More on the REAL reason the war party wants to attack Iraq. And freedom or "eliminating weapons of mass desruction" has nothing to do with it.
Wall Street/Washington insider spills the dirty secret of
Iraq war
“Getting control of that oil will make a vast difference”
By Bill Vann
16 October 2002
In his October 7 speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, George W. Bush, addressing the question,
“Why Iraq?”, declared, “While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq
stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place.”
There followed the standard litany of warnings of imminent Iraqi chemical and biological
attacks on US soil, a looming threat of nuclear attack by Baghdad, and Saddam Hussein’s
supposed links with the Al Qaeda terror network.
There was one three-letter word that did not pass the president’s lips—oil.
The president is not alone in shying away from the oil issue in his public pronouncements.
The major US media outlets have virtually ignored Washington’s interest in Iraq’s oil fields,
which are second only to those of Saudi Arabia in proven reserves. Newspaper reporters and
columnists have paid more attention to French and Russian investments in Iraq, suggesting
crass mercenary motives for their opposition to the Bush administration’s ostensibly selfless
determination to enforce the mandates of the United Nations.
The situation is very different, it seems, when the cameras are off, and government officials
and corporate executives are speaking freely among themselves. Such was the case at a
meeting of prominent businessmen in Grand Rapids, Michigan last Friday, where the featured
speaker was a prominent Washington and Wall Street insider.
A US war against Iraq is “probably the most bullish thing I can think of,” William Seidman,
a senior economic adviser under four US presidents, told his audience at the posh Peninsula
Club.
Seidman, a commentator for CNBC, was an adviser to presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and
Bush senior. He is the former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and
also headed the Resolution Trust Company, the federal agency created to bail out the
scandal-ridden savings and loans industry in the 1980s. He served as a consultant on the
junior Bush’s transition team, and maintains close ties with top administration officials.
According to the Grand Rapids Press, which was alone in reporting the remarks, Seidman
told the meeting that he had just come from a State Department briefing in which US plans
for a military occupation of Iraq were outlined.
Removing the Iraqi government and installing a US military regime that would control the
country’s oil fields is “at least as important as eliminating weapons of mass destruction,” he
said. “Getting control of that oil will make a vast difference in all sorts of things, but
particularly the price of oil.”
“We are planning to set up a MacArthur-like” government in Iraq, the ex-official said
enthusiastically, referring to the US occupation regime established in Japan at the end of
World War II. “If we are in Iraq, nobody can use oil as a weapon.”
Seidman suggested that establishing US military rule over the Arab country would also
strengthen Washington’s hand in relation to the other top Middle East oil producer, Saudi
Arabia, effectively crippling its ability to set an independent oil policy. “Having two major oil
producers not part of any radical Muslim or any other unfriendly government,” he said,
would be “a huge additional factor in the world’s economy.”
This same point was spelled out in an opinion piece published by the Los Angeles Times on
Sunday. Co-authored by Robert Johnson, a New York financier who formerly was the Senate
Banking Committee’s chief economist and then managing director of Soros Fund
Management, and Thomas Ferguson, a University of Massachusetts political science
professor, the article was entitled “Oil economics lubricates push for war.”
Unlike Seidman, Johnson and Ferguson are less than “bullish” on the impact a US conquest
of Iraq would have on the world economy. They suggest that Washington’s military
unilateralism in relation to another Persian Gulf war is matched by an economic unilateralism
that could destabilize global economic and political relations.
“By setting a goal of ‘regime change’ rather than weapons elimination,” they write, “and by
ostentatiously preparing to assume operational and oversight responsibilities in Iraq for a
long stretch of time, the US is sending a strong message to treasuries and foreign ministries
around the world. In matters affecting either oil supply or the value of the dollar, we will act in
our best interests, with little consideration of the interests or views of others.”
Iraq’s abundant and cheap oil makes it “pivotal for stabilizing oil prices in both directions,”
they argue. “If prices rise too high, Iraq can simply pump more. Less obviously, however, if
the Saudis decide, as they have twice done in recent years, to wage a ruinous price war,
lowering prices sharply in order to deter other cartel members from overproducing, then
Iraq’s role is again key. With another low-cost gas station open for business, the Saudis
cannot count on maintaining total revenues as prices fall, because now they will have to split
the take with the Iraqis. This downward price deterrence will be welcome news to marginal
producers around the world, including those in Texas ...” |
