US Attack On Iran In June Following Rigging Of Iraqi Elections By US

Press Corps 'Stenographers'
Carry On Reporting White House At Face Value Despite Experience Of Deception Over Iraq
Media Ignores Latest Fraud Accusations From Scott Ritter
Who Correctly Warned The World About The Bush Administration

"Ritter said that President George W. Bush has received and signed off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005. Its purported goal is the destruction of Iran’s alleged program to develop nuclear weapons, but Ritter said neoconservatives in the administration also expected that the attack would set in motion a chain of events leading to regime change in the oil-rich nation of 70 million......Ritter [also] said that U.S. authorities in Iraq had manipulated the [election] results in order to reduce the percentage of the vote received by the United Iraqi Alliance from 56% to 48%.... an official involved in the manipulation was the source..."
Scott Ritter says US attack on Iran planned for June
United for Peace of Pierce County, 19 February 2005

"Britain .... ignored the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, which promised Kurds their independence, and surplanted it with the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey, leading to the division and subjugation of the Kurdish people. Restive Kurds in Iraq subsequently were bombed and gassed into acquiescence by the RAF and British Army. Mr Talabani now looks to the British to make amends by safeguarding the rights of Iraq’s Kurdish minority. 'When I met Tony Blair once, I told him that as a student I had taken part in many demonstrations saying ‘British go home’,' he said."
Kurd who will seal Saddam's fate
London Times, 24 February 2005

"In late 1990, I discovered four British technicians in Baghdad who told me they had been 'seconded' to Iraq by Britain's ministry of defence and MI6 intelligence to make chemical and biological weapons, including anthrax, Q-fever and plague, at a secret laboratory at Salman Pak. The Reagan administration and Thatcher government were up to their ears in backing Iraq's aggression, apparently with the intention to overthrow Iran's Islamic government and seize its oil. ..... The West paid for and supplied Saddam's bullets, tanks, gas and germs. He was our regional SOB."
Eric Margolis - West Has Bloodied Hands
Toronto Sun, 19 December 2004

"British Prime Minister Tony Blair has denounced Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as one of the world's most dangerous rulers. Ahead of his first meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush, Blair defended both countries' airstrikes on Baghdad on Friday.... The Iraqi president had killed thousands of his own people, he said... Earlier this month he said the UK and U.S. shared 'bonds of kinship and history and a bond of a shared language, but most of all ... shared values.'..."
Blair: Saddam most dangerous leader
CNN, 20 February 2001

"I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it."
US Ambassador to the UN Madeline Albright,
in response to a question about the killing of 500,000 Iraqi children
as a result of US/UK pressured international sanctions against Iraq
CBS-TV '60 Minutes', 15 May 1996

US President George W Bush greets Slovak citizens at Hviezdoslav's square in Bratislava
Week in pictures: 19-25 Feb (Photo No 9)
BBC Online, 26 February 2005

"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous.
Having said that, all options are on the table."
President George W Bush in Brussels 22 February 2005
Bush Denies U.S. Plans to Attack Iran
Associated Press, 22 February 2005

"In its drive to stop Iran gaining any ability to make nuclear weapons, the United States is ready to give European allies only until June to cajole Tehran before Washington seeks U.N. sanctions, U.S. diplomatic documents show.... Washington will not push the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Iran's case to the Security Council when it meets next week and no condemnation of the Islamic republic are expected, diplomats on the 35-nation board told Reuters. But the next quarterly meeting in mid-June will differ....The draft position paper, seen in full by Reuters, shows Washington is ready to give EU-Iran negotiations until that meeting to achieve their aim."
U.S. May Give EU Till June to Coax Iran on Nukes
Reuters, 25 February 2005

"President Bush attempted to dispel concern his administration is going it alone in the war on terrorism by telling German lawmakers Thursday that America and Europe need each other to win the fight. Standing in the well of the Reichstag, Germany's historic parliamentary building only recently restored after World War II bombings, Bush reminded the audience of the conflicts in Europe that have 'drawn the blood of millions, squandering and shattering lives across the Earth. There are no plans now to attack Iraq, he told reporters before his speech."
Bush: Europe Must Fight Terror; No Plans to Attack Iraq
NewsMax.com, 24 May 2002

“Scott Ritter, appearing with journalist Dahr Jamail yesterday in Washington State, dropped two shocking bombshells in a talk delivered to a packed house in Olympia’s Capitol Theater. The ex-Marine turned UNSCOM weapons inspector said that George W. Bush has ‘signed off’ on plans to bomb Iran in June 2005, and claimed the U.S. manipulated the results of the recent Jan. 30 elections in Iraq. Olympians like to call the Capitol Theater ‘historic,’ but it's doubtful whether the eighty-year-old edifice has ever been the scene of more portentous revelations. The principal theme of Scott Ritter's talk was Americans’ duty to protect the U.S. Constitution by taking action to bring an end to the illegal war in Iraq. But in passing, the former UNSCOM weapons inspector stunned his listeners with two pronouncements. Ritter said plans for a June attack on Iran have been submitted to President George W. Bush, and that the president has approved them. He also asserted that knowledgeable sources say U.S. officials ‘cooked’ the results of the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq. On Iran, Ritter said that President George W. Bush has received and signed off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005. Its purported goal is the destruction of Iran’s alleged program to develop nuclear weapons, but Ritter said neoconservatives in the administration also expected that the attack would set in motion a chain of events leading to regime change in the oil-rich nation of 70 million -- a possibility Ritter regards with the greatest skepticism. The former Marine also said that the Jan. 30 elections, which George W. Bush has called ‘a turning point in the history of Iraq, a milestone in the advance of freedom,’ were not so free after all. Ritter said that U.S. authorities in Iraq had manipulated the results in order to reduce the percentage of the vote received by the United Iraqi Alliance from 56% to 48%. Asked by UFPPC's Ted Nation about this shocker, Ritter said an official involved in the manipulation was the source, and that this would soon be reported by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist in a major metropolitan magazine -- an obvious allusion to New Yorker reporter Seymour M. Hersh.”
Scott Ritter says US attack on Iran planned for June
United for Peace of Pierce County, 19 February 2005

"Bush is playing Europe for a fool, and oddly, it seems willing to go along.....Bush has persuaded NATO to send some trainers—mostly American—to Iraq. So maybe the European powers are just putting up a front of pleasantry while leaving the fighting to Americans. But if the insurgency surges, Bush may come to NATO for more than that, and the rationale for resisting such an appeal has now been undercut. On the subject of Iran, European leaders seem to be deluding themselves that Bush somehow wants to resolve the nuclear crisis there peacefully. They should stop kidding themselves. Seymour Hersh has already noted that a U.S. military strike may be in the offing. And Scott Ritter puts the date somewhere in June. Don’t discount Ritter. He was absolutely right on Iraq and its nonexistent stash of WMDs. European leaders need to put their smiles away and unbow themselves. They shouldn’t placate Bush. He only wants to push them around, this time with charm (such as it is), next time, like last time, with disdain."
Europe, Unbow Yourself
The Progressive, 25 February 2005

"If one accepts George W. Bush’s lecture to the Russians that democracy requires a free press unafraid to criticize national leaders, then what kind of political system exists in the United States where the news media seems so scared of Bush that it shies away from mentioning the president’s autocratic tendencies? For the American press, there appears to be no bigger taboo than against questioning Bush’s sincerity when he presents himself as the grand promoter of democracy around the world.... In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, instead of encouraging a full and vigorous debate, Bush mocked anti-war demonstrators as a 'focus group' and signaled his backers that it was okay to intimidate Americans who questioned his case for war. So conservative pundits saw no problem in painting former weapons inspector Scott Ritter as a traitor when he objected to Bush’s claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction..... MSNBC made an example of war critic Phil Donahue by booting him off the network as it competed with Fox News to see which cable news channel could wave the flag more enthusiastically. The Washington Post editorial page dropped all sense of professionalism when it referred to Iraq’s supposed possession of WMD stockpiles as fact, not allegation. As it turned out, of course, the Iraq War critics were right. Bush’s claims about Iraq’s WMD turned out to be bogus, as even Bush’s arms inspectors David Kay and Charles Duelfer concluded in reports written after the invasion.... on one hand, an accomplished journalist like former CBS producer Mary Mapes is shown the door for not adequately checking out a purported memo about Bush shirking his National Guard duty. On the other hand, a Bush ally like the Washington Post’s Hiatt keeps his prestigious job despite buying into Bush’s false Iraq WMD claims.The key difference was that powerful voices in the conservative media demanded the head of Mapes, who months earlier had broken the Abu Ghraib sexual abuse scandal. There was no comparable pressure for punishing journalists, such as Hiatt, who had violated journalistic rules by treating a disputed claim – Iraq’s WMD – as a settled fact. The double standard was even more glaring since the facts contained in the questionable Bush-Guard memo were true, while the assertions about Iraq’s WMD were not only false but have contributed to the deaths of nearly 1,500 American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis..... the timidity of the U.S. press corps in holding Bush accountable is a sign that American democratic institutions are neither vibrant nor healthy."
The Hypocrisy Taboo
Consortium News, 26 February 2005

"I'd like to nominate someone who really deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom: Scott Ritter. Remember Ritter? In a column in 2002, I wrote about the square-jawed former U.S. Marine and United Nations weapons inspector, who was in Wichita several months before the invasion of Iraq, giving a talk -- no, a plea -- about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He was adamant: Saddam Hussein had no WMDs -- at least none of any consequence or that posed an imminent danger to the United States. Certainly nothing that would warrant a rushed invasion. 'We can't go to war based on rhetoric and speculation,' he told the crowd. 'We'd better make sure there is a threat out there worth fighting.' He argued that 90 percent to 95 percent of Saddam's WMDs had been dismantled by the U.N. inspection team in which he served from 1991 to 1998. And that Saddam was otherwise well-contained by U.S. forces. Now we know: He was right. You've probably heard that the Bush administration this week quietly called off the weapons search. There aren't any WMD stockpiles. As in none. Zip..... Ritter saw that his country was headed down a disastrous path and had the guts to speak out... Will we listen to him now? Probably not. But make no mistake: Scott Ritter is an American patriot who cares enough about his country to tell it the unvarnished truth."
Ritter Right About Iraq
The Wichita Eagle (Kansas), 14 January 2005

