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Recently, Mark LeVine did a pioneering piece for Tomdispatch on the nature of the chaos in Iraq, including what he termed "sponsored chaos." The two piggybacked Tomgrams below remind us that the present visible chaos in the region may be nothing compared to the chaos to come -- and that on all sides there are parties (and not just American ones) ready to "sponsor" a distinctly chaotic future.
Iraq, as we all know, sits on vast oil reserves that, for complex reasons, have turned out to be difficult indeed to get out of the ground and to market. Despite the fact that the Bush administration is, by prior experience, an energy administration with a geo-energy view of how our planet works, our media spent much prewar time ignoring the issue of Iraqi oil and the clear desire of administration hardliners to plant further American military bases in the heart of the energy lands of our Earth. Oil, as a subject, was largely left to the business pages, when dealt with at all during those prewar (and then postwar and then, again, war) months.
Anyway, that was then, this is now. As Marshall Auerback and Brandon Sprague both indicate, we should brace ourselves for future oil "wars" of unexpected kinds. Auerback, an international portfolio strategist, considers one of Bob Woodward's recent revelations -- that the Saudis had promised the Bush administration a positive pre-election oil surprise -- and suggests that Woodward's information, undoubtedly gathered many months ago, is at best out of date. The surprise, it turns out, may be all on the Bush administration.
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