PNAC Pulverizes Lebanon Right on Plan

"THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD FOR BIG OIL"

Bobby Kennedy and Palast on why Saddam had to go.

"This war in Iraq has been the best thing in the world for Big Oil and OPEC. They've made the largest profits in the history of the world. The interesting thing about your book is you show how it was all planned from the beginning. The story is like a spy thriller." -- Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Listen to RFK and Greg Palast on Iraq, a 20-minute conversation about blood and oil, the podcast of 'Ring of Fire' from Air America.
The following is part of the story referenced in their discussion:

THE JERK: WHY SADDAM HAD TO GO

by Greg Palast

Excerpt from 'Armed Madhouse'

Beginning just after Bush's Florida 'victory' in December 2000, the shepherds of the planet's assets got together to plan our energy future under the weighty aegis of the "Joint Task Force on Petroleum of the James A. Baker III Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations." The master plan makers included Paul Bremer's and Kissinger's partner, Mack McLarty, CEO of Kissinger McLarty Associates; John Manzoni of British Petroleum; Luis Giusti, former CEO of the Venezuelan state oil company (until Hugo Chavez kicked him out); Ken Lay of Enron (pre-indictment); Philip Verleger of the National Petroleum Council, and other movers and shakers crucial to such bi-partisan multi-continental group gropes -- all chaired by Dr. Edward Morse, the insider's insider, from Hess Oil Trading.

Their final report detailed Saddam's crimes. Gassing Kurds and Iranians? No. James A. Baker was the Reagan Chief of Staff when the U.S. provided Saddam the intelligence to better target his chemical weapons. Weapons of Mass Destruction? Not since this crowd stopped selling him the components.

In the sanitary words of the Council on Foreign Relations' report (written up by Jaffe herself), Saddam's problem was that he was a "swinger":

Tight markets have increased U.S. and global vulnerabilityto disruption and provided adversaries undue potential in-fluence over the price of oil. Iraq has become a key"swing" producer, posing a difficult situation for the U.S.government.
Now hold on a minute: Why is our government in a "difficult" position if Iraq is a "swing producer" of oil?
The answer was that Saddam was jerking the oil market up and down. One week, without notice, the man in the moustache suddenly announces he's going to "support the Palestinian intifada" and cuts off all oil shipments. The result: Worldwide oil prices jump up. The next week, Saddam forgets about the Palestinians and pumps to the maximum allowed under the Oil-for-Food Program. The result: Oil prices suddenly dive-bomb. Up, down, up, down. Saddam was out of control.

"Control is what it's all about," one oilman told me. "It's not about getting the oil, it's about controlling oil's price."

Not surprisingly, the desires of the "Project for a New American Century," the neo-con field of dreams, of remaking Arabia, was not in the Baker Institute-CFR plan. However, the conclusion, Saddam must go, matched the neo-con's policy demand, if for highly different reasons. The Baker-CFR panel had a limited concern: Get rid of the jerk, the guy yanking the market.

More important, back in early 2001, the initial Baker-CFR report (another participant tipped me) was handed directly to Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney met secretly with CFR task force members (including Ken Lay) to go over the maps of Iraq's oil fields. That, apparently, sealed it. Cheney took the CFR/Baker recommendations as his own plan for dissecting Iraq, I'm told, beginning with the none-too-thinly-veiled take-out-Saddam "assessment."

And whose plan was it? I knew the membership of the Baker-CFR group was Big Oil and its retainers. But I was curious to know who put up the cash for drafting the extravagant report that was so protective of OPEC and Saudi interests. This document was, after all, the outline on which the Bush administration drew its grand design for energy, from Iraq to California to Venezuela. According to Jaffe, the cost of this exercise in Imperialism Lite was funded by "the generous support of Khalid al-Turki" of Saudi Arabia.

Excerpt adapted from Greg Palast's just-released New York Times bestseller, "ARMED MADHOUSE:

Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?,

China Floats Bush Sinks,

the Scheme to Steal '08,

No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War."

http://www.gregpalast.com/mailing/link.php?URL=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5HcmVnUGFsYXN0LmNvbQ%3D%3D&Name=&EncryptedMemberID=MTUzMjY%3D&CampaignID=21&CampaignStatisticsID=13&Demo=0&Email=trottingwolf@cox.net. May be reproduced without permission.

Special thanks to investigator Leni von Eckardt for preferring documentation over sleep.***
It is quite astounding to watch the American news media behave (as Lou Dobbs says) "like guppies feeding on the surface of every issue," while the PNAC plan to invade and destroy the Middle East sits ignored. Their shame and ability to betray their own country is only exceeded by their cowardice.

May Mother Earth and Father Sky hold the light on liberty and give us strength to hold this faith based fascist group of thugs and dead enders accountable before God.