Antonia Juhasz is the author of several books about the oil industry and a visiting scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies. She notes that even Alan Greenspan, in his memoirs, wrote that “the war in Iraq is about oil,” although he later retreated from that statement under attack from the right. Juhasz says giving control of Iraqi oil to Western companies was a central part of the Bush Administration war plan. “This oil is sitting there like a gleaming prize at the end of the finish line,” she says. Juhasz also says US military planners wanted to employ 500,000 Iraqi soldiers for reconstruction, but the Bush Administration wanted to use private contractors. The soldiers were fired—“half a million men with guns made unemployed without jobs, without money, and their families left without hope,” she says, creating an enormous, hostile group that, including the families, may amount to 10 percent of Iraqis.