Bush and Cheney clearly went into Iraq primarily in order to put US petroleum firms in precisely this favored position. The US power elite wanted this outcome and connived actively at it. As Alan Greenspan put it, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

The more painful the Iraq adventure is for Americans the more conducive it is to our imperialist aims. The argument is that if we've paid with 4,000 lives and trillions of dollars, the least the Iraqis can do for us is to give us control of their oil fields. The more Iraq appears to be a national catastrophe for us, the higher public support will be for grabbing the oil.

The Times piece is meant to bring antiwar types to the Cheney camp. The logic is this: "You hated that war, I know, but look, Iraq does not have the technical expertise to handle its own oil, so whether we like it or not, it'll be handed over to foreign companies. Now would you rather have the Chinese or Russians take control? We lost so much in this horrible war that we hate so much. So don't we deserve a tiny consolation prize? Plus, look, the process was opaque but apparently fair. At least we couldn't find any US oil expert to tell us otherwise."

The article makes a preemptive strike against the skeptics: "But didn't we invade for the oil?"
Ah, that's what the Arabs say and some "parts of the American public." In other words, there are creationists out there and scientologists who say all sort of crazy stuff. And some of them are even American. We're not hiding that fact: there are conspiracy theorists out there.

See, we're not stealing that oil. We've paid for it, with 4,000 lives.