As soon as the Soviets discovered the vast Caspian Sea oil fields in the late 1970's, Standard Oil-influenced U.S. government and the CIA trained and funded armed terrorist groups, including Osama bin Laden.

On January 20, 2001, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that he was willing to deploy U.S. military forces in "another 15 countries" if that is what it takes to combat terrorism. The reason the so-called "war against terrorism" began in Afghanistan is because it is critical to the U.S.-British rulers' plans to control the Caspian Sea area oil and gas. In the spring of 2001, Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's company, signed a major contract with the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan to develop a 6000-square-meter marine base to support offshore oil construction in the Caspian Sea.

When it became clear that the Taliban could not control all of Afghanistan and provide a stable political environment for a north-south pipeline construction project, the Bush administration has put their own man, Karzai, in power to control Afghanistan. During the 1980s, Karzai was a top contact for the CIA, maintaining close relations with CIA Director William Casey, Vice President George Bush, and their Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) Service go-between. After the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, the CIA sponsored the relocation of Karzai and a number of his brothers to the U.S.

Iraq discovered an oil field in its western desert, is widely regarded as having more oil than Saudi Arabia once its deposits are developed. Prior to the 2003 U.S. preemptive invasion of Iraq, Iraq was producing 3 million barrels a day, funneling most of it to world markets through a United Nations-monitored program that directs the proceeds to food and medicine for the Iraqi people. Saddam Hussein was still exporting his oil to Syria, which was glad to resell Iraqi oil as if it were Syrian. The United States was one of Syria's biggest customers, because it liked the low sulfur content of Iraqi oil, according to Nimrod Raphaeli, publisher of the Middle East Economic News, a Washington-based newsletter. Iraq earned $1.5 billion a year from oil smuggling and oil sales outside UN controls, through Syria, Turkey, and Jordan, as well as by ship down the Gulf.

Beginning in September of 2001, the Bush regime threatened to include Iraq in its "war on terrorism." Any incursion into Iraq had to deal with the reality that American companies, such as Cheney's Halliburton and G.E. were making billions in Iraq by selling them goods and services. Also, the difficulty that the eradication of the Saddam Hussein regime would seriously compromise America's establishment of bases on the Arabian peninsula on the pretext of protecting poor Arab sheikhs against the Iraqi Evil Monster.

Prior to the 2003 Iraq war, Saddan was desperately trying to ingratiate himself with the Gulf Arab Cooperation Council (GCC) members: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to gain support for the lifting of the U.N. sanctions against it. Russia, Iraq's closest U.N. Security Council ally and a major beneficiary of contracts to purchase Iraqi oil and to sell Iraq humanitarian supplies, was demanding "a comprehensive settlement" of the sanctions issue, including steps leading to lifting the military embargo against Iraq. On January 24, 2002, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov made a formal statement that Moscow was opposed to any U.S. military operation against Iraq. Russia's Lukoil Oil Company and two Russian government agencies had a 23-year contract to develop Iraq's West Qurna oil field. By the terms of the contract, Lukoil was to get one half, Iraq one quarter, and the Russian government agencies was to get one quarter of the oil field's 667 million tons of crude, potentially a $20 billion deal. Iraq still owed Russia at least $8 billion from the old cold war days when Russia armed Iraq, considering it a client state.

In 2001, Saddam gave Russia $1.3 billion in oil contracts under the United Nations oil-for-food program that allowed Iraq to sell oil to buy supplies to help Iraqi civilians. In September, 2001, Saddam announced plans to award Russian companies another $40 billion in contracts as soon as United Nations sanctions were lifted.

The 2003 Standard Oil-Bush junta war against Iraq ended all the prior Iraqi agreements with nations such as Russia, Germany, and France. The opposition by these Eurasian nations to Dubya's preemptive attack on Iraq was understandable. The Standard Oil/Bush imperialists don't concern themselves with the threat of China in the Middle East. They have seized control of Iraq's oil and now have their eye on Syria's and Iran's oil as well. We're now in phase two of the war on terrorism: invading countries that Bush says harbor terrorists, with the real intent to seize those countries' energy sources. And since U.S.-British a.k.a. Standard Oil imperialism now--since 9/11--results in the killing of American civilians.

If Bush enters this 38-year old conflict in Colombia which has resulted in 40,000 deaths in the past decade, he'll be involving the U.S. in a dead-end power struggle among FARC, the Cuban-inspired National Liberation Army (ELN), ultra-right paramilitary groups and the U.S.-supported fascist government. The excuse for spending U.S. taxpayers' money in Afghanistan was that Bin Laden was responsible for the September 11th attacks. Now the only pretext for spending taxpayers' money in Colombia is to combat the FARC and ELN "terrorists" who only threaten U.S. oil company resources, not American lives.

Invading Colombia follows the British-U.S. oil imperialism pattern: going where the oil is. Colombian oil production rose from only 100,000 barrels per day in the early 1980s to approximately 844,000 barrels in early 1999. Colombia harbors large reserves of untapped oil and natural gas, possibly as much as 20 billion barrels (and Venezuela has 73 billion barrels in proven reserves). The United States imports more oil from Colombia and its neighbors, Venezuela and Ecuador, than from all of the Persian Gulf.

A revealing feature of the South American "war on terrorism" is that, unlike the Taliban and al Qaeda, the Bush administration is not destroying the numerous South American drug terrorists. Why? Because the Bush administration and its plutocratic controllers are at the center of the $1.5 trillion per year in U.S. cash transactions that result from the international drug trade. Wall Street and the Bush administration depend on the South American drug barons for hundreds of millions of dollars for corporate income and election campaign finances. For every million dollars of increased sales or increased revenues that a company like Enron realizes from a buyout, the stock equity of the one per cent who control Wall Street, increases twenty to thirty times.

Oil imperialism rests on our continued dependence on oil, which not only threatens the future of humanity through prolonged and bloody conflict, but through another even more insidious threat--climate change and ecological collapse. Oil imperialism flourishes when a supine press cheers and a groveling congress grants unconstitutional authority to the oil-saturated Bush dynasty.

Despite our grief and rage over terrorist atrocities, a "war on terrorism" cannot be fought with bombs and missiles alone. Citizens throughout the world must awaken to this new U.S.-British imperialism and reclaim their governments. Once democracy is re-established, we can start a war on homelessness, poverty, and economic and political inequalities, and begin work to achieve ecological sustainability for our planet. http://www.american.edu/TED/colspill.htm

Updated: 8/26/03 -- original article: 10/29/01

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