BIG OIL VS. BIG NEOCONS

So says investigative reporter Greg Palast, left, who was interviewed on Democracy Now! about his recent BBC Newsnight report detailing secret U.S. plans to privatize Iraq's oil resources and the political fight it sparked with the oil companies. They resisted privatization because it would upset the OPEC monopoly and reduce profits for the oil companies.

Wolfowitz is being "tossed out" of the Pentagon, Palast says, essentially at the behest of the supposedly non-partisan James Baker Institute, which represents Saudi Arabia and the big oil companies among its clients. In his BBC report, broadcast this morning on D-Now!, Palast interviews Philip J. Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA, among others, to back up documents he has obtained about the secret privatization plans.

Carroll, who took control of Iraq's oil production a month after the invasion, "stalled the sell-off scheme," Palast reports, and Carroll's "chosen successor," a Conoco Oil executive, Robert McKee, "ordered up a new plan [from the Baker Institute] for a state oil company preferred by the [oil] industry."

In his BBC story posted last week on the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Palast wrote:

Two years ago today -- when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad -- protestors claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.

In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists."

"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.

In addition to watching his interview on Democracy Now!, you can go to Palast's Web site to see some of the documents. He also links to his BBC online story and to a tease of his magazine story in the April issue of Harper's. "The neo-cons, once in command, are now in full retreat," according to insiders and the documents. "With pipelines exploding daily, the fantasy of remaking Iraq's oil industry also went up in flames."

The tale has so many serpentine twists it's counter-counterintuitive. And Palast shows once again why he is a snake charmer in a class by himself.