Ex-CIA Agent Talks About Oil
And War In Iraq
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/EnergyAug2006.htm
'You’re talking about morality. We don’t do morality in the CIA.’

Energy Update, August 2006

"We have to sit down and get rid of our dependence on fossil fuels. Now.
We need a 'Manhattan' project. This thing is fragile in the Middle East.
If this was a part of the world we didn't care about we could fly the aid in and forget about it.
This isn't Darfur. It's oil. It's oil. It's oil. It's oil.
We just have to face the facts, whether you're Republican or Democrat.
.... [but] I don't see Washington coping with it."
Robert Baer, Colorado, 12 August 2006

Ex-CIA Middle East Agent Robert Baer Near His Home In Colorado "The other one thing is, ‘they hate us’, which is just total bullshit .... It wasn’t Western values. It’s Western presence. They want us to get out... [but] I don’t think any American politician, however at fault we are in Iraq or anywhere else, can say, ‘All right, let the crazies have the oil fields’, because oil at $200 a barrel would put us into a depression.... That, I believe, is your classic paradox." Robert Baer London Times, 2 August 2005

"The satellite dish-bearing TV uplink truck doesn't create quite the stir of excitement as the first beer truck that rolls into town after an avalanche or rock slide closed the passes. But the TV truck is becoming a familiar harbinger. It means Robert Baer and his wife, Dayna, are home. And CNN, Fox, perhaps the BBC and others are queuing up to beam the former CIA officer back out into a world he keeps trying to leave. After 21 years in the CIA's directorate of operations, where he oversaw agents in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, Baer is a rarity - an American with deep experience and understanding of the region. Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, writing in The New Yorker, called Baer 'perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East.' And with Israel and Hezbollah fighting, Baer is in demand. 'I have been following Hezbollah since 1982,' Baer says.  .... Although Baer left the CIA in 1997, he was in Gaza, Beirut and Tehran last spring making a documentary, the Emmy-nominated 'The Cult of the Suicide Bomber,' available on DVD.... His best-selling CIA memoir, 'See No Evil,' inspired the artfully convoluted movie 'Syriana,' for which George Clooney, playing a character based on Baer, won an Oscar and Golden Globe for best supporting actor in 2005."
Ex-CIA Middle East field officer a man in demand
Denver Post, 15 August 2006

"Until making the programme, Baer had not visited Iran since 1979, near the beginning of his 21-year career as a CIA field officer that would post him to Syria, Sudan, Beirut and Tajikistan. March 1995 found him in northern Iraq, where rebels were preparing an uprising against Saddam Hussein. To Baer’s amazement, at the last moment the Clinton regime decided to disown it..... His cynicism has undoubtedly been sharpened by his treatment at the hands not only of his CIA masters, but by politicians. He abhors the neo-cons who now shape American foreign policy (he says on leaving the CIA he had any number of offers to take a job in a 'crazy right-wing institute'), but he is also deeply critical of Bill Clinton’s 'moral pliability'. 'Clinton brought the whole level of politics to a new low, and then Bush come along and institutionalised the corruption.'"
Suicide bombing is a virus that’s here to stay
London Times, 2 August 2005

"We import 65 percent of our oil. Three-quarters of world reserves are concentrated in Islamic theocracies and assorted trouble spots. Bob Baer, ex-CIA agent and author of 'Sleeping With The Devil,' has explained how vulnerable the global oil supply is. With vulnerability comes the potential for economic shock that Baer explains in language not permitted in a family newspaper."
Arctic drilling is necessary, just not now
Contra Costa Times, 20 August 2006

"The Ford Motor Co., which is struggling to keep its grip on second place in the American car market, said Friday it would cut by one-fifth the number of vehicles it plans to build in the final three months of the year. The production cuts by Ford will most deeply affect its F-Series pickup, which has reigned as America's best-selling vehicle for the past quarter century, and makes up 30 percent of its sales. The slowdown represents the deepest production cuts since the industry's crisis of the 1980s. It also underscores the difficulty that Detroit, whose business relies on sales of sport utility vehicles and pickups, is having as gas prices remain at $3 a gallon. Detroit's market share has dropped to its lowest level in history, while Asian brands, known for their fuel efficiency, are setting sales records... Analysts disputed Ford's contention that the high gas prices could not have been foreseen. 'They might say nobody could see it coming, well, nobody but everyone in the world,' said James Womack, co-founder of the Lean Enterprise Institute, which studies manufacturing efficiency.'"
Ford idled by gas prices
New York Times, 18 August 2006

"Optimists about world oil reserves, such as the Department of Energy, are getting increasingly lonely. The International Energy Agency now says that world production outside the Middle Eastern Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (opec) will peak in 1999 and world production overall will peak between 2010 and 2020. This projection is supported by influential recent articles in Science and Scientific American. Some knowledgeable academic and industry voices put the date that world production will peak even sooner—within the next five or six years. ..... At present, the United States is not funding a vigorous program in renewable technologies.... The United States cannot afford to wait for the next energy crisis to marshal its intellectual and industrial resources....Our growing dependence on increasingly scarce Middle Eastern oil is a fool's game—there is no way for the rest of the world to win. Our losses may come suddenly through war, steadily through price increases, agonizingly through developing-nation poverty, relentlessly through climate change—or through all of the above."
Richard G. Lugar and R. James Woolsey (Former Director of the CIA)
The New Petroleum - Foreign Affairs January/February 1999

"There is, however, a three-letter reason why the US will not impose a peace plan on Israel and leave the region. Baer, the author of Sleeping With The Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude, well knows what it is."
Suicide bombing is a virus that’s here to stay
London Times, 2 August 2005

"We're addicted to cheap oil—Democrat or Republican. The American people don't want to know. They say, 'What do you mean we have to pay five dollars for a gallon of gasoline? It violates our constitutional rights.'"
Robert Baer
Chronogram Interview, February 2006

".... it is time in our imaginations to start cutting the psychological ties with oil."
That's enough oil – I'm going to make my own energy from now on
London Times, 19 August 2006

Introduction
Who Is Robert Baer?

