George Bush nearly pelted with shoes

[Kirkland Laing]

You've given some pretty good reasons why a country might want to control Iraq, but that don't make it so. You say maintaining it's position as the world's pre-eminent econmy is a prime motivator, but let's just call it maintaining enough oil supply to keep things running.

I find it hard to argue againt your position. And you should find it hard to argue for it. It's not like we have proof of US/Britain motives for the invasion. You have taken a bunch of facts and built a somewhat logical argument. But I don't see a whole lot of evidence or proof. I'll give you credit for at least coming up with some kind of analysis, which is better than the knee jerk crowd who cry out "oil control" without much in the way of critical thought.

As I understand it the Iraq war has cost the US a couple trillion dollars so far. That kind of negates the economic benefit gained from this supposed control or Iraq oil, wouldn't you say? And then there is the human and political costs of the war. Sorry, but I'm sure even George W. Bush can see that this war is costing him, and the US, dearly.

OK, ostensibly Iraq was about the WMD thing, and maybe there was some issues about support of terrorism. Let's not get into whether or not there is any justification for terrorism. And let's assume without arguing that if Iraq has nukes, then the US has reason to be concerned. I do not think the US lied outright to the UN, as well as it's closest allies, about Iraq developing nukes. As I recall there was evidence that Iraq was trying to acquire technology to develop nuclear weapons. As it turned out, no physical evidence of this activity found. Myself, I consider it entirely possible that Hussein has stashed whatever he had in Syria. Why do you suppose Hussein put the UN and the Atomic Energy Commission off for so long? And I don't know about you, but with all due respect, to suggest as some have that Hussein would cease and desist from anything just because the UN told him to is kind of naive. I am quite sure that Hussein would try to develop or acquire wmds if it was within his power to do so.

Don't get me wrong, I am not a supporter of the Iraq war. I myself sided with the UN position on the issue, as did the Canadian government, against our closest ally and friend, the USA. I just think the USA deserves a little more credit than saying, they just want to control Iraq's natural resources (oil).

It's nothing to do with maintaining any supply. Since oil was discovered in the region we've manipulated the supply of oil to suit our needs. When oil was first discovered in Iraq the quantities involved were so huge that putting it on the market would have caused a collapse in the price of oil so the wells were capped and not tapped for a couple of decades. We've kept the supply of oil moving in the Middle East in the same way that the Mafia have kept the construction industry in New York working smoothly without disruptions. Similarly our security agreements with the dictatorships running oil-rich countries in the region have guaranteed their security and freedom to do business in much the same way that five Sicilian immigrant families have guaranteed the security and freedom to operate of New York's shopowners and businesses.

There is a great deal of proof. Bush's Secretary to the Treasury, a man obviously handpicked by Bush and famous for getting a tax rebate on his corporation's $1 billion yearly profit was a member of Bush's national security cabinet, and he tells us that the first item on the agenda of the first US national security cabinet meeting Bush held after taking office -- eight months before 9/11 -- was the invasion of Iraq :

Advocating "going after Saddam" during the January 30 meeting, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, according to O'Neill, "Imagine what the region would look like without Saddam and with a regime that's aligned with U.S. interests. It would change everything in the region and beyond. It would demonstrate what U.S. policy is all about." He then discussed post-Saddam Iraq -- the Kurds in the north, the oil fields, and the reconstruction of the country's economy. (Suskind, p. 85)
Among the relevant documents later sent to NSC members, including O'Neill, was one prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). It had already mapped Iraq's oil fields and exploration areas, and listed American corporations likely to be interested in participating in Iraq's petroleum industry.
Another DIA document in the package, entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," listed companies from 30 countries -- France, Germany, Russia, and Britain, among others -- their specialties and bidding histories. The attached maps pinpointed "super-giant oil field," "other oil field," and "earmarked for production sharing," and divided the basically undeveloped but oil-rich southwest of Iraq into nine blocks, indicating promising areas for future exploration. (Suskind., p. 96)



The second meeting was devoted exclusively to Iraq.




Iraq contains somewhere in the region of five hundred trillion dollars of oil, or about 300x US GDP. A couple of trillion to get at it is an investment any bunch of war criminals running a country would be happy to make. And don't forget they thought they were just going to swan in there and put their handpicked guys in charge of everything and that Iraq would then pay them back for the cost of the invasion. Human costs historically are never a calculation in these things, the politicians always claim that they'll do everything for the men and women there to "protect" us but there are plenty of homelesss Iraq vets right now and they're cutting Veterans' healthcare.


Before the war Bush's limited "evidence" was almost all exposed as bs by the only US media organisation who bothered to investigate it, Knight Ridder. Bush now claims that Saddam wouldn't let the inspectors in and that everybody thought he had weapons but this was all more lies. Saddam did let the inspectors in and France, Russia etc. all claimed they'd seen nothing that persuaded them Saddam had any weapons. Even people like Colin Powell, Condy Rice had said Iraq was no threat.


After the war Bush sent his handpicked weapons inspectors into Iraq and they confirmed that Saddam had stopped all WMD programs and destroyed all his equipment in 1991. The Syria thing is the last desperate claim by fring rightwing loonies with no basis in fact -- Iraq didn't have any weapons to export, Syria have their own "WMD" and would never have let anything dangerous over the border as it would have given the US a chance to bomb/invade them too. Even Bush admits there weren't any WMDs now. When Iraq did have "WMD" capability it was just battlefield munitions that could fire chemical weapons (made in factories we built for him), not missiles which could travel even 100 miles.

Ok, for now let's focus on just how much oil we are talking about.

You have claimed Iraq oil reserves estimated at 500 trillion dollars, or 300 times US GDP.

My source, http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Iraq/Oil.html puts recoverable Iraq oil reserves somewhere around 200 billion barrels, and that is one of the more optimistic estimates. That is an estimate of proven and unproven reserves.

Right now oil is priced at about $47/barrel on world markets. Last year it was at an all time high of about $140. Lets pick a price somewhere in the middle of $100 barrel. That makes a total value of Iraq oil reserves of 20 trillion dollars, not 500 trillion dollars.

I also have US GDP at about 14 trillion dollars according to U.S. Gross Domestic Product GDP Forecast That means that the total value of Iraq oil reserves would be about 1.5x US GDP, not 300x US GDP.

Any comment? Does this have any effect on your claims of economic motivation for war?

Iraq has never had its oilfields mapped or quantified. There are huge areas of Iraq that have never been seismically tested. Since oil was first found in Iraq there have been less than 200 drills in various areas. To put that in perspective there have been well in excess of 20 million drilled in Texas.

As part of my job I get access to various economic data. As far as oil data goes the company with the most accurate name is a firm in Geneva called petroconsultants. Their reports change hands for over a million dollars a copy, and Petroconsultants' conservative estimate of Iraq's oil wealth based on the projected size of their known geological formations is $500 trillion. Certainly that's the figure that was in discussion in various meetings of financial institutions I attended on both sides of the Atlantic in 2002/3 before we invaded. Although it was never openly discussed from the various comments made it was clear that the participants at those meetings certainly seemed to think the war was all about oil. They were all people like me, who'd absorbed the distilled wisdom of 400 years of British/US mercantalism/imperialism/capitalism over decades working in the financial industry. And I can tell you that the firms they work for, their jobs, status, income etc. was built on us having done similar stuff for hundreds of years and depends today on the same thing. It's hard to overstate the importance of oil to the global economy or the existance of a country where there's huge potential to increase oil production -- only one such country exists. If I'd have stood up and claimed that i was worried about Saddam's WMD they would have looked at me like i had two heads.