America's Achilles' heel

President Bush and his administration don't like to talk about Iraq's oil -- at least not in the context of a justification for the war. In November 2002, in an interview with Steve Croft on "60 Minutes," Rumsfeld asserted that the then-looming Iraq war had "nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil."

Despite Rumsfeld's pronouncement, it's clear that oil has always been the key factor in America's relationship with Iraq. During the Gulf War, George H.W. Bush kept to his script that the war was "not about oil." Yet his own secretary of state, James Baker, a Texan with deep ties to the oil industry, didn't get the memo advising him to stick with the script. On Nov. 13, 1990, Baker held a press conference during which he said that the "economic lifeline of the industrial world runs from the [Persian] Gulf, and we cannot permit a dictator such as this to sit astride that economic lifeline. And to bring it down to the level of the average American citizen, let me say that means jobs. If you want to sum it up in one word, it's jobs. Because an economic recession worldwide, caused by the control of one nation, one dictator if you will, of the West's economic lifeline will result in the loss of jobs on the part of American citizens."

On Jan. 15, 1991, just before the United States began attacking Saddam's forces in Kuwait, Bush signed a national security directive.

The very first line of the recently declassified directive declared, "Access to Persian Gulf oil and the security of key friendly states in the area are vital to U.S. national security." It goes on to say that America "remains committed to defending its vital interest in the region, if necessary through the use of military force, against any power with interests inimical to our own."

Oil was a key factor in the second Iraq war from the get-go. The first combat took place on March 20, 2003, when several groups of Navy SEALs stormed the Mina al-Bakr and Khor al-Amaya oil terminals. By controlling the oil terminals, the Pentagon was able to ensure that it would eventually control Iraq's oil exports.

A week later, on March 27, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress that the war wouldn't be overly expensive. "We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." He continued, saying "the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years."

A few weeks later, Wolfowitz compared America's reaction to the threat of nuclear weapons being developed by North Korea with the situation in Iraq. "Let's look at it simply," he said. "The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

Leaders of al-Qaida have been talking about the oil issue for years. In interviews with Western reporters a few years ago, Osama bin Laden repeatedly referred to what he called the "rape" and "plunder" of Saudi Arabia's oil by the United States. In 2002, after al-Qaida operatives bombed the French oil tanker Limburg off the coast of Yemen, the terror group released a statement that said, "The Mujahadeen hit the secret line -- the provision line -- and the feeding to the artery of the life of the crusader nation."

On April 24 of this year, three bomb-laden boats piloted by suicide bombers attacked both of Iraq's oil terminals in the Persian Gulf. None of the boats hit their targets, but the attacks killed two U.S. Navy sailors and injured four others. Two days after the attacks, al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi issued a statement that said, "We tell you enemies of God, robbers of oil and riches and drug traders ... O snakes of evil, we will exterminate and debilitate you by land, sea and air until God makes us victorious or until we die."

The attempted bombings of the oil terminals were the first waterborne suicide attacks on American forces since 2000, when al-Qaida engineered the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 American sailors. Al-Zarqawi reminded the world of the attack on the USS Cole, saying that his loyalists "have repeated this attack in a new garb and with stubborn determination by striking vital economic links of the infidel and atheist states."

One week after the attack on the terminals, Saudi gunmen killed two Americans, two Brits and an Australian who were working for ABB Lummus in the oil town of Yanbu, Saudi Arabia's most important port on the Red Sea. On May 29, al-Qaida assassins attacked an oil industry complex in Khobar, Saudi Arabia. That attack left 22 people dead. After the Khobar attack, al-Qaida leader Abdul Aziz al-Moqrin (now believed to be dead) said the attack was carried out because Saudi leaders have been providing "America with oil at the cheapest prices according to their masters' wish, so that their economy does not collapse."

The Iraqi government and the Pentagon are doing all they can to protect Iraq's oil infrastructure. More than 14,000 security personnel are now working for Erinys, a South African private security firm that has a $39 million contract to guard Iraq's pipelines, pumping stations, refineries and oil wells. But given the results so far, Erinys may need an additional estimated 14,000 guards.

Mike Ameen, a Houston-based oil executive, is not optimistic about the future of Iraq's oil economy. Ameen has spent decades working in the Middle East. He speaks, reads and writes Arabic and has recently worked as a consultant for the U.S. government on the Iraqi oil business. Ameen says that by targeting the oil infrastructure, the insurgents are making it far more expensive for oil field contractors to do business in Iraq. They are also preventing any major oil companies from even considering new investments in Iraq. "It's a gloomy picture -- it really is," says Ameen.

Unfortunately, that gloomy picture shows no sign of improving anytime soon.

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