"President Bush and interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi insisted last week that Iraq would go ahead with elections scheduled for January, despite continuing violence. But U.S. officials tell TIME that the Bush team ran into trouble with another plan involving those elections — a secret 'finding' written several months ago proposing a covert CIA operation to aid candidates favored by Washington. A source says the idea was to help such candidates — whose opponents might be receiving covert backing from other countries, like Iran — but not necessarily to go so far as to rig the elections. But lawmakers from both parties raised questions about the idea when it was sent to Capitol Hill. In particular, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi ‘came unglued’ when she learned about what a source described as a plan for ‘the CIA to put an operation in place to affect the outcome of the elections.’ Pelosi had strong words with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in a phone call about the issue. Rice spokesman Sean McCormack says, ‘I cannot in any way comment on classified matters, the existence or nonexistence of findings.’ But, McCormack says, ‘there have been and continue to be concerns about efforts by outsiders to influence the outcome of the Iraqi elections, including money flowing from Iran. This raises concerns about whether there will be a level playing field for the election. This situation has posed difficult dilemmas about what action, if any, the U.S. should take in response. In the final analysis, we have adopted a policy that we will not try to influence the outcome of the upcoming Iraqi election by covertly helping individual candidates for office.’ A senior U.S. official hinted that, under pressure from the Hill, the Administration scaled back its original plans. ‘This was a tough call. We went back and forth on it in the U.S. government. We consulted the Hill on this question ... Our embassy in Baghdad will run a number of overt programs to support the democratic electoral process,’ as the U.S. does elsewhere in the world.”
How Much U.S. Help?
The Bush Administration takes heat for a CIA plan to influence Iraq's elections
TIME magazine, 27 September 2004

Meanwhile, Back In The White House

BUSH: Condi, what's all this in TIME MAGAZINE on the Iraqi elections: "....but not necessarily to go so far as to rig the elections"?

RICE: Well it only says "not necessarily", Mr President.

BUSH: Yeah, but now people are gonna talk about this. Whata we gonna do?
......... Hey - I know, let's get Dick and Jeb's new electronic voting
machines over there - we won't need them for a while after November. Jim
Baker and John Negroponte can fix it all up - should be a cinch after all
the experience with the 2000 elections and Iran-Contra.

RICE: I'm sorry Mr President but Iraq is not Florida - they have no
electricity for most of the day even when there are no hurricanes. No, it
looks like we'll have to do it the old fashioned way. Whatdaya think Porter?

GOSS: I cannot in any way comment on classified matters, the existence or
nonexistence of findings.... but I can tell you that we've only cancelled
the overt covert operations (i.e. the ones TIME magazine found out about),
but not the covert covert operations (i.e. the ones they didn't)......

BUSH: Bring 'em on!

"Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev called the Iraqi parliamentary elections a profanation. In an interview with the Interfax news agency, he said the elections are 'very far from what true elections are. And even though I am a supporter of elections and of the transfer of power to the people of Iraq, these elections were fake. I don’t think these elections will be of any use. They may even have a negative impact on the country. Democracy cannot be imposed or strengthened with guns and tanks,' the agency quoted Gorbachev as saying."
Gorbachev Calls Iraqi Elections 'Fake'
Moscow News, 31 January 2005

Saturday, 19 February 2005

On Friday evening in Olympia, former UNSCOM weapons inspector Scott Ritter appeared with journalist Dahr Jamail. -- Ritter made two shocking claims: George W. Bush has "signed off" on plans to bomb Iran in June 2005, and the U.S. manipulated the results of the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq....

SCOTT RITTER SAYS U.S. PLANS JUNE ATTACK ON IRAN, ‘COOKED’ JAN. 30 IRAQI ELECTION RESULTS
By Mark Jensen

Scott Ritter, appearing with journalist Dahr Jamail yesterday in Washington State, dropped two shocking bombshells in a talk delivered to a packed house in Olympia’s Capitol Theater. The ex-Marine turned UNSCOM weapons inspector said that George W. Bush has "signed off" on plans to bomb Iran in June 2005, and claimed the U.S. manipulated the results of the recent Jan. 30 elections in Iraq.

Olympians like to call the Capitol Theater "historic," but it's doubtful whether the eighty-year-old edifice has ever been the scene of more portentous revelations.

The principal theme of Scott Ritter's talk was Americans’ duty to protect the U.S. Constitution by taking action to bring an end to the illegal war in Iraq. But in passing, the former UNSCOM weapons inspector stunned his listeners with two pronouncements. Ritter said plans for a June attack on Iran have been submitted to President George W. Bush, and that the president has approved them. He also asserted that knowledgeable sources say U.S. officials "cooked" the results of the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq.

On Iran, Ritter said that President George W. Bush has received and signed off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005. Its purported goal is the destruction of Iran’s alleged program to develop nuclear weapons, but Ritter said neoconservatives in the administration also expected that the attack would set in motion a chain of events leading to regime change in the oil-rich nation of 70 million -- a possibility Ritter regards with the greatest skepticism.

The former Marine also said that the Jan. 30 elections, which George W. Bush has called "a turning point in the history of Iraq, a milestone in the advance of freedom," were not so free after all. Ritter said that U.S. authorities in Iraq had manipulated the results in order to reduce the percentage of the vote received by the United Iraqi Alliance from 56% to 48%.

Asked by UFPPC's Ted Nation about this shocker, Ritter said an official involved in the manipulation was the source, and that this would soon be reported by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist in a major metropolitan magazine -- an obvious allusion to New Yorker reporter Seymour M. Hersh.

On Jan. 17, the New Yorker posted an article by Hersh entitled The Coming Wars (New Yorker, January 24-31, 2005). In it, the well-known investigative journalist claimed that for the Bush administration, "The next strategic target [is] Iran." Hersh also reported that "The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer." According to Hersh, "Defense Department civilians, under the leadership of Douglas Feith, have been working with Israeli planners and consultants to develop and refine potential nuclear, chemical-weapons, and missile targets inside Iran. . . . Strategists at the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, have been asked to revise the military’s war plan, providing for a maximum ground and air invasion of Iran. . . . The hawks in the Administration believe that it will soon become clear that the Europeans’ negotiated approach [to Iran] cannot succeed, and that at that time the Administration will act."

Scott Ritter said that although the peace movement failed to stop the war in Iraq, it had a chance to stop the expansion of the war to other nations like Iran and Syria. He held up the specter of a day when the Iraq war might be remembered as a relatively minor event that preceded an even greater conflagration.

Scott Ritter's talk was the culmination of a long evening devoted to discussion of Iraq and U.S. foreign policy. Before Ritter spoke, Dahr Jamail narrated a slide show on Iraq focusing on Fallujah. He showed more than a hundred vivid photographs taken in Iraq, mostly by himself. Many of them showed the horrific slaughter of civilians.

Dahr Jamail argued that U.S. mainstream media sources are complicit in the war and help sustain support for it by deliberately downplaying the truth about the devastation and death it is causing.

Jamail was, until recently, one of the few unembedded journalists in Iraq and one of the only independent ones. His reports have gained a substantial following and are available online at dahrjamailiraq.com.

Friday evening's event in Olympia was sponsored by South Puget Sound Community College's Student Activities Board, Veterans for Peace, 100 Thousand and Counting, Olympia Movement for Justice & Peace, and United for Peace of Pierce County. --

NOTE: Dahr Jamail will make three more appearances in the Puget Sound area this weekend: (1) SATURDAY, FEB. 19, 7:00 p.m., at the Kirkland Congregational Church, 106 5th Avenue, Kirkland WA. Admission $5 -- Sponsored by Evergreen Peace & Justice; (2) SUNDAY, FEB. 20, 1:00 p.m. at the Vashon Land Trust. Vashon Islanders for Peace will be hosting Dahr Jamail and Bert Sacks on the subject of Exit Strategies from Iraq; (3) SUNDAY, FEB. 20, 7:30 p.m. at UW Kane Hall, Room 120. Hosted by the Interfaith Network Of Concern for the people of Iraq (INOC), the University of Washington -- Department of Communication, the Iraqi Community Center of Seattle (ICCS), and the United Nations Association, Seattle.

