Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq [Hardcover]

Greg Muttitt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 3, 2012

The departure of the last U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of 2011 left a broken country and a host of unanswered questions. What was the war really about? Why and how did the occupation drag on for nearly nine years, while most Iraqis, Britons, and Americans desperately wanted it to end? And why did the troops have to leave?

Now, in a gripping account of the war that dominated U.S. foreign policy over the last decade, investigative journalist Greg Muttitt takes us behind the scenes to answer some of these questions and reveals the heretofore-untold story of the oil politics that played out through the occupation of Iraq. Drawing upon hundreds of unreleased government documents and extensive interviews with senior American, British, and Iraqi officials, Muttitt exposes the plans and preparations that were in place to shape policies in favor of American and British energy interests. We follow him through a labyrinth of clandestine meetings, reneged promises, and abuses of power; we also see how Iraqis struggled for their own say in their future, in spite of their dysfunctional government and rising levels of violence. Through their stories, we begin to see a very different Iraq from the one our politicians have told us about.

In light of the Arab revolutions, the war in Libya, and renewed threats against Iran, Fuel on the Fire provides a vital guide to the lessons from Iraq and of the global consequences of America’s persistent oil addiction.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A painstaking piece of investigative reporting with 48 pages of footnotes, based on documents released under freedom of information legislation and interviews with Iraqis, [Fuel on the Fire] gives the best account yet of a hitherto under-reported story."
—Financial Times

About the Author

Greg Muttitt is the former co-director of the campaigning charity Platform and has served as the campaigns and policy director for the antipoverty organization War on Want. His articles have appeared in The Guardian, the Financial Times, and The Independent, among other publications. He lives in London.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The (July 3, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9781595588050
• ISBN-13: 978-1595588050
• ASIN: 1595588051
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #546,086 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Required Reading. August 5, 2012

By The Perapatetic Reader

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

There is a history of Justinian called The Secret History, by Procopios, a functionary of the Byzantine emperor. It was called "the secret history" because it purported to disclose the personal habits and characteristics of the Emperor Justinian and his wife, Theodora, facts not generally known by the public at large.

Naomi Kline calls this book the "secret history"of Iraq. In much the same way, this excellent history of the Iraq Occupation and the subsequent role of oil and politics in post-invasion Iraq is a secret history, disclosing facts not revealed by the news agencies (in the United States, at least) and not generally known by the public at large. Not that the public did not suspect that there were ulterior motives to the Iraq invasion. Oil, and the acquisition of oil, has long been suspected at the real reason Iraq was occupied. This book confirms this suspicion. But with a difference: the author provides the reader with facts little reported to American media thanks to military censorship.

The public at large is hardly at fault for not knowing the full story. Since the Invasion began it was covered by "embedded" journalists, giving sanitized, censored reports of the carnage as if it they were providing the narration to a video game. Any accurate reporting was stopped by the military; the journalists from CNN or Fox should have been receiving their paychecks from the US military. Any meaningful reporting, which was not a pretty sight, had to be obtained from Al-Jazeera or foreign newspapers or news magazines.

There were reports, of course, of high-level visits to Iraq from Presidents of Cabinet members and politicians.... The news agencies would not give the reasons for these visits other than showing, for example, President Bush smiling, handing out turkey dinners to the troops for Thanksgiving. This book, thankfully, actually describes the reasons for these visits, who was visited, what was said.

The narrative is replete with facts supporting the entire, brutal, story of the Invasion. The author is meticulous about providing a complete, detached narrative of the scramble of the oil companies to acquire concessions and agreements for rights to Iraq's oil. Significantly, he is far more generous than one may suspect on the motivations for the invasion. Early on, he discounts that oil was the sole reason for invading the country. Since the oil nationalizations which Hussain introduced in 1975 were not in effect, and in light of the chaos which ensued after the invasion, the author quite reasonably notes that the oil cartels would have a naturally interest in allowing the oil to flow once again. The author also relates, again in meticulous detail, how the cartels attempted to create a veneer of legality in the negotiations for the oil rights.

The book provides a fascinating look into the world of international oil, both in its business and legal aspects. This book provides in painstaking detail to destroy a country and culture, install a puppet leadership, divide the population into factions, and attempt to institute the invading county's agenda. The US media covered many stories about bombing, carnage and destruction, but precious little about the actions to take over Iraq's oil industry. This book provides page-turning details about the behind the scenes actions. A part of that veneer of legitimacy was for the Occupation Forces to push the Oil Law through the Parliament they helped create. A particularly compelling portion of the book relates not only to the failures of the Occupation Forces in winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people (some of those failures are downright laughable if it weren't true), but relates how the proposed the Oil Law was never enacted and enforceable.

