PART II–WAR FOR OIL AND DRUGS

“We haven't heard from [Osama bin Laden] in a long time. I truly am not that concerned about him.”

—President George W. Bush,
in a news conference on March 13, 2002

Oil and drugs are among the most profitable commodities in the world, coming in close behind the top moneymaker—armaments. Therefore, it should be no surprise that foreign policy, political maneuvering and open warfare have resulted from the struggle to control oil and drugs. This struggle can be clearly seen in the US military action in Afghanistan.

Its genesis began on the high plateau of Iran, which curves along the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. In ancient times, this area was known as Persia and was the spawning ground of several great civilizations. It was also the home of the “eternal pillars of fire” worshiped by the followers of Zoroaster, a sixth-century BCE sage who added monotheism to an even older Aryan creed. Today, most believe that the pillars of fire were flaming petroleum gas escaping through holes in the local limestone. Marco Polo wrote of springs in the area that produced water that was undrinkable but burned well and removed mange from camels. It was not until the modern era that man found a practical use for liquid petroleum—fuel for transportation and the machines of war.

In 1873, Robert and Ludwig Nobel, sons of the famed inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel, came to the Baku area on the western shore of the Caspian Sea and soon were supplying half of the world's petroleum supply. The Swedish Nobel brothers were soon in competition with the French branch of the powerful Rothschild banking family. At the same time, John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil was becoming a major force in the burgeoning oil industry and also coveted the Caspian Sea oil. With the help of their respective governments, these powerful families competed for control over the Caspian Sea oil for decades. This struggle has been called “the Great Game.”

Today, with the controversial claim that the world is rapidly running out of oil, public attention has been focused on the issue of “Peak Oil.” But the quest for oil is nothing new.

Petroleum has been behind all recent wars, beginning in the early 1940s, when a mostly rural and isolationist America was suddenly thrown into a world war as a reaction to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Americans mourned the loss of some three thousand soldiers and civilians in Hawaii and, in righteous indignation, allowed their country to be turned into a giant military camp. The federal government, which had consolidated so much power unto itself under the Depression-busting policies of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, would now grow even stronger and more centralized under the aegis of “national security.” It all seemed quite natural and necessary at the time.

But serious students of history now know that even that “good war” was the result of machinations by a handful of wealthy and powerful men. By closing off Japan's oil supplies in the summer of 1941, Roosevelt, closely connected to Wall Street power, ensured an eventual attack on the United States. It has now been well established that Roosevelt and a few close advisers knew full well that Pearl Harbor would be attacked on December 7, 1941, but chose to allow it to happen to further their agenda for dragging the isolationist American population into war.

In an odd addendum, the 9/11 attacks apparently blocked an effort to bring the truth concerning foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack to the American public.

Ever since the war, efforts have been mounted to exonerate the two military commanders who were initially blamed as being unprepared for the attack on Pearl Harbor. The latest attempt, aided by Delaware Representative Michael Castle, was stopped when White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card refused to pass along a plea for exoneration to President Bush despite the admission that Rear Admiral Husband Kimmel and Major General Walter Short “were, without question, honorable and patriotic Americans who served our country with bravery and dedication.” Furthermore, White House Weekly, in reporting this effort, declared, “Subsequent investigations by those inside and outside the military proved that Washington knew the Japanese were on the move but never told Hawaii.”

According to reporter James P. Tucker, Jr. the rationale for not forwarding the plea from the officers’ families to Bush was that the White House considered the issue too explosive in light of the questions being raised regarding the Bush administration's foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks.

During World War II, Hitler's Army Group South rampaged through the Ukraine in Russia and moved inexorably toward Baku and the rich Caucasian oil fields. With these oil reserves in hand, Hitler planned to turn south and capture the oil of the Middle East in a combined operation with Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's famed Afrika Korps’ assault from North Africa. This scheme was thwarted by Rommel's defeat at El Alamein and the eventual destruction of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad.

The Vietnam War was about the oil and mineral wealth of Southeast Asia and was prosecuted by men who had been close to Roosevelt and the secretive Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). CFR position papers had long voiced a desire for the United States to gain control over Indochina's oil, magnesium and rubber assets. There also has been incessant speculation that drugs played a major role in US activities in the region, as some have argued that the war was a cover for allowing covert protection for the “Golden Triangle” of opium production and to insure the clandestine importation of drugs to the United States.

