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tv   The Rachel Maddow Show  MSNBC  May 24, 2014 3:00am-4:01am PDT

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no details too small. american express open forum. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. good evening, thanks for being with us. let me say up front that this is not a story about north korea and that that's kind of the point. but on october 9, 2006, at around 10:30 a.m. local time the ground started to shake pea nooet a small village in northeast corner of north korea. halfway around the world, back here in the u.s., seismologists recorded what looked to be a 4.3-magnitude earthquake. but what happened in north korea that morning was not an earthquake. it was a nuclear explosion. >> kim jong-il denies the u.s. and the world and claims to have set off an atomic weapon. >> that day in 2006, the secretive, repressive north korean regime showed the world that they had built and tested a
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nuclear bomb, a rogue county building nuclear weapons recall threatening to proliferate that technology, stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. but when 9/11 happened and the u.s. government announced that those actions would now constitution a grave and unacceptable threat to the united states, there was no radical change in our actions toward north korea. there was no move by the u.s. to disarm that country after 9/11. instead, the u.s. went into iraq. if the threat of weapons of mass destruction was the driving force for u.s. action after 9/11, why iraq rather than north korea? at the time, north korea really was building a nuclear bomb and threatening to proliferate that technology. iraq wasn't. the case for war in iraq that was presented to the american people proved to be a smoke screen. there were no weapons of mass destruction. there was no reconstituted iraqi nuclear program. the case that was made publicly for that war turned out to be false. what was true? what was the reason for that war?
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we know that it wasn't the reasons that they told us. so, why did we really do it? newly obtained documents from both here and abroad, as well as interviews with many of the key players in the war planning process and in the invasion now provide an answer to that question, the question of why we did it. watch. ♪ >> i will swear to not only uphold the laws of that land -- >> summer or of 2000. >> but lift the spirit of this country when i put my hand on the bible. i will also swear to uphold the honor and the integrity, the office to which i have been elected so help me god. >> we love you, bush! >> as the presidential race heats up, the economy threatens to stall. the problem is energy costs, a looming crisis.
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>> in the united states and throughout the world tonight, the rising prices of oil are beginning to be a drag on these boom economic times. the high price of oil and the soaring price at the pump have been at the top of the national conversation for months now. >> with global energy demand on the rise and u.s. dependence on foreign oil at an all-time high, george w. bush turns america's looming energy crisis into a central issue for the presidential campaign. >> we got a potential crisis in the energy markets, because we have had no energy plan. and it's -- to me, that's the -- that -- that's possible problem for the next administration. >> when it's clear that he will be the republican nominee and with energy taking center stage in the campaign, bush taps dick cheney, a man with deep experience in both politics and the oil industry, to be his running mate.
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>> i believe you're looking at the next vice president of the united states. >> the two running mates make the case that the clinton administration did not know how to handle the issue of oil, but a george w. bush administration would. >> those gasoline prices are going up. you know why? there has been no energy plan. >> the fact we don't have an energy policy out there is one of the major storm clouds on the horizon for our economy. >> rewind a year before that election. dick cheney is ceo of the oil service firm, haliburton, speaking at the institute of petroleum's fall conference in london. he says there, "for over 100 years, we, as an industry, have had to deal with the pesky problem that once you find oil and pump it out of the ground, you have got to turn around and find more or go out of business." looking ahead to 2010, by which time he says the world's energy needs will have increased by millions of barrels of oil per day, cheney asks, "where is the oil going to come from? "the middle east, with