"Osama bin Laden, Baer told us, 'is irrelevant.' George Bush’s war has opened a Pandora’s Box of ancient Middle East religious rivalries, and old tribal quarrels that are flourishing – and will likely continue to rage – well outside any single Middle East’s leader’s influence. Baer, an entertaining and highly informed Middle East expert, said he didn’t have any real solutions for resolving the expanding crisis set off by the U.S. invasion of Iraq four years ago. But, contrary to Bush administration policy, Baer said, 'We’ve got to talk to these people.'”
Don't Be Snowed By Tony
The Telluride Watch, 18 August 2006

Robert Baer, filming Friday prayers at Tehran University for Britain's Channel 4 in 2005, shortly after reports that an American guard at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the Koran: "It was not a good time for an American, and especially a former CIA agent, to be in Iran". "Baer has kahones of steel to go to some of the places he does, with a camera crew no less." 'The Cult Of The Suicide Bomber' Amazon.com, 15 August 2006

As a disillusioned ex-CIA field officer who has written extensive critiques of the agency, Robert Baer is an unusual man. He has a variety of claims to fame of which the following are only some:

1. The recent film Syriana is based loosely on his life as a US undercover agent in the Middle East. The film revolves around competition between Chinese and US companies for access to gas reserves in the Persian Gulf. CIA agent Bob Barnes (based on Bob Baer) is played by George Clooney (see film trailer).
2. Baer was part of attempt to launch a coup d'etat against Saddam Hussein in 1995, but the plot was aborted by the Clinton administration at the last moment after Iraqi intelligence learned of the operation.
3. One of the main players in ending Baer's career at the CIA was Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi National Congress's 'fixer' of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Baer had worked with Chalabi in the previously aborted coup attempt. But a letter on National Security Council stationary, which Baer says was forged by Chalabi, led to an FBI investigation against Baer and his team. Baer was accused of organising an assassination attempt against Saddam, an activity which was illegal under US law. Baer was eventually cleared of the charges, but not without irrecoverable damage to his career. Chalabi was later the conduit for much of the false information used by the Bush administration to justify that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (in that infamous affair “Chalabi was scamming the U.S. because the U.S. wanted to be scammed” says Baer).
4. Pre-9/11 Baer tipped off the CIA that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (later identified as the 'mastermind' of 9/11) was going to hijack some planes. The CIA, according to Baer, showed no interest.
5. Baer was the first to break to the media the claim that the murderer in Pakistan of Wall St Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was not Omar Sheikh as previously thought, but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. This was a development which bolstered earlier claims, not made by Baer, that Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, was involved in the financing of the 9/11 attacks. Long since detained in prison in Pakistan (but facing no charges for his alleged involvement in 9/11), Britain's interior intelligence service MI5 is currently seeking access to Sheikh in connection with the alleged bomb plot to blow up multiple transatlantic airliners in August 2006 (according to India's Daily News and Analysis 19 August "Despite repeated requests for his extradition to the US, Islamabad has refused to oblige, fearing that American access to the condemned man could expose the Inter-Services Intelligence". A similar perspective was offered by the Sunday Times 13 August). United Press International reports that some of the British Muslim suspects for the bomb plot had visited Pakistan in 2005 and "called in at the prison in Sindh that houses Omar Sheikh, the British-educated Muslim convicted of the beheading of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Interestingly, Omar Sheikh was also visited in prison by two of the suicide bombers in the 7/7 attacks on the London underground last year".
6. Baer produced a two part series for Britain's Channel 4 on the 'The Cult of the Suicide of Bomber' broadcast in the summer of 2005, a version of which has recently been made available on DVD. By chance the original programmes aired shortly after the July suicide bombings in London. The series provided probably the most extraordinary footage that has ever been aired on the subject of terrorism, including dramatic filming of Friday prayers at Tehran University and a rare western media interview with the head of the Iranian army (an 8 minute clip from the DVD version is available for viewing online at 'Ifilm').

Amongst other things the TV series demolished the myth that suicide bombings are executed by Islamic militants because 'they hate our freedoms'. In the series suicide bombing is not found to be the direct result of religious fanaticism, although many religious people are regularly recruited to it.

In 2000 an eighteen year Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon ended. In his interviews for Channel 4 Baer spoke to representatives of those who fought the occupation and who had deployed suicide bombers as a means of opposing a much better equipped occupying force. Some of these suicide bombers were part of a secular socialist community in Lebanon. These were not religious devotees even though they fought alongside others who were. But what all the suicide bombers had in common was the objective of removing foreign occupying troops (one Israeli estimate not featured in Baer's report indicates that half the suicide bombings in Lebanon were executed by Hizballah and Amal, and the remainder by secular communist and nationalist organisations).

It is not possible to tell from the short clips available online whether these important messages from Baer's TV series are retained in the DVD release. However, it is self-evident that only after British troops had participated in the occupation of Iraq did suicide bombings arise as a phenomenon in the United Kingdom, albeit executed by non-Iraqis (a pre-attack 'martyrdom' video made by the lead bomber specifically invoked the occupation of Iraq. A second from another of the bombers did likewise).

Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has carried out a detailed statistical analysis of the role of foreign occupations in fostering the deployment of suicide bombings. His findings support those of Baer.

According to Pape "The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that you may not be familiar with: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. This is a Marxist group, a completely secular group that draws from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of the country. They invented the famous suicide vest for their suicide assassination of Rajiv Ghandi in May 1991. The Palestinians got the idea of the suicide vest from the Tamil Tigers.... The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign-over 95 percent of all the incidents-has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw."

