What Role is the Oil
Industry Playing in
Bush's Drive to War?
by Ralph Nader
Dissident Voice
February 15, 2003
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.
Ralph Nader is America’s
leading consumer advocate. He is the founder of numerous public interest groups
including Public Citizen, and has twice
run for President as a Green Party candidate. His
latest book is Crashing the Party: How to Tell the Truth and Still Run for
President (St. Martin’s Press, 2002)