Iraq in the Crude World: Part 1

In Baghdad, the Ministry of Oil turned into the Ministry of Truth, or so it seemed in the spring of 2003. While most government buildings, including the National Museum, were looted of everything from art-work to computers and light bulbs, after which the remains were often set alight, the Oil Ministry was untouched, aside from a bit of vandalism in the hours between the melting away of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the arrival of American soldiers. This was not a matter of luck.

When I visited the cream-colored ministry one morning, a concrete plaza at its entrance was sealed off by coils of barbed wire and scores of marines equipped not only with .50-caliber machine guns but a particular view of current events. There were no roving bands of looters near the ministry, nothing more threatening than echoes of chaos rather than chaos itself, so Corporal Shane Evans had enough time to show off a tattoo that read, “Anyone who sees through death becomes ageless, deathless and immortal.” He also displayed a crafted view of the relationship between oil and invasion, when I asked about it. “There’s a misconception,” he said. “We’re just coming here to give Iraqis freedom.”