Thirteen days after Islamic extremists attacked the United States, President Bush declared, “Money is the lifeblood of terrorist operations.”

Four months later in his State of the Union speech, the president labeled Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, part of the “axis of evil.”

Even as Bush spoke those words, Halliburton, the Houston-based company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, was using an off-shore subsidiary to do business with Iran.

At the time, the subsidiary, Halliburton Products and Services, Ltd., was wholly owned by Halliburton and registered in a building in the capital of the Cayman Islands, with nothing more than an address as proof of its existence.

As early as 1998, during the Clinton administration, Cheney, then CEO of Halliburton, was lobbying to relax restrictions on doing business with Iran, telling an Australian newspaper, “I think we’d be better off if we, in fact, backed off those sanctions [on Iran], didn’t try to impose secondary boycotts on companies trying to do business there.”

In fairness to Halliburton and other members of the military-industrial complex, what Halliburton was doing was not illegal. It did, however, violate the intent of Iran-Libya Sanctions Act.

In May of 2004, the Republican-controlled Senate blocked legislation that would, according to Democratic Senator Max Baucus, “close, lock and seal” Halliburton’s backdoor business deals.

During committee hearings, William Thompson, the New York City comptroller who divested the city’s pension funds from Halliburton, testified that the revenue that companies like Halliburton generated helped “to underwrite and support terrorism.”

Four years after President Bush declared that Iran was a state sponsor of terrorism, and in face of intense public scrutiny, Halliburton’s corporate counsel Margaret E. Carriere announced that Halliburton “[would] take appropriate corporate action to cause its subsidiaries to not bid for any new work in Iran.”

Notwithstanding, Halliburton executives were defiant in the face of criticism and deaf to the suggestion that their business dealings with Iran might have contributed to the death of American forces at the hands of Shiite insurgents in Iraq, who, according to the Bush administration, were being trained and equipped by Iran.

Last week, I contacted SMU’s treasurer to inquire if SMU invested in Halliburton. Her prompt reply read, “SMU’s investments are not public information.”

In the same e-mail, I asked if SMU also invested in Hunt Oil, the Dallas-based exploration and production company owned by SMU trustee and Bush ally Ray L. Hunt. My curiosity was sparked by recent news that Hunt Oil had just inked a multi-billion dollar production-sharing deal with the Kurdish provincial government in Iraq.

I would be lying if I said that I haven’t always believed that the Iraq war wasn’t predicated on oil. Five years ago, those of us who held that view were labeled radical left wing, troop-hating liberal kooks.

Five years later, my belief is finally being vindicated. And by at least one source that might surprise you.

“To understand what’s really happening in Iraq, follow the oil money, which already knows that the surge has failed,” wrote New York Times columnist Paul Krugman last week, who, when not writing his twice-weekly column, moonlights as a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton.

I can almost hear the jeers now. Honestly, I was wondering how I was going to sell some readers on the opinion of a “liberal” college professor whose opposition to Bush’s foreign and domestic policy is well documented.

That is, until I read this: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

Another liberal kook? Hardly. Alan Greenspan, the very Republican former Federal Reserve chairman, known for his cryptic, carefully worded economic pronouncements.

Greenspan’s declaration, which the New York Times leaked on Saturday in advance of the publication of Greenspan’s autobiography, came just days after the news of Ray L. Hunt’s wildcat bargaining with the Iraqi Kurds was made public.

So what’s the fuss?

Allow me to repeat the second half of Krugman’s quote, “…which already knows that the surge has failed,” the surge that Bush insisted was necessary to give the Iraqi government time to meet a list of benchmarks, including the passage of a law that would guarantee equitable oil-revenue sharing among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

Why is Mr. Hunt pursuing a financial arrangement that directly contradicts – nay, undermines – America’s stated policy in Iraq?

According to Krugman, by signing a deal with the Kurdish regional government, Hunt is “essentially betting that the Iraqi government…won’t get its act together. Indeed, he’s effectively betting against the survival of Iraq as a nation in any meaningful sense of the term.”

He is also creating a pretext for a long-term military presence in Iraq. By signing a deal with the Kurds, Mr. Hunt has all but guaranteed that violence will spread into the until-now relatively peaceful Kurdish region. Neither the Shiites nor the Sunnis will allow the oil-rich and much-despised Kurds to profit financially without a fight.

As a result, insurgent incursions and attacks into the region will create a need for a more robust military presence to protect America’s (read: Hunt Oil’s) interests.

Mr. Hunt’s unsavory deal is nothing new in American capitalist history. In the late 19th century, the term “robber baron” was used to refer to a handful of American oligarchs who, through intimidation and unscrupulous practices, accumulated great wealth, the most notorious example being Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller.

Many people believe that America finds itself in a similar era today. Indeed, Mr. Hunt may be well on his way to ensuring the acquisition of a similarly ignoble title.

Whatever the case, there is little question that business dealings like those of Halliburton and Hunt Oil do little to protect America from the terrorist threat that President Bush uses to justify the American military presence in Iraq.

On the contrary, they are the terrorists’ lifeblood.

About the writer:

George Henson is a Spanish professor. He can be reached at [email protected].