Gawd. Speaking of oil: It really is astonishing what some folks in this administration are willing to do to avoid breaking our petrol-addiction.
Check out this BBC scoop from Greg Palast, and this Juan Cole post on it. (Via Kevin Drum.) It’s too much to summarize in one blog post, but the long and short of it is that the neocons in Bush’s administration had a plan to invade Iraq and privatize (i.e., hand over to huge American companies) its oil industry, in order to break OPEC’s control over oil prices and production, before 9/11 (and the plan isn’t entirely dead yet). Three things in particular are astonishing about it: one, oil companies were overwhelmingly opposed — they don’t want to own Middle East oil fields, because, well, they’re sane; two, lots of high-level sources were willing to speak to Palast on record about this — it’s obvious that lots of folks feel like the U.S. has gone batshit crazy and they’re willing to say so publicly; three, the plan itself is nuts — not just Dr.-Evil-world-domination nuts, but utterly and completely doomed to failure. As Cole persuasively argues, it just wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t have much effect on oil prices. It would be a quagmire and a nightmare for all involved.
Of course, who was one of the prime movers behind the plan? Paul Wolfowitz. Why does this man still have a job?
