A greenie-weenie jingoistic term is “Energy Fascism,” defined as “increasing state involvement in the procurement, transportation, and allocation of energy supplies, accompanied by a greater inclination to employ force against those who resist the state’s priorities in these areas.”
And, if you needed a real life-and-death example, the greenie-scaly BG relayed an assertion from Matthew Rothschild that “It Was Always a War for Oil.”
Lee Raymond, former CEO of Exxon-Mobil, who AG Readers fondly know as Emperor Fossil I, icon of do-re-mi democracy American culture.
Before Bush launched the Iraq War, I had a bumper sticker that said “No War for Oil.” I got some one-finger salutes, and I remember a guy on a motorcycle screaming at me for several hundred yards.
Meanwhile, all the on-air cheerleaders for Bush’s war disputed the assertion that it had anything to do with that dirty three-letter-word oil.
But, it all comes out sooner or later. And now is later.
On Tuesday, Bush issued one of his notorious signing statements—this one on the latest Pentagon spending bill that he had just made into law. He objected to the part of the bill that barred the U.S. government from trying “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”
Why did he do that?
Because from day one in Iraq, he’s been trying “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.” As he sent our soldiers in, he warned Iraqis not to blow up pipelines or burn the oil fields. As our soldiers entered Baghdad, the only ministry they defended was the Oil Ministry.
And, for years, Bush has been twisting Prime Minister Maliki’s arm to open up the oil sector to foreign bids, which Maliki finally did on Monday. “The biggest ever sale of oil assets will take place today, when the Iraqi government puts 40 billion barrels of recoverable reserves up for offer,” wrote The Guardian on Monday. “Access is being given to eight fields, representing about 40 percent” of Iraq’s reserves, it noted, adding that BP, Shell, and ExxonMobil were all expected to bid.
This reckless, costly war was always about oil. And the occupation still is. Now we have the proof.
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Via Peak Energy we learn from MarketWatch that Flight Suit Boy “has used a signing statement to reject a Congressional provision barring the US military from controlling Iraq’s oil resources.”
William Pfaff writes that the conclusions of the report on American reconstruction of Iraq, which included the following statement: “Five years after embarking on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the U.S. government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program”, “should be written in fiery letters over the portal of the future president Barack Obama’s National Security Council.”