Examining recently released government and corporate sources,
researchers at the Institute for Policy Studies have uncovered new
evidence that oil has long been the driving concern behind US-Iraqi
relations. Key figures associated with the Bush Administration, in
particular Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, pressed Saddam Hussein
during the mid '80's to approve the Aqaba pipeline project from Iraq
to Jordan. In "Crude Vision: How Oil Interests Obscured US Government
Focus On Chemical Weapons Use by Saddam Hussein" the Institute for
Policy Studies reveals that the diplomatic pressure from Rumsfeld and
the Reagan administration happened during and despite Hussein's use of
chemical weapons. Behind the scenes, these officials worked for two
years attempting to secure the billion dollar pipeline scheme for the
Bechtel corporation. The Bush/Cheney administration now eyes Bechtel
as a primary contractor for the rebuilding of Iraq's infrastructure.
Bechtel's pipeline would have carried a million barrels of Iraqi crude
oil a day through Jordan to the Red Sea port of Aqaba. "The men who
courted Saddam while he gassed Iranians are now waging war against
him, ostensibly because he holds these same weapons of mass
destruction" said Jim Vallette, lead author of the report. "To a man,
they now deny that oil has anything to do with the conflict. Yet
during the Reagan Administration, and in the years leading up to the
present conflict, these men shaped and implemented a strategy that has
everything to do with securing Iraqi oil exports. All of this
documentation suggests that Reagan Administration officials bent many
rules to convince Saddam Hussein to open up a pipeline of central
interest to the US, from Iraq to Jordan." Crude Vision reveals how the
White House, through the Department of State and the National Security
Council, pressured the U.S. Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) and U.S.
Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) to approve financing
for this deal. Reagan officials knew of numerous human rights
violations by Saddam Hussein while they pursued US taxpayer support
for the pipeline. And it notes that the break in US-Iraq relations
occurred not after Iraq used chemical weapons on the Iranians, nor
after Iraq gassed its own Kurdish people, nor even after Iraq invaded
Kuwait, but rather, followed Saddam's rejection of the Aqaba pipeline
deal. "In their own words, we now see that for Administration
officials, a dictator is a friend of the United States when he is
willing to make an oily deal, and a mortal enemy when he is not" said
Vallette. Adobe Acrobat version of report (download free Adobe Acrobat
reader) Scanned memoranda obtained from the National Archives:

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