The New York Times is shocked -- shocked! -- to find personal enrichment of American elites at the heart of the rape and gutting of Iraq. Who could possibly have ever foreseen such a scenario as the Times revealed on Thursday, describing how "influential American adviser" Peter Galbraith helped "ram through" highly controversial provisions in the constitution that the occupying force and its collaborators imposed – provisions that could put more than $100 million in Galbraith's pocket.

Of course, Galbraith's war-profiteering machinations are hardly unique; the roll call of "advisers" and officials and other insiders feasting on Iraqi corpseflesh is longer than the Mississippi, and considerably more muddy. Just this week, the Financial Times noted that another gaggle of occupation geese, "including Zalmay Khalilzad, former US ambassador to Baghdad, and Jay Garner," the first appointed satrap of the conquered land, are now cashing in on their blood-soaked connections in Iraq.

Given the fact of the rampant corruption among the murder-mongering elite, one might darkly suspect that this sudden spotlight on Galbraith could be related to the embarrassment he recently caused to the Obama administration, which ordered the UN to fire him from his special envoy post after he insisted on a full investigation of the massive fraud in the Afghan elections. (Although one can't but wonder now if Galbraith took this principled stand only after failing to cut some juicy sweetheart deal with Hamid Karzai.)

However, although the Afghan imbroglio might have played some part in the prominence accorded the revelations by the Times (A call from Rahm to the editorial offices, perhaps: "Galbraith's fair game now; let him have it"), the story itself was initially unearthed by journalists in Norway, investigating Galbraith's ties to the Norwegian oil giant, DNO. And what a sordid little saga it is. As the Times notes:

Galbraith, an influential former American ambassador, is a powerful voice on Iraq who helped shape the views of policy makers like Joseph R. Biden Jr. and John Kerry. In the summer of 2005, he was also an adviser to the Kurdish regional government as Iraq wrote its Constitution — tough and sensitive talks not least because of issues like how Iraq would divide its vast oil wealth.

Now Mr. Galbraith, 58, son of the renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith, stands to earn perhaps a hundred million or more dollars as a result of his closeness to the Kurds, his relations with a Norwegian oil company and constitutional provisions he helped the Kurds extract.

In the constitutional negotiations, he helped the Kurds ram through provisions that gave their region — rather than the central Baghdad government — sole authority over many of their internal affairs, including clauses that he maintains will give the Kurds virtually complete control over all new oil finds on their territory....

[The investigations] reveal in considerable detail that he received rights to an enormous stake in at least one of Kurdistan’s oil fields in the spring of 2004.  As it turns out, Mr. Galbraith received the rights after he helped negotiate a potentially lucrative contract that allowed the Norwegian oil company DNO to drill for oil in the promising Dohuk region of Kurdistan, the interviews and documents show...

When drillers struck oil in a rich new field called Tawke in December 2005, no one but a handful of government and business officials and members of Mr. Galbraith’s inner circle knew that the constitutional provisions he had pushed through only months earlier could enrich him so handsomely.

As the scope of Mr. Galbraith’s financial interests in Kurdistan become clear, they have the potential to inflame some of Iraqis’ deepest fears, including conspiracy theories that the true reason for the American invasion of their country was to take its oil. It may not help that outside Kurdistan, Mr. Galbraith’s influential view that Iraq should be broken up along ethnic lines is considered offensive to many Iraqis’ nationalism.

Oh, our good Gray Lady! She just can't help herself, can she? Even as the Times publishes an actually excellent story outlining vile corruption in high places, it is still fretfully anxious to assure its readers that America's intentions are always pure, always good, despite any "mistakes" or the inevitable "bad apples." Hence the reference to Iraqi "conspiracy theories" that the American invasion was about taking their oil.

Poor little primitives. Of course it wasn't just about taking their oil. As the Times' own Thomas Friedman tells us (via Arthur Silber), it was also about America's need "to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world" to assert its dominance. It was also about "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf [which] transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein," as the elitist faction PNAC told us back in September 2000 (along with their open yearning for a "new Pearl Harbor" to "catalyze" the American people into support the militarist agenda). It was also about the hundreds of billions of dollars in government pork and outright graft that the invasion and occupation have provided to a select and powerful few. It was about our elites' profound psychological and sexual anxieties that evidently cannot be quelled without resort to violence, destruction, repression and mass death inflicted on innocent people. No, the American invasion of Iraq was about a lot of other things besides "taking their oil."

