Never forget that this is the real reason that we are still in Iraq.

Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.

The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.

The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.

If you think about this thing from the outside looking in, it is brutally clear that when a group of CEO's and oilmen gain control of our country then getting access to more oil becomes job one.

Those al-Quaeda hi-jackers did George Bush and company a favor by giving them a reason to do what they were trying to find a way to do in the first place, invade Iraq and get at those precious oil fields. And the blood of our citizens, and the Iraqi citizens, lubricated the wheels of that progress.

And we let that happen.