No. of Recommendations: 4
In Iraq, the biggest problem during that whole Israeli errand was that the nest day,
One of the guys on TYT was around during the Iraq invasion. He said he saw a presentation by one of the Bush junta people, with four slides. iirc, he said slide 3 was something about the Iraqi government falling. Slide 4 said "TBD".
Recall Rant #1: the entire op was about taking Iraqi production off line, to raise oil prices.
Iraqi production had been restricted by UN sanctions, for a decade. Exports had been allowed to increase a bit, in the "oil for food program", but output was still constrained.
WTI was, at that time, $18-$20/bbl
Recall how fast Saddam presented the documentation to the UN about the disposal of all his WMDs?
Rant #1 long form: Saddam had destroyed all his WMD's, as required by the UN. He was about to present the documentation to the UN, and apply for repeal of the sanctions. Saddam had recently signed contracts with several (non-US) oil companies for development of Iraqi resources, in anticipation of the sanctions being repealed. Iraq had capacity to expand production far beyond what was allowed by the sanctions. The added supply would push oil prices even lower, hurting oil company profits. So, the Bush junta hatched a scheme to preempt repeal of the sanctions by invading. Instead of Iraqi production increasing, production would be disrupted by the war, tightening global supplies, and increasing oil company profits. To stoke the price increases further, the media cranked it's hype and hysteria machine up to "11", about "peak oil". *presto*, the price of oil quadrupled, and it all went in the oil company's pockets.
Rant #1 addendum: Iraqi production did not surpass the sanctions restricted level, until after the Bush junta left office in 2009. Then the Chinese moved into Iraq, and have doubled production, the outcome the Bush junta had fought against for it's entire term in office.
I anticipate the same "plan" here; not exploiting Venezuelan reserves to increase production, but to disrupt production to tighten supply and raise oil company profits.
Steve
