Jacob Levich wrote a piece, Yes, Tony, There is a Conspiracy – New Iraq Report, about a report that he had a hand in producing, that documents the shocking long range plan of this administration.

Jake came o­n our list when TheConversation posted something he wrote that was circulating widely o­n the Net after Bush addressed Congress, post 9/11: Bush's Orwellian Address – Happy New Year: It's 1984. A sentence: “The defining speech of Bush's presidency points toward an Orwellian future of endless war, expedient lies, and ubiquitous social control.”

This new piece, which Jake wrote a couple of weeks ago, chillingly fleshes out what that first o­ne pointed to. However, it makes a  statement that was so shocking that I wondered about not seeing it anywhere else. Also, it was part of a larger picture, of “American Empire,” that  the conspiracy theorists were promoting but seemed to me most likely untrue.  Here's Jake's paragraph that I had doubts about:

Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, quietly passed word to Russia and France that their countries will be frozen out of staggeringly lucrative postwar oil contracts unless they roll over and endorse the US attack.

If this were true, surely everyone would be up in arms over it, yet no more about it ever turned up. But, the piece scratched at me, especially as more stories about a U.S. master plan started coming from sources I respect — before Frontline put the seal o­n it this week (see below).  So, I went o­n the Net and searched. That Lugar item is out there — not in the American press, and o­nly o­n a couple of websites, but it was in the London Observer. US buys up Iraqi oil to stave off crisis:

Richard Lugar, the hawkish chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, suggests reluctant Europeans risk losing out o­n oil contracts. 'The case he had made is that the Russians and the French, if they want to have a share in the oil operations or concessions or whatever afterward, they need to be involved in the effort to depose Saddam as well,' said Lugar's spokesman.

Why aren't we arresting the United States for criminal behavior? Why doesn't anybody with the power to help remove Bush from office point to the nakedness of our emperor? Is it OK to threaten countries with economic ruin to get them to behave in ways we want? Add a question about buying our way into Turkey with money that's going to causes we find unsupportable. “We've pretty much already agreed to allow tens of thousands of Turkish troops to march into Iraqi Kurdistan to ruthlessly put down any Kurdish nationalism,” is what they said o­n warblogging.com. This is not to mention Turkey's negotiating for enough money for reconstruction up front because Afghanistan was abandoned by us and Turkey doesn't want the same fate. But, wait a minute, this bargain is being struck in the face of  us being about to participate in devastation being wreaked o­n Turkey. I don't know, maybe it's cause I'm a girl, but this calm process of guaranteeing rebuilding for what we are about to level doesn't rest easy in my psyche. I want all the money that's being spent o­n warring to go to making this a better world.

Quotes from Jake's Iraq piece:

Yes, Tony, there is a conspiracy, in the dictionary sense of the term: an agreement among people to perform a criminal or wrongful act. It consists not of a tiny cabal, but of the whole of the American power elite, from politicians to business executives to journalists…

Behind the Invasion of Iraq, the startling new book-length report authored by the Research Unit for Political Economy (RUPE), synthesizes the seemingly disparate threads of the US war drive in what amounts to a blistering indictment of American foreign policy. The report is lavishly documented and jargon-free; the effect, especially for readers with limited understanding of global commerce and finance, is of puzzle pieces clicking decisively into place.

The RUPE report wholly confirms the widely-held view of the coming war as a massive oil grab, “on a scale not witnessed since the days of colonialism.” Further, the current debate about arms inspections and alleged links to al-Qaeda is revealed as pure political theater, since the decision to invade Iraq was made months ago…

The US invasion of Iraq needs to be understood not as an end in itself but as the means to an end — the foundation of a New American Empire.

Listmember Rick Ingrasci [rick@bigmindmedia.com] sent this:

Subject: Frontline tells it like it is…

Dear Friends,

If you didn't catch Frontline o­n PBS — a show entitled “The War Behind Closed Doors” — you might want to check it out o­nline at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/.

A taste:

As the U.S. stands at the brink of possible war with Iraq, many are now warning about the potential consequences: the danger of getting bogged down in Baghdad, the prospect of longtime allies leaving America's side, the possibility of chaos in the Middle East, the threat of renewed terrorism.

But the Bush administration insiders who helped define the “Bush Doctrine,” and who have argued most forcefully for war, are determined to set a course that will remake America's role in the world. Having served three Republican presidents over the course of two decades, this group of close advisers — among them Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and perhaps most importantly, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz — believe that the removal of Saddam Hussein is the necessary first act of a new era.

In “The War Behind Closed Doors,” FRONTLINE traces the inside story of how that group of advisers — calling themselves “neo-Reaganites,” “neo-conservatives,” or simply “hawks” — set out to achieve the most dramatic change in American foreign policy in half a century: a grand strategy, formally articulated in the National Security Strategy released last September, that is based o­n preemption rather than containment and calls for the bold assertion of American power and influence around the world.

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