Writing in Britain's Observer newspaper on 6 August Pape adds that "Researching my book, which covered all 462 suicide bombings around the globe, I had colleagues scour Lebanese sources to collect martyr videos, pictures and testimonials and biographies of the Hizbollah bombers. Of the 41, we identified the names, birth places and other personal data for 38. We were shocked to find that only eight were Islamic fundamentalists; 27 were from leftist political groups such as the Lebanese Communist Party and the Arab Socialist Union; three were Christians, including a female secondary school teacher with a college degree. All were born in Lebanon. What these suicide attackers - and their heirs today - shared was not a religious or political ideology but simply a commitment to resisting a foreign occupation. Nearly two decades of Israeli military presence did not root out Hizbollah. The only thing that has proven to end suicide attacks, in Lebanon and elsewhere, is withdrawal by the occupying force.... Understanding that suicide terrorism is not a product of Islamic fundamentalism has important implications for how the US and its allies should conduct the war on terrorism. Spreading democracy across the Persian Gulf is not likely to be a panacea as long as foreign troops remain on the Arabian peninsula. The obvious solution might well be simply to abandon the region altogether. Isolationism, however, is not possible; America needs a new strategy that pursues its vital interest in oil but does not stimulate the rise of a new generation of suicide terrorists. The same is true of Israel now."

The following extract from an article about Baer and his Channel 4 documentary was published in the London Times 2 August 2005 and serves as a summary of the general direction of his assessment of the phenomenon of suicide bombing:

"Robert Baer, a former CIA spy who presents a television documentary on the history of suicide bombing, says he knew the practice would come to the UK. And it’s not the West’s values, but its foreign policies, that are to blame..... As someone who prefers his terrorism confined to Sunday nights and episodes of 24, I had been clinging to the hope that London’s recent Thursdays were an aberration. My optimism is severely dimmed by meeting Robert Baer, a former CIA spy who has returned to his old beat in the Middle East to make a grimly fascinating two-part history of suicide bombing for Channel 4. What he delivers is not good news. It provides, however, an unusually clear view of the landscape... He does not disown the words he uses at the end of this Thursday’s documentary, that suicide bombing, 'like a pathological virus', has become unstoppable. He does add, perhaps for my sake, the proviso 'until you take the causes away', but by this stage even I can see they are not going to be..... 'The other one thing is, ‘they hate us’, which is just total bullshit.' [he says] Is it? 'Yes,' he says, 'it is.' In a school run by Hezbollah, he asked a class dominated by the daughters of 'martyrs' if they watched US television. 'Everybody raised their hand. And what did they watch? Oprah. I said, ‘How can you watch this crap?’ And they said, ‘No, she’s great. We love Oprah.’..... So, it wasn’t our values. It wasn’t Western values. It’s Western presence. They want us to get out.'.....  There is, however, a three-letter reason why the US will not impose a peace plan on Israel and leave the region.  Baer, the author of Sleeping With The Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude, well knows what it is. 'I don’t think any American politician, however at fault we are in Iraq or anywhere else, can say, ‘All right, let the crazies have the oil fields’, because oil at $200 a barrel would put us into a depression.' So because the American economy is at stake, we can’t get out even to save our skins? 'That, I believe, is your classic paradox.' "

As also referred to by Pape, Baer's reference to oil is not incidental. Below is a local press report of a talk that Baer gave earlier this month in Colorado, where he was raised and now lives. Oil is the dominant theme.

For those who still doubt that oil is at the heart of the US government's Middle East policy, including its current ambitions to strike Iran and its attitude towards Israel, it is important to remember that these observations come from a man who spent more than twenty years on the ground in the region doing Washington's classified business. As the title of Baer's book "Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude" suggests, some things in life are more important to America than others.

It now appears (Independent, 14 August 2006) that the recent Israeli strikes on Lebanon were part of a pre-planned campaign approved by US Vice President Dick Cheney (and of which Downing St was informed) to try and neutralise Hezbollah prior to an attack on Iran. Despite their limited success, the intention was to pre-empt a counter-attack on Israel by Hezbollah following any strike on Iran (the limited success of the campaign has lead to a belief both in Tehran and elsewhere that Binyamin Netanyahu may now make a come back as Israeli Prime Minister, a man who has long been campaigning for war with Iran. A recent opinion poll in Israel gave him a rating of 58%).

Out of all the countries of the world Iran has a uniquely large combination of both oil and gas reserves - the second highest in each case.

With these resources Iran is increasingly doing important supply deals with China and other Asian countries, at a time when there are growing concerns about the sufficiency of supply to meet future global demand.

From the Anglo-American perspective Iran is regarded not only as a crucial support to the global daily flow of these 'essential' hydrocarbons, but like the former regime of Saddam Hussein, it has also come to be seen as a potential threat to the continuity of their flow from other Gulf states - and especially to western markets as demand from Asia rises.

In addition to the dispute over Iran's nuclear ambitions, this fear is fuelled by the possibility that Iran might succeed in establishing a 'Shia Crescent' through Iraq and into Saudi Arabia. This is a process which is already underway, triggered as one of the many disastrous consequences of the US led invasion of Iraq. As a result of the war, says Baer, the Saudis and other Gulf states "lost their shield against Iran, which was Saddam Hussein." Not to mention Israel. Yuval Diskin, the head of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security agency, said earlier this year that his country might come to regret its decision to support the US invasion of Iraq. "I'm not sure we won't come to miss Saddam," he told a group of students on Israeli TV.

Meanwhile, many people still don't want to face up to the ugly oil-tainted economic driver lurking behind these most tragic of events unfolding in world affairs today. Acknowledging this makes life uncomfortable, cutting away the moral 'high ground' from those who sincerely, or not so sincerely, have lent their support to what Baer refers to as the 'fantasy' of trying to reshape the Middle East through the so called war on terror.

But as Baer is quoted from his talk in Colorado: "You’re talking about morality. We don’t do morality in the CIA."

