Reply #30: Need for a US military presence transcends the issue of Saddam H. [View All]

Remember the PNACers statement in their document, "Rebuilding America's Defenses" available on their website at www.newamericancentury.org :

While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Rebuilding America's Defenses Pg 14 (It's a PDF file so Adobe Acrobat Reader required to view).

There are two possible reasons as far as I can tell why the PNACers might have felt the need to have a susbstantial force present in the Gulf. One would have to be to control access to the energy resources and also possibly to help ensure the safety of Israel from neighboring Arab states or leaders. However, I think the oil would probably be reason No 1. For one thing it looks like the Bush administration does believe that Peak Oil (A world peak in oil production before a permanent and irreversible decline in production sets in, sometimes called the Hubbert Peak) is almost upon us. You can argue if you want whether or not Peak Oil is really iminent, but the facts tends to point that the oil soaked Bush gang of robber barons believe that Peak Oil might be upon us much sooner than we have been expecting. One of the chief proponents of a rapidly approaching world oil production peak is the prominent energy investment banker Matthew Simmons. Matthew Simmons was on Dick Cheney's 2001 energy task force. You can see Mr Simmons opinion of Peak Oil by reading my sig line.

And here are some of Cheney's thoughts on difficulties in meeting future oil demand.

Dick Cheney, Peak Oil and the Final Count Down
By Kjell Aleklett
Uppsala University, Sweden

In the April 2004 issue of the magazine the Middle East I found a statement that Vice- President Dick Cheney had made in a speech at the London Institute of Petroleum Autumn lunch in 1999 when he was Chairman of Halliburton. A key passage from his speech was: “That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day.”

It suggested that he was fully aware of the issue of peak oil. A full text of the talk had been available on the website of the Institute of Petroleum, but has now been removed ( www.petroleum.co.uk/speeches.htm ). Nevertheless, further research did bring to light a printed version, dated 24.08.00, as follows:

Dick Cheney: “From the standpoint of the oil industry obviously - and I'll talk a little later on about gas - for over a hundred years we as an industry have had to deal with the pesky problem that once you find oil and pump it out of the ground you've got to turn around and find more or go out of business. Producing oil is obviously a self-depleting activity. Every year you've got to find and develop reserves equal to your output just to stand still, just to stay even. This is as true for companies as well in the broader economic sense it is for the world. A new merged company like Exxon-Mobil will have to secure over a billion and a half barrels of new oil equivalent reserves every year just to replace existing production. It's like making one hundred per cent interest; discovering another major field of some five hundred million barrels equivalent every four months or finding two Hibernias a year. For the world as a whole, oil companies are expected to keep finding and developing enough oil to offset our seventy one million plus barrel a day of oil depletion, but also to meet new demand. By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of about ninety per cent of the assets.Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer greet oil opportunities,the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greeter (sic) access there, progress continues to be slow. ( Bold by the author)”

To understand the magnitude of the problem that Dick Cheney is addressing we can compare “fifty million barrels a day” with the total production coming from the six countries bordering the Persian Gulf (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, United Arab Emirates,
Kuwait and Qatar), that in 2001 produced 22,4 million barrels per day (Energy Information Administration).

Dick Cheney, Peak Oil and the Final Count Down (Adobe Acrobat Reader required to view)

The fact that some of the neo-cons are very pro-Israel probably would be a contributing factor to the eagerness to go into Iraq, but in my mind not the main one. Here's an article that pretty well sums up my own point of view on this topic.

Pro-Israel Hawks and the Second Gulf War

The interests of the pro-Israel lobby and the attack-Iraq caucus of the second Bush administration have converged, and are to a significant degree represented by the same people. That is not to say that the interests they are pursuing overlap completely. For the neo-conservatives operating under the patronage of Cheney and Rumsfeld, the immediate interests are demonstrating that the overwhelming military power of the US can and will be efficaciously deployed to make and unmake regimes and guarantee access to oil. Destroying the Iraqi regime and installing a long-term US military presence in the Persian Gulf of even greater magnitude than now exists will remove the present limited threat to US oil interests in the region. It would reduce the need to conciliate the Saudis or the Russians or to develop alternative sources of energy. With the Second Gulf War, the neo-conservatives aim to establish the principle, in the extraordinarily hubristic words of President George H. W. Bush after the 1991 Gulf war, that "what we say goes." This agenda is far broader than that of the traditional pro-Israel lobby, although Ariel Sharon and his supporters are amenable to it and will seek to exploit it for Israel's purposes to the maximum extent possible.

Pro-Israel Hawks and the Second Gulf War

Would US forces be in Iraq today if the regions main exports were cotton and potatoes? I tend to doubt that would be the case, Israel or no Israel.