I just learned that originally the current US led expedition in Iraq was called Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL). Strangely enough Karl Rove quickly had that changed to Operation Iraqi Freedom – a deft move, Karl.
In this article by Greg Palast I also learned that “…the five largest oil companies pulled in $113 billion in profit in 2005 — compared to a piddly $34 billion in 2002 before Operation Iraqi Liberation.” The price of oil is up 371% since Clinton smoked cigars in the egg room and OPEC are very happy chappies (the price of oil is up 148% since early 2002). It seems there were two plans developed for post-war Iraq, one to privatise the oil industry and the other to control it. The control option won, Iraq plays nice with OPEC and everyone prospers. Well, everyone in the oil business anyway.
This is not new news – this BBC article and this Democracy Now movie were released along with the original Harpers article in March 2005. By the way the movie link requires RealPlayer (get the free version) and the reprint of the Harpers article is good. There’s a good timeline of nefarious events here.