Or as General John Abizaid, Commander of the United States Central Command overseeing US operations in Iraq, put it to a US Congressional Committee in the spring "... we've been in the Middle East more than 50 years. We've been in the Middle East ever since the -- however you would like to call the dependency upon oil has developed. And our forces have been there either as naval, air or land forces in one way or another for an awful long time. And once the British pulled out the Arabian gulf, it became more and more necessary for us to provide more and more force in the region..... And ultimately, it comes down to the free flow of goods and resources on which the prosperity of our own nation and everybody else's depends upon.... We need to maintain a presence that protects the small nations and ensures the continued stability of the region and the flow of those resources that are essential to our well-being." You can be sure Abizaid is not in Iraq fighting for the sand.

Although Baer says he offers no solutions (he told the Guardian "I don't know. I've moved to Colorado and have a wood-burning stove."), one thing is clear. At the heart of all this turmoil is the failure of the United States (and other developed nations) to pursue a modern and progressive energy policy in the more than thirty years that has elapsed since the original oil crisis of 1973.

However counter-productive the result may have proved to be, this continuing dependency on imported energy has fostered a US policy of constantly interfering in the internal affairs of Middle Eastern states for the sake of oil and gas. It is a process in which America (following in the footsteps of Britain before it) has been engaged since at least the 1953 CIA-MI6 sponsored coup d'etat against Iran's first democratically elected government. That government had dared to nationalise its oil sector, one previously dominated by the Anglo-Iranian oil company, a precursor to what is now BP, and in the process incurred the displeasure of London and Washington. The coup led to a generation of dictatorship overseen by the US imposed Shah.

The Iranians have not forgotten all this, and they see through the sudden enthusiasm for 'democratising' the Middle East as it becomes clear that the US intends to maintain a permanent military presence in Iraq. In the words of the press attaché to the Iranian Embassy in London "The people of our region now associate the term 'democracy' with western greed for oil and incessant interventions in our internal affairs. They regard it as self-evident that the west is not after democracy in the Middle East. The history of the region tells them that grassroots movements for democracy have all been suppressed by the west. History shows that the west stood against democracy in Iran, but behind the dictatorial regime of Saddam."

America's apparent post-9/11 enthusiasm for democracy in the Middle East has come too late.

Today where elections are allowed to take place those who are hostile to American interests have been making substantial gains - Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Iranian sympathisers in Iraq. Undermining the position of reformists, crude attempts by the Bush administration to influence the outcome of the elections in Iran in 2005 only served to drive voters into the arms of the hardliners, much to the alarm of Israel. Many Iranians may not much like rule by the Mullahs, but they like American interference in their affairs even less.

Ultimately the history of US tactics in the region, particularly support for previous corrupt dictatorships, has served to generate a series of self-defeating consequences. With emerging Iranian democracy nipped in bud the 1953 coup sowed the seeds of resentment that sprouted the 1979 Islamic revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini and the aggressively anti-American backlash which has persisted in Iran ever since.

At the time America feared the Iranian revolution spilling over into the wider Gulf and threatening oil supplies. In June 1979 a researcher for the Heritage Foundation observed that "Not only is Iran no longer willing or able to under write the security of other pro-Western states in the Persian Gulf, but the spillover effects of the unfinished Iranian revolution pose several potential threats to the internal stability of other states in the region. In particular, the centrifugal ethnic separatist pressures engulfing Iran, and the political manifestations of a fundamentalist Shi'ite backlash may prove contagious to neighboring states, especially Iraq.... Washington has been deprived of a dependable ally which helped safeguard the vital oil supply routes from the Persian Gulf the jugular vein of the West.... [and] of a reliable oil supplier at a time when the long term supply availability and price levels of petroleum are determined increasingly by political decisions made in producing countries to the detriment of Western oil importers. The Iranian revolution therefore constitutes a serious long-term setback to U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf and significantly boosts the risk that the flow of Persian Gulf oil - the lifeblood of the West - will be disrupted by local conflict, external intervention or domestic instability in the future."

Such concerns eventually led to America supplying weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein during the ensuing Iran-Iraq war, complete with the approval of George Bush Senior when Vice President to Ronald Reagan according to the specialist Defence journal Jane's.

Saddam's later invasion of Kuwait (which had been accused of slant drilling into Iraqi oil fields) ultimately led to thousands of US troops being permanently stationed in Saudi Arabia to protects its oil fields, and that in turn led to Bin Laden's 1996 fatwa against the United States seeking their removal (fearing that its continued presence might precipitate another Islamic revolution in the Gulf, this time in Saudi Arabia, America eventually conceded to those demands, moving its combat troops out of Saudi Arabia and into Iraq following the 2003 invasion, where the ambition is now to provide alternative permanent military bases from which to police the security of Gulf oil).

Needless to say none of this unhappy history would have taken place had there been no oil in the Persian Gulf.

Instead western manipulation of the region for self-interested economic reasons has created a bedrock of resentment in the Islamic world, with the more recent escalation in terrorist activity against America and its allies being a direct consequence of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Given its close association with the United States (an image handicap Baer refers to in another interview), in practice Israel is hardly a beneficiary from all of this.

With America making enemies left, right, and centre, Israel's own sense of insecurity has grown accordingly. Its fleet of F16 fighter bombers and inventory of other US weaponry do little to reduce perception of Israel by its critics as something akin to a permanent US military base in the region. Reporting on the extent of secret US military facilities in the country the Arutz Sheva Israel National News service noted 28 January 2005 that "Late Republican Senator Jesse Helms used to call Israel 'America’s aircraft carrier in the Middle East,' when explaining why the US viewed Israel as such a strategic ally, saying that the military foothold in the region offered by the Jewish State alone justified the military aid that the US grants Israel every year." Implicit in those remarks is the notion that the US has more important interests in the Middle East than Israel itself.

However, it is not just the Bush Administration that must take responsibility for all this chaos arising from America's addiction to oil. Far from it. A forward looking energy policy has been lacking for decades. As Baer puts it: "... this isn’t a partisan issue. What did Clinton do about the oil addiction? What is Bush doing? Nothing. Let’s be fair.”

The difference today, however, is that (as key Iraq war backer Senator Joe Lieberman has warned) the latest emerging energy crisis ultimately offers the prospect of a major military confrontation with China. And for those who doubt such a prospect the article "How China's secret deals are fuelling war" published in the London Times 7 August should be compulsory reading.

