http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=419&row=0AMY GOODMAN: That report by investigative journalist Greg Palast, who joins us now in our Democracy Now! studio.
Welcome, Greg Palast.
GREG PALAST: Glad to be here, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: An explosive report on these two plans. And tie them in now to the nomination of John Bolton to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank.
GREG PALAST: Well, only in weird Bush world is nomination to the presidency of the World Bank considered a punishment job. Basically Wolfowitz is being tossed out head first out of the Pentagon because he decided to take on one enemy too big for his own teeth, which is big oil.
The main spoils of the war in Iraq is a seat on OPEC. It's not just the fields; it is a seat on OPEC. What do we do with that seat? The neo-cons wanted to use our control of Iraq's oil to smash OPEC, to smash the power of what they see as an Arab-controlled monopoly and Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, that also meant smashing $56-a-barrel oil prices, and the oil industry was deeply unhappy.
So, there was a neo-con plan put out. In fact, you broke the report here two years ago when we were on the air saying that there was a plan to privatize and sell off all of Iraq's oil fields. There was. Then Phil Carroll of Shell Oil was assigned by George Bush to baby-sit the situation in Iraq. The oil man went in and said there ain't going to be no privatization on my watch. We don't work that way.
You have to understand, oil companies, when they privatize, the big oil companies never get it, it’s always the cronies of Chalabi and who’s ever in power in any country. So, the oil companies did not want to be locked out, so they weren't going to go along with it.
Plus, they didn't like the neo-con idea that if there was privatization, and production would be ramped up, OPEC would be destroyed, oil prices would fall apart, and that would be the end of record profits for the oil companies.
So, a new report was secretly ordered up by a guy named Rob McKee, who took the Shell man's place. McKee is from ConocoPhillips, paid $25 million by Conoco in his last year there, assigned by Bush to Iraq to the oil ministry there. And he ordered up a new study which was done by the Jim Baker Institute.
Now Jim Baker represents Exxon and the Saudi government. And the Baker Institute people, and the people they worked with, came up with a report that said that there would be a state-controlled company, which would be very OPEC-friendly, very oil company-friendly and would establish profit sharing agreements with international oil companies. And that was their recommendation. Privatization was dead out, and they were just livid about Wolfowitz.
The woman who is the chief guider on that project said, you know, here's Wolfowitz talking about democracy, yet he wants to do what 99% of Iraqis don't want. The oil companies don't want to own oil fields in flames. So, basically Wolfowitz came up against big oil and his cronies, Doug Fife and the others. So, their privatization plans, because they kept pushing them, just absolutely killed them off.
And we also got, of course, a story that you saw at the beginning, that at the very beginning of the war, in fact, even before Bush was inaugurated, but within a couple of weeks, there was a meeting of oil industry people, associated with Iraq, planning the overthrow of Saddam. An invasion which would look like a coup d'etat. We would actually send in the 82nd Airborne and replace Saddam, just give a new dictator his mustache, the Baathists would stay in power, nothing would change. It was in and out.
I think people got the wrong impression with Bob Woodward's book: Colin Powell did not oppose the invasion of Iraq. They were planning this from, like I say, the second week in office. Powell and the State Department people were opposing a long occupation and a remaking of Iraq. They just wanted to get rid of the top guy. They were quite happy with the Baathists, and they wanted to keep the oil flowing, and they didn't want this type of situation we have now with a bloody, brutal occupation, which is also, you know, jamming up the oil fields and creating a major problem.
So that, again, it is the State department simply had a different plan for invasion than the neo-cons. But after September 11, the neo-cons kind of seized control of policy. Now we've had a new kind of policy coup d'etat by big oil and the -- and OPEC allies in the government. They're in charge now.
AMY GOODMAN: It's also hard to believe that John Bolton becoming U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations is any kind of step down.
GREG PALAST: For them, you know, it is pushing the Bush policy. But you have to understand that the real levers of power are not in these public jawboning jobs. The real levers of power are behind those closed walls. So Wolfowitz had his power. He now has to take his hands off the levers, and Bolton is now in a position where he is told what to say, and he is not a person setting policy.
The neo-cons understand what's happening here, and they are screaming bloody murder. But they’re all being purged. This is a very big change in U.S. policy toward people like Negroponte, who are State Department establishment, oil-friendly, OPEC-friendly, Saudi-friendly.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, on that note, I want to thank you very much for being with us. The investigation, a joint BBC-Harper’s magazine investigation. Greg Palast’s latest piece out today in the April edition of Harper's magazine, called "OPEC on the March: Why Iraq Still Sells Its Oil a la Cartel."
Thank you, Greg.
GREG PALAST: You're welcome.
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