Oil and the looming threat to Iraq

Access to and control of Middle East oil has figured prominently in the strategic thinking of American policy makers. In the Bush administration, State Department policy planners discussed scenarios for taking over by force the oilfields of the Middle East and internationalising them.

Jane Mayer revealed in the New Yorker that a secret Bush National Security Council (NSC) document dated February 3, 2001, instructed NSC members to cooperate with Vice President Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force for “reviewing international policy towards rogue states” and “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.”


The Bush administration has denied that the Iraq war was for oil, and proclaimed its commitment to the preservation of Iraq’s sovereignty and Iraq’s territorial integrity.

Recent events, however, indicate that oil is playing a role in the looming threat to Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Sovereignty under occupation is at best nominal anyhow.

Gulf News