How ironic it is that after all those lives and monies lost and after all the suffering needlessly inflicted in the invasion of Iraq, the Western Powers still do not have to this day the thing they had most sought after and which constituted the driving motivation of all the invasion, solid oil legislation to the oil companies' satisfaction. As the author relates, the enforceability of the contacts made after the troops withdrew is doubtful. This book is most of all a testament to the indomitable will of the Iraqi people. It is highly recommended and fills a painful need for an unvarnished history of the Iraq invasion. Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Important Alternative History to Iraq War and Occupation December 21, 2012

By Brett A. MccUlly

Format:Hardcover

The 'war-for-oil' hypothesis of Iraq 2003 was often derided as a "conspiracy theory", a term used by former UK prime minister Tony Blair. Greg Muttitt's Fuel on the Fire provides an excellent rebuttal to that line of thinking: while acknowledging that the war was not fought for any single reason (there may have been some genuine concerns about WMDs, democracy, and human rights, or the US leadership might have held a grudge against Saddam and his ability to thwart US efforts towards his removal, etc.), oil was a prime compelling factor leading to the war.

The book posits three main theses: the US-UK invasion was motivated primarily by oil; the Iraqi labor movement was instrumental in hindering key US objectives (in particular an oil law to allow foreign oil corporations to easily acquire contracts for Iraqi oil and gas) from being realized; and the sectarian bloodshed in Iraq was caused in large part by the attitudes and policy decisions of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Muttitt's understanding of the first point is necessarily nuanced. Few auctioned oil fields have gone to American firms, though most of the service contracting has. (NY Times, 6/16/2011) Thus the war cannot be said to simply be about stealing Iraq's oil. More crucially than adding to the reserves of US multinationals is reducing the price of oil and weakening OPEC. Iraq's oil reserves are large enough to affect the price of world oil, and handing them over to private foreign companies allows production to occur without the blessing of OPEC. Of course Iraq could sign contracts demanding that oil companies adhere to production quotas set by OPEC, but the Iraqi government and oil ministry was under great pressure from the US to give generous terms to oil companies and drew up the contracts in secrecy....

Where Muttitt's argument is weakest is not entirely his own fault; many of the documents needed to conclusively determine the causes of the war are still classified (such as those from Vice President Cheney's energy task force). Instead he provides a substantial amount of suggestive quotes and documents from governments and oil companies as well as a rundown of US behavior during the occupation (such as in pushing the oil law). With those caveats in mind, Muttitt makes a strong case.

He also makes a forceful argument for the benefits wrought by Iraqi labor unions, one the of the few functioning civil society organizations in Iraq throughout the occupation. Despite the Bush administration's alleged concern with democracy, Paul Bremer, administrator of Iraq from 2003 to 2005, maintained a Saddam-era law outlawing public sector labor unions, and furthermore banned workers from electing their own managers. Successive Iraqi governments have further clamped down on unions, yet their influence was strong enough to block an oil law from being passed, which would have allowed oil contracts to be made solely by the executive branch rather than the current Parliamentary approval now required.

Finally, Muttitt demonstrates that most Iraqis do not see themselves in sectarian terms (apart from the Kurds); rather than a Shia or a Sunni, they are Muslim; rather than Turkoman or Arab, they are Iraqi. Yet Bremer's appointed Iraqi Governing Council emphasized the ethnic and religious makeup of the group. The message was clear: identity politics would trump policy and ideology. The US preferred an Iraq divided along sectarian lines (though Muttitt is careful not to make this out to be a conspiracy) as a united Iraq could more easily oust the occupiers, since that was the will of the vast majority of the population.

Like many books on post-invasion Iraq, Fuel on the Fire is a grim tale of the suffering of Iraqis under occupation. However, hope still remains, in particular with the labor movement and the rest of civil society; the country is still without the much sought after oil law. For those wishing to understand the invasion and subsequent occupation, this is required reading. Read more ›

4.0 out of 5 stars A War for Oil and Israel March 20, 2013

By "Bernie W."

Format:Hardcover

This book is most useful in presenting the case that the US-led military invasion of Iraq in 2003 was "motivated primarily by oil" and that oil plays a big role in domestic Iraqi convoluted politics. However, I am afraid that no matter how instructive the reading of the book is, there is a danger in concentrating only on that one-dimensional rationale behind the Bush-Cheney's decision to launch a war of aggression against Iraq. It is true that for Oilmen George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the control of Iraqi oil and the reliance on American oil companies to develop Iraq's oil resources played a central role.

But what about the pro-Israel lobby's campaign, inside and outside the Bush-Cheney administration, to violate international law and to launch a war of aggression against a country that had not attacked the United States and which posed no threat to the United States as such? Without that cabal, Bush and Cheney would not have been able to get the public support they needed.

It is a fact that Oilmen Bush and Cheney teamed up with Israel firsters Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy secretary of defense), Lewis "Scooter" Libby (Cheney's chief of staff) and Douglas Feith (in charge of projects to justify the Iraq war) because it was in the interests of both the U.S. and Israel to have a regime change in Iraq. Indeed, Iraq had a lot of oil, and it was considered in certain circles an enemy of Israel, a country that the current generation of American politicians supports blindly. For one, Saddam Hussein had been excluding U.S. and U.K. companies from Iraqi oil resource development in retaliation for the American and British support of Israel. Secondly, Saddam Hussein had also made payments to the families of suicide bombers in Israel....

For a thorough analysis of why the Bush-Cheney administration launched an illegal war of aggression in 2003 for oil and for Israel, I recommend reading the book, "The New American Empire", by Dr. R. Tremblay. The latter is a good complementary reading to "Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq. Read more ›