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two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost is still where the prize ultimately lies." arguing that oil is the fundamental building block of the world's economy, the future vice president says "governments and the national oil companies are obviously controlling about 90% of the assets. companies are anxious for greater access there," he says, "but progress continues to be slight." >> they sought oil that was just not accessible because of political circumstances. oil that if it could be accessible, was abundant and easy to market. >> when dick cheney gave that speech in london and he was talking about the industry's interests, later, he was talking about the government's interests, but the conclusion of both of those was the same. we need to get into the middle east. >> in the summer of 2000, iraqi leader saddam hussein and his state-run oil company control about 10% of the world's oil reserves. >> experts say saddam has terrific leverage now because with demand for oil high and
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u.s. supplies at a 24-year low, the 2 million barrels of oil a day iraq produces matter. >> my big fear is that saddam hussein is going to take the advantage of this tight market to cut oil production and that could send prices up much higher. >> god bless you all. and god bless america. >> on the campaign trail, bush and cheney zero in on saddam's control of vital oil sources as a potential threat to america's security. >> on the clinton/gore watch, saddam hussein's iraq has become a major supplier of oil to america. this means that one of our worst enemies is gain more and more control over our country's economic future. >> i think if we look for something that could develop, it's the possibility that we might find ourselves without adequate supplies of energy in the future and there would be no quicker way to shut down our economy than that. >> as bush and cheney take office in january 2001, they
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inherit a country that is thirsty for oil and an enemy sitting of an sea of it. >> iraq is sitting right there in the waterfront. all you got to do is stick a straw in it, pipe it out to the boat, the boat goes around the straits of hormuz and there it is in european markets. >> what it has and what it puts on to the world market makes it a very important player. it was an oilman's mecca or utopia, for sure. ugh. heartburn. did someone say burn? try alka seltzer reliefchews. they work just as fast and taste better than tums smoothies assorted fruit. mmm. amazing. yeah, i get that a lot. alka seltzer heartburn reliefchews. enjoy the relief. i missed you, too.ou.
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january 2001 -- >> i george walker bush do solemnly swear. >> george w. bush assumes the presidency, with the nation's energy concerns near the forefront. 11 days into office, bush assembles his national security team for the first time. along with the vice president and national security adviser, condoleezza rice the principals include secretary of state colin
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powell, defense secretary, donald rumsfeld and treasury secretary, paul o'neill. >> paul o'neill opened up everything for the book i wrote about him in the bush administration, including 19,000 documents. in the first national security meeting of the bush presidency january 31st, 2001, he a reached with colin powell. >> the subject of that meeting that day was the middle east, iraq. >> immediately, there's talk of the arab/israeli conflict and bush says, you know, i don't think much is going to be done over there. and bush says, well, what do you think the big issue in the region is, condi, to condi rice, at which point she says i think iraq is the big issue in this region, the destabilizing force and that's going to be our focus. the reaction of both o'neill and powell, they are startled. o'neill summed it up, bush
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basically saying i want to overthrow saddam. find me a way to do it. not if. how. >> saddam hussein's past use of chemical and biological weapons and the prospect of him developing a nuclear weapon make him a prime target. as does the liberation of what iraq has under the ground. >> in the first meeting, rumsfeld says, imagine, imagine if iraq was essentially a client state of the united states? imagine how that would look, if they were a friendly state. if we had primacy and access and maybe control of their oil field and rumsfeld is pointed about this, in the first meeting, in fact, oil fields, oil fields that will be essentially our oil fields. >> as the national security council trains its focus on iraq, that same week, president bush also directs vice president cheney to head up a high-level
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energy task force. its operations are run out of vice president cheney's office. >> it was a highly secret operation and it was arranged to be that way. they tasked these people to hide away in a room, in secret, holding meetings, and coming up with a policy. >> cheney's task force meets privately with energy lobbyists, as well as executives from some of the nation's top oil companies. concerns about big oil's influence in crafting u.s. energy policy will eventually lead congress' general accounting office to file an unprecedented lawsuit against the white house for access to energy task force records. >> john dingell, who was chairman of the energy and commerce committee, and i requested the gao to do an investigation because while we were sending letters to the vice president, we weren't getting responses. >> they said, no, these are presidential advisers. we don't have to divulge what
