This month, the Iraqi people will vote in elections that will decide their future and their fate. It will be the next stage in their tortuous journey from oppressed people to a free nation. If everything goes smoothly, the elections should signal the beginning of the end of the occupation.  The country will have a new government, a new assembly, a new constitution, and a new future.

The elections will be seen as a vindication for those in Washington and London who advocated this bloody and brutal war and who pushed for the removal of Saddam Hussein. In a great co-incidence, as the Iraqi people go to the poles, Saddam Hussein will be on trial. But even his trial, like the war, is built on flaws and lies. Last week, the Independent gave ten reasons why “justice may not be served,” for Saddam. This includes his length of time in detention, the level of proof, the impartiality of the trial and the fact it could be just a show trial that results in Saddam receiving the death penalty. What the trial is unlikely to do is unravel the real reasons why we went to war.

The PSYOPs unit quickly realized the propaganda damage that was done when an American flag was hoisted over the fallen statue, not an Iraqi one. “We were thinking from PSYOP School that this was just bad news. We didn't want to look like an occupation force”, recalls Staff Sergeant Brian Plesich, the team leader of Tactical Psychological Operations Team 1153. But an occupation force they became.

Journalists were repeatedly told at the beginning of the war that there would be no censorship. Yet we now know that America had a deliberate policy of targeting journalists it did not agree with, especially Al Jazeera. Not only did American forces kill Al Jazeera's Baghdad correspondent, Tareq Ayoub, in April 2003, but we now know that Bush wanted to bomb Al Jazeera’s offices in Qatar, at the height of the US attack on Falluja. Al Jazeera was one of the few media outlets showing the full horror of the American assault. There is a five-page memo outlining what Bush wanted to do, but Blair's government has now gagged the British Press. So much for the idea of no censorship.

Ever since that attack on Falluja there has been evidence – widely ignored by the mainstream media – that US forces used chemical weapons against civilians and “insurgents”. The US military denied it. But we now know it to be true. Another lie.

In fact everything we were told by the authorities about the Iraq war has turned out to be a lie. And so we come to the biggest lie of all – that the war had nothing to do with oil. It has been the most often repeated lie of them all. For example, in November 2002 Tony Blair spoke on Monte Carlo radio: “The idea that this is about oil for us is absurd. If all we wanted was greater oil supplies we could probably do a deal with Iraq or any other country on that basis”.

And that is exactly what British and American oil companies are doing: secret deals that are giving them access to Iraqi oil, plundering billions of dollars from under the noses of the Iraqi people.

Western oil companies have long wanted Iraq’s oil – with at least ten per cent of the world’s reserves – the third largest of any country. But crucially Iraq has the largest unexplored potential of any country in its vast Western Desert. The western companies are desperate to get their hands on these reserves. For example, one American oil baron said shortly before the invasion: “We know where the best [Iraqi] reserves are [and] we covet the opportunity to get those some day”. 

Now a new report has been published that, for the first time, looks in detail at the secret carve up of Iraq’s oil sector.  Published by a coalition of non-governmental organizations in the UK and America, it makes disturbing reading. Iraq stands to lose some $200 billion from just the first 12 oil fields to be developed due to the nature of kind of contracts it is drawing up with international oil companies. Not only this, but the deals will put Iraqi oil beyond the reach of the Iraqi courts, public scrutiny or democratic control. So by the time the Iraqi people get democracy, they will have lost democratic control of their oil reserves. Tony Blair once said that Iraq’s oil would be developed for the benefit of the Iraqi people, but that was yet another lie.

The reason we know this is because of the nature of the agreements that are being drawn up in secret. The contracts to develop the oil are called Production Sharing Agreements or PSAs. Although these agreements will leave the oil legally in the hands of Iraq, the nature of the agreement will mean much of the power and control will be in the hands of the multinational oil companies. The Financial Times in London argues that the use of PSA in Iraq could “spell a windfall for the big oil companies such as Exxon Mobil; Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Total Fina Elf”.

Due to the unfavourable nature to host countries, no other government in the Middle East uses them. Where they have been used, many countries regret it. Russia has lost billions of dollars through their use. But Iraq intends to use them, under pressure from the British and Americans, who have been the driving force for their use. "After the elections, we are going to do production-sharing agreements with international oil companies”, says long-term US ally, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi.

What is happening is extremely clever. The US and British are laying down the rules for international investment that favours their own companies. The US State Department proposed the use of PSAs prior to the invasion, and its “Oil and Energy” working group argued that Iraq “establish a conducive business environment to attract investment of oil and gas resources”.   The British government too is secretly working on the rules of investment. Working with them are companies such as Shell that will be at a distinct advantage to sign a PSA contract once all the legal framework is in place.

As the contracts are fixed for this time period, future governments cannot alter or change the agreement, even if they do not like it. Therefore the contract over-rides any future legislation that compromises the foreign company profitability, such as introducing stricter safety or environmental laws.  The agreements also stipulate that any dispute between a government and foreign oil company is not resolved in Iraq but in an international arbitration tribunal that would be biased in favour of the companies.

Iraqi oil will not be for the Iraqi people but western oil companies. “Britain and America are stitching up these deals with the Iraqi government”, argues Greg Muttitt from Platform, the author of the report. “The fate of Iraq’s oil is far too important to be decided behind closed doors. It is essential that these decisions are transparent and that people in Iraq know about them and comment on them. Internationally we need to know about them too, given the huge public debate about the reasons for going to war”. So we now know the reason for war was oil and if anyone tells you anything else they are lying. But lying is what wars are all about.