But by God, taking their oil was sure enough a great big part of it. The recent Jay Garner story has that black gold at its corroded heart as well, as the FT reports:

Mr Garner, the de-facto US governor of Iraq after the war, sat on the board of Vast Exploration when it bought 37 per cent of a Kurdistan oil block two years ago and remains an adviser to the Canadian company. “Jay is very well known in Kurdistan and Iraq and it was useful to the company,” said a spokesman for Vast.

This kind of war profiteering goes back to the very beginnings of the illegal war of aggression -- and it goes up to the very top. For example, here's a piece I wrote way back in December 2003, about the Bush family's direct involvement in blood money. In detailing the cornucopia of dodgy, dirty dealing that is Neil Bush, I noted this:

Now comes the sweetest deal of all – enriched by the blood sugar seeping out from the bodies of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Yes, Neil has dipped his silver spoon into the reconstruction gravy being ladled out by his brother George, the White House warlord. Neil is now being paid a fat annual fee to "help companies secure contracts in Iraq," the Financial Times reports.

Bush is co-chairman of a pork funnel called Crest Investment Corporation. His partner, Jamal Daniel, is wired into the chief private conduit of war profits, New Bridge Strategies, a lobbying firm packed with Bush family retainers, many of whom left government service this spring to leap into the Iraq money pit. And what does Neil do to earn his crust of bloodsoaked bread? He told the divorce court that he "answers the phone when Jamal Daniel calls to ask for advice."

And what does Jamal Daniel get out of this unusual arrangement? Why, he gets to say, "I was just talking to my partner, the president's brother" when he's negotiating with Bush administration officials to win "reconstruction" contracts for his clients. As long as Brother George keeps tossing cannon fodder into the Iraqi cauldron, Brother Neil will keep padding his fat Bush wallet.

[For an update on Bush's exemplary life of elitist money-grubbing, see "The Anguish of the Overlords."]

Like Bush, Galbraith is a paradigm of how the system really works -- and how it is meant to work. Public service, private enrichment, principled stands, backroom dealing -- it's all one thing to our great and good. And behind it all is a willingness (when it is not an eagerness) to have many thousands upon thousands of people die, and many millions more suffer torment, ruin and grief, to keep the system's beneficiaries in their wonted, wadded place of power and privilege.

Comments (17)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Kurdo Ghazi said:

you are wrong Mister Galbraith was the only western official , who has decried the mass murdering of our people by the hands of the brutal arab regime of Sadam Hussein he has since then , always helped our people and was since then a supportive voice of our legitimate rights he and Jay Garner both, used everything possible to help our people, to provide humanitarian support and rescue our people from genocide as kurds we all stand by our true friends the natural ressources of kurdistan belong first and principally to the kurdish nation, not iraq and surely not to the arabs the only reason we are supposed to share the oil is our political and economical weakness compared to the arab world, it has nothing to do with moral or any legitimate right of the arabs arabs have neither the right to complain, ask or even discuss the matter Mister Galbraith as an expert on diplomatic relations and long experience in shaping political contracts helped our political representatives to create the right language in order to ensure our say on our natural ressources both men had supported the kurdish nation for at least 20 years prior to the constitution talks and had never asked nor received any money from our people or government . Today kurdistan, despite all the bad propaganda is a succees story and it is natural , that first the kurdish government and bussiness community supports and especially trust those true heroes, Mister Galbraith has always showed his deepeest support for freedom, democracy and human rights , he was the only american official who did not try to hide the genocidical efforts against our people and mass murderings in Halabja, Mister Galbraith risked his job, career and reputation by blaming the iraqi government and Sadam Hussein in 1988 , he is a true hero and always welcome in Kurdistan i will sue you and your page , if you again describe our people as primitive Mister Galbraith deserves the money !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

report abuse vote down vote up

November 12, 2009
Votes: -5

Chris Floyd said:

