I’m still curious to find out more about the planning to seize Iraq’s southern oil fields which began roughly a week after the September 11th terrorist attacks.
Whatever President Bush’s ambitions to launch a war against Iraq and whatever early discussions there were at Camp David, according to Bob Woodward, the president was quite sensitive to the potentially explosive public consequences of having it become known too quickly that he was preparing to launch a war against Iraq. According to Woodward, he waited until late November — after the initial military phase of the Afghanistan war was essentially over — to tell Don Rumsfeld to start drawing up plans for war against Iraq.
Yet that’s not when the planning started. As I noted, it started two months earlier.
At the same time Centcom was tasked with drawing up plans to attack the Taliban — in fact, in the very same document — they were also tasked with putting together plans to seize the oil fields of southern Iraq — same document, same order.
Whose idea was that? And why were we dividing the war planners’ time with gaming out this oil fields gambit when they had the more pressing issue of planning the Afghanistan war? And why the idea of seizing Iraq’s oil fields in the first place?
