Admiral Dennis Blair: "We Sent Troops to Middle East…Because of Oil-Based Importance of Region"

onMar 26, 2014 @ 11:54 PDT

At the just-completed U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing titled, “The Geopolitical Potential of the U.S. Energy Boom,” Admiral Dennis Blair — former Director of National Intelligence, President and CEO of Institute for Defense Analyses and Commander in Chief of U.S. Pacific Command — admitted what’s still considered conspiratorial to some.

Put tersely: the U.S. and allied forces launched the ongoing occupation in Iraq and occupy large swaths of the Middle East to secure the flow of oil to the U.S. and its global allies, explained Blair.

Blair began his analysis lasting just over a minute after a line of questioning (beginning at 1:02:56 in the video below) coming from U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) about TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, “energy as an instrument of geopolitical power” and geopolitical tensions in Venezuela.

By Steve Horn

Steve Horn is the owner of the consultancy Horn Communications & Research Services, which provides public relations, content writing, and investigative research work products to a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit clients across the world. He is an investigative reporter on the climate beat for over a decade and former Research Fellow for DeSmog.

uk/Who Funds Nigel Farage? Mapping His Millions

BySam Bright

onApr 18, 2026 @ 09:58 PDT

Live tracker of the Reform leader’s personal income.

Series: Defending Democracy from Dirty Money

Series: Defending-UK-Democracy

uk/Nigel Farage Has Personally Accepted £675,000 from Foreign Sources

BySam Bright

onApr 18, 2026 @ 09:40 PDT

A-third of the Reform leader’s income has come from overseas interests since he became an MP.

Series: Defending Democracy from Dirty Money

Series: Defending-UK-Democracy

‘Get Rid of MAHA’: Trump Alliance Cracks as Climate Denialists Turn on RFK Jr.’s Movement

ByRachel Santarsiero

onApr 17, 2026 @ 06:54 PDT

At the Heartland Institute’s annual climate conference, fossil fuel allies warn MAHA’s push on regulating chemicals and plastics could threaten the oil industry — exposing a growing rift inside Trump’s base.