Why the war in Iraq was fought for Big Oil
Editor's note: Ten years ago, the war in Iraq began. This week, we focus on the people involved in the war and the lives that changed forever. Antonia Juhasz, an oil industry analyst, is author of several books, including "The Bush Agenda" and "The Tyranny of Oil."
(CNN) -- Yes, the Iraq War was a war for oil, and it was a war with winners: Big Oil.
It has been 10 years since Operation Iraqi Freedom's bombs first landed in Baghdad. And while most of the U.S.-led coalition forces have long since gone, Western oil companies are only getting started.
Before the 2003 invasion, Iraq's domestic oil industry was fully nationalized and closed to Western oil companies. A decade of war later, it is largely privatized and utterly dominated by foreign firms.
From ExxonMobil and Chevron to BP and Shell, the West's largest oil companies have set up shop in Iraq. So have a slew of American oil service companies, including Halliburton, the Texas-based firm Dick Cheney ran before becoming George W. Bush's running mate in 2000.
The war is the one and only reason for this long sought and newly acquired access.
Oil was not the only goal of the Iraq War, but it was certainly the central one, as top U.S. military and political figures have attested to in the years following the invasion.
"Of course it's about oil; we can't really deny that," said Gen. John Abizaid, former head of U.S. Central Command and Military Operations in Iraq, in 2007. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan agreed, writing in his memoir, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Then-Sen. and now Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the same in 2007: "People say we're not fighting for oil. Of course we are."
For the first time in about 30 years, Western oil companies are exploring for and producing oil in Iraq from some of the world's largest oil fields and reaping enormous profit. And while the U.S. has also maintained a fairly consistent level of Iraq oil imports since the invasion, the benefits are not finding their way through Iraq's economy or society.
These outcomes were by design, the result of a decade of U.S. government and oil company pressure. In 1998, Kenneth Derr, then CEO of Chevron, said, "Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas-reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to." Today it does.
In 2000, Big Oil, including Exxon, Chevron, BP and Shell, spent more money to get fellow oilmen Bush and Cheney into office than they had spent on any previous election. Just over a week into Bush's first term, their efforts paid off when the National Energy Policy Development Group, chaired by Cheney, was formed, bringing the administration and the oil companies together to plot our collective energy future. In March, the task force reviewed lists and maps outlining Iraq's entire oil productive capacity.
Planning for a military invasion was soon under way. Bush's first Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, said in 2004, "Already by February (2001), the talk was mostly about logistics. Not the why (to invade Iraq), but the how and how quickly."
In its final report in May 2001 (PDF), the task force argued that Middle Eastern countries should be urged "to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment." This is precisely what has been achieved in Iraq.
Here's how they did it:
I'm going to have to read these books - The Bush Agenda and The Tyranny Of Oil
I rather think that the War in Afghanistan served to create a two front war where Afghanistan would serve to draw off Taliban and Al-Quaeda fighters, without which, they would have created more of a military problem for the US in Iraq.
But I don't KNOW that to be true. Probably, it is too simplistic. But it is my thought. And it offers an explanation for why the US is still in Afghanistan - still drawing fighters to the region and away from already too troublesome post-war Iraq.
And if I had to guess, I think the invasion and permanent presence of the US in Iraq has shored up the dollar as a petro world reserve currency and has allowed the US to rack up such a tremendous amount of debt. It sort of allows us to keep a chain around the Chinese neck.
Sure. It still is difficult for Big Oil to do its thing in Iraq with the ongoing civil violence. But this is something Big Oil has gotten used to over the decades - something that Yergin wrote of often in his excellent history, "The Prize" (Yes, it is an excellent history despite what you might think of Yergin).
You know, back in 2004, I would have LOVED to have been transported to the year 2013 to see what and how everything went down. But now that I am here in 2013 and I look back at that whole period of time, I still scratch my head and wonder with so many questions.
Looks like we've found the other person promoting that old lie. We now have KJ and Dick Cheney.
