Iraq: Conspiring for Oil

Illegal Invasion and Occupation

Above all, the invasion contravened natural justice and violated International Law. There was no just cause. Genuine evidence of weapons of mass destruction was never presented. Colin Powell’s slideshow to the UN was an embarrassment, satellite photos of trucks he claimed without any justification were mobile chemical weapons labs. The Uranium from Niger document the British Government had first waved in the air and hailed as a ’smoking gun’ was exposed as a fake by the IAEA before the invasion began (the question remains, who produced the fake?). While the British government’s February dossier was lifted from an 11-year-out-of-date post-graduate thesis and doctored to fit the propaganda. If the government already possessed evidence of WMD, why were they trawling the Internet for information already in the public domain? And worse, altering details to suit their scurrilous purpose.

The 45-minute claim that appeared in the September dossier was revealed by MI6 chief Richard Dearlove to refer to battlefield weapons, by definition only a threat to invaders of Iraq. Blair claimed he was completely unaware of this, an admission alone that ought to have led to his resignation and indictment for war crimes. What kind of weapons were they that could be assembled in 45 minutes? What was their range? What countries or strategic interests could be targeted? Had Blair asked any of these questions, he would have known the weapons were battlefield weapons and of no threat to anyone outside Iraq (Indeed it turns out even the battlefield weapons didn’t exist). For Blair to claim he took the country to war on WMD without asking fairly basic questions about Saddam’s weapons capability is astounding. But Blair was unconcerned about the reality of WMD; he had made his mind up long before to back Bush on regime change.

Christopher Meyer, who was then UK ambassador to the US, gave the game away on BBC Question Time (14th Oct 2004). Meyer let slip how he had told Washington officials, “we back regime change,” “but the plan had to be clever.” Clearly the plan would have to be clever, because regime change is illegal in International law. Meyer went on to reveal the advice David Manning (Blair’s foreign policy adviser) offered his US counterpart, “Don’t try and avoid the UN, because in the end we know he (Saddam) will never be able to accept the UN conditions. And because he won’t be able to do so, in the end it will involve his removal and by necessity regime change.” Clearly, WDM was a deception to justify an invasion that was already a done deal, the UN process a charade predetermined from the start to end with Saddam in violation and ‘warrant’ the US invasion. Indeed the invasion began long before March 2003, as the US/UK provocatively stepped up their bombing raids over Iraq’s no fly zones (source: Chomsky), further confirmation of an orchestrated outcome.

Neither was there right authority. It was clear the UN were not going to sanction a resolution for war. For France, Russia, China and others were satisfied Saddam was complying with resolution 1441 and allowing the weapons inspectors access to requested sites without impediment, a setback for US/UK plans that prompted them to ignore the UN route and go to war anyway. It was disingenuous for Jack Straw to claim UN resolution 1441 was sufficient to go to war, when Security Council members clearly didn’t agree and were prepared to vote against a motion for war. Besides, John Negroponte, US ambassador to the UN, on the day resolution 1441 was signed, clearly stated it did not sign anyone up to war.

The US heavily pressured the Security Council into resolution 1441. They tried to over-determine the outcome from the first. Hans Blix unsurprisingly found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence the CIA offered Blix proved remarkably unintelligent and embarrassing. The coordinates of ‘suspected’ weapons sites leading to fields, waste ground, roadsides. Yet the *US bullied and harangued Blix; a complete acquittal of Saddam in Blix’s report would be unacceptable to the US, he was forcefully told. But Blix could produce nothing of substance against Saddam. He requested more time, but the US/UK were primed for war.

* “The US wasn’t interested in what we had to say as inspectors… they ignored us and went to war.” (Hans Blix)

It was desirable for the UK government to pursue a new resolution to placate public opposition. In violation of International Law, the US planned to wiretap the other Security Council members (contravening the Vienna Convention), as they sought information on how members intended to vote, so they could then target those opposed with bribes to secure the desired outcome. When it was apparent Permanent Security Council members France, Russia and China would veto a resolution for war, the US gave up on the ‘clever plan’ and the bombs slammed into Baghdad.

But so much of this is irrelevant. There were no weapons of mass destruction and there never was credible evidence of such weapons. The year prior to the US engineered crisis, *Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice publicly stated as much. Significantly weakened by a long war with Iran, then crushingly defeated in the first Gulf war, and further debilitated by the internal uprising that followed. Weapons Inspectors monitored the country for seven years, there were 12 years of no fly zones, relentless UK/US bombing raids and lethal sanctions right up to the invasion of 2003. Official UN sources estimate the US/UK sponsored sanctions were responsible for the deaths of more than a million Iraqi civilians. Hospitals in Baghdad found it almost impossible to get hold of very basic medication. The UK Foreign Office blocked supplies of aspirin to Iraq. A threat to world security? More like a country brought to its knees.