In order to move into position in Southeast Asia, a provocation was again created. In August 1964, President Lyndon Johnson whipped Congress into a frenzy claiming that North Vietnamese gunboats had attacked the US Sixth Fleet in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam. “Our boys are floating in the water,” he cried. Congress responded by passing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which bypassed the Constitution and gave Johnson the power to wage war to stop attacks on Americans. Soon after this, ground combat troops augmented American military advisers there. It was the beginning of the real shooting war in Vietnam.

But the attack was all a lie. No evidence has ever been brought forward that such an attack ever took place. In fact, editors for US News & World Report (July 23, 1984) called it “The ‘Phantom Battle’ That Led to War.”

While America was waging war against North Vietnam, which we were told was merely a puppet of communist Russia and China, Johnson was encouraged by his CFR advisers to grant the Soviet Union loans at higher levels than offered during World War II, when they were our ally. US-backed loans provided Russia with funds to build facilities that turned out war materials that were then sent to North Vietnam for use against American troops. This support for the opposing sides was a prime example of the duplicity of the financiers behind our modern wars.

Everyone understood that the Persian Gulf War of 1991, as with most Middle-East conflicts, was a war for oil that ended with its cause celebre, Saddam Hussein, the “new Hitler,” still in power. This conflict also began with a fabricated provocation.

The well-publicized testimony of a young girl named Nayirah telling Congress how babies were dumped onto the floor from their incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital stirred angry support for war with Iraq. Months later, it was learned that “Nayirah” was actually the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the United States and that she had not actually seen the reported atrocities.

It was also learned that the American public relations firm of Hill & Knowlton had been paid $10.7 million by the Kuwaiti government to orchestrate a campaign to win American support for the war. Hill & Knowlton president Craig Fuller had been then-President George Bush's chief of staff when the senior Bush served as vice president under Ronald Reagan.

Interestingly, no one in Congress or the US news media bothered to substantiate the atrocity story. Similar unsubstantiated stories were presented to the UN a few weeks later by “witnesses,” who were never placed under oath and were also coached by Hill & Knowlton.

Fabricated atrocity stories, stock purchases, oil and grain deals, arms sales, loans and guarantees, the weakening of the Arabs to benefit Israel, the movement toward a global army and government controlled by a global elite created a mind-numbing entanglement during this struggle. “It is doubtful whether the ‘real’ reasons why the United States went to war in the Persian Gulf will ever emerge,” wrote authors Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen. “Unlike in Vietnam, where the ambiguous outcome elicited natural suspicions, in the Gulf the decisiveness of victory has buried the reality deeper than any Iraqi or American soldier who went to a sandy grave.”

But at least one American leader understood the futility of attempting to occupy Iraq to further objectives of the West. In a 1998 book entitled A World Transformed, former President George H. W. Bush explained his decision to call a halt to the Gulf War.

“Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into the occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in ‘mission creep,’ and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible…We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no visible ‘exit strategy’ we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It [the Gulf War] would have been a dramatically different—and perhaps barren—outcome.”

Apparently, Bush's reasoned argument against any occupation of Iraq was lost on his son. Even the arrival of Democratic President Barack Hussein Obama did little to stop the violence in that strife-torn nation.

Although by 2010 the Obama administration announced that under an agreement with the Iraqui government—which after all was kept in power by the US military presence—all US combat troops would be withdrawn by Dec. 31, 2011. Some duplicity seemed to be taking place.

Some combat troops remained in Iraq but received a name change. According to the Army Times, the 2nd Stryker Brigade combat team of the 25th Infantry Division remained but its name was changed to the “Advise and Assist” Brigade. Apparently at least two other combat brigades would remain under this policy. So, almost 50,000 US troops would remain, though not officially designated combat troops, despite the fact that they were the same personnel with the same weapons and equipment that operated there a year earlier. According to Army spokesman Lt. Col. Craig Ratcliff, seven “Advise and Assist” Brigades as well as two National Guard infantry brigades for “security” purposes will continue operations in Iraq. This number does not include the more than 150,000 private contractors such as Blackwater (now Xe).

To bastardize Shakespeare, a combat brigade by any other name is still a combat brigade. But such duplicity seems only appropriate in an occupation begun in lies and dissembling.