That sucking sound you hear...

Is the noise that human heads make when they explode. Greg Palast is at it again. This is actually nuttier than his post-election analysis of Ohio:

O.I.L.

It’s all about OIL!: In case you've forgotten what their real mission was, let me remind you of White House spokesman Ari Fleisher's original announcement, three years ago, launching of what he called,
"Operation

Iraqi

Liberation."

O.I.L. How droll of them, how cute. Then, Karl Rove made the giggling boys in the White House change it to "OIF" -- Operation Iraqi Freedom. But the 101st Airborne wasn't sent to Basra to get its hands on Iraq's OIF.

Do tell!: And what did the USA want Iraq to do with Iraq's oil? The answer will surprise many of you: and it is uglier, more twisted, devilish and devious than anything imagined by the most conspiracy-addicted blogger. The answer can be found in a 323-page plan for Iraq's oil secretly drafted by the State Department. Our team got a hold of a copy; how, doesn't matter.

Doesn’t matter? Hi,…one word for you Greg: Credibility. But I digress.

So the entire plan was to, what, exactly?:

There you have it. Yes, Bush went in for the oil -- not to get more of Iraq's oil, but to prevent Iraq producing too much of it.

You must keep in mind who paid for George's ranch and Dick's bunker: Big Oil. And Big Oil -- and their buck-buddies, the Saudis -- don't make money from pumping more oil, but from pumping less of it. The lower the supply, the higher the price.

It's Economics 101. The oil industry is run by a cartel, OPEC, and what economists call an "oligopoly" -- a tiny handful of operators who make more money when there's less oil, not more of it. So, every time the "insurgents" blow up a pipeline in Basra, every time Mad Mahmoud in Tehran threatens to cut supply, the price of oil leaps. And Dick and George just love it.

Dick and George didn't want more oil from Iraq, they wanted less. I know some of you, no matter what I write, insist that our President and his Veep are on the hunt for more crude so you can cheaply fill your family Hummer; that somehow, these two oil-patch babies are concerned that the price of gas in the USA is bumping up to $3 a gallon.

Not so, gentle souls. Three bucks a gallon in the States (and a quid a litre in Britain) means colossal profits for Big Oil, and that makes Dick's ticker go pitty-pat with joy. The top oily-gopolists, the five largest oil companies, pulled in $113 billion in profit in 2005 -- compared to a piddly $34 billion in 2002 before Operation Iraqi Liberation. In other words, it's been a good war for Big Oil.

As per Plan Bush, Bahr Al-Ulum became Iraq's occupation oil minister; the conquered nation "enhanced its relationship with OPEC;" and the price of oil, from Clinton peace-time to Bush war-time, shot up 317%.

Apparently world events transpire in a vacuum. At least in Palast’s world. Which makes sense, since as best I can tell he is a walking vacuum. As in lots of empty space where the brains ought to be…

Meanwhile, what does common sense and context add to this discussion? I give you Sim’s thoughts via the magic of the internet:

1. Any commentary which suggests a policy based around OPEC assumes that it is the powerful entity it once was. It is not. It is a player that is not of an order of magnitude much greater than the Texas Railroad Commission in global energy.

2. OPEC is NOT strangling us.

3. The oil industry is NOT run by OPEC.

4. If Cheney and Bush want less oil to ratchet up prices, why is the centerpiece of their misguided energy strategy the search for new sources, more refining capacity, etc ?