Whoops, Iraqolypse!

Here's how BushCo. hoped, and prayed, the War On Iraq would unfold back in 2001 :

Just a few years ago, an overconfident George W Bush administration expected to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, pacify the country, install a compliant client government, privatize the economy, and establish Iraq as the political and military headquarters for a dominating US presence in the Middle East.

These successes were, in turn, expected to pave the way for ambitious goals, enshrined in the 2001 report of vice president Dick Cheney's secretive task force on energy. That report focused on exploiting Iraq's monstrous, largely untapped energy reserves - more than any country other than Saudi Arabia and Iran - including the quadrupling of Iraq's capacity to pump oil and the privatization of the production process.

The dream in those distant days was to strip the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) - the cartel consisting of the main petroleum exporters - of the power to control the oil supply and its price on the world market. As a reward for vastly expanding Iraqi production and freeing its distribution from OPEC's control, key figures in the Bush administration imagined that the US could skim off a small proportion of that increased oil production to offset the projected $40 billion cost of the invasion and occupation of the country.

All in a year or two.

Michael Schwarz at Asia Times goes on to compare the reality, to the dream.