Shlonkom Bakazay?

UPDATE: VIEW THE BBC PROGRAM! Thankfully, democracy now has broadcast it today. You can go here for the transcript and to listen or see it.

This is huge. Not that we couldn't guess there was something afoot. Here's more pudding to prove it now.

--- Greg Palast Reporting...

The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks, sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed.

Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protesters claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.

In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists".

"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.

Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks" of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US.

"We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities and pipelines [in Iraq] built on the premise that privatisation is coming." -Mr Falah Aljibury

An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant, Falah Aljibury, says he took part in the secret meetings in California, Washington and the Middle East. He described a State Department plan for a forced coup d'etat.

Mr. Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed potential successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration.

I wish I had time to comment on this now. I will as soon as I can.

Greg Palast's tenacity has paid off yet again.

Read the entire report on the BBC here. View newsnight's program

Update: Anticipating this program possibly disappearing on the web, I've recorded the audio of it here in two sections. Listen to Section 1 & Section 2 in MP3 format. The first section is 3 minutes, the second is 10 minutes.

You may find the Harpers Magazine article that is to be out in Harpers next edition out on newstands on Tuesday, March 22, right here.

Go to Greg Palast's website to view more details about this important news story.

When there's more information on the story I'll try to update it here.