(Fwd) Securing What's Left of the Planet's Oil

[Ivo Skoric]

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Date sent:      	Sat, 19 Oct 2002 02:27:26 -0400
To:             	CERJ at igc.org
From:           	CERJ at igc.org
Subject:        	Securing What's Left of the Planet's Oil

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/101802_the_unseen.html

The Unseen Conflict; War Plans, Backroom Deals, Leverage and Strategy
Securing What's Left of the Planet's Oil Is and Has Always Been the Bottom Line
by Michael C. Ruppert
© COPYRIGHT 2002, Michael C. Ruppert and FTW Publications
All Rights Reserved
May be Reprinted or Distributed for Non-Profit Purposes Only

October 18, 2002 -- (FTW) -- What started out as a blitzkrieg, the Bush 
agenda for the invasion of Iraq is now producing a world picture that can 
only be described with one word -- confusing.  It is becoming apparent that 
outraged world opinion, guided by shrewd public relations efforts of 
foreign governments (including Iraq), has thrown a curve ball to the Bush 
military plan for a pre-election invasion and occupation.

But one curve ball is not a strikeout.  The continuing military build up, 
more frequent air strikes, and the risky covert deployment of combat troops 
in supposedly neutral regions shows the degree of Washington's commitment 
to war.

These troops are going to be used.

Russia, France and China are only stalling for time, hoping to cut the best 
backroom deals possible.  They're perhaps also hoping that the American 
Empire will make a fatal mistake or a delay will break Bush's political, 
popular, and economic support.

Wall Street's 500-plus point rally on the two days of shameless 
congressional votes authorizing the use of force last week clearly signaled 
what world leaders have known for some time, and what the American public 
is seriously beginning to grasp -- the whole thing is about Iraqi oil.

The Associated Press ran a story yesterday indicating that the U.S. had 
been overwhelmed by global opposition to the invasion of a country second 
only to Saudi Arabia for its known oil reserves.  Iraq is capable of quick 
production increases even if Saddam tries to destroy his oil fields, as 
former CIA director James Woolsey recently acknowledged.

The story's lead sentence read, "Facing strong opposition from dozens of 
nations, the United States has backed down from its demand that a new UN 
resolution must authorize military force if Baghdad fails to cooperate with 
weapons inspectors, diplomats told The Associated Press on Thursday."

However, a Reuters story released hours later clearly indicated that the US 
was playing hardball behind the scenes:

"Iraq's main opposition group says a post-Saddam government would review 
existing oilfield development deals with French and Russian companies and 
could favour US firms instead.

"Sharif Ali Bin Al Hussein, spokesman for the main Iraqi opposition group 
the Iraqi National Congress (INC), told Reuters in an interview that his 
group would open the oil sector to all companies, including the US majors.

"'We would have to review all contracts which have been signed by this 
regime to make sure it is in the interest of the Iraqi people and not just 
for Saddam Hussein,' Hussein said."

Nobody is asking who controls the INC.  It's a given.

The stakes are incredibly high for Russia.  Major press organizations are 
now acknowledging what FTW has been saying for months.  The Bush objective 
is to drive the price of oil down and simultaneously drive a stake through 
OPEC, forestalling a further and perhaps catastrophic crash in the U.S. 
economy.

News analyses from Pravda to Fox News have foreseen that a successful US 
invasion will result in crude oil prices of between $12 and $16 per 
barrel.  Oil currently costs $30 per barrel.

That would destroy Russia's economic recovery as it sells, hand over fist, 
its own diminishing reserves -- oil that is more expensive to produce and 
of a lesser quality than Mideast crude, while prices are at $30.  Iraq owes 
Russia $7 billion in debt from the Soviet era.

And on August 19, Russia and Iraq signed a $40 billion infrastructure 
development deal, which -- as reported in the Tehran Times -- saw a team of 
Russian engineers on their way to what may soon be targets of U.S. bombing 
raids.

Both Russia and France have development interests in major Iraqi oil 
fields.  The Reuters story reported, "Although [France's] TotalFinaElf has 
no contract, it has been earmarked by Saddam's government to develop the 
Majnoon and Bin Umar fields with reserves totaling 26 billion 
barrels.  [Russia's] Lukoil has signed a contract for the 15 billion-barrel 
West Qurna field."

The back room deals and implied threats are getting hot and heavy.  On 
Sept. 5, the Asia Times reported that Russia was considering an expensive 
trans-Siberian pipeline to service China.  This would compete with 
post-9-11 pipeline deals that have been negotiated to send Caspian and 
Central Asian oil through Afghanistan for the Chinese market -- under US 
control.

As FTW noted last month, the World Bank has opened offices in Kabul, 
Afghanistan to facilitate the financing of the US-backed projects.

Russia's move may not be much of a threat because Russian oil is inferior 
to Caspian oil.  Also, Russia has long passed its peak of production, which 
means that as time passes its crude oil will be increasingly expensive to 
produce.  The message is clear, however, and a coalition of nations opposed 
to US Imperial behavior could pull it off.

In the meantime Stratfor, a geopolitical analysis firm, reported that the 
US is quietly offering a 'quid pro quo' to Russia in the form of a trade 
off.  If Russia will sanction the US invasion, the US will allow Russia a 
free hand in Georgia to deal with Chechen and Islamic rebels, and 
presumably a piece of the profits from the new Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan 
(Azerbaijan/Georgia/Turkey) pipeline project to the Mediterranean that just 
broke ground.  It seems like a very little 'quid' for a lot of 'pro quo'.

And in Saudi Arabia, Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal made a second 
about face on Monday and once again categorically withdrew any Saudi 
support for the US war.

The timing was possibly influenced by a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) 
report released today that was exceptionally critical of the Bush 
Administration for not cracking down on Saudi Arabia's extensive financial 
ties to al Qaeda.