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they are doing, whereas if it had been cabinet agencies, they would have been forced to divulge who they were meeting with and what the e-mails were, what the topics were. >> did we talk to energy companies? absolutely. you'd have to be a damn fool to put together a comprehensive, nationwide energy policy and not talk to energy companies. >> in order for me to be able to get good sound opinions, those who offer me opinions or offer the vice president opinions must know that every word they say is not gonna be put into the public record. >> the white house battles to keep secret most task force files and they will ultimately prevail in the courts in that fight, but the administration opponents are eventually able to pry loose a number of secret task force files. although it's not known to the public at the time, the cheney energy task force reviews this document detailing potential foreign suitors for iraqi oil field contracts. it's essentially a list of
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international oil companies that are lining up to get into iraq. the task force also obtained detailed maps of middle eastern oil fields. the map of iraq pinpoints the exact locations of the country's pipelines, refineries and supergiant oil fields. >> we had oil fields we could divide up, foreign suitors, along with american suitors, meaning major oil firms and major contractors, like haliburton, could line up for parcelling of those oil fields. >> none of these documents is included in the final energy task force report that's made available to the public and to congress. >> there was nothing that congress was told about and nothing that the energy task force publicly revealed. >> "the new yorker's" jane mayer discovered another document that hadn't been publicly revealed. mayer found the classified document, dated february 3, 2001, directs members of president bush's national security council to cooperate with the cheney energy task
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force, combining two seemingly unrelated fields, the review of operational policies toward rogue states and actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields. in the first month of the bush presidency, strategy for the potential use of military force toward rogue states and gaining access to new oil fields, are melted together. >> if you look at the nexus of rogue states and seizing and capturing and controlling oil assets, there aren't too many states in the world that fit that definition. iraq stands at the top of the list. i mean, that's like saying, okay, a little planning on iraq. >> this january 2001 report, also reviewed by the task force, warns that with global oil demand skyrocketing, oil-rich iraq may not be able to build the infrastructure necessary to meet the upward curve in energy demand.
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the report says the decades-old sanctions against iraq are keeping much of that country's oil from getting to western markets. >> the demand for world oil was so intense that you really needed to unlock all of the supply you could find. and at that time, the sense was that both iraq and iran were the two sources of really bottled up supply that was irrationally off world markets. >> another report reviewed by the task force just a few months later promises that iraqi reserves represent a major asset that can quickly add capacity to world oil markets. the report urges the u.s. government to conduct an immediate policy review toward iraq, including military assessments. all of this months before 9/11. >> i certainly wouldn't argue that iraq and the decision to go to war and oil were unrelated. ? nah, i'm good.
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but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america. engineering and innovation jobs. advanced safety systems & technology. shipping and manufacturing. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that's not a coincidence. it's one more part of our commitment to america. let our position be absolutely clear, an attempt by
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any outside force to gain control of the persian gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the united states of america -- [ applause ] -- and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force. >> january 1980. [ applause ] a generation before 9/11, president jimmy carter announces to the world that the united states is prepared to use military force in the persian gulf in order to keep open the free flow of middle eastern oil to the world market. >> our philosophy has been, since world war ii and up until today is that we are most secure when the global market works. it doesn't necessarily carry a nefarious connotation in the
