Oil is slippery stuff but not as slippery as the figures being peddled by Iraq’s U.S. occupiers. Up around Kirkuk, the authorities are keeping the sabotage figures secret — because they can’t stop their pipelines to Turkey from blowing up. Down in Baghdad, where the men who produce Iraq’s oil production figures are beginning to look like the occupants of Plato’s cave — drawing conclusions from shadows on their wall — the statistics are being cooked.

L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator here, is “sexing up” the figures to a point where even the oilmen are shaking their heads. Take Kirkuk. Only when the television cameras capture a blown pipe, flames billowing from its wounds, do the occupation powers report sabotage. Continue reading…