NOTE TO MEDIA: This piece has generated considerable public and media interest, receiving 14,325 hits as of 1:00 p.m., Feb. 21, and causing the UFPPC web site to crash several times on Monday. -- Kate Hunter of Vashon Islanders for Peace suggests reporters seeking to reach Scott Ritter contact Dennis Mills of the Olympia chapter of Veterans for Peace at mills.dennis@comcast.net

"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.... an Israeli attack would demolish the Middle Eastern peace process and provide Arab terrorist groups with a potentially lethal recruiting tool.... what British officials believe is a persuasive argument against a military attack: far from encouraging Iranian reformers to rise up against their theocratic government, any form of US intervention might unite the country behind Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader."
Blair’s loyalty tested as Bush menaces Iran
Sunday Times, 23 January 2005

“The United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of mainly Shi'ite Islamist parties, said today it had been told by Iraq's Electoral Commission that it had won around 60 percent of the vote in the country's election. ‘We have been told that we got around 60 percent,’ a senior source in the Alliance told Reuters on condition of anonymity. The final vote tally is due to be announced at 4 p.m. (1300 GMT). The United Iraqi Alliance is certain to have won the most votes, with a coalition of Kurdish parties expected to be in second place and a bloc led by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi third. (Reuters) (Posted @ 14:00 PST)”
SHI'ITE LIST SAYS WON AROUND 60 PCT OF IRAQ VOTE: BAGHDAD
Dawn (Pakistan) 13 February 2005

“… a senior State Department official said yesterday that the 48 percent vote won by the Shiite slate deprives it of an outright majority. ‘If it had been higher, the slate would be seen with a lot more trepidation,’ he said on the condition of anonymity because of department rules.”
Washington Post, 14 February 2005

"The former Marine also said that the Jan. 30 elections, which George W. Bush has called 'a turning point in the history of Iraq, a milestone in the advance of freedom,' were not so free after all. Ritter said that U.S. authorities in Iraq had manipulated the results in order to reduce the percentage of the vote received by the United Iraqi Alliance from 56% to 48%. Asked by UFPPC's Ted Nation about this shocker, Ritter said an official involved in the manipulation was the source, and that this would soon be reported by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist in a major metropolitan magazine -- an obvious allusion to New Yorker reporter Seymour M. Hersh."
Scott Ritter says US attack on Iran planned for June
United for Peace of Pierce County, 19 February 2005

"Since the 1991 Gulf War, the Kurds have enjoyed considerable autonomy and relative prosperity in the former no-fly zone of northern Iraq....With the Kurds commanding 75 seats in the 275-member National Assembly and the Shia well short of the two-thirds majority required to enact legislation, [Kurdish leader] Mr Talabani can afford to take a strong line..... He is emphatic that the Kurds will insist on secular government. 'We will never accept any religious government in Iraq. Never,' he declared, thumping the table."
Kurd who will seal Saddam's fate
London Times, 24 February 2005

"The Kurds are the only people to support the US occupation."
Kurds name their price for putting Shia party in power
Independent, 24 February 2005

"Iraqi Kurds are insisting on control of oil-rich Kirkuk and other disputed northern areas as their price for agreeing to a deal on the formation of a new national government, a Kurdish leader said on Thursday. Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdish regional government, outlined a tough negotiating position which, if backed by the Kurdish leadership, could greatly complicate the process of forging a unified government. Mr Barzani said in a telephone interview from Arbil that the Kurds would support whoever backed their demands to take back disputed territories, including Kirkuk. But he does not head either main Kurdish party and the extent of Kurkish support for his stand was not clear. The Kurds came second in the Jan 30 election, clinching 75 seats in the assembly, a margin that makes them king makers."
Kurds demand control over Kirkuk
Dawn (Pakistan), 26 February 2005

"Given the widespread Sunni boycott of Iraq's January 30 elections for a National Assembly, with voting concentrated among the Kurdish north and Shi'ite south, the polls served more as a referendum to prove Shi'ite and Kurd strength. This can be seen in the results of the polls released on Sunday, with the Shi'ite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance capturing 48% of the vote and the Kurdish alliance 26%. Now it emerges that there is a strong movement in southern Iraq for the establishment of autonomous Shi'ite provinces as a precursor to introducing vilayet-e-faqih (rule by the clergy) in the whole country. Of these calls for autonomy or federalism, the most disconcerting for US authorities is the call for religious rule. Already, leading Shi'ite clerics in Iraq are pushing for 'Islam to be recognized as the guiding principle of the new constitution'. To head off this threat of a Shi'ite clergy-driven religious movement, the US has, according to Asia Times Online investigations, resolved to arm small militias backed by US troops and entrenched in the population to 'nip the evil in the bud'. Asia Times Online has learned that in a highly clandestine operation, the US has procured Pakistan-manufactured weapons, including rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, rockets and other light weaponry. Consignments have been loaded in bulk onto US military cargo aircraft at Chaklala airbase in the past few weeks. The aircraft arrived from and departed for Iraq. The US-armed and supported militias in the south will comprise former members of the Ba'ath Party, which has already split into three factions, only one of which is pro-Saddam Hussein. They would be expected to receive assistance from pro-US interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National Accord. A military analyst familiar with strategic and proxy operations commented that there is a specific reason behind procuring arms from Pakistan, rather than acquiring US-made ones. 'A similar strategy was adopted in Afghanistan during the initial few years of the anti-USSR resistance [the early 1980s] movement where guerrillas were supplied with Chinese-made AK-47 rifles [which were procured by Pakistan with US money], Egyptian and German-made G-3 rifles. Similarly, other arms, like anti-aircraft guns, short-range missiles and mortars, were also procured by the US from different countries and supplied to Pakistan, which handed them over to the guerrillas,' the analyst maintained. The obvious reason for this tactic is to give the impression that the resistance acquired its arms and ammunition from different channels and from different countries - and anywhere other than the United States."
US fights back against 'rule by clerics'
Asia Times, 15 February 2005

“The outcome of the Iraqi elections was overshadowed this week by the brutal assassination of Lebanon's ex-prime minister Rafiq Harriri on February 15. As one country faced the danger of falling into chaos after the death of its leader, another was rising out of the ashes with election results that were not only democratic, after years of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, but surprising to all those awaiting them…..The largest coalition of Shi'ite leaders, headed by cleric Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim and backed by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, very surprisingly did not receive its expected 60% majority. It polled with a high 48%, however, earning a majority (4,075,295 votes) yet reducing fears that the Shi'ites would impose an Iranian-style theocracy in Iraq…. The twist that emerged this week is that with Mehdi out of the race, Jaafari stands for the premiership against the controversial yet seasoned Machiavellian politician, Ahmad Chalabi, a man who was thought to be politically finished six months ago. He has miraculously bounced back to life, and is poised to change Iraq's future once again, as he did in 2003…. To many inside Iraq, he remained an untrustworthy US stooge. In fact, a survey was conducted in February 2004 by Oxford Research International, in which 3,000 Iraqis were polled, and only 0.2% said that he was a trustworthy leader. The Americans then began a systematic smear campaign aimed at discrediting Chalabi, shedding light on their past connections with him and on his financial problems with Petra Bank in Jordan. They brought him to court for fraud in exchange of Iraqi money, done in the immediate aftermath of Saddam's fall, along with accusations of grand theft since 2003. The US responded on May 19, 2004 by cutting off all of the financial assistance it was giving to Chalabi, and on May 20 Iraqi police and US troops stormed his office and home in Baghdad A warrant was issued for his arrest on August 8. Undaunted, Chalabi returned to Iraq on August 10, and to everybody's surprise he was not arrested. He suffered an assassination attempt on September 1, while returning from a meeting with Sistani, but survived. Most likely, Chalabi had reached some sort of secret agreement with the US that prevented his arrest and brought him back into Washington's orbit. Shortly afterwards, charges brought against him were dropped for lack of evidence. Why did Chalabi quarrel with the US in the first place? Was it because he wanted to polish his ruined image among normal Iraqis, and shake off the US hallmark? Or was it because, truly, he was an Iraqi nationalist at heart who had unwillingly worked with the US to topple Saddam, and now that the dictator was gone, saw no need for a further alliance with Washington. Many in Iraq doubt if there was ever a quarrel to begin with, claiming that Chalabi's row with Washington was fabricated by both parties to polish his image in Iraq, prepare him for victory in the January 30 elections and enable him to become prime minister in February-March. This, in fact, would mean that Chalabi and the US carried out their Iraqi plans, hatched in 1998-2002, with high precision in a very twisted and creative manner: the toppling of Saddam using fabricated information provided by Chalabi, and his replacement by a very cooperative Chalabi in an Iraq occupied and run by the US.”
Chalabi still in the fight
Asia Times Online, 18 February 2005

"In Iraq they say 'Lil quta sabat arwaah' — the cat with seven lives. No matter how many times Ahmad Chalabi is knocked down, his enemies just cannot kill him off. Exiled, disgraced, convicted, branded a collaborator, overlooked in Iyad Allawi’s Government, then rubbished and dropped by his Washington paymasters, the former exile remains widely disliked by many ordinary Iraqis. Yet Mr Chalabi is now poised to gain a top job in the new Shia-led Government, and conceivably the prime ministership. The victorious Shia coalition was deadlocked last night over its choice of prime minister, with its 140 newly elected parliamentarians split between Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the leader of the Islamic Dawa Party, who remains favourite, and Mr Chalabi, the leader of the smaller Iraqi National Congress. A vote is expected within two or three days. Even if Mr Chalabi fails to win the top job, he is likely to secure a Cabinet post. That would represent a remarkable comeback. The former Pentagon favourite supplied much of the faulty intelligence about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction upon which the White House based its case for war. Nine months ago, Mr Chalabi’s disgrace seemed complete. His Baghdad home was raided by Iraqi and US forces amid charges that he had passed US intelligence secrets to Iran. ...Dr Pachachi, a veteran former Iraqi diplomat, was not surprised at Mr Chalabi’s re-emergence and doubted he ever really fell out with the US. ‘I don’t think anybody takes that very seriously, he was America’s man for so long,’ he said.”
Disgraced, despised, exiled: now he's in line for top job
London Times, 18 February 2005

"It's been a slow and steady return to the fold for Ahmad Chalabi, once disgraced and on the outs with both Iraqis and the Bush administration. The former Washington favorite may have lost his bid to be Iraq's next prime minister on Tuesday, but he emerged after three days of haggling with the possibility of being named to a senior Cabinet post in the new government.... It's a remarkable comeback for the man who was alienated by Washington last year over accusations he'd leaked intelligence to Iran. He was also blamed him for flawed evidence on former leader Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. His ascendancy within local Iraqi political ranks is even more noteworthy, given his profile among a public resentful of the U.S. occupation as someone who enjoyed patronage by the West. 'Chalabi was always seen by many as a creature of the United States. His visibility was always higher outside of Iraq,' said Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. 'It's surprising he was able to insert his way sufficiently high into the Shiite political spectrum.'... Chalabi made dropping murder charges against al-Sadr one of the tenets of his platform, should he become prime minister. It got him enough supporters in the alliance to convince him to press ahead with the secret ballot, and it may be enough to ensure him a senior ministry when the National Assembly convenes. Chalabi refused to show any disappointment with Tuesday's outcome, smiling throughout the press conference...."
Chalabi becomes political winner in Iraq
Associated Press, 23 February 2005