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sense of america's thirst for physically controlling middle eastern oil. >> you don't care who gets it, as long as who gets it makes it available to the world at a reasonable price. >> ten years after president carter says u.s. military force will, if necessary, keep oil flowing to market, saddam hussein invades the oil-rich nation of kuwait and the first gulf war is launched. president george h. w. bush's defense secretary at the time is dick cheney. >> iraq controlled 10% of the world's reserves prior to the invasion of kuwait. once saddam hussein took kuwait, he doubled that to approximately 20% of the world's known oil reserves was and that gave him a stranglehold on our economy and that of most of the other nations of the world as well. >> despite that stated motive of protecting the free flow of oil, the president's public case for war centers on saddam hussein and his oppressive regime. >> we are dealing with hitler
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revisited, a totalitarianism and a brutality that is naked and unprecedented in modern times. and that must not stand. >> my boss, colin powell, was chairman of the joint chiefs at the time, and he had problems with hw, president bush, going out and talking about hitler around things like that because he knew it was such a camouflage. you know, this is a mask to get the american people's support. the first gulf war was all about oil. >> the horror of 9/11, ten years after the gulf war, impels the first president bush's son to go to war. he first launches a retaliatory war in afghanistan. but then quickly puts three other nations on notice, north korea, iran and iraq. >> states like these and their terrorist allies constitute an
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axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world, by seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regions pose a grave and growing danger. >> all three nations have been on america's national security radar for decades, but now, after 9/11, the bush administration makes the case for action to disarm them. it is not just the threat of rogue states using weapons of mass destruction themselves, the president argues, but the prospect of a rogue state providing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons technology to terrorist groups. neither iran nor iraq is known to have nuclear capability, but north korea is steaming full speed ahead to a nuclear bomb. >> we argued about this in the state department, why wasn't there more concern with north korea when the cia was telling us that north korea probably already had plutonium-based nuclear materiel and the answer
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was 100,000 casualties, minimum, and a real mess. so no one wanted to do korea. and of course, the footnote was, as always, korea didn't have any oil. >> the public case is about weapons. 9/11 changed everything. the threat of weapons of mass destruction now drives american policy. but policy toward the nation posing the most clear and present danger on wmd, north korea, doesn't change dramatically. instead, inside the administration, it is the existing, pre 9/11 planning about iraq and iraq's oil that goes operational. it's one month after 9/11. the state department forms something called the future of iraq project, a comprehensive plan for what a new iraqi society will look like after saddam is gone. state department officials assemble a group, including iraqi exiles, to plan for everything from health to education to oil and energy.
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leading the oil team is a highly regarded former cia energy analyst named robert ebel. >> said we are going to bring together all these senior ex-iraqi oil officials and we are going to have them prepare a report on the future of oil in iraq. >> members of the group meet in london. they meet at a washington, d.c. area hotel. they assert that without a radical restructuring of its oil industry, iraq's oil potential will remain unrealized. in this draft report, revealed here publicly for the first time, the state department group calls for international oil companies to be allowed back into iraq and for the rapid expansion of iraqi oil production, "in the quickest possible time." >> these findings were how this bunch of ex-iraqi oil officials envisioned how they would come in and tell the government what it needed to do. >> publicly, the administration
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presses its case to the american people that iraq must be confronted before saddam hussein's true intentions are revealed in a nuclear mushroom cloud. >> the last thing we should want is a smoking gun. a gun doesn't smoke till it's been fired. >> privately though, the internal deliberations are also about exploiting iraq's oil. the pentagon is debating "whether to use control of iraqi oil to advance important u.s. foreign policy objectives affected by energy issues." well, the national debate is over aluminum tubes and mobile biological weapons labs, internal planning documents note that increased oil production in a postwar iraq would have the eventual affect of reducing world oil prices. >> prior to our even going to war in iraq, the focus was on oil. and iraqi oil. and how to take it over far more than anything else. >> in public, bush
