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Remember Jay Garner? The retired US Lieutenant General in Iraq is hardly in the news these days, despite the particulars of his new job. One of several former U.S. officials and lobbyists, Garner is now aiding Canadian corporations to secure oil agreements with the Kurdistan Regional Government or KRG in Iraq. Garner was the Bush Administration’s first appointed administrator of Iraq’s reconstruction in 2003, but since that time he has been active in assisting Canadian oil and gas companies do business in the Kurdish region of Iraq. As highlighted in a recent article in Mother Jones Magazine, Garner’s activities include advising the Toronto-based Forbes & Manhattan as well as sitting on the company board of Vast Exploration after they signed a potentially lucrative contract with the KRG. The agreements that Garner is helping to broker are pre-empting the passage of a national oil law in Iraq and are causing tension between Baghdad’s central government and the Kurds in the north.

GUEST: Anthony Fenton, independent journalist currently co-writing a book about post-9/11 U.S.-Canadian foreign policy integration. His first book, Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor, which he co-wrote with Yves Engler, was published in 2005.