NYT: Report Offered Bleak Outlook About Iraq Oil

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 — The Bush administration's optimistic statements earlier this year that Iraq's oil wealth, not American taxpayers, would cover most of the cost of rebuilding Iraq were at odds with a bleaker assessment of a government task force secretly established last fall to study Iraq's oil industry, according to public records and government officials.

The task force, which was based at the Pentagon as part of the planning for the war, produced a book-length report that described the Iraqi oil industry as so badly damaged by a decade of trade embargoes that its production capacity had fallen by more than 25 percent, panel members have said.

Despite those findings, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told Congress during the war that "we are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."

(snip)

Now, as the Bush administration requests $20.3 billion from Congress for reconstruction next year, the chief reasons cited for the high price tag are sabotage of oil equipment — and the poor state of oil infrastructure already documented by the task force.

more…
http://nytimes.com/2003/10/05/international/middleeast/05OIL.html?hp

Wolfowitz knew before he testified to Congress that Iraqi Oil wasn't going to pay the cost of the war?

Another Lie!

Another reason for Congress to hold up approval of restoration money until the heads of Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Pearle are delivered on a platter..........

This is outrageous!

This is just, dag nabbit,plain and simple, ....

Highway Robbery!!!!


Does America need glasses!!!!

they don't have the capacity to process all of this information about Bush's crooked administration. They can't see the link between this and the looting of the Treasury. Someone has to spell it out for them, like a 60 minutes story, very slowly, so they can make the connection. Stuff like this sails right over their heads. They can't see how if affects them, and if it doesn't affect them directly, they could care less. These are after all, the same people that are going to elect Ahhhnold as Governor next week because they recognize his name and think it will be cool to have "The Terminator" as their Governor. We're not dealing with the most intellectually stimulated people here in America.

to elementary to be real.

Of course the GOOP answer is: Halliburton and Brown and Root. Oh, we're gonna need 20 billion this year for zip codes and MTV and wanna bet it'll be another 60 billion next year and so on.

I really like the idea of a Democrat filibuster for ANY funding outside of the immediate needs for our troops until at least Von Rumsfeldt and Wolfowitz are taken down.

I certainly got $900 million dollars to spare for importing oil to an oil rich country so that the Eye-Rackees will have their 10-cent-a-gallon gas, don't we all?

So using that standard, there was no report issued in the fall that made such conclusions, Eye-Rack's now flowing with oil, and not a pittance of the taxpayers' dime is being spent on that country for all the profits we are reaping in.

Gawd, I am so conflicted now. . .

The case looks pretty clear. The Bushies twisted the facts to overstate the threat of Iraq and understate the problems with invading.

Amazingly awful. These bums have to go!

I'm not sure if it was in NEWSWEEK or if I read it somewhere here but there was a story that there was no more than 2 years worth of oil left under Iraq. This was well before we invaded them.