RawStory.com | Jul. 29, 2008

A neoconservative architect of President Bush's Iraq occupation could be preparing to personally reap the spoils of war, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Documents suggest that Richard Perle, top aide to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, has been in talks with government officials and its Washington envoy, and Turkish AG Group International, over a plan to drill for oil near the Kurdish city of Erbil. Perle is also in talks with the oil-rich nation of Kazakhstan, whose ruler, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has been involved in a US oil bribery investigation.

"Mr. Perle has publicly lauded President Nazarbayev as a 'visionary and wise,'" the Journal added.

Perle worked in the Reagan administration as assistant Secretary of Defense and held a seat on the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee from 1987 to 2004, also serving as its chairman from 2001 to 2003 under Bush. He is a member of such think tanks as Project for the New American Century, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Perle, as a member of PNAC, had called on President Clinton to overthrow Saddam Hussein as a signatory on a January 1998 letter alongside such names as Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Gary Bauer, Dan Quayle and William Kristol. Perle also linked Hussein to Osama bin Laden during a CNN interview on September 16, 2001, shortly after the World Trade Center towers were attacked.

Endeavour International, based in Houston, would administer the drilling and exploration of the "K18 concession," estimated to hold at least 150 million barrels of oil.

The State Department recently said that it was investigating deals brokered between the Kurds and other American energy companies, such as Dallas-based Hunt Oil Company, "infuriating" the Iraqi government, which called such deals "illegal attempts" to circumvent Baghdad's authority as the Iraqi government works to pass a national oil law. Documents suggest, however, that the State Department did not object to such deals.