Oil, Defense Spending and Urban Cowboys in Cowboy Boots
No one ever said we should pre-empt a war and invade Iraq until Wolfowitz, Perl and others wrote in 1996 the paper stating our need to do this. The fact that the intelligence was wrong can not be excused away by saying that everyone, at the time, agreed with it. I would have hoped that our standards were highest among the world powers for the veracity of the intelligence we used to go to war. The blatant disregard for the lack of substance in the intelligence gathered and the bold faced confidence the administration used to back the veracity of this information simply shows incompetence and an irresponsible use of the government’s power as a source of truth for the American people and the world.
Previous President Clinton didn’t make the claims that ultimately brought us to war in Iraq. He never stated that we should pre-empt an attack overthrowing Saddam although he did state that we should be watching him very closely and that he was dangerous. There was much discussion in the Clinton administration about Saddam as a threat to the world but the huge difference between the Clinton administration and the Bush presidency is that Clinton didn’t act on the intelligence he had, other than bomb the Afghanistan terrorist training camps (at the time he was criticized by the Republican opposition for trying to divert attention away from the Lewinsky Affair). Both Clinton and the first President Bush agreed that an invasion into Iraq would quickly become a quagmire and a new Vietnam type conflict and should be avoided. This was stated very clearly in the previous Bush’s autobiography when talking about why he didn’t push into Iraq after the 1991 war.
It’s time that we elect a woman as our head of state and let the cowboys go back to Texas and play with guns and dress up in cowboy boots and big belt buckles, spending the day chopping wood and describing complicated and nuanced world situations in over simplified, black and white, cartoonish ways believing that saying something equals to doing it (we know better). The bottom line is, was and will continue to be about oil, defense spending and power (=control of all those things). Paul Wolfowitz helped convince us that the war will be paid for by the eventual Iraqi oil sales. That never happened.
Here’s some interesting reading about the present oil situation in Iraq. It is this way due to inept management on our part or our gross inability to gauge the possibility of success based on poor past and present knowledge of the situation, either way someone is responsible for this failure and should be accountable for it (impeach President Bush and prosecute Carl Rove, among others and elect Hillary):
http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/art.shtml?x=548947 Mortgaging Iraq’s oil wealth
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0222-21.htm Oily Truth Emerges in Iraq
article posted March 1, 2007 (March 19, 2007 issue)
Who Will Get the Oil?
Christian Parenti
Iraq's postwar oil bonanza remains a mirage. The country has the second- or third-largest reserves in the world, making petroleum the heart and vast bulk of its economy. Thus in March 2003 did Paul Wolfowitz assure Congress that Iraq would "finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." American planners predicted that Iraq's oil production would triple to a feverish 6 million barrels per day by 2010.
Instead war, corruption, sectarian slaughter and a massive crime wave have reduced the country's once mighty petroleum sector to an industrial zombie: still ambulatory, functional but essentially dead.
Previous President Clinton didn’t make the claims that ultimately brought us to war in Iraq. He never stated that we should pre-empt an attack overthrowing Saddam although he did state that we should be watching him very closely and that he was dangerous. There was much discussion in the Clinton administration about Saddam as a threat to the world but the huge difference between the Clinton administration and the Bush presidency is that Clinton didn’t act on the intelligence he had, other than bomb the Afghanistan terrorist training camps (at the time he was criticized by the Republican opposition for trying to divert attention away from the Lewinsky Affair). Both Clinton and the first President Bush agreed that an invasion into Iraq would quickly become a quagmire and a new Vietnam type conflict and should be avoided. This was stated very clearly in the previous Bush’s autobiography when talking about why he didn’t push into Iraq after the 1991 war.
It’s time that we elect a woman as our head of state and let the cowboys go back to Texas and play with guns and dress up in cowboy boots and big belt buckles, spending the day chopping wood and describing complicated and nuanced world situations in over simplified, black and white, cartoonish ways believing that saying something equals to doing it (we know better). The bottom line is, was and will continue to be about oil, defense spending and power (=control of all those things). Paul Wolfowitz helped convince us that the war will be paid for by the eventual Iraqi oil sales. That never happened.
Here’s some interesting reading about the present oil situation in Iraq. It is this way due to inept management on our part or our gross inability to gauge the possibility of success based on poor past and present knowledge of the situation, either way someone is responsible for this failure and should be accountable for it (impeach President Bush and prosecute Carl Rove, among others and elect Hillary):
http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/art.shtml?x=548947 Mortgaging Iraq’s oil wealth
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0222-21.htm Oily Truth Emerges in Iraq
article posted March 1, 2007 (March 19, 2007 issue)
Who Will Get the Oil?
Christian Parenti
Iraq's postwar oil bonanza remains a mirage. The country has the second- or third-largest reserves in the world, making petroleum the heart and vast bulk of its economy. Thus in March 2003 did Paul Wolfowitz assure Congress that Iraq would "finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." American planners predicted that Iraq's oil production would triple to a feverish 6 million barrels per day by 2010.
Instead war, corruption, sectarian slaughter and a massive crime wave have reduced the country's once mighty petroleum sector to an industrial zombie: still ambulatory, functional but essentially dead.
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