No war for whose oil?

The slogan ’No war for oil’ rightly presumes that the Bush administration had plans for post-war profits from Iraq’s substantial oil reserves. But those plans were based on the Bush cabal’s relationships not with the major oil internationals, but with smaller independent firms. Everybody has now done the maths on Iraqi oil and found that their sums don’t add up.

THE US administration has cited many causes to justify its war against Iraq. Curbing weapons of mass destruction - so why not tackle nuclear North Korea? Combating terrorism - but Iraq is not even on the US State Department list of major terrorist supporters. Deterring threats to neighbouring states -well, the US cheered last time Saddam invaded Iran, and would probably do so again. Even liberating women - but Iraqi women are better represented in their government and military than US women. Most people suspect that the US has more material interests.

The popular slogan, "no war for oil", is closer to the truth than is Washington’s propaganda. The Bush administration cares about Iraq (as it has never cared about Pakistan, an unstable dictatorship with nuclear weapons and a plenitude of terrorists) because Iraq is in the middle of two-thirds of the world’s oil reserves. Baghdad is positioned to influence both the price and the availability of oil, the ultimate strategic commodity fuelling both the global economy and the US military. Monde Diplomatique