Although China, largely unnoticed, has so far made the greater gains in the Middle East as a result of America's backfiring 'war on terror', this is not the kind of struggle in which either side is likely to triumph in the long run. If the current trajectory is continued there can only be more terrible, and perhaps cataclysmic, losses. Both China and the US are nuclear powers, and so is Israel (and there have been indications within both America and China of a growing willingness to consider the use of first strike nuclear attacks under certain circumstances).

Richard Helms was US Ambassador in Tehran in the 1970s and before that director of the CIA. He once described Iran as "in geopolitical terms, the real center of the world". Now a key energy-supplier ally of China, Iran is where the most serious of today's global tensions converge.

So does anyone in the west feel that developing an alternative energy policy might be useful? Like the one even Lieberman himself has suggested following the failure of the Iraq war, through which he proposes joint co-operation on energy innovation between the US and China?

Like soon? Like now?

But then again, when you're in a hole, it's so much easier just to keep on digging. So what if continuing the addiction accelerates global warming as well. After all, you can't beat a good double whammy.

NATURAL LAW PARTY WESSEX
nlpwessex@btinternet.com
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex  

"Through cultivation of Saddam Hussein's government, China sought to develop some of Iraq's more promising reserves. Beijing advocated lifting the United Nations sanctions that prevented investment in Iraq's oil patch and limited sales of its production. Then the United States went to war in Iraq in 2003, wiping out China's stakes... In little more than a decade, China has changed from a net exporter of oil into the world's second-largest importer, trailing only the United States. Concern is mounting about future prospects for China's domestic oil production, which supplies about two-thirds of the country's crude oil needs. China's government estimates that it will need 600 million tons of crude oil a year by 2020, more than triple its expected output... 'Many people argue that oil interests are the driving force behind the Iraq war,' said Zhu Feng, a security expert at Beijing University. 'For China, it has been a reminder and a warning about how geopolitical changes can affect its own energy interests. So China has decided to focus much more intently to address its security.'... 'If the world oil stocks were exceeded by growth, who would provide energy to China?' said Shen Dingli, an international relations expert at Fudan University, who advises the government on security policy. 'America would protect its own energy supply. The U.S. is China's major competitor.' Such fears involve Taiwan, the self-governing island claimed by China. The United States has pledged to help Taiwan should China attack. Officials in Beijing envision being cut off from energy supplies by the U.S. Navy in the event of war... The Iraq war substantially intensified the foreign push. Most immediately, it destroyed China's hopes of developing large assets in Iraq... With so much competition for assets, China has pursued deals with international pariah states that are off-limits to Western oil companies because of sanctions, security concerns or the threat of bad publicity.... Last year, China signed a $70 billion oil and gas purchase agreement with Iran, undercutting efforts by the United States and Europe to isolate Teheran and force it to give up plans for nuclear weapons."
Big Shift in China's Oil Policy
Washington Post, 13 July 2005

"The world faces the real threat of a new conflict over oil as China competes with existing world powers for scarce resources to feed its growing economy, according to a report published today. The State of the World 2006, released by the Worldwatch Institute, says that last year China became the second- largest importer of oil, after the US, while consuming 26 per cent of the world's steel, 32 per cent of rice production,  37 per cent of cotton and 47 per cent of cement. China is set to become the world's largest carmaker in the coming decade. While environmentalists are concerned about the impact on the world's climate and the drain on its resources, strategists fear that the competition for energy, particularly oil, could destabilise the planet. According to the report, China was nearly self-sufficient in oil in the mid-1990s. But over the past decade its consumption has doubled and it has now overtaken Japan as the second-largest importer of oil, with 3.2 million barrels a day in 2004. It predicts that if the economies of China and India continue to grow at their current rate, the world will not be able to produce enough oil to meet demand by 2050, when consumption will have grown from the current 85 million barrels a day to 200 million barrels. 'Few geologists believe that output will reach even half those levels before beginning to decline,' the report says.  As a result China is already looking for new oil suppliers from Siberia to Sudan, often dealing with notorious regimes, such as the junta in Burma. Of even greater concern is the possibility that open conflict could break out between nations competing for resources or trying to protect their supply lines, such as key trade routes, currently patrolled by the US Navy."
'Find a couple of spare planets or face global oil war'
London Times, 12 January 2006

Ex-CIA Agent Talks About Oil
And War In Iraq

'You’re talking about morality. We don’t do morality in the CIA’.

"Over the past two years, I have collected the first complete database of every suicide-terrorist attack around the world from 1980 to early 2004. This research is conducted not only in English but also in native-language sources-Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and Tamil, and others-so that we can gather information not only from newspapers but also from products from the terrorist community. ..... This wealth of information creates a new picture about what is motivating suicide terrorism. Islamic fundamentalism is not as closely associated with suicide terrorism as many people think. The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that you may not be familiar with: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. This is a Marxist group, a completely secular group that draws from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of the country. They invented the famous suicide vest for their suicide assassination of Rajiv Ghandi in May 1991. The Palestinians got the idea of the suicide vest from the Tamil Tigers.... The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign-over 95 percent of all the incidents-has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.... The evidence shows that the presence of American troops is clearly the pivotal factor driving suicide terrorism. If Islamic fundamentalism were the pivotal factor, then we should see some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world, like Iran, which has 70 million people-three times the population of Iraq and three times the population of Saudi Arabia-with some of the most active groups in suicide terrorism against the United States. However, there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Iran, and we have no evidence that there are any suicide terrorists in Iraq from Iran.... For us, victory means not sacrificing any of our vital interests while also not having Americans vulnerable to suicide-terrorist attacks. In the case of the Persian Gulf, that means we should pursue a strategy that secures our interest in oil but does not encourage the rise of a new generation of suicide terrorists. In the 1970s and the 1980s, the United States secured its interest in oil without stationing a single combat soldier on the Arabian Peninsula. Instead, we formed an alliance with Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which we can now do again. We relied on numerous aircraft carriers off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and naval air power now is more effective not less. We also built numerous military bases so that we could move large numbers of ground forces to the region quickly if a crisis emerged. That strategy, called 'offshore balancing,' worked splendidly against Saddam Hussein in 1990 and is again our best strategy to secure our interest in oil while preventing the rise of more suicide terrorists."
Professor Robert Pape, University of Chicago
The American Conservative, 18 Juy 2005

