I just read Josh Marshall, who is trying to figure out just how early military action against Iraq was being planned in earnest. He quotes a Jane Mayer article from The New Yorker about the Energy Task Force and makes me think totally differently.

Mayer reports on a memo to National Security Council staff directing them to cooperate fully with Cheney’s Energy Task Force “as it considered the ‘melding’ of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy: ‘the review of operational policies towards rogue states,’ such as Iraq, and ‘actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.’

Bush-Cheney’s refusal to release records from the energy task force had rubbed me the wrong way before. I had it framed in my head as a conflict between a compulsively secretive administration and those who value openness and transparency in our democracy.

Perhaps the truth is more sinister, though… Perhaps the energy task force documents are secret because they contain evidence of pre-9/11 plans to militarily seize Iraqi oil fields.