FANTASTIC NEW CHOMSKY INTERVIEW

With a Kurdish newspaper via ZNet:

Naturally, they intended to control it -- though for many years they did not make much use of it themselves, and in the future, according to US intelligence, the US itself will rely on more stable Atlantic Basin resources (West Africa and the Western hemisphere).

Nevertheless, it remains a very high priority to control the Gulf resources, which are expected to provide 2/3 of world energy needs for some time to come. Quite apart from yielding "profits beyond the dreams of avarice," as one leading history of the oil industry puts the matter, the region still remains "a stupendous source of strategic power," a lever of world control. Control over Gulf energy reserves provides "veto power" over the actions of rivals, as the leading planner George Kennan pointed out half a century ago.

Europe and Asia understand very well, and have long been seeking independent access to energy resources. Much of the jockeying for power in the Middle East and Central Asia has to do with these issues. The populations of the region are regarded as incidental, as long as they are passive and obedient. Few know this as well as the Kurds, at least if they remember their own history.

US planners surely intend to establish a client state in Iraq, with democratic forms if that is possible, if only for propaganda purposes. But Iraq is to be what the British, when they ran the region, called an "Arab facade," with British power in the background if the country seeks too much independence. That is a familiar part of the history of the region for the past century.

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