'We're Addicted To Cheap Oil'
Chronogram Interview With Robert Baer

'Interests' In The Middle East
Oil And The CIA In Iran
The Anglo-American Addiction

"The President would be better off leveling with the American people. The U.S. has interests in the Middle East.....
And many of them have nothing to do with global terrorism."
Why the Middle East Crisis Isn't Really About Terrorism
TIME, 31 July 2006

"Fuel is our economic lifeblood. The price of oil can be the difference between recession and recovery. The western world is import dependent. ....So: who develops oil and gas, what the new potential sources of supply are, is a vital strategic question...The Middle East, we focus on naturally."
Prime Minister's speech at the George Bush Senior Presidential Library
10 Downing St Press Release, 7 April 2002

"The author of All the Shah's Men, New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer, argues that the coup planted the seeds of resentment against the US in the Middle East, ultimately leading to the events of September 11."
The Specture Of Operation Ajax
Guardian, 20 August 2003

".... our energy system faces new challenges.... Our energy supplies will increasingly depend on imported gas and oil..... we need access to a wide range of energy sources."
British Prime Minister, Foreword to DTI Energy White Paper, February 2003

"There is an allegation that Israel’s plans for the counter-strike [against Hezbollah] were given to the Americans, and that information was passed to the Prime Minister. These questions will be pressed if Parliament is recalled.... "
How The US Fired Jack Straw
London Times, 7 August 2006

Cheney's Quest For Oil
'Remaking The Middle East'
In One Big Hydrocarbon Driven Foul Up

'Remaking The Middle East'

"Rice will not leave Washington until later today, and it was clear from her pronounced lack of urgency that President George W Bush had torn up previous manuals for Middle East crisis intervention. The White House played down the seriousness of the Lebanon crisis, characterising the death and destruction as the 'birth pangs of a new Middle East'. Officials argued that it was pointless to negotiate with Hezbollah and that only its eradication could create the necessary conditions for a durable political settlement. The crisis was 'an opportunity, not a setback', insisted one senior US official."
Hell in the Holy Lands
Sunday Times, 23 July 2006

"Osama bin Laden, Baer told us, 'is irrelevant.' George Bush’s war has opened a Pandora’s Box of ancient Middle East religious rivalries, and old tribal quarrels that are flourishing – and will likely continue to rage – well outside any single Middle East’s leader’s influence. Baer, an entertaining and highly informed Middle East expert, said he didn’t have any real solutions for resolving the expanding crisis set off by the U.S. invasion of Iraq four years ago. But, contrary to Bush administration policy, Baer said, 'We’ve got to talk to these people.'”
Don't Be Snowed By Tony
The Telluride Watch, 18 August 2006

"Iraq has doubled the money allocated for importing oil products in August and September to tackle the country's worst fuel shortage since Saddam Hussein's 2003 ouster, a senior Iraqi official has said. Even though Iraq has the world's third-largest proven oil reserves, it is forced to depend on imports because of an acute shortage of refined products like gasoline, kerosene and cooking gas. Sabotage of pipelines by insurgents, corruption and aging refineries have been blamed.... Iraq has been plagued by periodic fuel shortages since the 2003 US-led invasion. The current crisis comes amid higher demand for fuel to power generators and cool homes during summer."
Iraq doubles funding for oil import
Times of India, 19 August 2006

Hezbollah Was Not A Threat To The US

"Enunciating a new security doctrine nine days after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush declared that the war on terrorism would be fought not just against al-Qaeda but also against 'every terrorist group of global reach.' Hizballah can certainly be said to fit in that category. However grand it may be to fight all global terrorists, though, the simple fact is that we can't: we don't have the troops, the money or the political will. That means it may make sense to limit our hit list to the groups that actually threaten us. Hizballah does not now do that...... Robert Baer, a former CIA covert officer who tracked Hizballah, says that by the late 1990s, the CIA was watching the group to see if it might resume violence against the U.S., but it never did.... "
Why the Middle East Crisis Isn't Really About Terrorism
TIME, 31 July 2006

"Hezbollah is a direct byproduct of the 1982 Israeli invasion and subsequent occupation of Lebanon.... Contrary to popular opinion, Hezbollah is not an 'international terrorist organization.' It has not been linked to any acts of terror outside the borders of Lebanon (the current shelling of Israel notwithstanding, Hezbollah claims these are legitimate military actions in response to Israeli 'aggression'). The United States and Israel often speak of 'Hezbollah terror attacks' outside of Lebanon, but in the end cannot trace these attacks to Hezbollah with anything stronger than circumstance and rhetoric."
Scott Ritter: The Grave Consequences of Supporting War in Lebanon
Alternet, 9 August 2006