The CFR investigation, directed by Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, CEO of 
American International Group (AIG), was chartered by the CFR to be an 
intelligence analysis of terrorist financing.  Greenberg, a staunch Israeli 
supporter, is well qualified for this task.  In 1996 Bill Clinton floated 
his name to replace John Deutch as the director of central intelligence.

Greenberg and AIG have been connected by FTW in previous investigations to 
suspected money laundering through the Arkansas Development Financial 
Authority and to the drug trade.  In fact, AIG's San Francisco legal office 
recently employed the wife of convicted Colombian Medellin Drug Cartel 
co-founder Carlos Lehder.

The CFR criticism of Bush is significant for many reasons.  First, it 
signals that the CFR is anxious to pursue an agenda that will likely result 
in the demise of the Saudi kingdom and the division of that country, with 
the US simultaneously occupying both Iraq and the oil producing regions of 
Saudi Arabia.  FTW predicted this scenario last month.

The significance of a move that would give the US military control of 36 
percent of the world's oil is not lost on the rest of the world, and it 
suggests the presence of a much deeper reality.

So flimsy are the Bush Administration's frequently changing justifications 
for war that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jay Bookman wrote a 
September 29 editorial called "Pax Americana", in which he openly called 
the US an empire.

"The official story on Iraq has never made sense", Bookman wrote.  "The 
connection that the Bush administration has tried to draw between Iraq and 
al-Qaida has always seemed contrived and artificial.  In fact, it was hard 
to believe that smart people in the Bush administration would start a major 
war based on such flimsy evidence."

He continued to make the point that the administration had no Iraqi 'exit 
strategy' because it didn't intend to leave.  Period.  His premise seemed 
to be, 'Hey, let's stop kidding ourselves.  We are an empire and we should 
go out and act like it.'

But perhaps the most critical element of the post-9-11 landscape, which is 
made clear by the CFR report, is a sense of urgency held by major financial 
players.

As FTW has been saying for a year now, the only way both the urgency and 
the frenzy and the near desperation of these moves to carve up the world's 
oil can be explained is with one simple concept -- the world is starting to 
run out of oil.

Coming cataclysmic global oil and natural gas shortages are about to become 
very real, certainly within the next two years, to everyone on the 
planet.  Those countries that have access to what oil remains will survive 
and dominate, and those that do not will atrophy and disintegrate.

This is a deadly game of musical chairs.  It is the kind of unspoken crisis 
that would compel the U.S. Congress to worship Caligula's horse, forget the 
Constitution and international law, and sell out completely.

Many have almost worshipped the progressive, seemingly unassailable 
credentials and leadership of Senator John Kerry from Massachusetts, who is 
a possible 2004 Democratic nominee for the White House.  However, many have 
others have also charged him with being a privileged member of an elite 
ruling class.  Kerry was educated at Yale and belonged to the secretive 
Skull and Bones Society, of which both Bush presidents are members.

What one believes about Kerry's background is not significant.  What is 
significant is that he voted for the 'use of force resolution' in the US 
Congress last week without even a whimper.  That vote was noticed and so 
were many others.

These are strange times.

Yesterday's announcement by the State Department that North Korea has a 
nuclear weapons program is troubling for two reasons.

First, it raises all of the obvious questions about whether, if the U.S. 
isn't really concerned about oil, it will now drop all Iraqi plans and go 
invade Korea instead.  They seem to be closer to building a bomb than Iraq is.

But second -- and perhaps most importantly -- is the fact that, as reported 
by Stratfor, Pyongyang told the Bush Administration about the nuclear 
program two weeks ago.  Why didn't we hear about it then?

Stratfor suggests that reason is a pending summit between the U.S. and 
China where one country might be 'traded' for another.

But instead, it is likely that the announcements earlier this year that the 
two Korea's might unite scares the White House infinitely more.  What, 
then, would be the need for massive US troop deployments in the former 
South Korea, right next to China?

And isn't it also strange that a number of pipeline plans involving both US 
and Russian companies -- plans involving routes that might go around China 
and make oil marketable to Japan and South Korea -- seem to pass through 
North Korea?

Go figure.

We are already being prepared for the Bush Administration's fallback 
position if it cannot get the war it wants, when it wants it.  Yesterday, 
CIA director George Tenet sounded the clarion call in the last public 
hearing of the Joint House-Senate Intelligence Committee examining the 9-11 
attacks.

"Al Qaeda has reconstituted itself -- It is capable of multi-theater 
operations."

Tenet made no bones about the fact that another major attack -- one that 
will be very convenient for the White House -- is on the way.

The October 12 bombing of a nightclub in Bali that killed many Australians 
has not seemed to impact widespread anti-war sentiment among the people 
down under.  That might well be an omen for the outcome of the next 
terrorist attack in the US.

We now know that Bush et al knew enough about the last one to prevent it 
but did not.  It has already been shown that CIA-linked members of the 
Pakistani intelligence service helped to fund it; that five of the 
hijackers received flight training at U.S. *military* installations; that 
no fighters were scrambled in time to do anything; and that President Bush 
lied when he said he had no idea that planes could be used as weapons.

We know that it is a state secret as to whether the intelligence agencies 
told Bush what we now know that they knew.

I hope that this government fully understands how numerous, well-informed, 
now-seasoned and capable citizens will be watching an attack this time, and 
how quickly the worldwide networks that have formed in the last year will 
expose the first scintilla of untruth in the government's actions.

I hope this government understands that the "sleeping giant" of the 
American people is beginning to stir and unite with peoples all around the 
world who are already awake.

But, as my dear friend Catherine Austin Fitts loves to say, "Those who win 
in a rigged game get stupid".  And that is perhaps the most frightening 
thing of all.

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