Some facts should never be forgotten and here are some:

February 2001

In Armed Madhouse, Greg Palast describes what he calls Plan A.

A month after Bush’s ‘election’ to the White House a meeting is held in Walnut, California. The National Security Council and the State Department plan the invasion of Iraq. They even interview a replacement for Saddam. According to Falah Aljibury, who hosted the meeting, (Aljibury was a top U.S. oil industry advisor on Iraq) the original plan was for an invasion that had the characteristics of a coup ‘…shut everything down for two or three days… then everything ‘as is’.’ Under this plan the ministry would retain the government oil monopoly.

December 2001 –March 2001

The idea of a global energy plan is put forward by the James Baker III Institute and sponsored by Saudi Arabia. The fly in the ointment is Saddam who is doing unpredictable things and causing the oil price to fluctuate wildly… ‘requiring an immediate policy review – military, energy, economic, diplomatic.’ In March 2001 Baker, CFR Group member Ken Lay (remember Enron?) and other industry chiefs have a secret meeting with Dick Cheney in order to cast their eyes over a map of Iraq’s oil fields.

October 2001 – February 2003

Fired up by 9/11 and their easy victory in Afghanistan the neo-cons draw up a counter plan, Plan B. This involves a year long occupation in order to turn Iraq into a free market poster child. The 101 page secret document becomes a grab bag of goodies for insider lobbyists who fill it with corporate benefits such as copyright protections for Microscoft and Sanyo at the same time as they draw up the CPP (Comprehensive Privatization Program) to sell off all Iraqi state assets,‘especially the oil’.

September 2002

In Plan B, the purpose of privatizing Iraq’s oil is set out in the ‘Economy Plan’ spelled out by Ari Cohen of the Heritage Foundation for neo-cons at the Pentagon. The purpose is simple: destroy OPEC and the Saudis. Privatizing the oil is the key, which requires abolishing Iraq’s state oil monopoly and selling their oil fields, bumping up production over and above the OPEC quota thereby destroying OPEC, forcing oil prices down and ending Saudi Arabia’s stranglehold on America. Plan B is heavily promoted by Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Harold Rhode, all members of The Project for a New American Century.

January 2003

The State Department sets up a ‘Future of Iraq Group’ but denies it discusses oil. Bush sends Robert Ebel, former CIA and industry oil specialist to London to meet secretly with ‘Future of Iraq’ leader, Fadhil Chalabi to discuss post invasion oil plan. Fadhil, a fellow tribesman of Ahmad Chalabi, would- be ruler of Iraq, throws in his hand with the neo-cons and agrees with their plan to sell Iraq’s oil fields and to dismember and sell off its state oil company and then to increase oil production and quit OPEC. Ebel tells Chalabi his numbers don’t add up.

March 17

Bush II broadcasts this message to the Iraqis: ‘Do not destroy oil wells.’

This signals the beginning, as announced by Ari Fleischer, White House spokesman, of Operation Iraqi Liberation which is an acronym for OIL. This is quickly changed to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

March 27 2003

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz announces that Iraq will cost barely a cent: ‘There’s lots of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be U.S. tax payer money.’ Secret analysis he has received from the CIA and the Department of Energy says the opposite. This is perjury.

April 21 2003

Bush has appointed a three star general, Jay Garner, as occupation chief in Iraq. He is fired by Rumsfeld for trying to hold elections and refusing to sell Iraq’s oil fields. The neo-cons are still obsessed with Plan B.

May 2003 – June 2004

Managing Director of Kissinger Associates, Jerry Bremer replaces Jay Garner. He cancels the elections and appoints a new government. At its head he places neo-con favourite, convicted bank swindler, Ahmad Chalabi. Neo-con puppets then fire pro-State Department, pro-OPEC oil ministers and bring in Plan B. It sells off Iraq’s banks and changes the copyright laws to favour Microsoft and Sanyo. All of their activities result in 60% unemployment and an ‘insurgency’ which is boosted on a daily basis by poverty, occupation, rumours of oil privatization, and mistreatment and false imprisonment of Iraqis.

May 2004-March 2005

Dick Cheney deserts the neo-cons and sticks with Big Oil. By May 20 Ahmad Chalabi is on the run, wanted for espionage. His governing council is scuttled and a ‘sovereign’ government, with a Baathist at its head meets with State Department approval. Bremer gets the boot and John Negroponte, a firm friend of Big Oil replaces him. There is much rejoicing at the Council on Foreign Relations: ‘The realists have defeated the fantasists’ they bleat. Baathists fired by Bremer and Chalabi return to run the oil ministry and establish a state oil monopoly. They are Pro-OPEC and the Saudis are saved. Oil prices break all records reaching $50 a barrel and the oil reserves of the top five oil companies increase their value by over $2 trillion.

February 2005 to the present

More ‘progress’ is made. Negroponte gets the boot and is replaced as puppet headman of Iraq by neo-con PNAC darling Zalmay Kalizad. Then Chalabi returns to power with Shi’ite support and becomes temporary oil minister. He lacks the intestinal fortitude to privatize oil fields or dismantle OPEC. Crude rises to over $60 a barrel, on its way to over a $100 a barrel. The war is lost but the black gold stays golden

The families who have sons and daughters who died in Iraq need to face the fact that they died not to protect America but to protect oil, in particular, OPEC and the Saudis. Bush and Cheney are playing chess with real live chess pieces. This insanity needs to stop.

In MOCKERY of Charlton Heston, that STUPID JERK

Whose duty as a TRUE AMERICAN he did SHIRK

By BECOMING a pachyderm of FUDGE

Who believed the foul SLUDGE

That the right-wing uses for its WORK!!!!!