There is a history of Justinian called The Secret History, by Procopios, a functionary of the Byzantine emperor. It was called "the secret history" because it purported to disclose the personal habits and characteristics of the Emperor Justinian and his wife, Theodora, facts not generally known by the public at large.
Naomi Kline calls this book the "secret history"of Iraq. In much the same way, this excellent history of the Iraq Occupation and the subsequent role of oil and politics in post-invasion Iraq is a secret history, disclosing facts not revealed by the news agencies (in the United States, at least) and not generally known by the public at large. Not that the public did not suspect that there were ulterior motives to the Iraq invasion. Oil, and the acquisition of oil, has long been suspected at the real reason Iraq was occupied. This book confirms this suspicion. But with a difference: the author provides the reader with facts little reported to American media thanks to military censorship.
The public at large is hardly at fault for not knowing the full story. Since the Invasion began it was covered by "embedded" journalists, giving sanitized, censored reports of the carnage as if it they were providing the narration to a video game. Any accurate reporting was stopped by the military; the journalists from CNN or Fox should have been receiving their paychecks from the US military. Any meaningful reporting, which was not a pretty sight, had to be obtained from Al-Jazeera or foreign newspapers or news magazines.
There were reports, of course, of high-level visits to Iraq from Presidents of Cabinet members and politicians. The news agencies would not give the reasons for these visits other than showing, for example, President Bush smiling, handing out turkey dinners to the troops for Thanksgiving. This book, thankfully, actually describes the reasons for these visits, who was visited, what was said.
The narrative is replete with facts supporting the entire, brutal, story of the Invasion. The author is meticulous about providing a complete, detached narrative of the scramble of the oil companies to acquire concessions and agreements for rights to Iraq's oil. Significantly, he is far more generous than one may suspect on the motivations for the invasion. Early on, he discounts that oil was the sole reason for invading the country. Since the oil nationalizations which Hussain introduced in 1975 were not in effect, and in light of the chaos which ensued after the invasion, the author quite reasonably notes that the oil cartels would have a naturally interest in allowing the oil to flow once again. The author also relates, again in meticulous detail, how the cartels attempted to create a veneer of legality in the negotiations for the oil rights.
The book provides a fascinating look into the world of international oil, both in its business and legal aspects. This book provides in painstaking detail to destroy a country and culture, install a puppet leadership, divide the population into factions, and attempt to institute the invading county's agenda. The US media covered many stories about bombing, carnage and destruction, but precious little about the actions to take over Iraq's oil industry. This book provides page-turning details about the behind the scenes actions. A part of that veneer of legitimacy was for the Occupation Forces to push the Oil Law through the Parliament they helped create. A particularly compelling portion of the book relates not only to the failures of the Occupation Forces in winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people (some of those failures are downright laughable if it weren't true), but relates how the proposed the Oil Law was never enacted and enforceable.
How ironic it is that after all those lives and monies lost and after all the suffering needlessly inflicted in the invasion of Iraq, the Western Powers still do not have to this day the thing they had most sought after and which constituted the driving motivation of all the invasion, solid oil legislation to the oil companies' satisfaction. As the author relates, the enforceability of the contacts made after the troops withdrew is doubtful. This book is most of all a testament to the indomitable will of the Iraqi people. It is highly recommended and fills a painful need for an unvarnished history of the Iraq invasion.
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