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administration officials continue to maintain that oil is not a factor in their war deliberations. in this infinity cbs radio interview broadcast on c-span, defense secretary donald rumsfeld is pressed on that issue. >> mr. secretary, what do you say to people who think this is about oil? >> nonsense. it just isn't. there's certain things like that myths that are floating around and i'm glad you asked. it has nothing to do with oil. literally nothing to do with oil. >> behind the scenes though, planning for iraq's oil goes into overdrive. rumsfeld's defense department has just recruited former exxon executive, gary vogler to plan for the administration of iraq's oil sector, soon after the impending invasion. >> our mission was to repair, restore iraq's oil sector to the prewar level before we went in. and we got word in probably november that we needed to be
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ready by the middle of february. we took that to mean that we needed to be ready to go to war by the middle of february. >> according to vogler, he and a pentagon team traveled to houston, texas, to the epicenter of big oil to discuss their postinvasion plans for iraq's oil sector. the defense department team does not convene at a u.s. military base or even at a government building. they meet, instead, at this houston location, the offices of kbr, a subsidiary of the oil company, haliburton. part of the defense department's prewar planning for iraq's oil takes place in a halliburton subsidiary office in texas. a detail not known to the public before now. >> the bush administration had lots of contacts in houston in the sophisticated executive suites of the major u.s. headquartered oil companies and
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they reached out there. >> the pentagon team that traveled to houston calls for rapidly increasing iraqi oil production soon after the invasion. they set an initial goal of bringing production up to 3.1 million barrels a day, 50 more than iraq was producing at the time. the long-term goal is to increase iraq's oil production to more than 5 million barrels per day, more than iraq has ever produced. while administration officials insist that increase in production is aimed at financing the reconstruction, and that oil proceeds will benefit the iraqi people, their war plans also note that the policy will put "long-term downward pressure on oil prices, help consumers and diversify/increase global oil supply." as all of this detailed planning is going on in private, the bush administration's public argument for war is about everything but oil. >> his regime aids and protects terrorists, including members of al qaeda.
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>> the weapons he is developing could well fall into the hands of terrorists who might be able to use them. >> the lives of iraqi citizens would improve dramatically if saddam hussein were no longer in power. >> none of the behind-the-scenes planning for iraq's oil is publicly known and the administration leaves oil out of the public conversation all together. but a large segment of the american public suspects that oil is a motive. no blood for oil becomes an anti-war battle war cry. >> people misunderstand this business of oil. it isn't about possessing it. it isn't about exxonmobil and chevron and elf and total owning the oil. it is about the oil flowing freely at a reasonable price. so this is what we saw when we mean protecting oil. we mean protecting the access, protecting the price, protecting the stability and so forth, not owning it. >> it wasn't a war for oil, but
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it was in a meaningful way, a war about oil and about the role that oil plays in our world and in our world economy. >> the idea was to go into iraq to remove saddam hussein and his government. once that job is done, then it's about oil. period. (man) that's a good look for you. (woman) that was fun. (man) yeah. (man) let me help you out with the.. (woman)...oh no, i got it. (man) you sure? (woman) just pop the trunk. (man vo) i may not know where the road will lead, but... i'm sure my subaru will get me there. (announcer) love. it's what makes a subaru, a subaru. alright, that should just about do it. excuse me, what are you doing? uh, well we are fine tuning these small cells that improve coverage, capacity and quality of the network. it means you'll be able t post from the breakroom.
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i'm richard lui with your top stories. a wild fire burning out of control. that blaze has scorched nearly 8,000 acres and is just 5% contained. president obama has nominated julian castro as the next housing secretary. castro is currently the mayor of san antonio. pope francis is heading to the middle east for a three-day visit. he arrives in jordan on saturday. the pope will also make stops in israel and the west bank. get back. get back. >> winter 2002/2003.
