The Cross of Oil – GW Bush in Iraq

Well, despite the weasel wording, the American people were told last week that after five years of the War on Terror, al Qaeda is alive and well, prepared to strike anywhere, anytime... About the same time, reports were received that the US nurtured and democratically elected Iraqi government is totally dysfunctional – cannot come close to meeting US mandated benchmarks. This admission of US failure follows earlier forced declarations to correct misleading Bush misrepresentations that Iraq did possess WMD and was linked to al Qaeda before 9/11. Faced with all this vaporizing baloney, WHY DID Bush preemptively invade Iraq? OIL – OIL – OIL. Even BEFORE the invasion, VP Cheney awarded a 7 billion dollar contract to Halliburton to rebuild the Iraq oil industry. Bush's invasion was cheered on by his agitated, pro Israeli Neocon stooges who had another agenda, but Bush did not mind. He just coveted control of Iraq's black gold. For his war, neocons provided him a media propaganda blitz and an intense congressional lobby supported by the powerful Israeli political action committees in the US.

Republican Senator Stevens of Alaska said last week that the US cannot permit al Qaeda to control Iraqi oil, so the US must fight on. About the same time the leadership of Australia, part of Bush's coalition of the willing, said after dropping the mask: Australia is in Iraq for oil. We know the English occupy Southern Iraq where BP (British Petroleum) got its start in the early 1920s. Reviewing the invasion of Iraq, it is obvious that Iraqi oil production, oil administration offices, and pipelines were the main strategic objectives in the war. US troops on orders stood by as the the rest of Iraq was seriously looted under their noses and instead, they diligently guarded the oil related facilities. Even Iraqi ammunition dumps were foolishly left unguarded as US troops focused on Bush's oil priorities. The large scale looting of the economy, hospitals, and infrastructure set back Iraqi reconstruction for years. The looting of Iraq museums and cultural sites ripped the soul from the Iraqi people – Rumsfeld's reply to all this chaos was STUFF HAPPENS. Looting caused more devastation to Iraq than the war itself.

When Bush invaded Iraq, the price of oil was about 33.48 USD a barrel. Today it is shockingly over 70.00 dollars a barrel. Bush's father, President HW Bush, also had sticky fingers when it came to oil. The reason Saddam invaded Kuwait was that HW Bush had the Kuwaitis produce and sell oil at $11 a barrel when Saddam needed OPEC market value, at least $24 a barrel, to sell to pay for his war debts that left him broke after his war with Iran. Daddy Read My Lips Bush sold his Kuwaiti war to a multinational coalition on a promise of keeping oil prices down – forget about those other glorious reasons, such as the threat to Saudi Arabia, and protecting the non existing democracy and so called freedom of the despotic Kuwaiti sheiks. Saddam, to his eternal distress, now, like GW Bush, ironically found stealing oil is indeed a risky business.

Bush's invasion of Iraq is a bloody and costly enterprise and it is failing; but to the US peoples' dismay, it is not over yet by a long shot. His fiasco now costs $12 billion a month. There are estimates by a nobel prize winning economist that the war could cost trillions of dollars as it continues, and if long term aid to the many seriously wounded veterans is calculated. The US casualties become more outrageous when the metaphor BLOOD FOR OIL is applied. And that is why the Bush Administration does not link oil to the war officially. After five years of war there is little reconstruction and almost no security for the Iraqi people, but the US has built its permanent bases as the Jihadists continue to swarm around them.

The intelligence reports of al Qaeda's resurgence is a head blow to Bush's War on Terror. Despite regular, self congratulatory reports on gains against the Jihadists, the fierce Islamic bedbugs continue to procreate and bite – Bush still has not figured out how to exterminate them, no matter how many bombs and bullets he employs. As long as Bush remains in Iraq and aids Israeli occupation of Arab lands, the Jihadist ranks will continue to swell globally with the hatred of the US continuing to grow.

The war in Afghanistan has been sidelined by the Iraqi war, but you have to wonder what the NATO forces there have been doing wrong to have the US raise the reward for bin Laden from 25 million to 50 million USD and have the US Secretary of Homeland Defense Chertoff suffer from intuitive pangs of a Jihadist attack on the US. My sense of the operations in Afghanistan is that as long as it is a NATO run operation, it is doomed to be one of more profile and less success. Now that Bush has screwed around with the Russian Bear, the Afghan war even becomes more problematical – Russia prefers that NATO remain tangled in the Hindu Kush more than on the plains of Europe charging through the Fulda Gap, so it will do its best to keep it there to spend and bleed at the hands of the tribesmen. And the Russians know that turf well... Can you see them drinking a vodka toast to the NATO miseries?

It is uncertain how the Chinese view the Afghan war that is near their borders. The Chinese are diplomatically close to Pakistan, so further Bush meddling there in internal affairs may have more Chinese repercussions than their rejecting of US exports to China of American pig ears and chicken feet in the ongoing trade tensions between the two countries. One thing Bush's inept diplomacy has managed to do is bring China and Russia, two natural enemies, closer together.

Apart from the failure to accomplish US political goals in Iraq, the Iraqi Shiite premier Maliki told the US a few days ago that Iraq does not need US forces for security – but, if the US wanted to provide military equipment or training to Iraqi forces, it could. The Iraqi Kurdish foreign minister quickly popped up on US TV the next day trying to walk the statement back; but, Kurds and Shiites have a different view of the world that even Condoleezza's dysfunctional State Department understands. While the US forces fight their battle in the blistering desert heat, the Iraqi foreign minister also defended the fact that the Iraqi parliament took a month off for vacation by declaring that the Iraqis intended to take two months off, but compromised, taking only a month. I am beginning to believe the Iraqis really have sangfroid, at least as much as our sometimes pals, the French.

Bush has run out excuses for the invasion of Iraq. He cannot publicly admit it was for oil, otherwise each US KIA tombstone might read THIS BRAVE WARRIOR DIED FOR BIG OIL and that could cause serious damage to American patriotic sensibilities. His effort to keep the war going by arguing that he keeps faith with those who died is a loser's sweat argument that only continues to multiply our loses in situation where our goals remain like a mirage that keeps slipping away. Bush certainly has gone after the oil in Iraq, but in the process he has built a string of permanent bases over the top of the oil he intends to hold. He has few except big oil and frightened Israelis to support him; he needs US military manpower to sustain the strategy, which under today's circumstances, is almost burned out. He could buy more mercenaries disguised as private contractors, but these guys work expensively and their loyalty is available to the highest bidder, which could be a Russian or a Chinese who now have plenty of dough to buy them off. Spending 12 billion dollars a month, there comes a time when just to pay market price for the God Damned oil is wiser, and let occupation go. This certainly will be more cost effective than is the fighting and dying in the Iraqi debacle... Colonel Robert E Bartos USA RET

* Photograph: The upside-down Christ is a symbol for those who do the opposite of Jesus of Nazareth