Letter to Democrats on Iraqi Oil Production

General Wesley K. Clark
P.O. Box 2959
Little Rock AR 72203

Saturday, September 27, 2003

Dear General Clark,

On August 12th, 2003, I wrote to your fellow candidates for President and accused Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz of lying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about Iraqi oil production, when he stated that Iraq was “producing” 1.4 million barrels of oil per day. The administration has now raised that figure to 1.8 million barrels, and yet their supplemental budget request for Iraq includes $900 million to import gasoline, diesel fuel, propane and other petroleum products into Iraq. What is actually going on here?

The answer is: “storage wells”. In plain English, they are pumping oil out of the ground, and then turning around and pumping it right back into the ground because that’s all they can do with it. Only about half the crude oil being “produced” is in fact finding its way to export terminals and refineries outside the country. True Iraqi oil production is severely limited by decayed infrastructure, sabotage by the resistance, and the lack of sufficient working facilities to turn crude oil into usable petroleum products to meet even their own needs. The rest of it is just a political exercise to inflate the numbers.

In light of this, all the administration’s pronouncements about Iraq financing its own reconstruction can be added to their long and growing list of lies and sick jokes at the expense of human lives. Or should we just call them “war crimes”?

Yours sincerely

Letter to Bush Calling for End to War and Restoration of Legitimacy

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington DC 20501

Saturday, September 6th, 2003

Dear Mr. President,

I hope you had a good summer break, and that you are ready to take a fresh look at the substantial problems facing our country and the world. I’m enclosing a copy of a letter I sent last week to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and I would ask you to adopt the same position with respect to the integrity and neutrality of the U.N. in Iraq. In addition, I would urge you to take the following steps to end the war in Iraq and to restore our country’s position of respect and leadership in the international community: -

a) Publicly acknowledge that Iraq was successfully disarmed before the war thanks to years of extraordinary work by the United Nations and its inspection teams.

b) Make a formal request to the United Nations to supervise the end of the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the restoration of sovereignty to the Iraqi people.

c) Commit our country to paying reparations to Iraq for the damage done by our invasion and military occupation, as called for by the World Council of Churches.

d) Appoint an independent bi-partisan commission to investigate the corruption of U.S. policy towards Iraq.

e) Recommit our country to the terms of all international treaties signed and ratified under previous administrations, including the U.N. Charter.

f) Sign a non-aggression treaty with North Korea, tied to existing nuclear non-proliferation treaties.

g) Obtain the resignations of Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Assistant Secretary Wolfowitz, and all those responsible for the catastrophic breakdown of U.S. foreign and defense policy under your administration.

You may not be ready to take any of these steps yet, but it is excruciating to many Americans that our young people in Iraq are paying such a price for the failure of your policy. It is clear that the kind of face-saving measures that your administration is currently proposing do not go nearly far enough, and would only extend the agony of war for our troops and the Iraqi people, so I hope that you will give serious consideration to each of these recommendations.

Yours sincerely