Cheney Task Force Had Eyes on Iraq Oil (in 2001)

[rainbow4321]

From a 2003 article:

http://www.astandforjustice.org/cheney-iraq.htm

Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force appeared to have some interest in early 2001 in Iraq's oil industry, including which foreign companies were pursuing business there, according to documents released Friday by a private watchdog group.


Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, obtained a batch of task force-related Commerce Department papers that included a detailed map of Iraq's oil fields, terminals and pipelines as well as a list entitled "Foreign Suitors of Iraqi Oilfield Contracts."


The papers also included a detailed map of oil fields and pipelines in Saudi Arabia and in the United Arab Emirates and a list of oil and gas development projects in those two countries.

"Opponents of the war are going to point to the documents as evidence that oil was on the minds of the Bush administration in the run-up to the war in Iraq," said Fitton. "Supporters will say they were only evaluating oil reserves in the Mideast, and the likelihood of future oil production."

[tk2kewl]

1. how could the article be from 1993?

:shrug:

[rainbow4321]

2. MY bad......2003.....sorry!!!!!!! I corrected it.

[WLKjr]

8. The way back machine???

:shrug:

[Angry Girl]

3. Palast wrote a nice article

Harper's Magazine investigation reveals how Big Oil vanquished the neo-cons - and OPEC is the winner.

"…For months, the State Department officially denied the existence of this 323-page plan for Iraq's oil …."

Some conspiracy nuts believe the Bush Administration had a secret plan to control Iraq's oil. In fact, there were TWO plans. In a joint investigation with BBC Television Newsnight, Harper's Magazine has uncovered a hidden battle over Iraq's oil. It began right after Mr. Bush took office - with a previously unreported plot to invade Iraq.

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=418&row=1


And this bit of info just knocks me off my feet...

Halliburton pumping the oil that’s not even metered
http://benfrank.net/blog/2005/10/21/oil_not_even_metered/

[acmavm]

4. That's what I said this morning. Get the info in the top secret energy

meetings Cheney held and you got the explanation of the why for everything this administration has done vis a vis Iraq.

Oh yeah, and the Cheney energy policy is all tied in with Valerie Plame and the leak.

[KoKo]

7. And the Media made fun of our "No War for Oil" Signs when we protested

BEFORE the Iraq Invasion. And Freeper types gave the "finger" to us calling us liars.

The Media who didn't report on the Protests was a Media complicit with the Government. That's why they never reported all of our protests or derided what little they did report. THEY KNEW the TRUTH!

It's disgusting...this complicity of the Media with the Bush propaganda machine. He should NEVER have been installed. I want Scalia, Thomas and the rest who installed him impeached along with the rest. :puke:

[Kurovski]

9. During those early days of protests I refrained from chanting

"no blood for oil" because I wasn't absolutely certain that was the reason.

Silly me. Great big silly me.

[KoKo]

13. They had drilled the WMD thing into all our heads so while

we had that little worry that "what if it's true" we still had to go with the info that our great Internet Folks had tracked down. I know there were many who protested, but weren't sure.

[berni_mccoy]

5. Kick

:kick: Extremely relevent wrt PLAMEGATE.

[Kurovski]

6. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil had mentioned some of this

in his book and interviews.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/main592330.shtml

"From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11."

"Based on his interviews with O'Neill and several other officials at the meetings, Suskind writes that the planning envisioned peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals, and even divvying up Iraq's oil wealth."

[Old and In the Way]

10. This is where the secret planning for the invasion/occupation got

started. They got Big Oil onboard for the carve up of the Iraqi's oil assets. Cheney, et al, were planing for this war before they stole the 2000 election....they tipped their hand by putting the PNAC template on the 'net. If we ever get access to all the memoranda and documents in this meeting, we will see that the war was a done deal, well before the Pearl Harbor event on 9/11.

I hope the Plame investigation opens up the investigation into the manufactured Niger Yellowcake which will lead back to Cheney's secret meetings. With luck, we can take down Scalia in this conspiracy to hide the truth from the American people.

[burythehatchet]

11. I bow to your superior optimism

anything's possible.

[highplainsdem]

12. More detail on this in a 9/20/2004 Toronto Star article archived at

Truthout.org:

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/4/6376/printer

Crude Dudes
By Linda McQuaig
The Toronto Star

Monday 20 September 2004

<snip>

There's something almost obscene about a map that was studied by senior Bush administration officials and a select group of oil company executives meeting in secret in the spring of 2001. It doesn't show the kind of detail normally shown on maps - cities, towns, regions. Rather its detail is all about Iraq's oil.

The southwest is neatly divided, for instance, into nine "Exploration Blocks." Stripped of political trappings, this map shows a naked Iraq, with only its ample natural assets in view. It's like a supermarket meat chart, which identifies the various parts of a slab of beef so customers can see the most desirable cuts .... Block 1 might be the striploin, Block 2 and Block 3 are perhaps some juicy tenderloin, but Block 8 - ahh, that could be the filet mignon.

The map might seem crass, but it was never meant for public consumption. It was one of the documents studied by the ultra-secretive task force on energy, headed by U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney, and it was only released under court order after a long legal battle waged by the public interest group Judicial Watch.

Another interesting task force document, also released under court order over the opposition of the Bush administration, was a two-page chart titled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfields." It identifies 63 oil companies from 30 countries and specifies which Iraqi oil fields each company is interested in and the status of the company's negotiations with Saddam Hussein's regime. Among the companies are Royal Dutch/Shell of the Netherlands, Russia's Lukoil and France's Total Elf Aquitaine, which was identified as being interested in the fabulous, 25-billion-barrrel Majnoon oil field. Baghdad had "agreed in principle" to the French company's plans to develop this succulent slab of Iraq. There goes the filet mignon into the mouths of the French!

<snip>

I can't recall any MSM coverage of this in the US.