... Dear Mr Ghazi, The use of "primitive people" was entirely ironic. It referred to the attitude of the New York Times and others who dismiss as a mere "conspiracy theory" the heartfelt conviction of many Iraqis that the United States invaded their country to get their oil. I share that conviction myself, while noting that the United States also had other equally malevolent motives for the invasion. I'm very sorry if you took offense at this rather transparent rhetorical device. I am very far from believing that the Iraqi people are primitive, as the slightest acquaintance with my published work, over several years, will show. I'm sure Mr Galbraith and Mr Garner are happy to receive such vigorous support. I'm sure they are equally happy to have the prospect of millions of dollars in Iraqi oil profits to help them out in the event that someone sues them for expressing an entirely misunderstood opinion, as you have threatened to do to me. Money is such a blessing, isn't it?

report abuse vote down vote up

November 12, 2009
Votes: +10

ahsan javed said:

... Well, i guess chris answered Ghazi's objections in most humble way possible. i don't know how to speak this language. Mr. Ghazi would object that and why not ? Isn't he included in the less than 1% of the kurdish population who are enjoying the pleasures of the lucrative contracts with the invaders (so called protectors of the world nowadays) But what he forgot is the miseries and destruction brought to the whole Iraq peoples by the same friends of his own. I won't go into the details of other countries. Iraq is nowadays dead, what is inside the country. i agree that there was too much violence and bribery etc before the invaders came for rescue, but what now ? Is it reduced, no. the stats say that it has increased more now and will continue increasing. people will die of hunger, poverty, violence etc BUT still people like ghazi will stay in there palaces and enjoy the screaming of their fellow human beings and shaking hand with rescuers.

report abuse vote down vote up

November 12, 2009
Votes: +1

Truth Excavator said:

	... Galbraith was the protege of Holbrooke, and that's all the evidence I need to see that he is the farthest thing from a 'diplomat.' He is definitely a petty man, like all men who mix in business and politics, and present themselves in public as the 'disinterested guru.' Any proud people would decline help and guidance from such a shallow man, especially on their constitution of all things!
	report abuse vote down vote up

November 12, 2009 | url
Votes: +2

Sean O'Neil said:

... Not about oil, eh? Here's Recommendation 63 from the Iraq Study Group Report: Long Term Expanding oil production in Iraq over the long term will require creating corporate structures, establishing management systems, and installing competent managers to plan and oversee an ambitious list of major oil-field investment projects. To improve oil-sector performance, the Study Group puts forward the following recommendations. RECOMMENDATION 63: • The United States should encourage investment in Iraq’s oil sector by the international community and by international energy companies. • The United States should assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise, in order to enhance efficiency, transparency, and accountability. • To combat corruption, the U.S. government should urge the Iraqi government to post all oil contracts, volumes, and prices on the Web so that Iraqis and outside observers can track exports and export revenues. • The United States should support the World Bank’s efforts to ensure that best practices are used in contracting. This support involves providing Iraqi officials with contracting templates and training them in contracting, auditing, and reviewing audits. • The United States should provide technical assistance to the Ministry of Oil for enhancing maintenance, improving the payments process, managing cash flows, contracting and auditing, and updating professional training programs for management and technical personnel. ......................... James A. Baker III and Lee Hamilton, Authors and Co-Chairs. ISG group also contained these notables: Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Edwin Meese III, Sandra Day O’Connor, Leon E. Panetta, William J. J. Perry, Charles S. Robb, Alan K. Simpson

report abuse vote down vote up

November 12, 2009
Votes: +0

Anthony Fenton said:

	More on Garner's Iraqi oil ties Not to shamelessly self-promote, but here's more context regarding Garner's role in Iraq: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/11/drill-garner-drill
	report abuse vote down vote up

November 12, 2009 | url
Votes: +0

scott douglas said:

... This heart-rending reality was all foretold. A million and three hundreds of thousands -- individual, unique human beings, cast early into oblivion: dead for a worldly economic resourse. That the power-brokers have taken the blood-money cut coming to them for participating, upfront, with this criminal action is not news. Just more horror to top the grim compost-heap of American Imperial history...there will be more to come. Probobly, these blood-sucking lice comfort their shriveled souls by reflecting upon this very fact: 'My crimes will be lost amongst the many that came before and all which will follow!' Scum: You will be judged by Nature when Reality strips you of the biological vacation-home in which your transient ego now cavorts with careless glee. Good Luck, all yee disciples of Ba'al! Scott

report abuse vote down vote up

November 12, 2009
Votes: +1

Nelson Waller said:

