As part of his new book, Fuel on Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq, Greg Muttitt discloses the damning information he obtained under the Freedom on Information Act. The two whistleblowing Pentagon documents marked SECRET/NOFORN draw a vivid picture of Energy Infrastructure Planning Group’s role in 2002 as the Bush administration was contemplating occupying Iraq. In 2002, the EIPG was established by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, to plan how to run the Iraqi oil industry under the Coalition Provisional Authority, ultimately inclined to encourage private sector involvement. Much of what is laid out in the documents, and subsequently discussed in Fuel on Fire is about the EIPG’s long-term contracts with Halliburton, of which Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of at the time, that gave them controlling priority over Iraqi oil if it were to be overtaken by the U.S. Other incriminatory aspects of the released documents depict how under EIPG’s suggestion, the Bush administration denied the media’s questions and rumors about Big Oil being a motive or determining factor in sending troops to Iraq, and how there was an overall disregard for Iraqi civilian welfare throughout this process.

Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Funds pinpointed a number of accounting weaknesses that put “billions of American taxpayer dollars at risk of waste and misappropriation” in the largest reconstruction project of its kind in U.S. history. The report concluded the precise amount lost to fraud and waste can never be known.

Title: Secret Pentagon Docs Reveal Pre-War Plans to Get Big Oil into Iraq

Publication: Institute for Public Accuracy, July 17, 2012

http://www.accuracy.org/release/secret-pentagon-docs-reveal-pre-war-plans-to-get-big-oil-into-iraq/

“Fuel on the Fire”: Author Greg Muttitt on Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq, Arab SpringSource: Democracy Now, July 16, 2012
URL: http://www.democracynow.org/2012/7/16/fuel_on_the_fire_author_greg

Researcher: Jennifer Garza. Sonoma State University


Faculty Evaluator: Barbara Widhalm, SSU Professor Environmental Studies and Planning