Cheney and Bush planned the Iraq war to pave the way for US oil companies to profit. They ran up the debt to finance a war in Iraq that was unnecessary, merely to secure oil supplies and further profits for oil companies. That was their payment for putting Cheney and Bush in power. That is nothing short of a criminal abuse of power, in my opinion. Below are some data points:
sourcewatch.org
* The public interest group Judicial Watch, in July 2003, "after a protracted court battle with the White House," obtained documents utilized by the controversial Cheney Energy Task Force. It was discovered that the task force "led by Vice President Dick Cheney was examining maps of Iraq's oil assets in March 2001, two years before the United States led an invasion to oust Saddam Hussein."
* The task force had maps which showed "Iraq's oil fields, its major refineries and pipelines," a list of "companies from countries that were interested in doing business with Saddam's regime, ranging from Algeria to Vietnam," details of "oil and gas projects in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and [which included] information on the cost and status of projects in those countries." [4]
* "Bush's Cabinet agreed in April 2001 that 'Iraq remains a destabilising influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East' and because this is an unacceptable risk to the US 'military intervention' is necessary." [5]
* In December 2002, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, "a respected Washington think tank, prepared a classified briefing commissioned by Andrew Marshall, the Pentagon's influential director of the Office of Net Assessment, on the future role of U.S. Special Forces in the global war on terrorism. One recommendation was that "oil funds be used to defray the costs of a military occupation in Iraq." [6]
* In the December 13, 2002, briefing, deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz said that the "'the cost of the occupation, the cost for the military administration and providing for a provisional [civilian] administration, all of that would come out of Iraqi oil.'"
* A report produced by a Pentagon task force "secretly established" Fall 2003 "as part of the planning for the war" to study Iraq's oil industry "described the Iraqi oil industry as so badly damaged by a decade of trade embargoes that its production capacity had fallen by more than 25 percent." Contrary to the task force's findings, deputy secretary of state Paul Wolfowitz "told Congress during the war that we are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.'"
* On the eve of the handover of Iraq from the Coalition Provisional Authority on June 30, 2004, despite promises by the CPA to rebuild and expand Iraq's infrastructure, Iraq was "still not producing as much electricity or as much oil on a sustained basis as it was just before the war," which was attributed to "sabotage by insurgents and incompetence and profiteering by big US companies like Halliburton that captured virtually all of the reconstruction contracts, despite the much greater experience of Iraqi firms." |