"Ahmad Chalabi, another high-profile exile who stood against Jaafari ....dropped out only after apparently being promised a significant post in the new government."
It's Iran v US in Iraqi power plays
Sydney Morning Herald, 26 February 2005

“Control of these resources becomes a first-class war aim”
Sir Maurice Hankey 1918

"In late 1915 and early 1916, a British official and a Frenchman hammered out an understanding for the postwar order in Mesopotamia. Known by their names as the Sykes-Picot agreement, it rather casually assigned Mosul in northeatern Mesopotamia, one of the most promising potential oil regions, to a future French sphere of influence. This 'surrender' of Mosul immediately outraged many officials in the British government, and strenuous effort was thereafter directed towards undermining it. The issue became more urgent in 1917 when British forces captured Baghdad. For four centuries, Mesopotamia had been part of the Ottoman Empire. That Empire which had once stretched from the Balkans to the Persian Gulf, was now over, a casualty of war. A host of independent and semi-independent nations, many of them rather arbitrarily drawn on the map, would eventually take its place in the Middle East. But, at the moment, in Mesopotamia, Britain had the controlling hand. It was the wartime petroleum shortage of 1917 and 1918 that really drove home the necessity of oil to British interests and pushed Mesopotamia back to center stage. Prospects for oil development within the empire were bleak, which made supplies from the Middle East of paramount importance. Sir Maurice Hankey, the extremely powerful secretary of the War Cabinet, wrote to Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour that, 'oil in the next war will occupy the place of coal in the present war, or at least a parallel place to coal. The only big potential supply that we can get under British Control is the Persian [Iranian] and Mesopotamian [Iraqi] supply.' Therefore, Hankey said, 'control over these oil supplies becomes a first-class British war aim.' But the newly born 'public diplomacy' had to be considered..... Foreign Secretary Balflour worried that explicitly pronouncing Mesopotamia a war aim would seem too old-fashionably imperialistic. Instead, in August 1918, he told the Prime Ministers of the Dominions that Britain must be the 'guiding spirit' in Mesopotamia, as it would provide the one natural resource the British empire lacked. 'I do not care under what system we keep the oil,' he said, 'but I am quite clear it is all-important for us that this oil should be available.' To help make sure this would happen, British forces, already elsewhere in Mesopotamia, captured Mosul after the armistice was signed with Turkey."
Daniel Yergin - The Prize, 1991
First published in Great Britain by Simon and Schuster Ltd, 1991

"During World War I (1914-18), strategists for all the major powers increasingly perceived oil as a key military asset, due to the adoption of oil-powered naval ships, new horseless army vehicles such as trucks and tanks, and even military airplanes. Use of oil during the war increased so rapidly that a severe shortage developed in 1917-18. The strategists also understood that oil would assume a rapidly-growing importance in the civilian economy, making it a vital element in national and imperial economic strength and a source of untold wealth to those who controlled it. Already in the United States, John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil Company, was the world’s richest person. The British government, ruling over the largest colonial empire, already controlled newly-discovered oil in Persia (now Iran) through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Since Britain lacked oil in the home islands, British strategists wanted still more reserves to assure the future needs of their empire. An area of the Ottoman Empire called Mesopotamia (now Iraq), shared the same geology as neighboring Persia, so it appeared especially promising. Just before war broke out in 1914, British and German companies had negotiated joint participation in the newly-founded Turkish Petroleum Company that held prospecting rights in Mesopotamia. The war ended the Anglo-German oil partnership and it exposed the territories of the German-allied Ottoman Empire to direct British attack. As war continued, oil seemed ever more important and shortages ever more menacing to the imperial planners. ...... To this end, British forces raced to capture the key northern city of Mosul several days after the armistice was signed. Britain thus outmaneuvered the French, establishing a military fait accompli in the oil zone of Northern Mesopotamia. The French were furious. France, too, lacked oil fields in its home terriorites, and its politicians and imperial strategists saw Mesopotamia as a key resource for France’s future industrial and military might. In the months after the armistice, nothing caused greater friction between the two allies than the oil question. During the Versailles Peace Conference, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and his French counterpart Georges Clemenceau nearly came to blows over Mesopotamian (Iraqi) oil, according to eyewitness accounts. US President Wooddrow Wilson apparently intervened and only barely restrained them.... Finally, in the secret San Remo Agreement of 1920, the two rivals agreed to give Britain political control over all Mespoltamia, in return for France taking over the German quarter share in the Turkish Petroleum Company. All this before a drop of oil had been discovered in the disputed territory! The French government was not satisfied with its secondary role in world oil, fearing the might of the big British and US companies. In an effort to strengthen and 'liberate' France, the government in Paris set up the Compagnie Francaise des Pétroles in 1924 to take up the French share in Mesopotamia – now a British colony renamed Iraq . Further French legislation in 1928 referred to the company as an instrument to curtail 'the Anglo Saxon oil trusts' and to develop Mesopotamian oil as a strategic resource of the French empire. The uneasy settlement between the British and the French did not end the great power dispute over Iraq’s oil, however. The United States government and US oil companies were furious at the Anglo-French agreement, which left nothing for them! Before the end of 1920, following the companies’ strategic prompting, the US press began to denounce the Anglo-French accord as 'old-fashioned imperialism.' In Washington, some talked of sanctions and other measures against these ungrateful recent allies. Relations between Washington and London cooled swiftly and a young State Department legal advisor named Allen Dulles drew up a memorandum insisting that the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) concession agreement with the dismembered Ottoman Empire was now legally invalid and would no longer be recognized by the United States. Soon London bowed to this transatlantic pressure and signaled that it was ready for a deal that would give the US a 'fair' share. In response, Washington told its major oil companies that they should act as a consortium in future negotiations. Walter Teagle, Chairman of Jersey Standard (later Exxon), the biggest US company, took the lead role as negotiator for the consortium. Thus began lengthy secret talks in London. No oil had yet been found, but prospects had brightened. In October 1927, the British exploration team under D’Arcy hit a gusher, proving oil reserves in large quantities near Kirkuk in northern Iraq. In July 1928, the quarreling parties finally reached a famous accord, known as the 'Red Line Agreement,' which brought the US consortium into the picture with just under a quarter of the shares and an agreement to jointly develop fields in many other Middle East countries falling within the red line marked on the map by the negotiators. Throughout this phase, as in all later phases of Iraq’s oil history, major international powers combined national military force, government pressure and private corporate might to win and hold concessions for Iraq’s oil. The defeated and dismembered Ottoman Empire and its defeated ally Germany lost all oil rights they might otherwise have claimed. At the same time, the three victors of the war – Britain, France and the United States – shared out Iraqi oil among themselves on a basis of relative power. The dominant colonial power, Britain, came out with nearly a half share, while the two lesser powers on the regional stage – the US and France – each won close to a quarter share."
Great Power Conflict over Iraqi Oil: the World War I Era
Global Policy Forum, October 2002

