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[Big John Stud]

Every reason Bush said to justify invading Iraq has turned out to be a lie! He invaded Iraq for oil and as what was written earlier to finish what Daddy Bush had started.
The reason why the price of oil hasn't gone done in the U.S. is because the Americans leaders were stupid to think that taking over Iraq was going to be simple.

[hamel]

the title of this thread is dumb, but i agree with what agentmulderuk said about the invasion of iraq.

the picture of the guy from ucsb is so cute. i remember going to the campus about twenty years ago and some of the students had beards and looked like little hippies and at the class break i was nearly run over by packs of students on bikes. beautiful location though (on the ocean).

[Ajia]

AgentMulderUK,

[canuck]

[Sweetsee]

Hi Hamel,

Yes, UCSB rocks! I was there in '69 when bearded hippies burned the Bank of America to the ground in demonstrating against the Vietnam war.

Enjoy yourself,
s

[Moore]

In answer to the question whether any Europeans cared: OF COURSE WE CARE! - at least every single Spaniard and expat over here in Madrid - the sense of disappointment here is palpable.
Apathy is what got us into so much trouble in the first place: bombarded with TV and "entertainment" and working ourselves stupid when we�re not slumped in front of the tv, kn*ckered from working to pay for it all.
This stuff is important: the USA is the world�s self-proclaimed policeman, and yet it acts as no real policeman ever should: it plays favourites, takes bribes, bullies and discriminates against those who don�t follow it�s beliefs.
I was on a march where, in pouring (and i mean, POURING) rain, two million Madrid residents (50% of the population here) marched to protest against terrorist bombs at the Atocha railway station and a government who tried to lie to them and tell them it was not the inevitable reaction from Islamic terrorists. All over Europe people marched in vast numbers against the war in Iraq in every major city here.
I�m sorry to butt in on your forum here, but I really do feel that to say that Europeans don�t care is to do them a great disservice .

[Gordon]

Thanks for your comments Moore.

[Nismo]

[AgentMulderUK]

[AgentMulderUK]

[canuck]

[The G-stringed Avenger]

Let me put it simply:

The war was about oil. Alaska will not produce a great deal of oil. Iraq will. America has effectively conquered one of the world's oil-rich nations. It will be under American domination forever.

America didn't attack North Korea simply because victory is not assured. North Korea definitely has nuclear weapons and an irrational, illogical, unstable leader who may use them - too great a risk. Much easier to kick the butt of a country without powerful allies and crippled by sanctions. And that happens to be rich in oil.

Iraq posed no threat to anyone. They got their butts kicked so hard in the first war that they were never going to bother anyone ever again. This business about the WMD's was a smokescreen. If the reason was to get rid of Saddam, then there were other ways. America has ways and means most other countries can only dream about - assassinating Saddam wouldn't have been impossible.

And Kuwait? A result of America telling Iraq to "renegotiate" their border with Kuwait. Funny how it gave the US an excuse to occupy the oilfields of Saudi Arabia. An excuse they'd been looking for for years. And after the war? Manufacture a continued threat from Iraq, thus giving the Saudis the jitters and make them continue to request the US presence.

Where is Saddam? Probably enjoying his big paycheque after the successful conclusion of the Great Deal To Stir Up Trouble In The Middle East And Force An American Takeover. Nice work!

For the record, I'm not Anti-American - I just hate Bush and the US government.

[homersimpson]

Let me preface my comments by saying I neither support Bush or the war in Iraq, however, to contend that it is a war for oil is laughable. If so, then why were the oil fields not immediately seized and guarded by coalition forces? Why did production fall to zero? Why has production still not reached prewar levels?
Bush's reasons for invading Iraq were numerous: 1. He (perhaps naively) believed the faulty intelligence he was given. 2. There was a personal grudge he had against both Saddam and Iraq (the failure of the first Presdient Bush to remove Saddam cost him re-election; and evidence was later discovered that the Iraqi gov't had tried to assassinate the elder Bush). 3. The U.S. and the Bush administration needed a momentum-building victory to further the "global war on terrorism" and Iraq was an easy target. (Telling the American people you've toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan is akin to Shaquille O'Neal bragging he beat a toddler at a game of h.o.r.s.e.) 4. There were no other viable targets. (Iran, North Korea, Syria, etc.) all posed significant quagmires, unlike the much unforeseen ones in Iraq.

[fizayded]

Check this out:

Looking at the recent US policies in Iraq, What do you think was the real goal behind this war?

Noam Chomsky: Well, we can be quite confident on one thing. The reasons we are given can't possibly be the reasons. And we know that, because they are internally contradictory. So one day, Bush and Powell would claim that "the single question," as they put it, is whether Iraq would disarm and the next day they would say it doesn�t matter whether Iraq disarms because they will go on and invade anyway. And the next day would be that if Saddam and his group get out then the problem will be solved; and then, the next day for example, at the Azores, at the summit when they made an ultimatum to the United Nations, they said that even if Saddam and his group get out they would go on and invade anyway. And they went on like that. When people give you contradictory reasons every time they speak, all they are saying is: "don't believe a word I say" . So we can dismiss the official reasons.

