This New York Times story examines how the Bush administration overstated the capacity of the Iraqi oil fields to generate sufficient revenue to pay for the rebuilding of Iraq:
Bush administration officials announced earlier this year that Iraq’s oil revenues would be $20 billion to $30 billion a year, which added to the impression that the aftermath of the war would place a minimal burden on the United States. Mr. Bremer now estimates that Iraq’s total oil revenues from the last half of 2003 to 2005 will amount to $35 billion, running at a rate of about $14 billion a year.
These claims came despite the existence of a specially-commissioned “book-length report” by the Energy Infrastructure Planning Group “that described the Iraqi oil industry as so badly damaged by a decade of trade embargoes that its production capacity had fallen by more than 25 percent.”
Exaggerated claims in the face of contrary pre-war intelligence. Does that sound familiar?
With respect to locating weapons of mass destruction, intelligence analysts had clear challenges which lent a little leeway to debate their findings. The components for biological weapons, for example, are small and can be easily transported. So there was a little room to argue their conclusions one way or the other.
But what grounds are there to ignore intelligence on Iraq’s oil capacity? Did the Bush administration think Saddam ran a systematic program to conceal the decrepit condition of his oil wells and pipelines? That Saddam erected false derricks to deceive the world into thinking he was producing more oil? The true condition of Iraq’s oil industry should have been ascertainable for those who wanted to get at the truth.
The more of this type thing I read, the more I’m convinced that the Bush administration’s pre-war rhetoric was crafted primarily to sell a war, not to present an honest picture of the reality of things in Iraq.