"The U.S. is playing today roughly the same role with respect to Iraq’s oil riches that Britain did early last century. History has a habit of repeating itself, albeit with different nuances and different actors. In this two-part series, we shall review the intricacies of oil-related events in Iraq .... Discovery of oil in 1908 at Masjid-i Suleiman in Iran – an event that changed the fate of the Middle East – gave impetus to quest for oil in Mesopotamia. Oil pursuits in Mesopotamia were concentrated in Mosul, one of three provinces or 'vilayets' constituting Iraq under the Ottoman rule. Mosul was the northern province, the other two being Baghdad (in the middle) and Basra (in the south) provinces. Foreign geologists visited the area under the disguise of archeologists. For a good part of the last century, interests of national governments were closely linked with the interests of oil companies, so much so that oil companies were de facto extensions of foreign-office establishments of the governments. The latter actively lobbied on behalf of the oil companies owned by their respective nationals. The oil companies, in return, would guarantee oil supply to respective governments – preferably at a substantial discount..... Among the foreign powers the British, seeing Iraq as a gateway to their Indian colony and oil as lifeblood for their Imperial Navy, were most aggressive in their pursuits in Mesopotamia, aspiring to gain physical control of the oil region. Winston Churchill, soon after he became First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, declared oil to be of paramount importance for the supremacy of the Imperial Navy. Churchill was educated about the virtues of oil by none other than Marcus Samuel, the founder of Shell. During the war, Sir Maurice Hankey, secretary of the War Cabinet, advised Foreign Secretary Arthur Belfour in writing that control of the Persian and Mesopotamian oil was a 'first-class British war aim.' Britain captured the towns of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, capitals of the provinces bearing the same names, in November 1914, March 1917 and November 1918, respectively. Mosul was captured 15 days after Britain and Turkey signed the Mudros Armistice ending hostilities at the end of the war, an event that drew protests from the Turkish delegation at the Lausanne Peace Conference four years later. In 1913 Churchill sent an expeditionary team to the Persian Gulf headed by Admiral Slade to investigate oil possibilities in the region. More or less coincident with Admiral Slade expedition, Britain signed a secret agreement with the sheikh of Kuwait who, while ostensibly pledging allegiance to the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul, promised exclusive oil rights to the British. Kuwait became a British protectorate in November 1914. The British were so concerned about the security of their oil supply prior to the war that they wanted to have guaranteed British dominance in any oil company exploiting Mesopotamian oil. The government favored Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC, predecessor of BP) over Royal Dutch/Shell (RDS) in TPC. APOC, already holding oil concession in Iran but not one of the original participants in TPC, was 100 percent British while RDS, an original participant, was 40 percent British....World War I augured another fundamental change in the oil scene in Mesopotamia: assertiveness on the part of the American government for an “open-door policy” on oil concessions. Forcefully advanced by President Wilson, the policy meant equal access for American capital and interests. The policy was in response to reluctance of European oil companies to welcome American companies to the Mesopotamian oil scene....A rising demand for oil, fuel shortages and price increases during the war, and rumors of depleting domestic resources soon after the war rallied the American administration to give active support to American oil companies in search of foreign oil. Mesopotamia would not be a preserve for the European oil interests, Washington decided. The British initially tried to foil the American efforts by stonewalling American requests and by refusing access to American geologists who wanted to survey oil potential in the region. Britain’s tactics drew strong protest from Washington. The American government withheld its recognition of the Draft Mandate for Iraq on the grounds that it sanctioned discrimination against nationals of other countries. The San Remo agreement, in particular, caused consternation in Washington and catapulted the State Department and American oil companies into action. Walter Teagle, the head of Jersey (later Exxon), became the spokesperson for American corporate oil interests.....The Lausanne Peace Conference held in November 1922-February 1923 (1st session) in Switzerland marked the height of political brinkmanship and skullduggery in oil politics. The 'Mosul question,' i.e. whether Mosul belonged to Turkey or whether it would be included within the borders of a newly created Iraq, was taken up by a special Council dealing with territorial issues. The Turkish delegation, headed by Foreign Minister Ismet Pasha, came to the Conference with explicit instructions from Ankara to keep Mosul within Turkey, in accord with the National Pact ('Misak-i Milli') adopted by the last Ottoman parliament in January 1920. The British had a totally different agenda..... Lord Curzon argued that the policy of His Majesty’s Government on Mosul was not in any way related to oil, that instead it was guided by the desire to protect interests of Iraqi people consistent with its mandatory obligations, that he had never spoken to an oil magnate or an oil concessionaire regarding Mosul oil, but that a company called TPC had obtained a concession from the Ottoman government [in June 1914] before the war that his government had concluded was valid, that his government and TPC had no monopolistic designs on Iraqi oil, and that the Iraqis would be the chief beneficiaries of oil exploitation in Iraq. He added that Turkey would benefit as well. Considering British governments past knee-deep involvement in Mesopotamian oil, and TPC’s monopolistic charter (see below) and exclusionary tactics, it was almost surreal that Lord Curzon would make such statements, including the intimation that he was unaware of oil-related developments surrounding Mosul. At the time of the Lausanne Conference the British, Dutch, French and American oil companies were negotiating the future of TPC in London, and Lord Curzon was kept fully informed on the progress of these negotiations. The American observer at the Conference was bemused at Lord Curzon’s high-principled claims. In a vague, convoluted language, he remarked that the character of TPC concession should be evaluated by an impartial tribunal and that his government had not given up on the 'open-door' policy. In a subsequent diplomatic note to Britain, the State Department expressed its discomfort on some of the claims made by Lord Curzon at the Conference. Lord Curzon also misled and appeased a war-weary British public by making similar statements in British press. The British public was longing for peace and did not want a new military conflict for the sake of oil. Similar attempts by the government at the Parliament were less successful. Some members of the Parliament expressed deep skepticism on Britain’s motivations on Mosul, including one MP who complained about the 'vein of hypocrisy' running through Britain’s policy on Mosul. The government repeatedly ignored requests from MPs to produce the so-called oil concession agreement, or state clearly its terms.... in 1921, when Lord Curzon was already the Foreign Minister, Whitehall was forced to admit that the TPC concession was on shaky legal grounds. That did not deter Lord Curzon from making his preposterous claims a year later at Lausanne. With no solution in sight, and after receiving veiled threats from Lord Curzon on renewed hostilities in Iraq (which prompted a worried France to urge Turkey not to turn down the British proposal), Ankara reluctantly agreed in March 1923 to British proposal to refer the Mosul question to the League Nations for arbitration if direct negotiations with Britain failed. These talks, indeed, bore no fruit, and Britain took the Mosul question to the League of Nations. When the Lausanne Conference (2nd session) ended in July 24, 1923, the communiqué issued officially recognized these developments. The British, however, failed in their efforts to have inserted into the treaty a clause indicating Ankara’s acceptance of the so-called TPC concession. In January 1923, Britain, as the mandatory power, pressured Iraq to forego its right to 20 percent participation in TPC, voiding the provision that was included in the 1920 San Remo Agreement signed with France....In March 1925, TPC concluded an oil concession agreement with Iraq. The agreement, to be in effect for 75 years, stipulated that TPC would be and remain a British company registered in Great Britain....Discovery of the Kirkuk field was the second major oil-related event in the Middle East history after Masjid-i Suleiman in Iran. The event marked the fulfillment of a long-hoped dream for the TPC partners and shaped the destiny of Iraq, in fact the Middle East, until our times. The field, with reserves of 16 billion barrels, or 2150 million tons, lived up to expectations as to its immense size. In June 1929 TPC changed its name to Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC)."
Oil in Iraq: The Byzantine Beginnings
Global Policy Forum April 25, 2003

"In April 1932, a British-dominated international consortium, British Oil Development Company (BODC), obtained a 75-year oil concession for territory lying west of Tigris and north of 33rd parallel. The consortium was intended to be a competitor to IPC in Iraq. Ten years later, before it would start production, BODC was bought out by Mosul Petroleum Company (MPC), a fully owned subsidiary of IPC. Likewise, in December 1938, Basra Petroleum Company (BPC), another subsidiary of IPC, obtained a 75-year concession for the rest of Iraq. Thus all of Iraq, with the exception of the 'transferred territory,' came under IPC’s control. Competition was entirely eliminated. IPC was not meant to be a profit-making enterprise. It operated as a production and transport company that delivered oil to its shareholders at export terminals (initially Haifa in Palestine and Tripoli in Lebanon) in proportion to participation interest. The partners were charged a nominal fee for the oil. Real profits were made by the partners which shipped, refined and sold the oil in foreign markets. (Until 1948 some of the crude was refined in Haifa). Until 1940 or so, IPC maintained a strategy to delay production in Iraq. The strategy was aimed at protecting the interests of the British, American and Dutch partners, who had crude production of their own in areas outside Iraq and wanted to shield such production from competition. CFP and Gulbenkian, who had production interests only in Iraq, opposed the delay strategy; but with their minority shareholding, they had limited success. For good reason, the policy of retarding production irritated the Iraqi government as well. During its operation IPC was frequently at loggerheads with the Iraqi government on a number of issues. The oil revenue structure, the pace of oil development, building refineries, participation in shareholding, and representation at company’s board, were the chief areas of dispute. The disputes led to nationalization of Iraq’s oil industry in 1972.... As destiny would have it, Iraq’s oil development was affected not so much by internal conflicts but by external factors. Iraq significantly benefited from the Iran oil crisis in the early 1950’s, but suffered during the Suez crisis. The biggest setbacks were during the Iraq-Iran war and the Gulf War. And now, the American-led Iraq War has brought a new era of destruction and uncertainty. The players in the big Mesopotamian oil game included an assortment of foreign countries and nationalistic oil companies that had a symbiotic and at times incestuous relationship with each other. What lip service was paid to free trade and competition, both in word and on paper, was soon discarded and forgotten when rhetoric clashed with self-interest. In many ways, these were not glorious days for the oil companies. Nor were the governments that knowingly supported the monopolistic designs and sometimes clandestine undertakings of these companies without blame..... Judging the players, the British played big poker and won. For Britain, oil was an instrument of imperial ambitions, and at times blood was the sacrifice that had to be accepted – e.g., 2500 British lives lost during the internal uprising in Iraq in 1920. The British camouflaged their true intentions on oil through pretexts, e.g., their righteous claim of being the trustees of Iraqi people’s rights on oil. The Americans were more open in their intentions, although their tacit acceptance of the self-denial clause left them cold and dry on charges of hypocrisy. Lacking the colonial over-drive of the British, and having relinquished Mosul to British control in San Remo in return for the German share in TPC, the French were relegated to play second fiddle in the big Anglo-American grab for oil in the Middle East. The French never trusted the British, and later the Americans, but were reconciled to their dominance on matters of oil. As for the Dutch, they were the easiest winners. Thanks to 40 percent British share in RD Shell, the Dutch virtually got a free ride on the back of the British. At the beginning of WWI, RD Shell acquiesced to British control in order to operate freely on the high seas.....The Turks were the big losers in the oil game. The major reason for that, of course, was defeat during WWI and the headaches that the defeat brought. But Turks, the Ottoman Turks in particular, trailed the West in science and technology, which put them behind in appreciating the strategic value of oil. It is a poignant historical irony that at the time Admiral Slade expedition was surveying the Persian Gulf region for oil on instructions from Winston Churchill in 1913, Grand Vizier (Chief Minister) Mahmut Sevket Pasha, in blissful ignorance, was telling his cabinet in Istanbul that Qatar and Kuwait were 'unimportant desert' sheikdoms that were not worth creating conflict with Britain."
Oil in Iraq: The Byzantine Beginnings
Global Policy Forum, 26 April 2003

"Iraq may have been a British creation, from the ruins of the Ottoman empire, but Churchill remembered all too well how Britain's involvement had begun with a disaster. Over the 43 years of British influence, from that first invasion in 1915 to the revolution of 1958, a remarkable array of Britons had a hand in running the country. Churchill installed the first King of Iraq and his advisers drew up its borders. Gertrude Bell, the archaeologist and traveller, who founded the country's antiquities department, became known as the 'uncrowned Queen of Iraq'. T E Lawrence took part in the invasion and advised Churchill on Iraq policy while Arthur 'Bomber' Harris tried out his theories of aerial bombardment.... By the close of 1918, Britain had occupied all three Mesopotamian provinces - Basra in the south, Mosul in the north and Baghdad in between.....Britain gave Iraq notional independence in 1932. By then, the country's oilfields had become of vital strategic importance and the British remained dominant until King Faisal II and his family were butchered in a 1958 revolution. After that, a bewildering succession of coups and counter-coups bedevilled Iraq. Alternately America, France and the Soviet Union displaced Britain as the power behind the scenes."
Meddling in Mesopotamia was always risky
Daily Telegraph, 18 March 2003

