Hightower Lowdown

For five years, the Bush-Cheney regime has insisted that the Iraq invasion had nothing to do with helping Big Oil get its hands on Iraq's wealth of crude. No, the war was about WMDs...al Qaeda ...democracy.

Now we know that, ever since the invasion, U.S. occupying authorities have been trying to cobble together an Iraqi government that would allow the likes of Exxon Mobil to control the country's massive, undeveloped oil fields. Unsurprisingly, the Iraqi people have balked at handing over their chief national asset.

Last year, Iraq's U.S.-backed government issued no-bid contracts to five Western oil giants, authorizing them to prepare some existing oil fields for commercial production. This gave the Exxons a leg-up on winning control of Iraq's massive reserves. The Bushites said they played no role in this, but--whoops--now it's been revealed that a team of administration lawyers and private-sector consultants helped draft those no-bid contracts. At the same time, Ray Hunt, the billionaire CEO of Hunt Oil and a longtime pal of George W, cut a special deal with one of Iraq's regional governments to develop oil fields there, in violation of U.S. policy and laws passed by Iraq's central government. Again, the Bushites claimed not to have known about Hunt's end run, but--whoops again--internal documents have now surfaced showing that the Bush team knew about the deal and welcomed it.

These guys are covered in crude!