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as the white house drumbeat for war in iraq grows stronger, millions of people across the world are marching against it. >> no more war. no more war. >> in my country, in britain, we had more than 1 million people demonstrating on the streets of london against this war. the opposition to british participation in the war was absolutely immense. >> british prime minister tony blair's government, like its u.s. counterpart, denies vigorously that overthrowing saddam hussein is about oil. >> let me first of all deal with the conspiracy theory idea that this is somehow to do with oil. there is no way whatever, if oil were the issue, it would not be infinitely simpler to cut a deal with saddam who i'm sure would be delighted to give us access to as much oil as we wanted if we could carry on building weapons of mass destruction. >> if britain, we have two major oil companies, bp and shell, they were asked what have you asked the british government for
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in relation to the iraq war? and both the oil companies and the blair government said, we haven't even talked about it. absolutely no meetings on the subject. so, i managed to get documents which recorded five meetings that took place between bp and shell and the british government between october 2002 and march 2003, five meetings. one of the meeting was between bp and the british foreign office and the opening sentence was "iraq is the big oil prospect. bp are desperate to get in there" so you had bp, the blair government both saying in public, although we don't talk about this, we are not thinking about the oil. in private, as these documents reveal, they were talking fundamentally about it. >> back in the u.s., the bush administration is also denying a "wall street journal" report that administration officials held meetings about the war with oil industry executives. but british documents now reveal that in the fall of 2002, ahead of the invasion, bp's middle
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east director held a week of meetings with officials from both the u.s. state department and the pentagon, including with paul wolfowitz, donald rumsfeld's second in command. at the pentagon with just two months until the invasion, attention turns to who will run iraq in the immediate days and weeks after the fall of saddam. retired army lieutenant general jay garner, a man with deep experience in the region, gets the call from donald rumsfeld. >> he said what we need right now somebody is to come right in, put a staff together, operationalize the plans we put together. you know, you think if you're going to put that together, i'd have office space and a desk and computers and telephones and all that. i didn't even have a chair. >> that lack of planning when it comes to basic post-saddam governance stands in stark contrast to the level of planning that's already well under way for iraq's oil sector. >> there was a very strong sense of urgency. it was 12-, 15-hour days, from
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what i remember. they knew where every pipeline, where every refinery, gas plant, oil field, gas oil separation plant was. people said we didn't plan well for iraq i would take exception to that when it came to the oil sector. >> we are spending more time figuring out how to deal with the oil fields in iraq than we were our own troops when we went to war in iraq. >> all iraqi military and civilian personnel should listen carefully to this warning. in any conflict, your fate will depend on your actions. do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the iraqi people. >> as the invasion of iraq gets under way, months worth of detailed planning aimed at securing iraq's oil resources gets put into action. >> you have soldiers from the 173rd airborne brigade who are guarding key facilities in the oil fields right now, because we
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know we want to get the oil flowing as soon as possible. >> i remember several times, the statement that we want to make sure that we don't given an optic that makes the american people we are going in there for oil, because we are not doing that. you know, that was -- i knew that from day one. >> despite is that stated goal, as the u.s. military arrives in baghdad, with heavy looting under way, marines protect iraq's oil ministry to the exclusion of other critical iraqi government buildings and institutions. >> we let the museums go. we let the art and culture go. we let the telephones go elsewhere. we let the administrative offices go. ministry of the interior, ministry of justice, we let all those things go. and we protected the oil ministry. >> the perception that the u.s. has launched a war for oil is further stoked when the u.s. army's 101st airborne division
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crosses the boarder into iraq and establishes the refueling stations in the iraqi desert. the army names the two desert outposts after exxon and shell, unbeknownst to the companies themselves. >> presumably some colonel in the planning cell thought that this would be an easy designation for american soldiers, you know, flying helicopters through dust storms to bear in mind and to find on a map, but it did kind of undermine the pr campaign. >> as coalition forces rolled into baghdad and topple saddam, the general selected by the pentagon to stabilize the situation and quickly turn over power to the iraqis finds that his mission has changed. >> i did not want to slip from liberation into occupation. i thought that's the worst thing to do. >> my understanding from rumsfeld, from the white house, from everywhere, that we were going to go in there and we were going to set up an interim government as rapid as we could,
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but when ambassador bremmer came over, that direction had changed. >> instead of quickly handing off power to a new iraqi government and getting out, the bush administration selects former ambassador l. paul brimmer to take over in iraq and remake iraq's entire economy, starting with the oil sector. >> we are not here to be a colonial power. we are here to help turn over as quickly as we can efficiently do it to the iraqi people their country. >> we had virtually no elbow room for major changes to anything unless we could get the oil going and that was our priority.