"Energy is vital to a country's security and material well-being. A state unable to provide its people with adequate energy supplies or desiring added leverage over other people often resorts to force. Consider Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, driven by his desire to control more of the world's oil reserves, and the international response to this threat. The underlying goal of the U.N. force [in the 1991 Gulf war], which included 500,000 American troops, was to ensure continued and unfettered access to petroleum...."
Richard G. Lugar and R. James Woolsey (Former Director of the CIA)
The New Petroleum - Foreign Affairs January/February 1999

"[BP's] Lord Browne's said that most exploration for new supplies had halted [in Iraq] when the Iraqis nationalised their industry.... he believed there was a plenty of oil and gas waiting to be discovered in Iraq and that BP should be in prime position to capitalise [after a war with Iraq] because it had found most of the country's oil before being thrown out in the 1970s.... Lord Browne will be listened to carefully in Downing Street because the BP executive team has such close links with the UK government that it was once dubbed Blair Petroleum."
BP chief fears US will carve up Iraqi oil riches
Guardian, 30 October 2002

"Britain bears some responsibility for the Kurdish problem. It ignored the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, which promised Kurds their independence, and surplanted it with the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey, leading to the division and subjugation of the Kurdish people. Restive Kurds in Iraq subsequently were bombed and gassed into acquiescence by the RAF and British Army. Mr Talabani now looks to the British to make amends by safeguarding the rights of Iraq’s Kurdish minority. 'When I met Tony Blair once, I told him that as a student I had taken part in many demonstrations saying ‘British go home’,' he said."
Kurd who will seal Saddam's fate
London Times, 24 February 2005

"Even in the darkest days of 1940, working in the government bunkers beneath central London with German bombs raining down on the city above, Wendy Maxwell had no doubt the Allies would win World War Two. The source of her optimism was the man her boss worked with day and night, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. 'Even through the evacuation from Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the blitz, the fall of Singapore we never, never thought we wouldn't win,' she told Reuters on Wednesday at the opening of the first museum in Britain dedicated to Churchill. He insisted that the museum did not gloss over Churchill's multiple mistakes in his long career – including the disastrous Dardanelles Campaign in 1915 during World War One and using gas against Kurds in 1920 during the British occupation of Iraq."
Britain opens museum of Winston Churchill's life
Reuters, 9 February 2005

"Who was the first high government official to authorize use of mustard gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq? If your answer was Saddam Hussein's cousin, the notorious 'Chemical Ali' -- aka Ali Hassan al-Majid -- you're wrong. The correct answer: Sainted Winston Churchill. As colonial secretary and secretary for war and air, he authorized the RAF in the 1920s to routinely use mustard gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq and against Pashtun tribes on British India's northwest frontier. Iraq's U.S.-installed regime has just announced al-Majid, one of Saddam's most brutal henchmen, will stand trial next week for war crimes. Al-Majid is accused of ordering the 1988 gassing of Kurds at Halabja that killed over 5,000 civilians. He led the bloody suppression of Iraq's Shias, killing tens of thousands. These were the same Shias whom former U.S. president George Bush called to rebel against Saddam's regime, then sat back and did nothing while they were crushed. The Halabja atrocity remains murky. The CIA's former Iraq desk chief claims Kurds who died at Halabja were killed by cyanide gas, not nerve gas, as is generally believed. At the time, Iraq and Iran were locked in the ferocious last battles of their eight-year war. Halabja was caught between the two armies that were exchanging salvos of regular and chemical munitions. Only Iran had cyanide gas. If the CIA official is correct, the Kurds were accidentally killed by Iran, not Iraq. But it's also possible al-Majid ordered an attack. Kurds in that region had rebelled against Iraq and opened the way for invading Iranian forces. What's the difference between the U.S. destroying the rebellious Iraqi city of Fallujah and Saddam destroying rebellious Halabja? What difference does it make if you're killed by poison gas, artillery or 2,000-pound bombs? 'Chemical Ali' was a brute of the worst kind in a regime filled with sadists. I personally experienced the terror of Saddam's sinister regime over 25 years, culminating in threats to hang me as a spy. Saddam Hussein and his entourage should face justice. But not in political show trials just before U.S.-'guided' Iraqi elections nor in Iraqi kangaroo courts. They should be sent to the UN's war crimes tribunal in The Hague, where Saddam should be charged with the greatest crime he committed -- the invasion of Iran, which caused one million casualties. Britain, the U.S., Kuwait and Saudi Arabia convinced Iraq to invade Iran, then covertly supplied Saddam with money, arms, intelligence, and advisers. Meanwhile, Israel secretly supplied Iran with $5 billion US in American arms and spare parts while publicly denouncing Iran for terrorism. Who supplied 'Chemical Ali' with his mustard and nerve gas? Why, the West, of course. In late 1990, I discovered four British technicians in Baghdad who told me they had been 'seconded' to Iraq by Britain's ministry of defence and MI6 intelligence to make chemical and biological weapons, including anthrax, Q-fever and plague, at a secret laboratory at Salman Pak. The Reagan administration and Thatcher government were up to their ears in backing Iraq's aggression, apparently with the intention to overthrow Iran's Islamic government and seize its oil. Italy, Germany, France, South Africa, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Brazil, Chile and the USSR all aided Saddam's war effort against Iran, which was even more a victim of naked aggression than was Kuwait in 1991. I'd argue senior officials of those nations that abetted Saddam's aggression against Iran and supplied him with chemicals and gas should also stand trial with Ali and Saddam. What an irony it is to see U.S. forces in Iraq now behaving with much the same punitive ferocity as Saddam's army and police -- bombing rebellious cities, arresting thousands, terrorizing innocent civilians, torturing captives and sending in tanks to crush resistance. In other words, Saddamism without Saddam. A decade ago, this column predicted that when the U.S. finally overthrew Saddam, it would need to find a new Saddam. Finally, let's not forget that when Saddam's regime committed many of its worst atrocities against rebellious Kurds and Shiites, it was still a close ally of Washington and London. The West paid for and supplied Saddam's bullets, tanks, gas and germs. He was our regional SOB. Our hands are very far from clean."
Eric Margolis - West Has Bloodied Hands
Toronto Sun, 19 December 2004

"For just so long Kuwait, a small country at the head of the Persian Gulf, had been set free and independent from its long-time British protector. And during that time Kuwait had developed its oil fields and become immensely rich. Saddam Hussein claimed that Kuwait was part of Iraq. To have and to hold it would put him on the way to achieving something that the Soviets had yearned for right after the Second War and been denied by the intervention of the United Nations, which was to be sovereign of the Gulf - and so, as Churchill foresaw and warned about, soon to be able to conquer Europe without a war by possessing 60% of the oil Western Europe lived by and so be able to dictate to countries like Britain, France, Germany, that they should abandon their precious democratic ways and get themselves governments friendly to Iraq.....[Following Saddam's invasion of Kuwait] President Bush - the first that is - called a dawn meeting of the National Security Council at which the likely commander of any military action, one General Schwarzkopf, expressed the general feeling that the United States might fight for Saudi Arabia but hardly for Kuwait. President Bush told the press there was no thought of American intervention. The United Nations anyway had voted to impose a total embargo on Iraq. Two days after the invasion President Bush took a half day out to keep a promise to the British prime minister who was addressing a conference in Aspen, Colorado, a resort town in the Rockies. He found Mrs Thatcher in finer fighting fettle than all but one of his own advisers. She stressed that fighting for Kuwait now might be a necessary step to saving Saudi Arabia from invasion later on. ..... What so swiftly transformed the views and policy of the United States and the onlooking allies-to-be was the recognition, first pressed on President Bush by Mrs Thatcher and then rather late in the day realised by the King of Saudi Arabia, that once he held Kuwait there was nothing to stop Saddam from seizing the Saudi oil fields."
Alistair Cooke's Letter From America
BBC Online, 24 June 2002

"The National Security Archive at George Washington University today published on the Web a series of declassified U.S. documents detailing the U.S. embrace of Saddam Hussein in the early 1980's, including the renewal of diplomatic relations that had been suspended since 1967. The documents show that during this period of renewed U.S. support for Saddam, he had invaded his neighbor (Iran), had long-range nuclear aspirations that would 'probably' include 'an eventual nuclear weapon capability,' harbored known terrorists in Baghdad, abused the human rights of his citizens, and possessed and used chemical weapons on Iranians and his own people. The U.S. response was to renew ties, to provide intelligence and aid to ensure Iraq would not be defeated by Iran, and to send a high-level presidential envoy named Donald Rumsfeld to shake hands with Saddam (20 December 1983). The declassified documents posted today include the briefing materials and diplomatic reporting on two Rumsfeld trips to Baghdad, reports on Iraqi chemical weapons use concurrent with the Reagan administration's decision to support Iraq, and decision directives signed by President Reagan that reveal the specific U.S. priorities for the region [which included] preserving access to oil...."
U.S. DOCUMENTS SHOW EMBRACE OF SADDAM HUSSEIN IN EARLY 1980s
DESPITE CHEMICAL WEAPONS, EXTERNAL AGGRESSION, HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES
US National Security Archive, George Washington University, Press Release 25 February 2003

"An investigation of US corporate sales to Iraq, headed by Republican Congressman Donald Riegle and published in May 1994, listed some of the biological agents exported by US corporations with George Bush's approval as head of the CIA and later as vice-president under Ronald Reagan. The Iraqis are reported to have acquired stocks of anthrax, brucellosis, gas gangrene, E. coli and salmonella bacteria from US companies."
Who Armed Iraq?
Janes Defence News, 17 March 2003

