Bill Moyers/Michael Winship: The Iraq War Was About Oil, All Along

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



The Iraq War Was About Oil, All Along

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Bill Moyers Journal. Posted July 5, 2008.

Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn't a war about oil. That's cynical and simplistic, they said. It's about terror and al-Qaeda and toppling a dictator.



Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn't a war about oil. That's cynical and simplistic, they said. It's about terror and al-Qaeda and toppling a dictator and spreading democracy and protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. But one by one, these concocted rationales went up in smoke, fire and ashes. And now the bottom line turns out to be ... the bottom line. It is about oil.

Alan Greenspan said so last fall. The former chairman of the Federal Reserve, safely out of office, confessed in his memoir, "Everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." He elaborated in an interview with The Washington Post's Bob Woodward, "If Saddam Hussein had been head of Iraq and there was no oil under those sands, our response to him would not have been as strong as it was in the first Gulf War."

Remember, also, that soon after the invasion, Donald Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, told the press that war was our only strategic choice. "We had virtually no economic options with Iraq," he explained, "because the country floats on a sea of oil."

Shades of Daniel Plainview, the monstrous petroleum tycoon in the movie, "There Will Be Blood." Half-mad, he exclaims, "There's a whole ocean of oil under our feet!" then adds, "No one can get at it except for me!"

No wonder American troops only guarded the Ministries of Oil and the Interior in Baghdad, even as looters pillaged museums of their priceless antiquities. They were making sure no one could get at the oil except ... guess who?

Here's a recent headline in The New York Times: "Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back." Read on: "Four western companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power." ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/90509/

[screembloodymurder]

1. This is news?

On September 11, 1990 George H.W. Bush summed up America's interests in the Middle East in a speech before Congress. Referring to the world's remaining oil reserves, President Bush stated "We cannot permit a resource so vital to be dominated by one (Saddam Hussein) so ruthless. And we won't."

On edit: Check the date, 9/11