Now that the no bid contracts have been given to the big oil companies for Iraq oil, the Bush administration's constant denial about the Iraq invasion and occupation being about oil was just another heinous, blatant lie.  This entire Iraq sinkhole debacle was based on blood for oil.

It should not come as a surprise since lying is a primary characteristic of the Bush regime, yet they're still trying to spin the White House, State and Commerce Departments integral involvement in the deal.

There are other stories behind the recent blatant oil giveaway or robbery yet the mainstream media hasn't or refuses to connect the dots in the blood for oil story. 

But Nick Turse at Tomgram gave the media some suggestions.  He writes: "As always happens when, for whatever reason, you come late to a major story and find yourself playing catch-up on the run, there are a few corrections and blind spots in the current coverage that might be worth addressing before another five years pass. In the spirit of collegiality, I offer the following leads for the mainstream media to consider as they change gears from no-comment to hot-pursuit when it comes to the story of Iraq’s most sought after commodity. I’m talking, of course, about that “sea of oil” on which, as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz pointed out way back in May 2003, the month after Baghdad fell, Iraq “floats.”

"...since the taking of Baghdad in April 2003, the name of the game has been facilitating relationships between Iraq and U.S.-based and allied Western energy firms when it came to what President Bush used to delicately call Iraq’s “patrimony” of “natural resources.”

Turse then lists a trail of clues that shows that the Bush administration was up to their eyeballs in grabbing Iraq's oil.

"For instance, almost a year ago, the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus drew attention to a call by Bush’s Commerce Department for “an international legal adviser who is fluent in Arabic ‘to provide expert input, when requested’ to ‘U.S. government agencies or to Iraqi authorities as they draft the laws and regulations that will govern Iraq’s oil and gas sector.’” The document went on to state that, “as part of a U.S. government inter-agency process, the U.S. Department of Commerce” would be “providing technical assistance to Iraq to create a legal and tax environment conducive to domestic and foreign investment in Iraq’s key economic sectors, starting with the mineral resources sector.”

"In fact, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency notes that, in 2006 and 2007, it funded a “$2.5 million multifaceted training program for the Iraqi Ministry of Oil” to “provide critical knowledge transfer and establish long-term relationships between the U.S. and Iraqi oil and gas industry public and private sector representatives.”

"It’s worth recalling that Iraq’s oil bureaucrats, about to receive such “critical knowledge” and “expertise,” were not exactly neophytes in the world of oil management. They had effectively managed the Iraqi oil industry from the time the five oil majors now slated to receive those “service contracts” were tossed out of Iraq, when its industry was nationalized in 1972, until the invasion of 2003. They had kept the country’s oil infrastructure going even after the disaster of the First Gulf War of 1990-1991, even through all the desperate final years of sanctions against Saddam Hussein’s regime.

"Another connection, long ignored in the mainstream, that reporters like Kramer might consider pursuing when it comes to the complex ties among Iraqi officials, the Bush administration, the Department of Defense (DoD), and Big Oil is the overt Pentagon connection. The DoD is, as national security expert Noah Shachtman notes, “the world’s largest energy consumer.” And, when it comes to Pentagon gas-guzzling, its post-9/11 wars and occupations, especially in Iraq, have been a boon. While the Bush administration has been working overtime to clear the path for Big Oil’s return to Iraq, the Pentagon has been paying out staggering amounts of U.S. taxpayer dollars to the very oil majors now negotiating with Iraq’s Ministry of Oil.

"According to recent reports, the proposed Iraqi service contracts, which may be paid off in cash or crude oil, will be worth $500 million each. That is roughly what the Pentagon paid out on June 18th alone — the day before the Times broke its story about Big Oil’s return to Iraq — for natural gas and aviation fuel.

"Keep in mind, however, that — although you won’t learn this in your daily paper — this has long been standard operating procedure. Each of the oil giants named in the original New York Times piece — Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, BP, and Chevron — regularly show up on the Pentagon’s payroll. In fact, last year, Iraq’s new fave five took home more than $4.1 billion from the DoD — with Shell leading the way with $2.1 billion.

"It’s no secret that the Pentagon relies on vast quantities of oil to power the ships, planes, helicopters, heavy armor, and other ground vehicles essential to its occupation of Iraq, nor that it regularly pays out vast sums of taxpayer dollars to the very companies that U.S. advisors have aided in working out oil deals with the Iraq Oil Ministry. Despite ample evidence of the Pentagon connection, this circular and mutually-reinforcing relationship has been almost totally ignored in the mainstream media.

"It turns out that, despite that story the Times broke as if something totally new were on the horizon, the Bush administration has been facilitating ties between the Iraqi government and foreign oil companies for years, and the same companies now likely to nab a no-bid toehold in Iraq’s oilfields are intimately tied in to the Pentagon to the tune of billions of dollars annually. It’s worth noting that most of these firms have also been closely connected to Vice President Dick Cheney from the early days of the Bush administration. In fact, executives from Exxon Mobil, Shell, and BP met behind closed doors with Cheney’s energy task force in 2001, when the administration was pounding out its energy policies, according to a White House document obtained by the Washington Post. The Government Accountability Office also found that Chevron was just one of several companies that “gave detailed energy policy recommendations” to the task force.

"It’s almost impossible to tease out all the interconnections between Big Oil, the White House, the Pentagon, and the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, since they are tied together in a web of contracts and mutually supporting relationships built up over many years. However, just in case the Times wants to set its staff loose on the recent past, there is no mistaking the many ties that exist. (A small tip for Times researchers: Skip the Times archives. They will be of little help.)"

It's takes deliberate myopia or incompetence on the part of the Fourth Estate not to connect the dots.  It takes blatant deceit by the media to ignore Bush and Cheney's ties to the big oil and the rest of the Bushite regime's politicized federal departments staffed by administration loyalists making sure that Iraq's oil goes to the US.

And it takes extreme arrogance by Congressional leadership to show such disdain for the American people by keeping impeachment off the table.