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and require oral steroids, antibiotics, or hospital stay. breo is not for asthma. breo contains a type of medicine that increases risk of death in people with asthma. it is not known if this risk is increased in copd. breo won't replace rescue inhalers for sudden copd symptoms and should not be used more than once a day. breo may increase your risk of pneumonia, thrush, osteoporosis, and some eye problems. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking breo. ask your doctor about b-r-e-o for copd. first prescription free at mybreo.com may 2003, two months into the invasion of iraq, george w.
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bush selects former u.s. ambassador l. paul bremmer to be the top civilian in charge in iraq. >> ambassador goes with the full blessings of this administration and the full confidence of all of us in this administration that he can get the job done. >> at the top of the list for bremmer is oil. >> i had been told that we had to get the oil going because it was an oil-dominated economy. this was fairly straightforward. unless you can get the oil going, you can't get the economy going. >> what bremmer and his team find when they get into iraq is an infrastructure decimated by decades of war, sanctions and corruption. >> i was shocked when i got there about how undercapitalized it had been and how neglected it was. >> the oil fields were being held together, you know, kind of
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when i bailing wire and duct tape, in some cases, literally duct tape. >> the day after bremmer arrives in baghdad, the bush administration draws up secret policy guidelines, which are later declassified, stating that the coalition will move to privatize state-owned enter price in iraq, including the oil industry. >> oil was the lifeblood of the iraqi economy. you got to get the oil going if your going to get the economy going. it was not something we were doing for selfish american reasons or because we wanted more oil on the world market or all of these fantasies that people dream up. we were doing it because we were the iraqi government. >> the task of remaking iraq's oil sector falls to retired shell oil ceo, phil carroll. carroll is appointed by the bush administration to be the senior adviser to iraq's oil ministry. >> his role was, as was the case with all of these advisers, to essentially get alongside the iraqis at ministry of oil, make an assessment of the physical plant, the oil fields, the production facilities and of the people.
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>> when carroll comes to baghdad, he comes up against radical u.s. plans being discussed to commandeer and transform iraq's entire industry. >> he was surrounded by politicized young republican volunteers who had no experience in the oil industry who were planning stock market privatization schemes, running around talking about building pipelines from baghdad to israel, things that were really highly unrealistic and provocative. phil carroll very much acted as the brakes against the privatization crowd. >> in this 2005 bbc report, reaired on the program "democracy now," phil carroll describes what he encountered when he arrived in iraq. >> models everywhere from the total privatization to partial privatization, et cetera, et cetera. there were all sorts of ideas floated about the economy of iraq and what ought to be done. i was very clear that there was to be no privatization of iraqi oil resources or facilities while i was involved, end of
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statement. >> the first meeting that he and i had in baghdad, we sat down together and he said, gary, if i hear any hint of an oil grab out of here, i'm leaving. and i looked him in the eye and i said, phil if there is, i'll be with ya. >> the oil industry veterans ultimately prevailed, as paul bremmer decides to keep in play, at least temporarily, saddam's decades-old ban on foreign companies owning iraqi oil assets. [ gunshots ] but with the occupation not going well, with iraq unraveling, the foreign governments that led the invasion start to jockey for position to try to take advantage of what iraq has under the ground. [ sirens ] less than two months after the invasion, as the insurgency boils, the british government is internally discussing getting iraq's oil fields up and running as its first main target.