But Thanks To Bush And Cheney That Might Now Change

"In March  I ran into an old friend in Damascus, a Syrian businessman close to President Bashar al-Assad. I asked him what he thought would happen in Lebanon. 'It's not Syria's problem anymore,' he told me. 'You threw us out. We gave Lebanon to Iran.'  I never thought forcing Syria out of Lebanon had been a good idea. The Lebanese government left in charge was weaker than the one that had been powerless to stop the civil war in 1975. Brutal as its rule had been, it was Syria that put an end to that war with the 1989 Taif accord. Syria kept Hizbullah in check, limiting its parliamentary representation in the 1992, 1996 and 2000 elections. With the Syrian Army gone, I feared, Lebanon would again become a divided and dangerous country. 'To be sure, Damascus is hardly a benign influence. It arms Hizbullah and harbors violent Palestinian groups. Still, when Syria controlled Lebanon, Damascus was the closest thing America had to a return address for Hizbullah's terrorists. This was never clearer than during the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847. When passengers were about to be executed on the tarmac of Beirut International Airport, President Ronald Reagan appealed to Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, who ordered his commanders in Lebanon to gas up their tanks and prepare to crush the militia. Hizbullah released the hostages... As I say, like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, it was the Syrians who kept the lid on Lebanon. So the idea of Damascus's handing its Lebanon portfolio to Tehran sounded like trouble.... my source .... was telling me he feared that Lebanon was spinning out of control—with dangerous consequences for everyone, including his own country. Freed from Syria's restraint, Hizbullah might soon be hijacking planes and kidnapping people again. If backed by Iranian radicals, it could go even further. At the time I didn't imagine the full-scale war that has since erupted. But in retrospect, it's hardly surprising. Western diplomats may now seek a ceasefire and send in international peacekeepers. Israel may create an ethnically clean 'buffer zone' along its northern border. But does anyone really believe the violence will stop? Will Iran prove a better safety valve than Syria? Not likely."
Appointment In Damascus - Robert Baer
Newsweek, 14 August 2006

"The backers of the Administration argue that the U.S., through Israel, needs to slap back Hizballah in order to smack Iran. But does Israel's whacking Hizballah really deliver a blow to Iran on behalf of the U.S. any more than a medieval duel of seconds settles who is the superior of two knights? ..... Heisbourg, a special adviser to the French Foreign Ministry, stresses, 'I have absolutely no problem with the Bush Administration stepping up and saying, 'Hizballah is a pawn of Syria and Iran. It's a threat to Israel. And, yes, this isn't just about punishing Hizballah but also punishing Iran for the trouble it causes.' That would be the kind of strategically coherent, longer-term vision we've seen in the past. But the Bush Administration isn't saying that. It is calling it all part of the war on global terrorism, which is nonsense. And that, in turn, is throwing into stark relief just how confused and ill-conceived the global war on terrorism has been from the start.' Five years into that war, a lot of Americans are understandably perplexed about just what it is. 'Peace will come only by defeating the terrorist ideology of hatred and fear,' the President said recently about the Lebanon crisis and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But there is no one ideology among terrorists. And terrorism isn't even an ideology. It's a tactic. The President would be better off leveling with the American people. The U.S. has interests in the Middle East, such as protecting Israel. Some of them are subtle and require explaining, like resisting Iran's efforts to expand its influence. And many of them have nothing to do with global terrorism."
Why the Middle East Crisis Isn't Really About Terrorism
TIME, 31 July 2006

Interests? What Interests?

"We're there because the fact of the matter is that part of the world controls the world supply of oil, and whoever controls the supply of oil, especially if it were a man like Saddam Hussein, with a large army and sophisticated weapons, would have a stranglehold on the American economy and on — indeed on the world economy."
Dick Cheney, US Secretary of Defense 1990
New York Times, 24 February 2006

"The United States may want to keep a long-term military presence in Iraq to bolster moderates against extremists in the region and protect oil supplies, the army general overseeing US operations in Iraq has said. While the Bush administration has downplayed prospects for permanent US bases in Iraq, General John Abizaid told a House of Representatives subcommittee on Tuesday he could not rule that out.... Abizaid cited the need to fight al-Qaida and other extremists groups and 'the need to be able to deter ambitions of an expansionistic Iran' as potential reasons to keep some level of troops in the region in the long term.... 'Clearly our long-term vision for a military presence in the region requires a robust counter-terrorist capability,' Abizaid said.... Abizaid also said the United States and its allies have a vital interest in the oil-rich region. 'Ultimately it comes down to the free flow of goods and resources on which the prosperity of our own nation and everybody else in the world depend,' he said.... Representative David Price, a North Carolina Democrat, questioned 'what kind of signal that sends to the American people and to the Iraqis and the region ... if somehow there is ambiguity on our ultimate designs in terms of a military presence in Iraq'".
US 'may want to keep Iraq bases'
Reuters, 15 March 2006

Dick Cheney's Chase For Oil

"For the world as a whole, oil companies are expected to keep finding and developing enough oil to offset our seventy one million plus barrel a day of oil depletion, but also to meet new demand. By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."
Dick Cheney, Chief Executive of Halliburton, now Vice President of the United States
Speech at London Institute of Petroleum, Autumn Lunch 1999

"The super-giant fields of southeastern Iraq are the largest concentration of super-giants to be found anywhere in the world....unlike neighbor Saudi Arabia, Iraq has been unable to deploy the latest technology, such as 3-D seismic, to find its reserves. Present reserve estimates of Iraq's oil are based on 2-D seismic technology from the 1980s. Still, the estimated success rate in Iraq ranges from one in two in the Mesopotamian Basin to one in four in the western and northwestern stable platform, with the overall success rate exceeding 72 percent - perhaps the highest success rate achievable anywhere in the world. Oil exploration costs are among the cheapest globally, with the current cost estimated at around 50 cents per barrel....To date, petroleum geologists have delineated and mapped over 526 prospects - drilling 131 prospects to discover 73 major fields. They have identified some 239 as having a high degree of certainty, but those prospects remain undrilled. Thirty fields have been partially developed and only 12 fields are actually onstream. Undrilled structures and undeveloped fields could represent the largest untapped hydrocarbon resource anywhere in the world.....Clearly, large parts of Iraq are still virgin - its large hydrocarbon reserves are still waiting to be developed to their full potential, while most other Middle East countries are fully exploiting their reserves. The main challenges facing the new Iraqi authority are to establish law and order as well as security. Once these issues are resolved, Iraq will perhaps be the most exciting place on Earth with regard to oil development and exploration....International oil companies are looking forward with great anticipation to the opening of Iraq, as they have been waiting for the past 40 years. Hopefully, Iraq will soon be able to offer them acreage, thereby allowing proper development of its huge potential. Open and fair competition will enable oil companies to apply the latest technologies in the search for, and development of, the country's hydrocarbon resources - thus helping Iraq realize its full hydrocarbon potential."
Assessing Iraq’s Oil Potential
Geotimes, October 2003