” He (Saddam) has not developed any significant capability with respect to WMD… he is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours.” (Colin Powell, Feb 2001). “His (Saddam’s) military forces have not been rebuilt” (Condoleeza Rice, July 2001). This doesn’t mean other key members of the Bush administration (among them Cheney, Rumsfield, Wolfowitz and Perles) didn’t have a mind to attack Iraq (confirmation that they did is their 1998 letter to Clinton, advocating a military strike on Iraq, which see below); it merely tells us Powell and Rice were off script

Nor was there right intention. The US has always been after control of what are almost certainly the biggest oil reserves in the world. Throughout the 1980’s they tried to bid for oil contracts with Saddam. Donald Rumsfeld, in a consultancy role for Bechtel, tried to negotiate the construction of the Aquaba pipeline from Baghdad to Jordan. But Saddam demurred. In the aftermath of the first Gulf War, Saddam negotiated contracts for oil exploration rights with France, Russia and China, but ostracised the US and the UK.

So long as sanctions were in place, the contracts were held in check. But under UN resolutions the sanctions would be lifted once UNSCOM had dismantled and decommissioned Iraq’s armaments and weapons programmes. When it was becoming clear UNSCOM had almost completed the job, which would have meant, with the lifting of sanctions, oil contracts coming into effect that would place the world’s largest energy reserves outwith US control, Madeleine Albright unilaterally altered the conditions the UN had agreed. Sanctions would stay in place indefinitely, whether or not Saddam cooperated with the weapons inspectors. With no incentive and US agents hidden in the ranks of the inspections team working to overthrow his regime, Saddam refused further cooperation with UNSCOM, which gave the US (and the UK) the excuse to have the weapons inspectors withdrawn. The sanctions policy could be ‘justified’ if it could be claimed the weapons inspectors hadn’t been allowed to complete their task.

Sanctions were buying the US time. The Clinton administration funded a multi-million dollar programme throughout the 1990’s to have Saddam overthrown from within the Iraqi Republican Guard. The decapitation strategy would replace Saddam with a figurehead amenable to US designs, but the plan failed. The withdrawal-of-the-weapons-inspectors episode had critically kept the sanctions in place, but removed US covert agents from inside Iraq and made it more difficult to engineer a coup from within. So the US/UK turned the screw on the Iraqi population: sanctions were tightened, the bombing campaign intensified. *Clearly it was hoped the crippling of the Iraqi economy coupled with the abominable suffering of the Iraqi people would generate enough unrest within the Republican Guard to motivate Saddam’s demise.

*There are several precedents that support this analysis. Eisenhower approved the economic strangulation of Cuba in the expectation that “if [the Cuban People]are hungry, they will throw Castro out.” A strategy Kennedy backed with similar disregard for the suffering of the Cuban people. “The rising discomfort among hungry Cubans” mattered little, the only concern was that it would lead to Castros’ overthrow. (source: Chomsky).

(Similar nefarious schemes had worked in the past. The CIA engineered the overthrow of the democratically elected Mossadegh in Iran that brought in the corrupt regime of the Shah. They aided the brutal Suharto to usurp the elected Sukharno in Indonesia, beginning a reign of terror lasting more than 30 years that was responsible for internal political repression, genocide in East Timor and over a million deaths. The US was instrumental in Pinochet’s military coup that led to the death of the legitimate president Allende, eradicated democracy in Chile and eliminated political dissent with the torture and ‘disappearance’ of tens of thousands of left wing democrats.)

The US/UK ‘containment’ strategy succeeded in halting oil exploration contracts coming into effect that would lose them control over Iraq’s oil, but was responsible for the deaths of more than half a million Iraqi children according to UN data. A price worth paying, Madeleine Albright notoriously stated on US television.

It is a misconception that the Bush administration targeted Iraq because of fears after 9/11. Key figures in the Bush administration lobbied Clinton to deal with Iraq as early as 1998, advocating a military intervention. Saddam was clearly no threat, having endured years of weapons inspectors, crippling sanctions and relentless bombing raids. But it was imperative the oil contracts predicament was resolved in US favour.

Meanwhile several senior UN figures resigned at the brutality of the sanctions policy. France, Russia and China tabled a motion at the UN to have the sanctions lifted. As more information about the mass Iraqi deaths because of a lethal sanctions policy leaked into public consciousness, despite an almost total blanket omission in most of the mainstream media, it was becoming clear the sanctions couldn’t be maintained for much longer without ‘embarrassment’ to the US/UK governments. *Then 9/11 provided expedient context for an invasion.

* The day after 9/11, Iraq was high on the agenda: Rumsfeld, in a now notorious top-level meeting, pointed out that there were “no decent targets for bombing in Afghanistan,” and turned the attention to Iraq: “we should consider bombing Iraq instead,” emphasising Iraq had “better targets.”

The priority of triumphant US forces entering Baghdad in 2003 was to secure the oil ministry and seize the documents. Oil contracts signed with France, Russia and China were rendered null and void.