Why We Went to Iraq

We definitely went for the oil, but it was like reason 3 or 4.

The big reason was neocon ideology. These idiots really believed they could conquer Iraq and start a democratic domino effect. The more books I read about the war and the post-war planning, the more I realize this was the case; these morons seriously had NO post-war plans.

The second reason was 'This time it's personal.' It was GWB wanting to finish what his dad couldn't, thus stepping out of his shadow, plus he wanted to get back at Saddam for trying to kill his dad.

Third was oil. This is obvious when you look at the fact that the Oil Ministry was the only ministry in Baghdad protected by US troops. That ministry was on the bottom of the list of the important things to protect, yet every other govt building was looted or torched or both.

Oh, they had a plan, but it relied on hundreds of thousands of Iraqis spontaneously embracing democracy and deciding they loved us. And they seem honestly stunned that this didn't happen the second we knocked Saddam's statue down.

Who is 'we', exactly?

I thought it was Colin Powell and others that convinced dad George that they shouldn't, i.e., George I decided they wouldn't get involved in the implosion along ethnic and theological lines that was sure to follow.

I just think we went because Afghanistan is too hard to spell.

Seriously though, as an ex-Republican, I have to say that I somehow had myself convinced that this was a good idea at the time. I think the personal turning point for me was when they finally captured Saddam and I didn't give a shit, because it dawned on me that capturing him wasn't going to magically make anything better. A few months down the road, after taking great pleasure in rubbing it in Gore voters' faces that he lost, I found myself frantically trying to make sure my absentee ballot checked "Kerry" made it to the proper people.

Now I just hate everybody, as far as parties are concerned.

I believe that George I was also being stupid and following those stupid UN resolutions to not go after Saddam; instead, to just get him out of Kuwait.

Every time I think about the neocon dreams that Devin brought up, I can't help but think of a bunch of old fat white men in a smoky room saying to themselves, "If only the rest of the world was as civilized as us Real Americans. I know! Why don't we just go into those countries and civilize them just like us?! Those barbarians will be falling all over themselves to run and thank us. Now if only we can also figure out a way to make all of their skin tone lighter as well...."

Devin pretty much hit the point I wanted to make. As wrongheaded and ridiculous as it is, I think that these people sincerely believed that the Iraqis would welcome the troops, and that the entire middle east would fall into line and embrace democracy. I think that they're still trying to figure out why it didn't work. All of the lies leading up to and into the invasion were considered band-aids; they thought that once everything was flowers and puppies, all would be forgiven. Instead, they've had to scramble to make up new lies to continue to cover for the old lies.

Sure its oil. Iraq is a great strategic position to embed a US presence in (or as Chomsky says, to build the 'biggest embassy in the world'). It was an easy decision to make because there was no way Iraq could fight back (because obviously they had no WMDs) and now the US will try to stay there forever and eventually move outwards towards Iran, Syria, etc.

Check out a documentary called A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash for a brief history of oil, its effect on us and whats going to happen when it runs out.

Dev nails it. Iraq was supposed to be the starting point of the ascendence of neoconservative idealogy as a world doctrine. Iraqi civilians would worship the new bosses, neighboring dictators would bow to its might, and the dubious West and hostile East would recognise the true power of the new American way. But it obviously didn't work out like that.

Somehow, that theory is even scarier and more depressing than the "they did it for the oil" idea.

The PNAC idealogues definitely filled Bush's head with tripe, it's true, and like Frank says, we don't have Eisenhower or Patton running this. We have mostly politicians that have never seen what things look like from a battlefield. So, yeah, I think everything everybody is saying applies.

The reason I think it's oil is because whomever controls Iraq's oil controls the oil market. Period. It's so abundant, so easy to produce and refine, that if it were to get in the hands of someone not in "the club," they could completely redistribute the world's wealth. And the last person they wanted holding that trigger was Saddam Hussein, who like FC says, never quite played ball the way they wanted him to.

Cheney's with Halliburton and Halliburton appears to be (mis)handling Iraq's transformation from an oil operation in chaos to an oil operation under western rule. He is also infamous for that behind-closed-doors meeting with the energy industry when he first took office about which little is known.

Journalist Greg Palast believes that we're seizing Iraq to make sure that most of that abundant, easy-access oil never makes it to market. Palast believes that Houston intends to once again and forevermore suppress production in Iraq to continue its mutually beneficial racket with OPEC.