"United Press International has interviewed almost a dozen former U.S. diplomats, British scholars and former U.S. intelligence officials to piece together the following account. The CIA declined to comment on the report. While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a [failed] CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.... According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War with the Soviet Union.... Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions of 'real power,' according to this official.... In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative, told UPI the CIA had enjoyed 'close ties' with Qasim's ruling Baath Party, just as it had close connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian leader Gamel Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement, Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist Baath Party 'as its instrument.' According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a [failed] U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim.... during this time Saddam was making frequent visits to the American Embassy where CIA specialists such as Miles Copeland and CIA station chief Jim Eichelberger were in residence and knew Saddam, former U.S. intelligence officials said.... In February 1963 Qasim was killed in a Baath Party coup.... Noting that the Baath Party was hunting down Iraq's communist, the CIA provided the submachine gun-toting Iraqi National Guardsmen with lists of suspected communists who were then jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down, according to former U.S. intelligence officials with intimate knowledge of the executions. Many suspected communists were killed outright, these sources said. Darwish told UPI that the mass killings, presided over by Saddam, took place at Qasr al-Nehayat, literally, the Palace of the End....The CIA/Defense Intelligence Agency relation with Saddam intensified after the start of the Iran-Iraq war in September of 1980."
Saddam Key in Early CIA Plot
United Press International, 11 April 2003

"Iraq started the war [with Iran] with a large Soviet-supplied arsenal, but needed additional weaponry as the conflict wore on. Initially, Iraq advanced far into Iranian territory, but was driven back within months. By mid-1982, Iraq was on the defensive against Iranian human-wave attacks. The U.S., having decided that an Iranian victory would not serve its interests, began supporting Iraq... The U.S., which followed developments in the Iran-Iraq war with extraordinary intensity, had intelligence confirming Iran's accusations, and describing Iraq's 'almost daily' use of chemical weapons, concurrent with its policy review and decision to support Iraq in the war... Following further high-level policy review, Ronald Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 114, dated November 26, 1983, concerned specifically with U.S. policy toward the Iran-Iraq war.... It states, 'Because of the real and psychological impact of a curtailment in the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf on the international economic system, we must assure our readiness to deal promptly with actions aimed at disrupting that traffic.' It does not mention chemical weapons.... Soon thereafter, Donald Rumsfeld .... was dispatched to the Middle East as a presidential envoy. His December 1983 tour of regional capitals included Baghdad, where he was to establish 'direct contact between an envoy of President Reagan and President Saddam Hussein,'..."
Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1984
US National Security Archive, George Washington University, 25 February 2003

"A victory by Tehran, which seemed imminent, would pose a major threat to US interests in the Gulf, such as access to the region's oil.... For the next five years, Washington would quietly ensure that Saddam received all the military equipment he needed to stave off defeat, even precursor chemicals that could be used against Iranian soldiers and Kurdish civilians.... How much more of this intimate relationship Saddam will recall when he gets a public forum is undoubtedly a concern of many current and past administration figures.... the CIA was tasked to ensure that its former charge not run short of either weapons or vitally needed intelligence on the disposition of Iranian forces, a task, according to a 1995 affidavit by Teicher, that then CIA director William Casey took to with abandon. Casey, for example, used a Chilean arms company, Cardoen, to supply Iraq with cluster bombs that he thought would be particularly effective against Iranian 'human wave' tactics. In addition to the credit, equipment and covert military assistance, Saddam also received diplomatic help from Washington at the United Nations and elsewhere in fending off condemnations of his use of banned weapons during the war, as well as efforts in Congress to cut off US help. The CIA was still providing intelligence and other help when Saddam used poison gas that killed some 5,000 Kurdish non-combatants in Halabja in March 1988."
Rumsfeld and his 'old friend' Saddam
Inter Press Service, 17 December 2003

"Fifty years ago this week, the CIA and the British SIS orchestrated a coup d'etat that toppled the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh. The prime minister and his nationalist supporters in parliament roused Britain's ire when they nationalised the oil industry in 1951, which had previously been exclusively controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company [later renamed as BP]. Mossadegh argued that Iran should begin profiting from its vast oil reserves. The British government tried to enlist the Americans in planning a coup... The crushing of Iran's first democratic government ushered in more than two decades of dictatorship under the Shah... 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 coup and the culture of covert interference it created forever changed how the world viewed the US, especially in poor, oppressive countries. For many Iranians, the coup was a tragedy from which their country has never recovered. Perhaps because Mossadegh represents a future denied, his memory has approached myth."
The spectre of Operation Ajax
Guardian, 20 August 2003

"Iran, Iraq and North Korea are rushing to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons as a deterrent to American intervention.... the United States also must counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction that may soon allow lesser states to deter U.S. military action... In the post-Cold War era, America and its allies, rather than the Soviet Union, have become the primary objects of deterrence... and it is states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea who most wish to develop deterrent capabilities."
Rebuilding America's Defenses
Project For The New American Century, September 2000

"Scott Ritter, a former US intelligence officer and U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, is author of the forthcoming
Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of America's Intelligence Conspiracy"
Baltimore Sun, 22 February 2005

"David Kelly, giving evidence to the prime minister's intelligence and security committee in closed session on July 16 - the day before his suicide - made a comment the significance of which has so far been missed. He said: 'Within the defence intelligence services I liaise with the Rockingham cell.' Unfortunately nobody on the committee followed up this lead, which is a pity because the Rockingham reference may turn out to be very important indeed. What is the role of the Rockingham cell? The evidence comes from a former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, who had been a US military intelligence officer for eight years and served on the staff of General Schwarzkopf, the US commander of allied forces in the first Gulf war....."
The Very Secret Service
Guardian, 21 November 2003

"British intelligence ran a campaign designed to exaggerate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, a former US intelligence officer has claimed. Former UN chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter said the disinformation drive in the late 1990s was designed to shift public opinion. Mr Ritter has been a vocal critic of military action against Iraq since leaving the inspections team in 1998..... He told reporters in the House of Commons that he was involved personally with Operation Mass Appeal between the summer of 1997 until August 1998 when he resigned from the UN. Mr Ritter said the MI6 operation was designed to 'shake up public opinion' by passing dubious intelligence on Iraq to the media...... Mr Ritter claimed this was the first time the existence of Operation Mass Appeal had been revealed. He urged MPs to hold a fresh inquiry in the use of intelligence in the run up to the war against Iraq. He declined to give specific examples of disinformation but said he was prepared to reveal details before a public inquiry.... Mr Ritter said: 'I was brought into the operation in 1997 because at the UN... I sat on a body of data which was not actionable, but was sufficiently sexy that if it could appear in the press could make Iraq look like in a bad way. 'I was approached by MI6 to provide that data, I met with the Mass Appeal operatives both in New York and London on several occasions. This data was provided and this data did find its way into the international media. It was intelligence data that dealt with Iraq's efforts to procure WMDs, with Iraq's efforts to conceal WMDs. It was all single source data of dubious quality, which lacked veracity. They took this information and peddled it off to the media, internationally and domestically, allowing inaccurate intelligence data, to appear on the front pages."
MI6 ran 'dubious' Iraq campaign
BBC Online 21 November 2003

"Scott Ritter said .... that disinformation was also supplied by a little-known body within the Defence Intelligence Staff called the Rockingham Cell, which provided intelligence officers to work as inspectors with the UN's Unscom team. Government scientist David Kelly told a closed hearing of the House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee days before his death in July that he liaised with Rockingham when working for Unscom.... Operations like Mass Appeal - which has never before been publicly discussed - and Rockingham existed to support the case for continued sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s and war earlier this year, he argued. 'Operation Rockingham was more than just an intelligence cell that massaged information,' said Mr Ritter. 'It was an organisation designed to support a pre-ordained conclusion of the British Government that Iraq will never be found in compliance with UN Security Council resolutions. Speaking at Westminster today, Mr Ritter said: 'I want to encourage the British Parliament to hold an investigation, with open hearings, into the role of British intelligence before the war. 'I leave it to the British Parliament to find who authorised this and how it happened. Are British soldiers serving in Iraq now because of a lie perpetrated by the British Government?' He was backed by former minister Michael Meacher, who used an article in The Guardian to call for 'a full-scale independent inquiry into the operation of the intelligence services around the top of their command and their interface with the political system'... Mr Ritter was backed by Ray McGovern, who was a senior CIA analyst until 1990, preparing the President's daily intelligence brief and chairing the National Intelligence Estimates."
Parliament Urged to Probe 'Disinformation Operation'
The Scotsman, 21 November 2003

"What I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt is that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons, that he continues in his efforts to develop nuclear weapons.... I am in no doubt that the threat is serious and current.... the document discloses that his military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them.... The threat posed to international peace and security, when WMD are in the hands of a brutal and aggressive regime like Saddam's, is real.... We must ensure that he does not get to use the weapons he has...."
Foreword by the Prime Minister, The Right Honourable Tony Blair MP
IRAQ'S WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
THE ASSESSMENT OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT
September Dossier 2002

"Weapons expert Dr David Kelly told of 'many dark actors playing games' in an e-mail to a journalist hours before his suicide, it was reported on Saturday. The words appeared to refer to officials at the Ministry of Defence and UK intelligence agencies with whom he had sparred over interpretations of weapons reports, according to the New York Times."
Kelly warned of 'dark actors'
London Times, 19 July 2003

"British forces went into battle in the Iraq war without protective equipment against weapons of mass destruction -- the very 'threat' used by Tony Blair to justify joining the American-led invasion. Not one single tank or armoured vehicle was fitted with the required filter to guard against chemical and biological attacks..... according to a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) published today."
Soldiers in Iraq 'did not have WMD protection'
Independent, 12 December 2003