Great.... hmmm A fine exposé which is, as you may know, featured at www.anunews.net. But I'm curious about your phrase "longer than the Mississippi, and considerably more muddy." How did you happen to pick Mississippi as your paradigm of length and muddiness? Lots of states are longer and I'm not aware that MS is distinguished in the mud department. Thoughtless people have used MS for target practice since the media began wrongfully crucifying it in the "civil riots" era, but I know you're not one of those.

report abuse vote down vote up

November 13, 2009 | url
Votes: -1

Michael A said:

	I Think Mr. Ghazi was just auditioning for a spot on NPR as a colonial quisling. Cut the guy a break. Sycophant pay ain't what it used to be in a crumbling empire.
	report abuse vote down vote up

November 13, 2009 | url
Votes: -1

Chris Floyd said:

... I can't say that I'm exactly thrilled to be linked on anu with all the fretful, fear-ridden and evidently sexually anxious "white identity" folks, but anyway, when one refers to THE Mississippi, one is referring to the river, not the state. I personally have great affection for the state of Mississippi, where I once lived and worked -- and where, by the way, stories that I wrote for a prominent newspaper were often edited, heavily, to cast the worst possible light on blacks, Indians, and Jews. Strange, eh? The paper was run by the same people who were running it during what you call the "civil riots" era, which they spent cheerleading the killers of blacks and Jews. I reckon they somehow escaped all that crucifying of white folks that went on back then.

report abuse vote down vote up

November 13, 2009
Votes: +1

Nelson Waller said:

Whoops Well, that was dumb of me not to read you more carefully ("the" Mississippi). You comments about ANU are amusing considering we routinely document postings from the PC mass media that would heartily agree with you. I mainly wrote to let you know ANU readers were getting Systemic Success and ask a question, one tragically well-grounded in many other contexts. We agree on one thing at least -- the Mississippi is long and muddy.

report abuse vote down vote up

November 14, 2009 | url
Votes: +0

Shexmus Amed said:

... 1 Other than "poor little primitives", let's see what other "ironic" devices has been used to enflame, as opposed to inform, the audience: 'shocked -- shocked! --' 'the rape and gutting of Iraq' 'the constitution that the occupying force and its collaborators imposed' 'feasting on Iraqi corpseflesh' 'gaggle of occupation geese' 'satrap of the conquered land' 'blood-soaked connections' 'murder-mongering elite' 'darkly suspect that this sudden spotlight' 'some juicy sweetheart deal' 'what a sordid little saga' 'Oh, our good Gray Lady!' 'vile corruption in high places' 'government pork and outright graft' 'elites' profound psychological and sexual anxieties' 'violence, destruction, repression and mass death inflicted on innocent people' 'But by God' 'black gold at its corroded heart' 'blood money' 'cornucopia of dodgy, dirty dealing' 'a paradigm of how the system really works' 'Public service, private enrichment, principled stands, backroom dealing' 'wonted, wadded place of power and privilege' Now, English is not my first language and I have zero qualifications in English literature. But I have had some training in law and politics. Hence, I consider myself as a person in poor grasp of various applications of 'ironic' rhetorical devices. Nevertheless, reading the article above -and Mr Floyd's explanation of irony to Mr Ghani-, the thought that occured to me first and foremost is that the author, Mr. Chris Floyd, is simply too good to write rational political analysis or even a simple opinion piece. In my view, he should divest himself of all interests in politics, forthwith. Instead, with his superb ability to appeal to emotions quite self-evident, Mr Floyd might provide more accurate portrayals and much better reading satisfaction to his audience if he were to chanel his tremendous talents into writing poetry or short imaginary stories.

report abuse vote down vote up

November 14, 2009
Votes: +1

Shexmus Amed said:

... 2 As some of your readers may know, along with Peter Galbraith and Jay Garner, Christopher Hitchens too has been a strong, vocal advocate of Kurdish self-determination. Hitchens is a leading English essayist and quite a wordsmith by all standards. During his visit to Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991, Hitchens had an epiphany, of sorts, and, after the old Kurdish proverb that goes 'we have no friends but mountains', became a mountain of Kurdistan. He has always described what he saw in that first visit with the same dignified restraint, befitting a writer of good quality prose. Here is an example from Foreign Policy website: "The Kurds, the largest stateless minority in the Middle East, who have suffered many years of oppression and occupation, have begun to scramble to their feet and assume their full height as a people. Even before the intervention, they were producing an autonomy, a democracy, and self-determination of their own in the provinces of northern Iraq, which when I saw them last, were a landscape of desolation and depravity. You could still smell the poison gas, the mass graves, the ruined cities, the burned hillsides. The women still had chemical wounds that burned. Out of that, the Kurds have begun to build and to help their fellow Iraqis when they could have easily chosen chauvinism. They could have said, “We’ve had enough of Iraq.” Instead, they’ve accepted their international responsibilities.

report abuse vote down vote up

November 14, 2009
Votes: +2

Shexmus Amed said:

... 3 Anyway, let's not digress too far. Peter Galbraith, who visited Kurdistan four years earlier than Hitchens, could not possibly have had any whiff of oil in the Kurdish country side when the smell of nerve, mustard and sarin gas was still so fresh. He could not possibly have imagined any financial return for his investment in cost and credibility when he took up the Kurdistan project. Considering the international political context of the time, Peter Galbraith was engaged in a quixotic quest. It quite probably ruined a long time ago any hopes that he had for high political office in the US. Now, Kurdish people have achieved some freedom, some prosperity, thanks, in no small part, to Peter Galbraith's twenty years of advice and comradeship. Why should Kurdish people deny him a share of our hard-earned prosperity that came at great political cost to him? There is no pride in lacking gratitude. The one hundred million dollars that Peter Galbraith has allegedly earned from his hopeless venture that began twenty years ago can only show how proud we are also to have his priceless friendship. 4 By now, it should be obvious that I am a Kurd too, and I agree in toto what Kurdo Ghazi says above. So please excuse me if I have also missed some other irony in Chris Floyd's emotionally punchy delivery. If my defence, Kurdo Ghazi's defence, as well as Galbraith's own, does not acquit Galbraith of any wrong-doing in his Kurdish business interests, well, then there is always the Galloway Manuevre that the so-called anti-war crowd would find most compelling: "Ladies and Gentleman, Galbraith is not now, nor has he ever been, an oil trader, and neither has anyone on his behalf. He has never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on his behalf."

report abuse vote down vote up

November 14, 2009
Votes: +2

Sean O'Neil said:

	... oh how sweet... more dimwits on the CIA payroll here to try to take apart Mr Floyd. Shexmus Amed = liar, NOT a Kurd Kurdo Ghazi = liar, NOT a Kurd they're 20something scenesters that some CIA goon found at a hipster bar cadging drinks. or Tiger Club initiates at Princeton. or something like that.
	report abuse vote down vote up

November 14, 2009
Votes: -2

Chris Floyd said:

... To Shexmus Ahmed: You don't seem to understand. If the Kurdish people -- or rather, the Kurdish elite, including figures like Masoud Barzani, who called on the help of Saddam Hussein, years after the Halabja attack, in his political conflict with the PUK -- want to give Peter Galbraith $100 million or $100 billion for services rendered is not the point. The point is that for years, Galbraith posed to the American people and, apparently, to American government officials, as a completely disinterested figure, when, for the last five years at least, he stood to gain many millions of dollars from the specific measures he advocated. In this, as I said, he stands as a representative of the American elite as a whole, who always portray their policy decisions as completely disinterested, altruistic, noble, etc. -- when in fact most if not all of these elites stand to increase their own wealth and/or power and/or privilege from these decisions.

report abuse vote down vote up

November 14, 2009
Votes: -2

yankee 30 said:

	... I wonder what Nabaz Goran (an Iraqi Kurdish investigative journalist), who was recently severely beaten about the face and head, allegedly by goons of Massoud Barzani's KDP, would have to say on the matter?
	report abuse vote down vote up

November 14, 2009
Votes: -2