He believes that the oil management agreement currently making the rounds in Iraq's parliament was drawn up by Texas oil executives, and says he even has evidence of this.

The thing is that all of us can really only speculate because news about this particular subject is hard to come by. Yeah, FC, that's what people with a logical bent can look back and say, but where's the evidence of anyone giving that justification? You can look around at the world and find scores of tyrants as bad or worse than Hussein, yet they don't merit our attention, but he does.

WMD "evidence" was entirely cooked up, and Hussein had ZERO connection to Al Qaeda. By some accounts, Hussein's operation and power were deteriorating. In terms of oil production, he was in an untenable position wrt the dominating powers of Saudi Arabia and Houston. The whole weapons inspectors going to Iraq to make sure it was disarmed was a joke -- they found NOTHING to justify the west's alarmist ideas.

Occam's Razor tells us the simplest expanation is probably right:

Iraq = second largest oil cache in the world
US + OPEC = power and kingly riches derived through control of the oil market
Bush + Cheney = craziest, most secretive administration in history

Add a dash of PNAC's delusions of empire, a sprinke of Bush's feeble-minded Daddy complex, then wait for the piece de resistance: 9-11, the final ingredient to make their perfect oil cake.

That's why we're there, and the corporate-owned media is not allowed to even pose the question, so we're not permitted to even consider it.

What I find kind of scary about all of this is that there have been so many people coming and going in this administration that seemed to have more or less the right idea (either saying we shouldn't have gone in the first place or at the very least that we need to seriously rethink our approach and reasons for doing all this crap) that have been slandered or simply made to retire. Like, it disturbs me that the people in charge of a country where they are put into power because of their popularity with the masses couldn't care less about popular opinion. They're not even trying that hard to lie to us anymore.

Oil was not the third reason.

It's the only reason.

The Middle East and their bastion of megalomaniacal rulers and religious lunacy would be just as ignored as Africa is it didn't sit on the majority of the world's supply of energy. If the wells all ran dry tomorrow, the U.S., China, Russia, and everyone else would all walk away from that psychotic little region of the world and never darken their doorways again. Having a foothold in and some control over those vast resources is the only reason the U.S. has any interest in the region. With being on the outs with Iran since the late 70's, and the possibility of eventually there being an unsympathetic regime change in Saudi Arabia, targeting Iraq for it's central location and resources made perfect sense.

Now that we've established the motivation, let's see where everything went wrong. Absolutely the post war game plan has to be one of the most ill conceived end games formulated. One of the primary motivating factors for Bush Senior not ousting Hussein during the Persian Gulf war was advisers informing him of the eventual civil war that would result in the vacuum created by losing a single dictator form of government. In a country decisively split along religious doctrines, the only people who didn't see this coming were Rumsfeld and everyone working for him. The current fiasco could have been prevented by a huge commitment of troops that could provide the same security of answering to a single source that the previous regime provided. Then, by not executing the tactical mistake of immediately attempting to fabricate and install a new government, establishing that the U.S. was in complete control until further notice with those troops. This would have rallied unified anti U.S. sentiment, so a people led coalition of leaders that would later negotiate our withdrawal would be uniformly accepted, and serve as the launching point for a new found friendship between the U.S. and the new Iraqi government.

None of that happened, so it's either drop another 200,000 troops that don't exist to establish complete order , or withdraw, let the civil war ensue and start at square one with whatever government ends up in control.

-Off Topic- I think "Death Surge" is one of the most appropriate monikers I can think of in regards to any recent discussions about Iraq.

Carry on.

It was a 'kill two (middle-eastern epithet) with one stone' deal, I think. A confluence of factors.

I don't doubt people thought good would come of it: a democratic Iraq, Saddam overthrown, an American presence in the Middle East, etc.

But I also think it's important not to underestimate the amount of greed that went into planning the decision to invade: a lot of people stood to get very rich as a result (and I'm not talking about just oil). The thought process is easy to follow: 'hey, Saddam is a bad dude! He deserves what's coming! And if we and our corporate cronies can make a few (billion) bucks while we're at, so much the better! Who could blame us!?'

Never discount the human capacity for rationalizing greed, even at an awesome scale.

I have to disagree with this. Western powers (and Russia! don't forget the USSR!) have meddled in Africa to a pretty significant degree. Africa has always been a critical location when it comes to exploiting resources (whether they be labour oriented or, more recently, natural like uranium or copper). Plenty of oil comes from Africa as well.

