When the anti-war set claimed the Iraq invasion was about oil, they were called traitors. When they said it was to benefit Israel, they were branded anti-Semitic. What label will they earn for mentioning that, before Saddam’s statue had been down a week, Israeli, American and American-sponsored Iraqi National Congress representatives had already gathered to talk about pumping oil to Israel?

The plan, first mentioned publicly by the Israeli Minister for National Infrastructures, would see the resurrection of a Mosul-to-Haifa pipeline that has been inactive since 1948. Reconstructing the line would erase Israel’s energy crisis and allow the U.S. to transport oil to itself through its closest Middle East bedmate.

Curiously, the concept has been on the table since the ’80s, when the U.S. promised to stock a strategic oil reserve for Israel. The builder of that pipeline was to be Bechtel—the same company recently awarded a multi-billion-dollar contract to help reconstruct the shattered country.

» Scott Saxon