Totally pwned.

The links are mine, the quote comes from this blog by a professor at the Annenberg School of Journalism.

In the late spring of 2001, Vice President Cheney held a series of top secret meetings with the representatives of Exxon-Mobil, Conoco, Shell and BP America for what was later called the Energy Task-force. Their job, ostensibly, was to map out America’s Energy future. Since late 2001 several public interest groups, including the very conservative Judicial Watch, sued to have the proceedings of those meetings opened to public scrutiny. In March 2002, the Commerce Department turned over a few documents from the Task-force meetings to Judicial Watch, among which was the map of Iraq’s Oil Fields, dated March 2001 (above) and a list of the existing “Foreign Suitors” for Iraq Oil [here and here - ag]. Since that time, Cheney’s office has fought fiercely (and so far, successfully), right up to the Supreme Court, to keep the proceeding secret and to keep any of the private industry officials from disclosing any information about the meetings. Since we all now know the Bush administration’s energy policy, there can be only one explanation for the extraordinary efforts Cheney has taken to keep this secret–he was discussing the potential for a takeover of Iraq’s oil with the companies that might manage the resource, even before 9/11 gave him the excuse to do it.

While I find the whole notion depressingly plausible, the map and the lists are far from a smoking gun, as the quote’s author seems to claim. (I take exception in particular to his comment, “there can only be one explanation…”). However, it seems that the map suggests one fact: There was a lot of oil in Iraq. The lists, if you go through them, suggest another fact: Russia and China were already signed into deals, and involved in negotiations for more contracts, to get most of that oil. It is circumstantial, but as I said, depressingly plausible.