Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President + Iraq oil targeted before 9-11

Neil Mackay

[Editor's note: the author, an award-winning journalist with The Sunday Herald, Glasgow, Scotland, provided Culture Change this article and the related ones that follow. They are historic, though dated Sept. 15, 2002, and Oct. 6, 2002, respectively.]

A secret blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure ''regime change'' even before he took power in January 2001.

The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a ''global Pax Americana'' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power.

It says:

''The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.''

The PNAC document supports a ''blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great-power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests''.

This ''American grand strategy'' must be advanced ''as far into the future as possible'', the report says. It also calls for the US to ''fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars'' as a ''core mission''.

The report describes American armed forces abroad as ''the cavalry on the new American frontier''. The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document written by Wolfowitz and Libby that said the US must ''discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role''.

The PNAC report also:

-- refers to key allies such as the UK as ''the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership''; -- describes peace-keeping missions as ''demanding American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations''; -- reveals worries in the administration that Europe could rival the USA; -- says ''even should Saddam pass from the scene'' bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently - despite domestic opposition in the Gulf regimes to the stationing of US troops - as ''Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has''; -- spotlights China for ''regime change'' saying ''it is time to increase the presence of American forces in southeast Asia''. This, it says, may lead to ''American and allied power providing the spur to the process of democratisation in China''; -- calls for the creation of ''US Space Forces'', to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent ''enemies'' using the internet against the US; -- hints that, despite threatening war against Iraq for developing weapons of mass destruction, the US may consider developing biological weapons - which the nation has banned - in decades to come.

It says:

''New methods of attack - electronic, 'non-lethal', biological - will be more widely available combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool''; and pinpoints North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes and says their existence justifies the creation of a ''world-wide command-and-control system''.

Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP, father of the House of Commons and one of the leading rebel voices against war with Iraq, said:

''This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks - men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers during the Vietnam war.

''This is a blueprint for US world domination - a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing.''

Oil companies at the heart of Iraq crisis. Before 9-11, US targeted Iraq oil

President 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.

Vice-president Dick Cheney, who chairs the White House Energy Policy Development Group, commissioned a report on ''energy security'' from the Baker Institute for Public Policy, a think-tank set up by James Baker, the former US secretary of state under George Bush Snr.

The report, Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century, concludes: ''The United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a de-stabilising influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export programme to manipulate oil markets.

Therefore the US should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/ diplomatic assessments:

''The United States should then develop an integrated strategy with key allies in Europe and Asia, and with key countries in the Middle East, to restate goals with respect to Iraqi policy and to restore a cohesive coalition of key allies.''

Baker who delivered the recommendations to Cheney, the former chief executive of Texas oil firm Halliburton, was advised by Kenneth Lay, the disgraced former chief executive of Enron, the US energy giant which went bankrupt after carrying out massive accountancy fraud.

The other advisers to Baker were: Luis Giusti, a Shell non-executive director; John Manzoni, regional president of BP and David O'Reilly, chief executive of ChevronTexaco. Another name linked to the document is Sheikh Saud Al Nasser Al Sabah, the former Kuwaiti oil minister and a fellow of the Baker Institute.

President Bush also has strong connections to the US oil industry and once owned the oil company Spectrum.

The Baker report highlights massive shortages in world oil supplies which now leave the US facing ''unprecedented energy price volatility'' and has led to recurring electricity black-outs in areas such as California.

The report refers to the impact of fuel shortages on voters. It recommends a ''new and viable US energy policy central to America's domestic economy and to [the] nation's security and foreign policy''.

Iraq, the report says, ''turns its taps on and off when it has felt such action was in its strategic interest to do so'', adding that there is a ''possibility that Saddam Hussein may remove Iraqi oil from the market for an extended period of time'' in order to damage prices.

The report also says that Cheney should integrate energy and security to stop ''manipulations of markets by any state'', and suggests that Cheney's Energy Policy Group includes ''representation from the Department of Defence''.

''Unless the United States assumes a leadership role in the formation of new rules of the game,'' the report says, ''US firms, US consumers and the US government [will be left] in a weaker position.'' [rice.edu/projects/baker/]

The west's battle for oil

Five months before September 11, the US advocated using force against Iraq to secure control of its oil.

IT is a document that fundamentally questions the motives behind the Bush administration's desire to take out Saddam Hussein and go to war with Iraq.

Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century describes how America is facing the biggest energy crisis in its history. It targets Saddam as a threat to American interests because of his control of Iraqi oilfields and recommends the use of ''military intervention'' as a means to fix the US energy crisis.

