UK worked with Big Oil in invasion run-up

“Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq,” headlines the Independent, revealing collusion between the British government and the oil industry in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion. The leaked minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and oil executives are “at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time,” the London daily notes. One memo shows that in late 2002, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told oil multinational BP “that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime change.” While BP publicly maintained that it had "no strategic interest" in Iraq, it told the Foreign Office in private that Iraq was "more important than anything we've seen for a long time".