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they are debating how to position brittain in iraq to maximize their own long-term energy security. and britain is not the only one. >> in the battles of afghanistan and iraq, polish forces served with skill and honor. america will not forget that poland rose to the moment. >> along with britain, poland, a member of the bush administration's coalition of the willing, also positions itself to take advantage of iraqi oil. in july 2003, a consortium of polish companies signs with halliburton to join in the reconstruction. at the signing poland's foreign minister declares that their government has never, quote, concealed our desire to sources of poland's oil. access to iraq's oil, poland's foreign minister says is our
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it will take just one month to get iraqi crude oil flowing again after the invasion. >> black gold. under the ground. reserves of 10 billion barrels. there is so much of it here it comes out of the ground, catches fire and just burns away. >> but the decade of violent insurgency and all-out chaos that follows ultimately prevents iraq and its oil sector from reaching the potential that u.s. policy planners had in mind. >> an explosion at an oil pipeline, iraqi oil ministers call it sabotage. the u.s. military is investigating. no injuries, but a blow to iraq's already crippled oil industry. if iraq was expected to relieve
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the world's energy problems, the years of instability that follow the invasion prove the opposite. >> it took ten years to rehabilitate iraq's oil field to start to produce at the level that would support the iraqi government. it's not anything like the wind fall or the bonanza that, that some people had fantasized about. >> in terms of containing the oil price, of course the u.s. failed. failed spectacularly. they destablized the region through a military intervention and destabilization in the middle east inevitably leads to higher oil prices. >> despite that instability, iraq's vast oil fields which were once state owned and controlled by saddam hussein. are now largely open to western oil companies and free from the sanctions that held back their full potential. iraq's easy oil is finally getting to market. iraq in 2012 produced more oil per day than it had at any point in the previous three decades.
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it is now on track to become the world's second largest oil exporter behind only saudi arabia. this idea that iraq mattered because it had oil was important if not essential to the decision to invade the company. >> anybody who controls the straits of hormuz can shut down the industrial structure of the west and i was always very much concerned about that. my view was taking out saddam hussein was a very important thing. so i, my view of the -- of the war was yes it was about oil. >> in the decades since the invasion, declassified documents have revealed private deliberations about iraq's oil in the u.s. and in the uk that were unknown to the public at the time. deliberations that were never part of the public case for war. with the revelation that saddam
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did not have weapons of mass destruction with the collapse of the public case for war, those involved in the war effort have also now begun to reflect on what transpired in private behind that public case. what was the reason for the invasion? what was the reason for that near decade of war? why did we do it? >> if you know the region as i do now particularly after spending many years in the military doing war planning for the region it would be reasonable for me to say it was not about oil. of course it was about oil. >> the iraq war was presented to us to stop saddam hussein from getting weapons of mass destruction. we know now that to a great extent the war in iraq was about oil. >> i know there are people who make the argument -- as they did in -- in the first gulf war, that this -- this war of
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liberation was actually a war about oil. i frankly know of no evidence that shows that. >> i certainly wouldn't argue that iraq and the decision to go to war and oil were unrelated. i mean iraq, 95% of iraq's revenues come from oil. it is a big global producer and at least today exporter. you can't divorce these things. these are, these are realities. >> we, in my mind. we do not go into iraq for oil. you know -- the folks that i worked with -- we all felt like we were going into iraq because -- of -- of wmd. >> now, were there other folks that had other reasons, i'm not aware of it. there may have been. >> we didn't go into iraq to get access to the sand, we went into iraq to get access to oil. period. >> an attempt by any outside
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force to gain control of the persian gulf region. >> a u.s. foreign policy doctrine that was first articulated during an energy crisis in the 1970s put into action during a gulf war in the 1990s. >> and that must not stand! >> and then brought to full potential in 2003. >> do not destroy oil wells. a source of wealth that belongs to the iraqi people. >> that foreign policy doctrine is not a thing of the past. even as america has upped our own oil production, the commitment to defend the international free flow of oil by force remains. >> the united states of america is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure our core interests in the region. we will ensure the free flow of energy from the region to the world. >> u.s. interests in the persian gulf region are always first and foremost about oil.
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oil and water mix and they're mixing to day and they're going to mix a lot more. lightning and hail, a dangerous mix of weather to kick off this holiday weekend. where it's headed next. the forecast in minutes. benghazi again. why is john kerry now being called to testify about it and what can he offer since he wasn't secretary of state back then? the high price of the holiday. what the memorial day get away will cost you in three big money headlines. museum controversy. should there be a gift shop and cafe at the site of the 9/11 terror attacks? a live report ahead. good