IRAK

Guardian: A matter of life, death - and oil
Weapons of mass destruction are cited as the spur for action. Perhaps the real motive is something just as urgent?

"The US energy department frightened politicians with a study in 2001 known as the Cheney report after the former head of Halliburton oil services group, now US vice-president, who wrote it. He predicted that imported oil would need to rise from 10.4 million barrels a day at present to 16.7 million barrels a day by 2020.

The report spelled out the US dependence on a stable energy market and the need for a foreign policy that would protect America's energy supply. "In a global energy marketplace, US energy and economic security are directly linked not only to our domestic and international energy supplies, but to those of our trading partners as well," it said. "A significant disruption in world oil supplies could adversely affect our economy and/or ability to promote foreign and economic policy objectives, regardless of the level of US dependence on oil imports." "

"Fadel Gheit, a former Mobil chemical engineer and now an investment specialist with New York brokerage firm Fahnestock & Co, told 50 of the largest pension funds and financial investors in America before Christmas that the expected war was "all about oil" and that the global fight against terrorism was just "camouflage" to mask the real purpose. "