“President Bush’s Cabinet agreed in April 2001 that ‘Iraq remains a destabilising influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East’ and because this is an unacceptable risk to the US ‘military intervention’ is necessary. Vice-president Dick Cheney, who chairs the White House Energy Policy Development Group, commissioned a report on ‘energy security’ from the Baker Institute for Public Policy, a think-tank set up by James Baker, the former US secretary of state under George Bush Snr. The report, Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century, concludes: ‘The United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a destabilising influence to … the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export programme to manipulate oil markets. Therefore the US should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/ diplomatic assessments.’ “ [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]
– Neil Mackay, “Official: US Oil at the Heart of Iraq Crisis,” The Sunday Herald, Oct. 6, 2002