This link is perhaps the best that I've seen on this subject, which has been mentioned periodically in the blogosphere now for years. Corporatists obviously do not want the governments of other nation states to control such a major profit-producing commodity as petroleum.

The largely public sector control of this industry in Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, and even Saudi Arabia drives the corporatists into a frenzy.

Every sentient observer should have been able to detect in 2002 that the Bush/Cheney reasons for invading and occupying Iraq (WMD, yellow cake, implied link to Osama bin Laden and 9/11, imminent threat to neighbors and the U.S.) were utterly bogus. So that leaves us with a real--and at least in the alternative Bush/Cheney universe, rational--reason: Big Oil.

Perhaps the best way to yank this thread would be to subpoena Big Oil executives involved in meeting with Cheney's Energy Task Force back in 2001. Dana Milbank and Justin Blum had an illuminating article on the topic in the WaPo on November 16, 2005. Officials from ExxonMobil, Chevron, Conoco (before it merged with Phillips), Shell, and BP America met with the task force to help hammer out U.S. energy policy. Executives from these very same firms denied in testimony to Congress that their companies ("to their knowledge," of course) had participated in such discussions.

Subpoena the executives who participated. Subpoena their documentation of the meetings. Subpoena again the executives who later lied to Congress about their companies' participation. Subpoena the officials on Cheney's Energy Task Force who ran the meetings. Subpoena their documents and maps from the meetings. Subpoena Cheney himself.

I would not be surprised to find from these 2001 strategy sessions maps of Iraq's oil fields and a discussion of plans for their eventual "privatization" after a "liberation" of Iraq.

I wonder whether the documents and testimony would reveal maps and plans for "liberating" Iran's oil fields in Khuzestan.