"There is, however, a three-letter reason why the US will not impose a peace plan on Israel and leave the region.  Baer, the author of Sleeping With The Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude, well knows what it is. 'I don’t think any American politician, however at fault we are in Iraq or anywhere else, can say, ‘All right, let the crazies have the oil fields’, because oil at $200 a barrel would put us into a depression.' So because the American economy is at stake, we can’t get out even to save our skins? 'That, I believe, is your classic paradox.'"
Suicide bombing is a virus that’s here to stay
London Times, 2 August 2005

"... to say that Israel overshadows U.S. foreign policy is incorrect. Because I think that Israel is an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. And it is being used in this particular context in the pursuit of U.S. hegemony....  I don’t share the viewpoint that somehow Israel is now hijacking U.S. foreign policy and manipulating it. That position is simply incorrect."
Interview with Professor Michael Chossudovsky
Bulatlat Vol. VI, No. 21,  July 2 - 8, 2006, Quezon City, Philippines

"Although Downing Street publicly insists that Bush and Blair remain 'closely in touch' on the Iranian threat, some British officials are privately concerned that Dick Cheney, the hardline American vice-president, is driving the administration’s policy on Iran.... One well known US weapons specialist last week described the Iranian nuclear issue as 'the Cuban missile crisis in slow motion'.... [there are] reports in Israel that Washington is secretly encouraging Tel Aviv to strike.... "
Blair’s loyalty tested as Bush menaces Iran
Sunday Times, 23 January 2005

".... And there [in Iran] the issue is certainly not tyranny; it's nuclear weapons. And the vice president [Cheney] today in a kind of a strange parallel statement to this declaration of freedom hinted that the Israelis may do it [attack Iran] and in fact used language which sounds like a justification or even an encouragement for the Israelis to do it.  And I happen to think that this would be very destabilizing in the region. We would be viewed as complicit. It would intensify the problems that we are already facing in manifold fashion...."
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Former US National Security Adviser
PBS News Hour, 20 January 2005

"... the mideast will increasingly become the source of the world's oil, and this is a strategic problem for us and for many other countries."
James Woolsey, Former Director of the CIA
Interview with the Council on Foreign Relations and the Washington Post: June 7, 2000

"Iraq can be seen as the first battle of the fourth world war. After two hot world wars and one cold one that all began and were centered in Europe, the fourth world war is going to be for the Middle East."
Former Director of the CIA, James Woolsey
NATO conference, Prague, November 2002

"The White House, and in particular White House advisors who belong to the neoconservative movement, allegedly encouraged Israel to attack Syria as an expansion of its action against Hizbullah, in Lebanon. The progressive opinion and news site ConsortiumNews.com reported Monday that Israeli sources say Israel's 'leadership balked at the scheme.'"
US neocons hoped Israel would attack Syria
Christian Science Monitor, 9 August 2006

Besides Iraq And Iran
Why Are Britain And America
So Interested In Israel, Lebanon, And Syria?

"After all, this is a new world order now. This is what things look like particularly if we wipe out Syria. It just goes to show that it is all about oil, for the United States and its ally."
James Akins, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia
Israel seeks pipeline for Iraqi oil
Observer, 20 April 2003

The East Mediterranean Coast - Oil Gateway To The West
By-Passing The Strait Of Hormuz And The Suez Canal

"At the beginning of the 20th Century King Edward VII ruled over a vast empire with interests in every part of the world. India became increasingly important because it was the second pillar of British power in the world. Moving the Indian army about was extremely important in extending British interests and British influence across the globe and the Suez canal was of course the quick way to do that.   It's very important for the British geopolicital position to ensure the Suez canal remains safe and secure. With this aim in mind Britain had become the only European power to establish a major foothold in the Middle East, in the principalities around the Persian Gulf, in Aden, and in Egypt.... Pouring over a map of the Levant, Sykes and Picot personally drew in the areas they wished to see under their control. Their secret deal amounted to the virtual carve up of the Middle East.... [France was to have Greater Syria and] ... the area...  known as Iraq with its strategic ports, railways, and oil...  was to be under British rule. ... Palestine.... was envisaged as an international zone, except for Haiffa. What the British wanted was the oil of Iraq and they concentrated on getting Iraq and getting a way from Iraq to the Meditteranian in order to transport this oil. So they got Haiffa on the Palestinian coast and they got most of Iraq.  ... Unaware of these secret dealings behind their backs Hussein and Feisal proclaimed independence and in June 1916 attacked the Turkish troops... The Turkish garrason at Mecca was soon overun and the sea port at Jiddha seized... In a pincer movement Britain had launched a campaign from the south west to ensure control of the Suez canal and the Levant, and from the South East it was fighting to secure the oil wells of Iraq... In the east the Ottoman area of  Messoptamia, which included the oil fields of Mossul, was given to Britain as the mandate for Iraq. ... this  was basically the importance of the Sykes-Picot agreement, to divide what was called the fertile crescent between Iraq and Syria, and let Britain get access to the oil of the area and be able to exploit it in the future...."
Promises & Betrayals
The History Channel & Gulf Research Center
Content Productions 2002
Broadcast Monday 14th March  2005 on History Channel - 53 Minutes

"Middle Eastern oil was as essential, in 1956 as now, to the economy and security of the United States, Europe and world trade....The world community had an essential interest in the free flow of oil through the [Suez] canal. That could have been secured only by joint Anglo-American action. Eisenhower decided against such action; Dulles’s conduct convinced Eden that he personally was hostile and untrustworthy. The Suez Crisis was indeed the end of the [British] Empire, but it was a blunder of American policy, for which the United States is still paying a very high price."
Lord William Rees-Mogg
Suez: why I blame it on Ike
London Times, 24 July 2006