Iraq War Ten-Year Commemorative Edition

Back in the day, I was a feisty anti-Iraq war blogger cranking out two or three pieces per month on Smirking Chimp and at my own blog Halcyon Days, supported through the generous efforts of Roberto Bourgonjen at Hoppa.com.  

The shoddy factual and theoretical underpinnings of the Iraq War were clearly visible, in clear text and open source, to anyone who cared to look—and were promptly confirmed after the invasion.  

Anybody remember the story of Saddam’s mobile bioweapons labs that Colin Powell peddled to the UN?  Post-invasion the CIA tried to claim they had found two of them—but they were actually hydrogen gas generators (for weather/artillery balloons) sold to Iraq by Marconi UK in the 1980s…and the US Army had identical units in its own inventory. 

The fact that the US electorate deigned to give George W. Bush a second term in 2004 despite his dramatic failings contributed to your humble narrator’s corrosive overall cynicism.

Here are some of my greatest hits, mostly from the run-up to the invasion, and one afterword on “intelligence failures”.

U.S. Petro-Gangsters Muscle in On Saddam’s Turf

Fighting ExxonMobil’s War in Iraq

Posted July 21, 2002

The “War on Terrorism” is no longer about bringing the September 11 murderers to justice.  It’s not about terror either, since hotbeds of terrorist, anti-US sentiment such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt serve as our allies and clients and not our enemies.  It’s not about bringing

democracy and justice to the benighted despotisms of the Middle East and Central Asia, as George Bush’s clumsy dictatorial meddling in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, and Iran has demonstrated.

To the pundits who share our unelected president’s taste for vainglory, our violent, unilateralist stomp across the world has the whiff of empire.  Op-ed pages now bristle with bald eagles symbolizing our right as the world’s only superpower to set our own rules and standards.

More erudite commentators try to qualify or mitigate our behavior as “hegemonism” since we prefer to dominate and manipulate our vassals, instead of subjecting them to direct imperial rule.

Indeed, America has yet to demonstrate the belly and ability for empire.  A national inclination toward xenophobia and isolationism does not predispose us to offer up our sons and daughters for a lifetime of service in foreign lands.  The legionnaires and proconsuls we do send abroad roost in their mini-America encampments and pour out their contempt for the inexplicable, deplorable, and ungrateful locals who surround them.

However, as the outlines of the military, diplomatic, and public relations war against Iraq emerge, the motive for Bush’s foreign policy is revealed as infinitely vulgar, meretricious, and beneath the national interest.  It is simply the money to be had from controlling and selling cheap oil.

Those who care about our country and its interests would be well advised to read the July 11, 2002 London Times article “West sees glittering prizes ahead in giant oilfields” by Michael Theodoulou and Roland Watson.  It is well worth quoting at length:

 Iraq has oil reserves of 112 billion barrels, second only to Saudi Arabia, which has some 265 billion barrels…Iraq estimates that its eventual reserves could be as high as 220 billion barrels…Extraction costs in these giant onshore fields, where development has been held up by more than two decades of war and sanctions, would also be among the lowest in the world…it would take five years, at most, to develop the oilfields and Iraq’s prewar capacity of three million barrels a day could reach seven or eight million…

I remember reading that some Saudi oil emerged from the wellhead with sufficient pressure to pump itself onto the waiting tankers; direct production costs were measured in pennies and the only significant production costs were the investments in well-drilling and pipelines.  Let’s say for the sake of argument it costs $10/barrel to get the oil out, and oil is selling for about $30 per barrel.  Profits of $20/barrel x 5 million barrels a day in increased output equals $100 million in profits per day.  And $20/barrel  x 220 billion barrels of reserves: if you want to do the math, it’s profits (not revenues) of US$4 trillion.

Isn’t $4 trillion worth murdering, lying, and cheating for?  Isn’t it worth a few dozen wars that trample over the lives, health, wealth, and well-being of millions of people?  George Bush and the oil boys think it is.

And please don’t be fooled into thinking we have to go to war to “secure our oil supplies”. Saddam Hussein would like nothing better than to sell oil at the international market price until a glutted SUV sat in every garage in creation.  That oil is screaming to get out of Iraq and nothing will stop it.  Like Tolkien’s Ring of Power, the oil of Majnoon, West Qurna, and Nalu

Umar—names that should be carved on the tombstones of every victim of our 21st century petroleum crusade—has summoned up vast, powerful, and furious legions from every corner of the earth determined to descend upon Iraq and wrest the fatal treasure from the hands of that unlikely hobbit, Saddam Hussein.

We are not fighting for oil; we are fighting for the profits from Iraqi oil, and the power that comes with it.  We have already spent billions of dollars and thousands of Iraqi lives seeking to deny Saddam Hussein access to these profits, and now the Bush Administration petro-gangsters are ready to move in and seize these billions for themselves.

What we have here is simply a battle between two sets of gangsters: one weakened and isolated by two decades of war and sanctions but still clinging to its valuable turf, another greedy and emboldened and panting to initiate a gang war to seize it.

The lust for Iraq’s trillions have inspired a desperate push by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz, and company to get the war going before Bush’s popularity ratings sink to the point that even the Democratic leadership will dare to question our imperial bobblehead’s reasoning and competence, and challenge the illogic of our stated reasons for invading Iraq.

There has been a frantic roadshow over the last few weeks to assemble the Iraq invasion coalition, culminating in America’s apparent suggestion that the Iraqi people yearn for a Jordanian prince to rule their shattered and benighted land as a monarchy.   The same wishful thinkers who expect liberated Iraqis to compose ecstatic paeans in their honor promise the invasion will release a tidal wave of democracy through the Middle East (but presumably avoiding the Kurdish areas of Iraq, which we have assured Turkey will remain firmly under the thumb of Baghdad), whose mysterious agency will also solve the knotty Israeli-Palestinian problem as a lagniappe.  This sweaty salesman’s effort to be all things to all people, including bleeding heart liberals, signifies nothing more or less than the oil crew’s willingness to say or promise anything as long as the invasion can be launched as soon as possible.