-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: June 14, 2007 10:53:54 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Fwd: Secret U.S. Plans For Iraq's Oil
See what's free at AOL.com.
From: "Jim S." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: June 13, 2007 7:06:10 PM PDT
Subject: Secret U.S. Plans For Iraq's Oil
FLASHBACK: U.S. PLANS FOR IRAQ'S OIL "HELPED SET OFF THE 'INSURGENCY'"
"... Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's 'back-channel' to Saddam,
claims that plans to sell off Iraq's oil, pushed by the U.S.-
installed Governing Council in 2003, helped instigate the
insurgency and attacks on U.S. and British occupying forces. ... "
Secret U.S. Plans For Iraq's Oil
By Greg Palast
Reporting for Newsnight
17 March, 2005
The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil
before the 9/11 attacks, sparking a policy battle between neo-cons
and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed. Two years ago today --
when President George Bush announced U.S., British, and Allied
forces would begin to bomb Baghdad -- protesters claimed the U.S.
had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.
In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden
policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side,
versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and U.S. State
Department "pragmatists".
"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by
Newsnight from the U.S. State Department was, we learned, drafted
with the help of American oil industry consultants.
Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks" of
Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th
attack on the U.S.
We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities and pipelines
[in Iraq] built on the premise that privatisation is coming
An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant, Falah Aljibury, says he took
part in the secret meetings in California, Washington and the
Middle East. He described a State Department plan for a forced coup
d'etat.
Mr. Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed potential
successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration.
Secret Sell-off Plan
The industry-favoured plan was pushed aside by a secret plan,
drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which called for the sell-
off of all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan was crafted by neo-
conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the O.P.E.C.
cartel through massive increases in production above O.P.E.C. quotas.
The sell-off was given the green light in a secret meeting in
London headed by Fadhil Chalabi shortly after the U.S. entered
Baghdad, according to Robert Ebel.
Mr. Ebel, a former Energy and C.I.A. oil analyst, now a fellow at
the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington,
told Newsnight he flew to the London meeting at the request of the
State Department.
Mr. Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's "back-channel" to Saddam, claims
that plans to sell off Iraq's oil, pushed by the U.S.-installed
Governing Council in 2003, helped instigate the insurgency and
attacks on U.S. and British occupying forces.
"Insurgents used this, saying, 'Look, you're losing your country,
you're losing your resources to a bunch of wealthy billionaires who
want to take you over and make your life miserable'," said Mr.
Aljibury from his home near San Francisco.
"We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, pipelines,
built on the premise that privatisation is coming."
Privatisation blocked by industry
Philip Carroll, the former C.E.O. of Shell Oil USA who took control
of Iraq's oil production for the U.S. Government a month after the
invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme. Mr. Carroll told us he made
it clear to Paul Bremer, the U.S. occupation chief who arrived in
Iraq in May 2003, that: "There was to be no privatisation of Iraqi
oil resources or facilities while I was involved."
Ariel Cohen, of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation, told
Newsnight that an opportunity had been missed to privatise Iraq's
oil fields.
He advocated the plan as a means to help the U.S. defeat O.P.E.C.,
and said America should have gone ahead with what he called a "no-
brainer" decision.
Mr. Carroll hit back, telling Newsnight, "I would agree with that
statement. To privatize would be a no-brainer. It would only be
thought about by someone with no brain."
New plans, obtained from the State Department by Newsnight and
Harper's Magazine under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, called
for creation of a state-owned oil company favoured by the U.S. oil
industry. It was completed in January 2004 under the guidance of
Amy Jaffe of the James Baker Institute in Texas.
Formerly U.S. Secretary of State, Baker is now an attorney
representing Exxon-Mobil and the Saudi Arabian government.
View segments of Iraq oil plans at: www.GregPalast.com
Questioned by Newsnight, Ms. Jaffe said the oil industry prefers
state control of Iraq's oil over a sell-off because it fears a
repeat of Russia's energy privatisation. In the wake of the
collapse of the Soviet Union, U.S. oil companies were barred from
bidding for the reserves.
Ms. Jaffe says U.S. oil companies are not warm to any plan that
would undermine O.P.E.C. and the current high oil price: "I'm not
sure that if I'm the chair of an American company, and you put me
on a lie detector test, I would say high oil prices are bad for me
or my company."
The former Shell oil boss agrees. In Houston, he told Newsnight:
"Many neo conservatives are people who have certain ideological
beliefs about markets, about democracy, about this, that and the
other. International oil companies, without exception, are very
pragmatic commercial organizations. They don't have a theology." ...
[Newsnight is broadcast every weekday at 10.30 p.m. on BBC Two in
the U.K.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/4354269.stm ]
Published: 2005/03/17 15:41:31 GMT
[Posted by Alex Constantine on Saturday, January 27, 2007 0 comments]
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