I don't think it's a coincidence that both the Mid East and Africa are politically unstable and ideologically radicalized. It serves a purpose.

If oil was the main reason, we would have had a post-war plan. And I think they would have faked WMD evidence (which I thought for sure they would do anyway, so color me generally surprised) to cover the truth behind the invasion. But they have fucked up in ways that only honest to God ideologues can fuck up, because they had complete and total faith in their beliefs. If they were coming at it from mostly a greed perspective, they would have been more careful.

In an odd way, "oil" is both the first reason and the third reason. In reading THE ASSASSIN'S GATE, George Packer makes it clear that neocon ideologues (and to put names to some of the perpetrators: Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle) really did believe that the force of American democracy was so powerful that it would bloom in the Middle East. Of course, then you have to come to the question of "Why the Middle East?" as opposed to Somalia or Columbia or some other country; and the answer is that it best serves our national interests, AKA, oil.

You're absolutely right- none of those ideologues were interested in rosily spreading democracy simply for democracy's sake. It's obvious that a friendly, democratic middle east is important to the U.S. for one primary reason.

That's the truly frightening part. They didn't think they needed one. The Neo-cons really thought that the Iraqi people would sing and dance on their way to embracing a new economic destiny as a democratic state. It's as if they garnered their intelligence solely from immigrants who escaped from Iraq to the United States instead of a qualified authority on the country.

I'm still having a hard time with this one. They showed an extreme lack of respect for the Iraqi culture from the get go. I don't see how they could've possibly thought we'd be embraced with open arms with the way we treated their culture early on.

When the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad was looted, over 177,000 pieces of art that covered 7000 years in history were either stolen or destroyed. Rumsfeld basically shrugged it of with, "eh, boys will be boys" quips. The US was even warned ahead of time by The Association of Art Museum Directors that this would happen and there was still absolutely no interest in protecting these sites. Rumsfeld's attitude towards the Iraqis reminded me of the scene in Glory when Colonel Montgomery let his regiment have free range to loot because he considered them nothing more than "little monkey children".

Hell, even the Allies had the decency to form a group (The Monuments Men) that would protect art from being lost during WWII.

I really can't imagine Donald Rumsfeld giving a fuck about art.
(Maybe except his Thomas Kinkade repros.)

We are there because of the huge stockpiles of WMD's, duh you guys dont watch the news? I mean Donald Rumsfeld made it pretty obvious with his clean cut statements.

Very much so: remember when the US opposed sanctions against the apartheid regime in order to continue access to the strategic minerals South Africa had -- not to mention the ardent anti-communist stance.

I had a very well educated friend from SA who's first utterance was always that the ANC was communist -- and then she'd remember the bit about apartheid.

Not only that, I find my mind blown by the fact they never took into account the traditional sense felt by many people in the Middle East of subjugation and domination by the Western world . The US invading Iraq without any legitimate reasons (thereby giving credence to these feelings) was catastrophic in our efforts in fostering moderation and is rightly seen by radicals as a huge boon to their interests. Any person even vaguely familiar with the area would have foreseen that result. I remember cursing at the radio when I heard Bush's announcing the invasion in '03. What fucking idiots.

...

From here.

Because they view the world in black and white. Just because Sadam's forces were no match for the US might, they thought invading Iraq would be the same as invading Grenada.

That's a valid point, but (if I can risk sounding like a conspiracy nut for a moment) I don't think they really have "fucked up" the exit strategy. I think it was part of the plan all along. Oil is only part of the equation, the larger issue has always been (and always will be) MONEY. This administration started this war, first and foremost, in order for their friends, business partners and themselves to make money. It also, conveniently, helps to create and maintain a state of fear in our (sheeplike) population, allowing for the continued erosion of our civil rights, which in turn allows those in power to stay in power and make more money through further war profiteering and so on.

I know this sounds nutty, but historically it's the way demagogues and ideologues always stay in power - nurture the fear of the "enemy-on-our-doorstep" to keep the people from questioning their leaders or their methods. As Goering famously said "the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked." After Iraq it will be Iran or Korea or Russia or somebody. After all, we gotta keep building those bases and paying those defense contractors!

