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Top NeoCon Richard Perle Seeks Oil Deal With Iraqi Kurds
Richard Perle has almost always gone along with the Bush administration's policies.
But now the longtime neoconservative policy wonk is trying to get in on an oil-drilling deal with Iraqi Kurds despite the administration's public opposition to such deals there.
Perle, one of the most influential proponents of 2003 invasion of Iraq, is in talks to join a consortium of investors with the Kurdish Regional Government, today's Wall Street Journal reports.
The Bush administration has publicly discouraged energy firms from making unilateral deals with Iraqi Kurds until after Iraq's federal government in Baghdad agrees to a law for sharing future revenues. Disagreements over oil money have inflamed sectarian tensions in Iraq and undermined political unity.
But investigators are looking into whether the Bush administration privately gave the go-ahead to energy firms seeking the lucrative deals with the Kurds.
The Journal reports that Perle is talking with a Turkish firm, AK Group International, and also a representative from the government of Kazakhstan. They are targeting the co-called "K18 concession" which is near the city of Erbil and is estimated to hold 150 million or more barrels of oil.
Houston-based Endeavour International would conduct the exploration and drilling, according to the Journal.
During the run-up to the Iraq war, Perle was chairman of the Defense Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon. He is currently a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank in Washington.
Note about the headline for this article on the TPM homepage:
Perle is "flouting" the rules! Not "flaunting"!
Common mistake. But it still makes my eyes bleed.
July 29, 2008 10:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
So much for claims that the Iraq War wasn't for oil.
Anyone got any good links to Perle denying that we were going to war for oil?
July 29, 2008 1:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
This guy has the sole of Dick Cheney and the brains of Bob Novak, after the diagnosis. Dick Perle (aptly named) is scum!
July 29, 2008 10:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
flaunting........flouting
sole.............soul
what will come up next?
July 29, 2008 12:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps sole was intended. I can see Cheney walking on him.
July 29, 2008 1:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dick Perle: true war criminal and war profiteer. Shameless to the end.
July 29, 2008 10:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
What do you call Richard Perle giving a speech at the American Enterprise Institute?
Perle before swine.
July 29, 2008 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Perle before swine, that's baaaaaaddddddddd!
But, funny!
July 29, 2008 11:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
congrats on your creativity (and accuracy)!
July 29, 2008 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Someone should leave a dick pearl on his forehead.
True war profiteer, taking his turn at the trough.
Isn't this just what that other MuckMaster - Bob Schaffer, the Republican senate candidate in Colorado - was caught doing? Deals for Kurdish oil that was against US policy?
July 29, 2008 11:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Neoconservatives like Perle have a long-standing habit of fastening personal enrichment to their specious ideology. Remember, when he was assistant secretary of defense in the early 1980s, he was involved in a questionable deal to steer defense business to an Israeli firm - which had paid him handsome "consulting fees." In 2004, a controversy over his attempt to ease security approvals for an asset sale cost him his post as Defense Policy Board chairman when it was revealed the sale to an overseas company might expose vital U.S. strategic information to the Chinese; he had been promised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the deal. Will anything finally rid us of these guttersnipe "patriots".
July 29, 2008 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's a Perle jam.
July 29, 2008 11:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Important people no longer need to concern themselves with anything getting in their way of becoming more important...
Congress, the Senate, and our recent and future administrations have ensured this...
we commoners, however are fortunate that we are paying for construction of more and more prisons to house us later on... when the important folks decide "We the People" are too rowdy...
July 29, 2008 12:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Time for the Grand Old War Party to cash in
July 29, 2008 12:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can Wolfowitz be far behind?
July 29, 2008 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Richard Perle, a "policy wonk?" Please. That's like calling Al Capone a "policy wonk."
"But investigators are looking into whether the Bush administration privately gave the go-ahead to energy firms seeking the lucrative deals with the Kurds."
Could we be a little more naive please?
July 29, 2008 12:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another Israeli plant in the US Foreign Policy apparatus.
July 29, 2008 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
"But investigators are looking into whether the Bush administration privately gave the go-ahead to energy firms seeking the lucrative deals with the Kurds."
The Hunt Family of Texas?
Like, no way, man.
July 29, 2008 12:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
> Could we be a little more naive please?
No kidding. Waddya think these folks went into Iraq for? This is the culmination of the whole bloody 5+ years--actually since they first began the planning for it in 1996. Perle's is the only name that's come out yet; he's just not as good as Cheney at keeping his machinations secret. And is anyone looking into Dick's portfolio?
July 29, 2008 12:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
There better be no goddam timetable for pulling out US Troops.
They're protecting my investment.
July 29, 2008 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
But, hey, it was never about the oil, right, Richard? It was about liberating the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator! Right Richard?
Richard?
July 29, 2008 4:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
What a surprise! Another PNAC signatory benefiting from the Iraq debacle.
I'd start to rant about the blazing insanity of it all...except I start to go a squeak bonkers myself about this lying, cheating, killing machine we've not managed to stop. I get a little incoherent and stuff when I think about it because my mind veritably reels.
July 29, 2008 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
And not only are these criminals now cashing in on the blood & scarifice of our veterans -they also have managed to re-ignite the Cold War by pushing the neocon "strategerry " of a Polish based Anti Ballistic Missle Program .
The Russians aka CIS have began flying nuclear capable Badgers out of Cuba recently /Prime Minister "In Your Eyes " Putin told Boy George he was going to to start flying those missions again if we did not stop the ABM - Our Prime Minister "Darkside" Cheney made boygeorge do it anyway -
Wonder how big a boon doogle this new son of star wars will be for all the greed over party campaign contributors ...
so Perle writing his own deal is just more of the same -more ongoing criminal conspiracy ..
July 29, 2008 8:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Before the invasion, Germany, France and Russia had spent billions (probably more than ten, according to commentary I heard on KBOO) on oil exploration leases in Iraq. I suspect that this was a topic in the secret "energy summit" that was convened by Dick Cheney in the summer of 2001. Since the U.S. oil firms had been left out, I'm sure that they were lobbying for some action that would invalidate those leases. Note that this also explains the opposition by the above three countries to the U.S. invasion. After hearing that, I, my son-in-law, my grandsons, and thousands of others marched in protest in downtown Portland in the fall of 2002 and again after the invasion began.
I believe that the above topic was among the reasons that the proceedings of the "energy summit" were such a closely-held secret.
Richard Perle and his ilk are walking cesspools.
July 29, 2008 9:45 PM | Reply | Permalink