A conspiracy theory

Co-President Dick Cheney has adamantly resisted any disclosure of the contents of his energy task force meetings. Since the first days of the administration, the substance of the meetings -- and even the list of attendees -- has been blocked. Cheney has fought disclosure all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. What could he be so desperate to hide?

Now note some odd behavior on the part of the administration: Their frantic seizure of 9/11 as the pretext for invading Iraq, followd by their casual dismissal of the ostensible reasons for the war. ( 'Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere!!") And then add in the no-bid contracts to Halliburton for the management of the oil fields, and the administration's abrupt refusal to allow Mr. Bush to testify before the 9/11 commission without Mr. Cheney at his side, once it came out that the Iraq invasion had nothing to do with 9/11.

A disquieting notion: Could it be that the agenda for Cheney's energy task force meetings, at the very birth of the administration, included plans for the invasion and occupation of Iraq? Perhaps the oil companies were deciding on the division of Iraq's oil fields?

Jane Mayer's profile of Cheney in the Feb 16th New Yorker has a very creepy section which lends some credence to this notion:

"Additional evidence that Cheney played an early planning role is contained in a previously undisclosed National Security Council document, dated February 3, 2001. The top-secret document, written by a high-level N.S.C. official, concerned Cheney’s newly formed Energy Task Force. It directed the N.S.C. staff to coöperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the “melding” of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy: “the review of operational policies towards rogue states,” such as Iraq, and “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.”

This is scary.