"North Korea's dramatic public revelation that it possesses nuclear weapons represents a stark challenge for the Bush administration. The North Korean claim, if true, underscores the failure of President Bush's nonproliferation policies that since the beginning of his first term had been subordinated to a grander vision of regime change. That policy was intended to transform strategically vital regions of the world into Western-style democracies supportive of the United States and the Bush administration's vision of American global dominance. The intermingling of nonproliferation and regime change policies was doomed to fail.... It is now clear that Iraq, under pressure from U.N. weapons inspectors, was disarmed of its WMD by 1991 and had dismantled and destroyed the last vestiges of its weapons programs by 1996. But the United States had, since 1991, committed to a policy of regime change in Iraq, which required economic sanctions-based containment linked to a continued finding of Iraqi noncompliance with its disarmament obligation. Rather than embracing weapons inspections, three successive U.S. administrations denigrated and subverted the work of the inspectors in order to keep the primary policy objective of regime change in Iraq on track. The nail in the coffin of U.S. nonproliferation efforts came when the Bush administration willfully misstated the extent of the Iraqi WMD programs in order to justify its invasion of Iraq.....North Korea and Iran concluded from events leading to the U.S. invasion of Iraq that the Bush administration did not regard nonproliferation as an endgame but a tool designed to weaken a target state to the point that it could succumb to the grander U.S. policy objective of regime change.... With Iraq a model of the reality of America's unilateral militaristic approach toward bringing about regime change, North Korea and Iran have embarked on the only path available to either of them - acquisition of an independent nuclear deterrent intended to forestall what they perceive as irresponsible U.S. aggression. The Bush administration has come face to face with the reality of the failure of its policies. Rather than curtailing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the administration's crusade against global tyranny has served as an accelerant in placing the most dangerous weapons known to man in the hands of xenophobic regimes that have been backed into a corner..... 'Freedom is on the march,' Mr. Bush has said. Unfortunately for the United States, North Korea and Iran don't see it that way. And if America keeps marching, it could very well be in the direction of a nuclear apocalypse."
Doomed to Fail
Baltimore Sun, 22 February 2005

"This has been the year that the neo-cons grabbed the world by the nose and kicked it in the balls. At least that’s how one cynical wag in the intelligence community put it recently, paraphrasing General Patton’s infamous military dictum on how to deal with the enemy, when I asked him what the last 365 days had meant to the men now controlling the White House. This has been the year during which their plans – long-harboured and truly revolutionary – finally crept out into the light and came to fruition. The public unravelling of the grand scheme that the neo-conservatives have been privately hatching behind closed doors for years began when the Sunday Herald started to investigate the activities of an almost unknown think-tank called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) just over a year ago.... PNAC is a veritable who’s who of the leading lights in George 'Dubya' Bush’s administration. It was founded by Dick Cheney, the vice-president; Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary; Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy; Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Cheney’s chief-of-staff and Bush’s brother, Jeb, governor of the hanging-chad state of Florida. At first sight it may seem nothing more than a gentlemen’s club and talking shop for a lot of very rich and very powerful right-wingers. But that’s until you read what is, in effect, the PNAC’s mission statement – titled Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century. It is no exaggeration to refer to this as a chilling piece of work. It was – very importantly – written months before Bush took power. The document shows that the Bush neo-cons were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq and the 'regime change' of Saddam Hussein even before they took office. The plan shows that Bush’s Cabinet wanted to take military control of the Gulf whether or not Saddam was in power. It says: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.' One of the most cynical comments in the document regarding the expansion of US military power is as follows: 'The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalysing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.' The document was written, remember, before September 11."
Rise of the Neo Cons
Sunday Herald, 23 December 2003

"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

"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. The optimists who project large reserve quantities of over one trillion barrels tend to base their numbers on one of three things: inclusion of heavy oil and tar sands, the exploitation of which will entail huge economic and environmental costs; puffery by opec nations lobbying for higher production quotas within the cartel; or assumptions about new drilling technologies that may accelerate production but are unlikely to expand reserves. Once production peaks, even though exhaustion of world reserves will still be many years away, prices will begin to rise sharply. This trend will be exacerbated by increased demand in the developing world....."
Richard G. Lugar and R. James Woolsey (Former Director of the CIA)
The New Petroleum - Foreign Affairs January/February 1999

"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

"I fear we're going to be at war for decades, not years ..... one major component of that war is oil."
James Woolsey, Former Director of The CIA
Report On The Annual Policy Forum Of The American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE)
Washington, 6-7 December 2004
RenewableEnergyAccess.com, 14 December 2004

"We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says 'while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'... In late September and early October 2001, leaders of Pakistan's two Islamist parties negotiated Bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for 9/11. However, a US official said, significantly, that 'casting our objectives too narrowly' risked 'a premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky chance Mr Bin Laden was captured'.... The whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests.... The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11. A report prepared for the US government from the Baker Institute of Public Policy stated in April 2001 that 'the US remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a destabilising influence to... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East'. Submitted to Vice-President Cheney's energy task group, the report recommended that because this was an unacceptable risk to the US, 'military intervention' was necessary. Similar evidence exists in regard to Afghanistan. The BBC reported that Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that 'military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October'. Until July 2001 the US government saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of hydrocarbon pipelines from the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. But, confronted with the Taliban's refusal to accept US conditions, the US representatives told them 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs' .... The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the 'go' button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement. The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies.... A report from the commission on America's national interests in July 2000 noted that the most promising new source of world supplies was the Caspian region, and this would relieve US dependence on Saudi Arabia. To diversify supply routes from the Caspian, one pipeline would run westward via Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Another would extend eastwards through Afghanistan and Pakistan and terminate near the Indian border. This would rescue Enron's beleaguered power plant at Dabhol on India's west coast, in which Enron had sunk $3bn investment and whose economic survival was dependent on access to cheap gas... The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the 'global war on terrorism' has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. Is collusion in this myth and junior participation in this project really a proper aspiration for British foreign policy? If there was ever need to justify a more objective British stance, driven by our own independent goals, this whole depressing saga surely provides all the evidence needed for a radical change of course."
Michael Meacher, former Blair government Minister - 'This war on terrorism is bogus'
The Guardian, 6 September 2003

It's The Oil Stupid!

Woolsey On 'Peak Oil' - Click Here

Peak Oil To Arrive As Early As 2014 - Click Here

“Such openness is rare; it set me back on my heels. The question came last Monday as I finished a lecture in Pewaukee, Wisconsin–the first of a handful of talks I gave for ‘Great Decisions 2005,’ a program of the Institute of World Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. With the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ of recent memory having evaporated as casus belli for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, I had decided to experiment with a tutorial on what I believe to be the real reasons behind the war—first and foremost, oil. Passing by a phalanx of late-model gas-guzzlers on my way in, I found myself wondering how my observations on the oil factor would be received. In the end, I was more than a little surprised that none of the 250 folks in that very conservative audience seemed to have much of a problem. In Pewaukee I fully expected such observations to cause some static, at least during the formal post-lecture Q&A session before most of the audience drifted off into a light snow. I was later advised not to misread the lack of demurral as concurrence, but rather to chalk it up to Mid-West reticence….. Some twenty folks did linger in a small circle that was dominated by a persistent, well dressed man (let's call him Joe), who just would not let go: ‘Surely you agree that we need the oil. Then what's your problem? Some 1,450 killed thus far are far fewer than the toll in Vietnam where we lost 58,000; it's a small price to pay... a sustainable rate to bear. What IS your problem?’… I sized Joe up as one who would press for having the Ten Commandments prominently displayed in the courthouses of America. So I took a new tack, asking him, ‘Isn't one of those commandments about stealing... and one about killing... one about lying... and even one about coveting your neighbor's possessions? Would you think we might lop off those four and whittle the tablets down to the remaining six so as to spare ourselves potential embarrassment?’ Joe walked off to drive his gas-guzzler home.”
We Need The Oil, Right? So What’s the Problem?
Common Dreams, 16 February 2005
By Ray McGovern
Ray McGovern is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst spanned administrations from John F. Kennedy to George H. W. Bush. He chaired National Intelligence Estimates in addition to preparing and briefing The President’s Daily Brief.

"The changes in the global energy-policies are taking place in a breath-taking speed. Not only in Asia, where there is currently talk about a more Asian sharing of resources, but also the energy-relations between India and Russia, India and Kazakhstan, India and Sudan, India and Iran, China and Russia, China and Canada, China and Venezuela, Iran and Cuba, Iran and Mexico have suddenly intensified, all in search for stakes in the remaining resources. It is as if, quite suddenly over the last months, this search has started to accelerate..."
Update Issue #4 2005
Alexander's Gas & Oil Connections, 25 February 2005

"Our industry can certainly be proud of its past achievements. Yet the challenges we will face in the coming years will be every bit as great as those encountered in the past, due in part to ever-increasing global energy use. For example, we estimate that world oil and gas production from existing fields is declining at an average rate of about 4 to 6 percent a year. To meet projected demand in 2015, the industry will have to add about 100 million oil-equivalent barrels a day of new production. That's equal to about 80 percent of today's production level. In other words, by 2015, we will need to find, develop and produce a volume of new oil and gas that is equal to eight out of every 10 barrels being produced today."
John Thompson, President of ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company
The Lamp (published for ExxonMobil shareholders), 2003, Vol. 85 No.1

"The latest Harris Poll conducted following the recent elections in Iraq finds that on many aspects U.S. adults have not changed their basic views about Iraq.... 64 percent believe that Saddam Hussein had strong links to Al Qaeda...... 47 percent believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001...... 44 percent actually believe that several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11 were Iraqis ..... 36 percent believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded...."
Iraq, 9/11, Al Qaeda and Weapons of Mass Destruction: What the Public Believes Now, According to Latest Harris Poll
PRNewswire, 18 February 2005