An Oily Mess

by Dan Jacoby

The Supreme Court will hear Vice President Dick Cheney's appeal of the ruling that he must make his secret energy plan meetings public. But I'll get back to that. Meanwhile...

I never saw the film "JFK", but ever since it came out, any time I thought I had a silly conspiracy theory I called it my "Oliver Stone take" on the situation. So here is my Oliver Stone take on the invasion of Iraq.

First of all, let us not mince words. We didn't go in to Iraq to liberate its people. We invaded for the purpose of controlling the country. And it wasn't a coalition, it was the United States, with help from Britain, and a smattering of what amounted to lip service from some other countries. (Bulgaria? Please!)

Since the invasion, oil prices have reached their highest sustained levels ever. And now that OPEC has taken official notice of the spiraling decline in the dollar, oil prices will go even higher. This means that domestic oil companies can charge significantly more for their oil, even though it doesn't cost any more to drill for it. Which means that these oil companies are going to make a fortune, without facing the stigma of war profiteering.

The oil companies are run by rich men who are good friends of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. The President himself has run oil companies. Actually, the President has bankrupted oil companies, so it stands to reason that he feels that oil companies need all the help they can get.

Meanwhile, George W. Bush continues to claim that invading Iraq is part of the fight against terrorism. But there isn't a shred of evidence that Saddam Hussein was connected to Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda. After six months of American soldiers and weapons experts scouring a country the size of California, going anywhere they want, and arresting and questioning anyone they want without the need for a warrant or the limitations of the U.S. Constitution, they have found exactly no chemical weapons, no biological weapons, no nuclear program -- nothing to indicate that Saddam Hussein was ever a threat to us.

Furthermore, George W. Bush and his cronies are simply not allowing Iraqis to have any real say in how their country is run. They won't allow a census to be taken for the purpose of direct elections. They won't allow anyone they don't choose to have any power in Iraq whatsoever. And even if they nominally turn over some authority to hand-picked Iraqis, they still plan to keep American troops there for a long, long time.

President Bush didn't invade Iraq to stop terrorism. He didn't invade Iraq to remove a threat to the United States. In fact, he didn't invade Iraq for any legitimate purpose.

So why are American soldiers dying over there?

One could argue that the president sent American forces into Iraq to "look strong" and improve his poll numbers while the economy was a mess -- the "Wag the Dog" scenario. Unfortunately, there isn't a strong argument against that, except that it leaves one question unanswered.

Why are oil prices so high? The disruption of Iraqi oil supplies is minimal, since they weren't pumping much oil before the invasion. Other countries can easily make up the difference. There's just no legitimate reason for oil prices to be so high. Unless a plan was created to use the "fog of war" in order to drive oil prices through the roof.

Just what went on behind Dick Cheney's closed doors?

 

Copyright 2003, Dan Jacoby

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