The report is linked to a veritable who's who of US hawks, oilmen and corporate bigwigs. It was commissioned by James Baker, the former US Secretary of State under George Bush Snr, and submitted to Vice-President Dick Cheney in April 2001 - a full five months before September 11. Yet it advocates a policy of using military force against an enemy such as Iraq to secure US access to, and control of, Middle Eastern oil fields.

One of the most telling passages in the document reads: ''Iraq remains a destabilising influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export programme to manipulate oil markets.

''This would display his personal power, enhance his image as a pan-Arab leader and pressure others for a lifting of economic sanctions against his regime. The United States should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments:

''The United States should then develop an integrated strategy with key allies in Europe and Asia, and with key countries in the Middle East, to restate goals with respect to Iraqi policy and to restore a cohesive coalition of key allies.''

At the moment, UN sanctions allow Iraq to export some oil. Indeed, the US imports almost a million barrels of Iraqi oil a day, even though American firms are forbidden from direct involvement with the regime's oil industry. In 1999, Iraq was exporting around 2.5 million barrels a day across the world.

The US document recommends using UN weapons inspectors as a means of controlling Iraqi oil. On one hand, ''military intervention'' is supported; but the report also backs ''de-fanging'' Saddam through weapons inspectors and then moving in to take control of Iraqi oil.

''Once an arms-control program is in place, the US could consider reducing restrictions [sanctions] on oil investment inside Iraq,'' it reads. The reason for this is that ''Iraqi [oil] reserves represent a major asset that can quickly add capacity to world oil markets and inject a more competitive tenor to oil trade''.

This, however, may not be as effective as simply taking out Saddam. The report admits that an arms-control policy will be ''quite costly'' as it will ''encourage Saddam Hussein to boast of his 'victory' against the United States, fuel his ambition and potentially strengthen his regime''. It adds: ''Once so encouraged, and if his access to oil revenues was to be increased by adjustments in oil sanctions, Saddam Hussein could be a greater security threat to US allies in the region if weapons of mass destruction, sanctions, weapons regimes and the coalition against him are not strengthened.''

The document also points out that ''the United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma'', and that one of the ''consequences'' of this is a ''need for military intervention''.

At the heart of the decision to target Iraq over oil lies dire mismanagement of the US energy policy over decades by consecutive administrations. The report refers to the huge power cuts that have affected California in recent years and warns of ''more Californias'' ahead.

It says the ''central dilemma'' for the US administration is that

''the American people continue to demand plentiful and cheap energy without sacrifice or inconvenience''. With the ''energy sector in critical condition, a crisis could erupt at any time [which] could have potentially enormous impact on the US and would affect US national security and foreign policy in dramatic ways.''

The main cause of a crisis, according to the document's authors, is ''Middle East tension'', which means the ''chances are greater than at any point in the last two decades of an oil supply disruption''.

The report says the US will never be ''energy independent'' and is becoming too reliant on foreign powers supplying it with oil and gas. The response is to put oil at the heart of the administration - ''a reassessment of the role of energy in American foreign policy''.

The US energy crisis is exacerbated by growing anti-American feeling in the oil-rich Gulf states. ''Gulf allies are finding their domestic and foreign policy interests increasingly at odds with US strategic considerations, especially as Arab-Israeli tensions flare,'' says the report. ''They have become less inclined to lower oil prices A trend towards anti-Americanism could affect regional leaders' ability to co-operate with the US in the energy area. The resulting tight markets have increased US vulnerability to disruption and provided adversaries undue political influence over the price of oil.''

Iraq is described as the world's ''key swing producer turning its taps on and off when it has felt such action was in its strategic interest''. The report also says there is a ''possibility that Saddam may remove Iraqi oil from the market for an extended period of time'', creating a volatile market.

While the report alone seems to build a compelling case that oil is one of the central issues fuelling the war against Iraq, there are also other, circumstantial pieces of the jigsaw that show disturbing connections between ''black gold'' and the Bush administration's desire to wage war on Saddam. In 1998 the oil equipment company Halliburton, of which Dick Cheney was chief executive, sold parts to Iraq so Saddam could repair an infrastructure that had been terribly damaged during the 1991 Gulf war. Cheney's firm did (pounds) 15 million of business with Saddam - a man Cheney now calls a ''murderous dictator''. Halliburton is one of the firms thought by analysts to be in line to make a killing in any clean-up operation after another US-led war on Iraq.

All five permanent members of the UN Security Council - the UK, France, China, Russia and the US - have international oil companies that would benefit from huge windfalls in the event of regime change in Baghdad. The best chance for US firms to make billions would come if Bush installed a pro-US Iraqi opposition member as the head of a new government.

Representatives of foreign oil firms have already met with leaders of the Iraqi opposition. Ahmed Chalabi, the London-based leader of the Iraqi National Congress, said: ''American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil.''


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Source: http://culturechange.org/Bush_planned_Iraq_before.html