MSNBC's short documentary titled “Why We Did It” that aired March 06th, 2014 was somewhat informative but mostly anticlimactic. The only people in this country who have never believed that these actions were about oil are either disingenuous for political reasons, or stupid.
The newly revealed documents and statements by insiders of the time are interesting but don't really provide closure. Most people knew it was a scam that had something vaguely to do with oil from the beginning. Unfortunately, the picture, painted by these “new” details makes the Bush administration and particularly Dick Chaney look much more benign than they actually were.
A few simple facts:
a) Saddam Hussein was planning to switch to the Euro as his reserved currency, which would have had drastic effects on the value of the Dollar and the U.S. Economy. This is widely considered to be the prime motive for taking him out.
b) The spot price of oil bottomed out in 2002 at around $20.00 a barrel. By July 3rd, 2008, the spot price of oil had reached a peak of $145.31 a barrel. This upward trend tracks the progress of the war with an interesting parallel between a drop in Iraqi casualties in Jan 2008, the beginning of the Great Recession, and the sharp reduction in the price of oil after July 2008.
c)There is a bubble of record high profits by oil companies between late 2003 and 2008. Record oil profits track the war, not the peace.
d)War, unrest, and sanctions against countries like Iran and Syria slow down oil production. Slow production drives up demand and price. Note here that the Republicans always seem to be saber rattling against countries in the Middle East.
And finally, the United States is expected to be the largest producer of oil in the world by 2020, by methods of production that have been available for well over 30 years.
This is a good opportunity to point out that techniques employed by American anti submarine aircraft and other instruments helped produce the Geological Map of the World (CGMW) in July 2007. Which, means that the Contiguous United States had been thoroughly mapped out, mineralogically speaking since well before then. Clearly, long time oil men like G.W. Bush and one time Halliburton CEO Dick Chaney would know exactly precisely what we had, where it was, and what those assets would be worth with the emergence of the BRIC economies, Brazil, Russia, India, China so close on the horizon.
They knew we had shale oil and that the infrastructure to extract shale oil was practically a pipe dream with oil prices at $20.00 a barrel. Meaning that the wars were not just a device for maximizing oil profits and the profits of oil tech companies like Halliburton but also a means to get the extraction infrastructure in place in the U.S. before demand from the new emerging BRIC countries would take hold.
The Bottom line is that war in the Middle East is good for the oil business. Not only does it elevate the price of oil but it elevates consumption by military vehicles and through fires and spills. This is why war in the Middle East will always be part of the Republican/Big Oil agenda. We must maintain vigilance against warmongering of any kind not only because it is so clearly just about the money but because it is also always so close at hand. To suggest that all of the misery and death we rained down on the Iraqi people was about trying to secure anything is probably just the Disney version that Dick Chaney would have us believe.
Sources:
It is interesting to view the graph of Iraqi casualties figures and the spot price of oil side by side. It's not a one to one correspondence but there does seem to be a similar trend. In my mind, it is a numeric way to illustrate the obvious, that disruptions of flow due to war drives up demand and price.
Exxon profits graph 2000-2006
http://ww3.hdnux.com/...
Big oil profits
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/...
Oil spot price FOB
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/...
Oil price and trade deficit
http://www.c2es.org/...
Iraq war casualties
http://nickoow.files.wordpress.com/...
Comparitive casualties by who is doing the counting
http://thinkbynumbers.org/...
Syria second only to Iraq in proven oil researves
http://orientalreview.org/...
Found through Wikipedia. Hey, at least I'm honest.
1. ^ "Empire builders - Neoconservatives and their blueprint for US power", The Christian Science Monitor (2004), accessed May 22, 2007.
2. ^ Jump up to:a b c The PNAC was often identified as a "neo-con" or "right-wing think tank" in profiles featured on the websites of "left-wing" and "progressive" "policy institute" and "media watchdog" organizations, which were critical of it; see, e.g., "Profile: Project for the New American Century", Right Web(International Relations Center), November 22, 2003, accessed June 1, 2007.
2:42 PM PT: It is probably the most instructive to look at http://cdn.theatlantic.com/...
and
http://thinkbynumbers.org/...
side by side. As there does seem to be a close correspondence of the curves.