Many progressives believe Bush invaded Iraq to steal its oil. My candidate in the 2004 primaries - Dennis Kucinich - had the guts to say it on Meet The Press in February 2003, which freaked out war whores like Richard Perle and Richard Cohen. Kucinich was challenged by Tim Russert to prove that oil was the basis for Bush's war:
"I base that on the fact that there is $5 trillion worth of oil above and in the ground in Iraq, that individuals involved in the administration have been involved in the oil industry, that the oil industry would certainly benefit from having the administration control Iraq, and that the fact is that, since no other case has been made to go to war against Iraq ... oil represents the strongest incentive."
The central "war for oil" argument has been that Bush wanted to help his cronies at ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco steal Iraq's reserves to become fabulously rich. Cheney's Energy Task Force had a map of Iraq's oil fields and a list of non-US companies trying to get access to Iraq's oil business. After the invasion, Paul Bremer's occupation government tried to privatize Iraq's oil industry to benefit U.S. oil giants.
But important new revelations from David Corn add complexity to this basic argument. Corn has the scoop on a still-unpublished portion of the "White House Memo" from January 31, 2003 involving Russian president Vladmir Putin's refusal to support Bush's invasion:
For Putin, the problem was oil. He had convinced himself, quite wrongly, that military action against Iraq would lead to the collapse of the oil price. Bush had encouraged Berlusconi to go and explain a thing or two to Putin about the laws of supply and demand.
Obviously Putin didn't want oil prices to collapse because Russia's post-Soviet economy depends entirely on its lucrative oil sales.
But why did Putin think oil prices would collapse? (Obviously they haven't.) Presumably because he believed Bush would increase Iraqi output to destroy OPEC's price-fixing power, which was one of the neocons' loudly-proclaimed goals. This would also benefit U.S. consumers; some war supporters promised the war would be good for America because it would reduce the price of gasoline.
But did Bush really want to increase Iraqi oil production? Corn's revelation suggests the exact opposite - that Bush really wanted to reduce it.
Why?
The simple answer is that Bush's oil cronies would make far more money if Bush kept Iraqi oil off the world market - because the "laws of supply and demand" would raise oil prices. And that's exactly what happened:
And miraculously, profits of Bush's oil cronies reached record highs.
Was that Bush's plan from the outset? Is that the "supply" message that Bush sent to Putin via Berlusconi?
The actual 5-page White House Memo has never been published. Instead, portions of it have been described by Philippe Sands, the New York Times, and now David Corn. When will we get to see the memo itself?
