You Were Right When You Waved That “No Blood for Oil” Sign. Iraq Was About Oil

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/08/24



t was never exactly rocket science. You didn’t have to be Einstein to figure it out. In early 2003, the Bush administration was visibly preparing to invade Iraq, a nation with a nasty ruler who himself hadn’t hesitated to invade another country, Iran, in the early 1980s for no purpose except self-aggrandizement. (And the Reagan administration had backed him in that disastrous war because then, as now, Washington loathed the Iranians.) There was never the slightest evidence of the involvement of Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 9/11 attacks or in support of al-Qaeda; and despite the Bush administration’s drumbeat of supposed information about Saddam’s nuclear program (which was said, somehow, to threaten to put mushroom clouds over American cities), the evidence was always, at best, beyond thin and at worst, a potage of lies, concoctions, and wishful thinking. The program, of course, proved nonexistent, but too late to matter.

There was only one reason to invade Iraq and it could be captured in a single word, “oil,” even if George W. Bush and his top officials generally went out of their way to avoid mentioning it. (At one point, post-invasion, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz did point out that Iraq was indeed afloat “on a sea of oil.”) Unfortunately, oil as a significant factor in invasion planning was considered far too simpleminded for the sophisticated pundits and reporters of the mainstream media. They were unimpressed by it even when, as the looting began in Baghdad, it turned out that U.S. troops only had orders to guard the Oil Ministry and Interior Ministry (which housed Saddam’s dreaded secret police).

Mind you, far more than Iraqi oil was in the administration’s crosshairs, though that country, with its then-crippled energy sector, was considered a giant oil reservoir just waiting for Big Oil to set it free. To conquer and garrison -- “liberate” -- Iraq would put the U.S. in a position of ultimate domination in the oil heartlands of the planet, or so thought the top officials of the Bush administration, a number of whom had been in or associated with the energy business before scaling the heights of Washington. As Dick Cheney put it to the Institute of Petroleum Engineers in 1999, when he was still running the energy company Halliburton, "The Middle East, with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."

And the millions of protestors who took to the streets of the great cities (and small towns) of the planet in unprecedented numbers to oppose the coming invasion, waving signs like “No Blood for Oil!” “How did USA's oil get under Iraq's sand?" and “Don't trade lives for oil!” grasped perfectly well just what they had in mind -- and more prescient still, they knew it would be a disaster. If only they had been listened to. Instead, they were generally dismissed in the mainstream media for their hopeless naïveté.

[2on2u]

1. You're bound to follow along with stupid moves when you are skeert out of your wits by

threats real or imagined.

[trumad]

2. a no duh moment brought to you by xchrom

[xchrom]

5. ...

I like affirmations for Bleeding Heart thinking.

[Kolesar]

3. Bush said countries had to join "the coalition" if they wanted oil field development rights

The war put Bush back into the White House in 2004 and gave us Alito and Roberts. That is the real meaning of the war.

[TBF]

4. Syria, Iraq ...

it is all about the oil (or rather the profits from the oil). Anyone who thinks differently has not been paying attention the past 50 years.

[theinquisitivechad]

6. I find it so interesting. . .

That control over oil is considered "liberation" by the GOP when it is really further enslavement to oil dependence. They really lack ability to play the long game.

[raouldukelives]

7. Our military has become the enforcement arm for Wall St's wishes.

We certainly don't use it to protect people struggling for freedom or to spread democracy in the world. Just the opposite. We call on it when a region isn't playing ball with the masters of the universe. When they have something we can exploit to make money off of and they are being imprudent.
Sometimes I wonder if Uganda or some other ravaged country might not wish it had oil under its soil so it could receive assistance from us. Then I imagine they have to thank their lucky stars they don't. The suffering would be magnified and the body count would only intensify.