And the actual reasons I think are not very obscure. First of all, there�s a long standing interest. That does not account for the timing but it does account for the interest. And that is that Iraq has the second large oil reserves in the World and controlling Iraqi oil and even ending up probably with military bases in Iraq will place the United States in an extremely strong position to dominate the global energy system even more than it does today. That's a very powerful lever of world control, quite apart from the profits that comes from it. And the US probably doesn't intend to access the oil of Iraq; it intends to use primarily safer Atlantic basin resources for itself (Western Hemisphere, West Africa). But to control the oil has been a leading principle of US foreign policies since the Second World War, and Iraq is particularly significant in this respect. So that's a long standing interest. On the other hand it doesn't explain the timing.

If you want to look at the timing, I think that it became quite clear that the massive propaganda for the war began in September of last year, September 2002. Before that there was a condemnation of Iraq but no effort to whip people into war fever. So we asked what else happened then September 2002. Well, two important things happened. One was the opening of the mid term congressional campaign, and the Bush�s campaign manager, Karl Rove, was very clearly explaining what should be obvious to anybody anyway: that they could not possible enter the campaign with a focus on social and economic issues. The reason is that they are carrying out policies which are quite harmful to the general population and favorable to an extremely narrow sector of corporate power and the corrupt sectors as well, and they can't face the electorate on that. As he pointed out, if we can make the primary issue national security then we will be able win because people will -you know- flock to power if they feel frightened. And that is second nature to these people; that's the way they have ran the country -right through the 1980�s- with very unpopular domestic programs but accustomed to press into the panic button -Nicaragua, Grenada, crime, one thing after another. And Rove also pointed out that something similar would be needed for the presidential election.

And that's true and what they want do is not just to stay in office but they would like to institutionalize the very regressive program put forward domestically, a program which will basically unravel whatever is left of New Deal social democratic systems and turn the country almost completely into a passive undemocratic society, controlled totally by high concentration of capitals. This means slashing public medical assistance, social security; probably schools; and increasing state power. These people are not conservatives, they brought the country into a federal deficit with the largest increase in federal spending in 20 years, that is since their last term in office- and huge tax cuts for the rich, and they want to institutionalize these programs. They are seeking a "fiscal train wreck" that will make it impossible to fund the programs. They know they cannot face an election declaring that they want to destroy very popular programs, but they can throw up their hands in despair and say, "What can we do, there's no money," after they have made sure there would be no money by huge tax cuts for the rich and sharp increase in spending for military (including high tech industry) and other programs beneficial to corporate power and the wealthy. So that's the second, that's the domestic factor and in fact, there was a spectacular propaganda achievement on that. After the government-media propaganda campaign began in September they succeeded in convincing a majority of the population very quickly that Iraq was an imminent threat to the security of the United States, and even that Iraq was responsible for September 11th. I mean, there is not a grain of truth in all that, but by now majority of the population believes those things and those attitudes are correlated strongly with the commitment to war, which is understandable. If people think they are threatened with destruction by an enemy who�s already attacked them it is {delete "all"} likely that they'll go to war. In effect, if you look at the press today they describe soldiers as saying: "we are here for revenge - you know- because they blew up the World Trade Center, they will attack us", or something. Well, these beliefs are completely unique to the United States.

I mean: no one in the World believes anything like this. In Kuwait and Iran people hate Saddam Hussein, but they are not afraid of him, they know they're the weakest country in the region. In any event the government-media propaganda campaign worked brilliantly as the population was frightened and to a large extent it was willing to support the war despite the fact that there was a lot of opposition. And that's the second factor.

And there was a third factor which was even more important. In September the government announced the national security strategy. That is not completely without precedent, but it is quite new as a formulation of state policy. What is stated is that we are tearing the entire system of the international law to shreds, the end of UN charter, and that we are going to carry out an aggressive war -which we will call {delete "it"} "preventive"- and at any time we choose and that we will rule the world by force. In addition, we will assure that there is never any challenge to our domination because we are so overwhelmingly powerful in military force that we will simply crush any potential challenge.

Well, you know, that caused shudders around the world, including the foreign policy elite at home which was appalled by this. I mean it is not that things like that haven't been heard in the past. Of course they had, but it had never been formulated as an official national policy . I suspect you will have to go back to Hitler to find an analogy to that. Now, when you propose new norms in the international behavior and new policies you have to illustrate it, you have to get people to understand that you mean it. Also you have to have what a Harvard historian called an "exemplary war", a war of example, which shows that we really mean what we say.

And we have to choose the right target. The target has to have several properties. First it has to be completely defenseless. No one would attack anybody who might be able to defend themselves, that would be not prudent. Iraq meets that perfectly : it is the weakest country in the region, it's been devastated by sanctions and almost completely disarmed and the US knows every inch of the Iraq territory by satellite surveillance and overflights, and more recently U-2 flights. So, yes, Irak it is extremely weak and satisfied the first condition.

And secondly, it has to be important. So there will be no point invading Burundi, you know, for example, it has to be a country worthwhile controlling, owning, and Iraq has that property too. It�s, as mentioned, the second largest oil producer in the world. So it's perfect example and a perfect case for this exemplary war, intending to put the world on notice saying that this is what we�re going do, any time we choose. We have the power. We have declared that {delete "there"} our goal is domination by force and that no challenge will be accepted. We've showed you what we are intending to do and be ready for the next. We will proceed on to the next operation. Those various conditions fold together and they make a war a very reasonable choice in taking to a test some principles.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=3768

[AgentMulderUK]