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