostling for a slice of the world's third-largest reserves.
by Sarah Arnott -- Independent U.K. - April 15, 2009
The prize is huge. The country has proven reserves of 115 billion barrels, the third largest in the world after Saudi Arabia and Iran. "Iraq is a jewel for the international oil companies and always has been," said Manouchehr Takin, a senior petroleum analyst at the Centre for Global Energy Studies. "Not only does it have large proven reserves but there are also big estimates for undiscovered resources.
...
Oil companies large and small have been lining up for a piece of the action since Saddam was deposed in 2003 and there have been some isolated deals, often not involving putting people on the ground.
...
Last autumn, Shell joined a $4bn joint venture to collect and market the 700 million cubic feet of gas flared from 19,000 square kilometres of oil field in the Basra region.
In August, CNPC – now in talks with Shell over Kirkuk – signed a $3bn deal to develop the Ahdab field in central Iraq
http://www.independent.co.uk/...
Iraqi Reporters were sounding the alarm, about this modern day "Gold Rush" for quite a while, but the Energy-Hungry World has been slow to listen ... and too blindingly busy to connect the dots ...
The following paper was presented by Tariq Shafiq, Aug 01, 2005, at a conference organized by the Open Society Institute and London School of Economics,
"Iraq Oil Wealth: Issues of Governance and Development"
Country | Produced | Produced % Total | Proven + 15% + Potential Oil | Total |
UAE | 22.1 | 15 | 132.7 | 149 |
Kuwait | 34.2 | 21 | 133.2 | 159.5 |
Iran | 55.5 | 32 | 173.6 | 171.3 |
Iraq | 29.1 | 8 | 349.3 | 368.4 |
Saudi Arabia | 99.8 | 23 | 358 | 432.5 |
totals | | | | |
Mid East Majors | 240.7 | 22.00 | 1,146.80 | 1,087.20 |
World | 957 | 36 | 1,677.00 | 2,634.00 |
Data Table: Proven Oil Resource Base At Recovery Assumed 50% + Potential
http://www.mees.com/...
Some Charts from those data:
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The Biggest Growth Sector, in those Charts, is the Iraq "piece of the Pie". No Wonder, we HAD such "intense" National Security "Interests" there!
Where will that "Big Oil" Arrow point to Next, in the Global Game of Geo-Politics? Remember you're only as important as your last big conquest. George Bush realized this when "he rushed" the Iraqi Congress to pass their National Oil Law, a while back. (while chaos, was still the norm)
A New Oil Plan for Iraq
By VIVIENNE WALT/PARIS - TIME Magazine - Jan. 11, 2007
In his speech announcing plans to boost troop levels in Iraq, George Bush noted that Iraq was about to pass "legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis" in order to give the citizens of that country a share in the economy.
Indeed, the 33-page draft of that proposed Oil & Gas Law now circulating, if passed as currently written, would end decades of total government control over Iraq's mammoth oil reserves and distribute oil income among all the country's regions — a dramatic change from the past and a potential windfall for Big Oil.
...
As written, the law would end more than three decades of Iraq's nationalized oil industry.
It would give 10-year exploration and development rights to foreign oil companies — at least those willing to start drilling in a country where hundreds of contractors have been killed and pipelines are regularly blown up.
Once the exploration deals expire, the companies can negotiate to produce the oil for another 20 years in partnership with the state-owned Iraq National Oil Company.
Foreign oil companies would then pay the government 12.5% royalties of the oil's value, and be able to export the rest of whatever oil they find — potentially massive amounts.
http://www.time.com/...
Luckily, those efforts to enforce our "banana republic will" on our pliable Allies in the "New Iraq" -- has met with decided mixed results, as the People of Iraq, seem to have become their own Deciders:
Oil export ban costs Iraq dearly, Kurds say
Reuters, Guardian U.K. - April 17 2009
... Such rancour bodes poorly for hopes for a swift end to Kurds' and Arabs' long impasse over a national oil law, needed to ease investors' concerns about hunkering down billions of dollars in an unproven democracy still mired in violence.
It may be even more hard to render tough concessions as politicians of all stripes look to December's national polls.
"I'm not very optimistic at the moment," Hawrami said.
The need to to leverage Iraq's oil resources becomes all the more urgent ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
I wonder if Ex VP Cheney, planned for this Outcome, when he was secretly meeting with the GOP's "Base", back in the hey day, of the Bush "Power Rangers", of early 2001?
Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force
By Dana Milbank and Justin Blum - Washington Post - Nov 16, 2005
A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.
...
Chevron was not named in the White House document, but the Government Accountability Office has found that Chevron was one of several companies that "gave detailed energy policy recommendations" to the task force. In addition, Cheney had a separate meeting with John Browne, BP's chief executive, according to a person familiar with the task force's work;
The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
What "Tortured Logic" could have caused Bush and Cheney, to turn a National Tragedy, into a twisted, Raid for Oil, -- for Oil that DID NOT Belong to us!! How many pragmatic rationalizations were necessary for them to make "the Leap"? (What's yours is OURS!)
I wonder, which Failure, Dick Cheney regrets most, now?
The failure of the Iraq National Oil Law,
The failure of coercing their Puppet Government in Iraq,
The lack of Big Oil's in-roads to those untapped Fields,
Or the current over-exposure of his team's Twisted Tactics, to get there?
Most likely, none of them -- the prerequisite for regrets, is a Conscience.