“The December 15, 2005, elections [in Iraq] established an internationally recognized permanent Iraqi government with the authority to sign contracts. The Bush administration, for its part, spent the month of December reiterating its commitment to ‘stay the course in Iraq’ and would not speak of withdrawal of U.S. troops in any significant numbers prior to the end of 2006, giving U.S. oil companies enough time to sign contracts and get to work under the full protection of the U.S. and Coalition forces. Thus, amid all the talk of training Iraqi soldiers, heading off a civil war, and protecting Iraq’s fledgling democracy, the overriding agenda determining the timetable for the end of the Iraq war may in fact be the ‘oil timetable.’ ”
– Antonia Juhasz, The Bush Agenda, Pages 258-259