What Role the
Oil Industry Playing in
Bush's Drive to War?
By
Ralph Nader
As the drive to war in Iraq races toward a precarious endgame, the lead-footed
Bush Administration shows no signs of heeding to the caution flags flying
in from all sides.
Urgings to go slow are not
just a phenomena of "Old Europe." At home, retired General
Anthony Zinni, a consultant to Colin Powell, and many other retired
generals, admirals, and officers have warned about the potential for
"blowback." They argue convincingly that this pending war
diverts and distracts from the war on terror and is likely to catalyze
further acts of terror against the citizens and security of the United
States. Retired general Wesley Clark told the Senate Armed Services
Committee that a war would "super-charge recruiting for Al Qaeda."
With U.N. Security Council
Members France, Russia, and China still unconvinced of the need for
immediate military action, international support for "preemptive
strike" seems unlikely to materialize. Even governments that support
a U.S.-led war in Iraq, such as Britain, Turkey, Spain, do not have
the support of their people. If the U.S. chooses to go it alone or with
the help of only a few allies, the already present strains of international
anti-Americanism will become even more virulent.
Meanwhile, the Bush Administration
has been less than forthcoming in providing the public estimates of
the actual costs of a war, both in terms of troops and money. The American
Academy of Arts and Sciences estimates that over 10 years, war and the
reconstruction of Iraq could cost as much as $2 trillion - almost the
equivalent of the entire annual federal budget. In the New York Review
of Books, Yale Professor William D. Nordhaus puts thelow estimate at
$120 billion and a high estimate at $1.6 trillion, given a combination
of "different adverse effects." Despite the costs and dangers
to innocent civilians, one powerful administration constituency stands
to benefit from a unilateral war in Iraq that results in a U.S.-led
regime change. That constituency is the oil industry, whose slick influence
and crude ambitions permeate the administration from top to bottom.
Both the President and the Vice President are former oil executives.
National Security Adviser Condaleeza Rice is a former director of Chevron.
President Bush took more than $1.8 million in campaign contributions
from the oil and gas industries in the 2000 election. All told, 41 members
of the administration had ties to the oil industry.
U.S. oil companies, banned
from Iraq for more than a decade, would like nothing more than to control
the production of Iraqi oil. With reserves of 112.5 billion barrels,
Iraq sits on top of 11% of the world's oil. Vice President Dick Cheney
and Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ill.) are two of the many politicians who
have the question of who will control Iraq's petroleum on their minds.
Plans for control of the
oil fields are already being laid. The Wall Street Journal reported
on January 16 that officials from the White House, State Department
and Department of Defense have been meeting informally with executives
from Halliburton, Slumberger, ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips
to plan the post-war oil bonanza. But no one wants to talk about it.
Larry Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation
told the Journal, "If we go to war, it's not about oil. But the
day the war ends, it has everything to do with oil." The American
people have a right to know what role the oil industry is playing in
Bush's increasingly frenetic drive to war. What is being discussed in
these meetings regarding the oil industry's designs on this gigantic
pool of petroleum?
The American people also
have a right to know what was discussed in the numerous secret meetings
Vice President Cheney's national energy task force held with oil and
gas executives. Cheney has been adamantly secretive about these meetings,
despite repeated attempts by Congress and public interest groups to
learn what was discussed.
Cheney's energy policy casts
as inevitable that we will have to import 17 million barrels of oil
a day (two-thirds of our supply) by 2020 and subsequently recommends
"that the President make energy security a priority of our trade
and foreign policy." It does not recommend specific goals for conservation
anytime in the near future. Just as Cheney refused to meet with anybody
but industry cronies in formulating the national energy policy, Bush
is now refusing to entertain the counsel of anyone but war hawks. Repeated
entreaties by national peace groups, including veterans, clergy, and
business groups, for meetings with the President have fallen on ears
deaf to anything but the constant beating of war drums.
While it would be naive to
label this purely as a war for oil, the apparent connections are enough
to raise some serious questions. And when coupled with the Administration's
frighteningly stubborn insistence on ignoring the caution signs pouring
in from all sides, those questions become even more serious
Monday, February 17, 2003