More Delicious Neo-Con Treats

Wondering about what's propelling that pesky insurgency in Iraq? Greg Palast has the answer. Apparently one of the big goals of the neoconservatives in Iraq was neither to make big bucks off the oil, nor to "liberate humanitarianism". Nope, it was to:

The industry-favoured plan was pushed aside by a secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas

Sadly, the insurgents put the "kibosh" on this deal, as they were able to elicit mass support by claiming that:

"Insurgents used this, saying, 'Look, you're losing your country, you're losing your resources to a bunch of wealthy billionaires who want to take you over and make your life miserable,'" said Mr Aljibury from his home near San Francisco.
"We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, pipelines, built on the premise that privatisation is coming."

Fortunately for OPEC, the oil industry appeared to be somewhat unhappy about the idea of crashing oil prices, so the new plan is to let the Iraqis nationalize the industry. Unfortunately for everybody in Iraq, the damage was already done.

(Thanks to Juan Cole for pointing this out on Friday, and for authoritatively showing that the entire idea was rubbish to begin with. To me, it's reminiscent of Perle's crackpot plan to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan by setting up loudspeakers blaring pro-American propaganda. I wouldn't dislike the people running the world so much if they weren't so, well, stupid.)