BUSHCO's "UniPolar World"-Empowered By A Stolen Election & "SuperCharged" By 9/11

[kpete]

POLITICS-US:
Why Did the U.S. Invade Iraq?

Analysis by Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Mar 18 (IPS)
- So why, exactly, did the U.S. invade Iraq five years ago this week?

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That is not to say that oil was irrelevant to the administration's calculations, but perhaps in a different sense than that meant by the "No Blood for Oil" slogan. After all, oil is an absolutely indispensable requirement for running modern economies and militaries. And the invasion was a forceful -- indeed, a shock- and awe-some -- demonstration to the rest of the world, especially potential strategic rivals like China, Russia, or even the European Union, of Washington's ability to quickly and effectively conquer and control an oil-rich nation in the heart of the energy-rich Middle East/Gulf region any time it wishes, perhaps persuading those lesser powers that challenging the U.S. could well prove counter-productive to long-term interests, if not their supply of energy in the short term.

Indeed, a demonstration of such power could well be the fastest way to formalise a new international order based on the overwhelming military power of the United States, unequalled at least since the Roman Empire. It would be a "unipolar world" of the kind envisaged by the 1992 draft Defence Planning Guidance (DPG) commissioned by then-Pentagon chief Dick Cheney, overseen by Wolfowitz and Cheney's future chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, and contributed to by future ambassador to "liberated" Afghanistan and Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad and Bush's deputy national security adviser, J.D. Crouch.

It was that same vision that formed the inspiration for the 27 charter signatories -- a coalition of aggressive nationalists, neo-conservatives, and Christian Right leaders that included Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby, Khalilzad, and several other future senior Bush administration national-security officials -- of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in 1997. It was the same project that began calling for "regime change" in Iraq in 1998 and that, nine days after the 9/11 attack on New York and the Pentagon, publicly warned that any "war on terror" that excluded Hussein's elimination would necessarily be incomplete.

In retrospect, it seems clear that Iraq had long been seen by this group, which became empowered first by Bush's election and then super-charged by 9/11, as the first, easiest and most available step toward achieving a "Pax Americana" that would not only establish the U.S. once and for all as the dominant power in the region, but whose geo-strategic implications for aspiring "peer competitors" would be global in scope.

more at:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41643