Now, I won't go so far as to say that Bushies engineered 9/11, but they certainly have used it well (the "freedom haters" make a great foil). They didn't need it though, they were already preparing to reignite a cold war before it even happened (new nuclear weapon programs, new STAR WARS, pulling out of SALT, etc). Unless people in this country wake up, pull their heads out of their butts and move past American Idol, we are in for endless war in our lifetimes.

I think all of the above are pretty right-on.

Dev's mention of the "Democracy domino-effect" was a big part of it. Also, Wolfowitz's original memos on the subject--going back to the late 70s, after the Shaw of Iran was overthrown--also pointed out that taking out Iraq would intimidate Iran. Even back then, we knew that a war with Iran would be very dangerous and might not be win-able. If we could destabilize the region by overthrowing Saddam, the thinking went, we might be able to cause an uprising in Iran--and, thereby, neutralize our biggest enemy in the region while encouraging democracy.

And--like Goldberg said--we wouldn't even be interested in the Mid East, at all, if it wasn't for the oil. Without oil, we'd just let those dude declare Fatwahs on each other indefinitely and watch the carnage like we're currently doing in Sudan.

And, like another writer said, greed made it nearly impossible for us to carry off any portion of the plan well...everyone wanted a piece of the pie and all the Americans got one (at least initially) without thinking about how it would effect the country or rebuilding effort.

Finally, like Deep Throat says in All the President's Men, "These are not very bright guys...and things got out of hand".

Sometimes folks attribute an evil genius sorta quality to the Administration (Cheney in particular) and--while the 'evil' part seems correct--there was no one in the Neocon segment of the Administration who thougth this thing through....Those 'Project for a New American Century' members of the Admin. were just so full of hubris that they made the Classic mistake--they overestimated their intelligence and abilities...

In the end, its a total clusterckuf politically for the USA--but it may have destroyed Iraq for the next 50 years, which is the real tragedy. The birthplace of civilization and one of the most sophisticated cultures on Earth reduced to an Afghani-level of barbarism and poverty.

I wish that Bush and Co. were eroding our civil rights in some Palpatinian scheme to grab total power. But unfortunately, right now I really think that they've been stumbling through the Bill of Rights and knocking over anything in their way because they're so thickheaded and enamored with the smell of their own shit that they don't see all the ways it could come back to bite them and the country in the ass. The Empire would be easier to fight than the Idiocracy, and I've come to fear incompetence even more than Evil.

Ha ha ha ha ha!

I hope to God you're right, I really do! If not, than to quote the Maitre D` from Ferris Bueller, "I weep for the future"

Thanks for the giggle though!

And I hope to God that you're Evil Conspiracy theory is right. At least in that case the people in charge have a clue what they're doing.

Not giggling at either prospect, though.

Exactly right. The Western world wouldn't care if the Middle East didn't have the capacity to cripple their respective economies.

I don't think another 200,000 troops would do the trick at this point. Iraq has become a perfect storm of disastrous post-war planning. Failure to promote and develop a viable replacement government, failure to properly evaluate the underlying motivations of the populace (having a brutal secularist dictator, if nothing else, masked the potential for religious extremism in Iraq), failure to properly assess the spheres of influence neighboring theocracies would have on the destablized Iraqi regime, failure to gauge what skills/equipment would be needed in post-war world....failures on every level.

The Bush cabinet basically tried to half-ass it. They didn't seize full control of the nation, but had no exit strategy for a reasonably speedy withdrawal once Saddam was removed from power (if one could even be devised). Establishing small pockets of U.S. influence while trying to rally a growingly, and rightfully, unsympathetic populace has been a recipe for disaster.

I think the overall reason of course is enrichment of the power elite.

War and especially the kind of war the U.S. military industrial complex has perfected is just a very clever "legal" way of stealing the tax payers money and redistributing it to war profiteers.
Of course there are nice side effects like maybe more control in region XY of the world or getting rid of a socialist government somewhere but the biggest scam of all time is that war is just a way of legally shuffling money belonging to many into the pockets of few.

Just watch this, an eye opener on the contractor issue in Iraq...
IRAQ FOR SAIL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEnX5meWTPQ

Washing a bag of soldier's clothes costs the tax payer 99 Dollars, or a six pack of soda for just 45$!
Where do you think those missing billions are? So sad when you consider that Eisenhower saw the whole damn war scam scheme and the "revolving door" effect gripping the USA in '54 and it just got worse from there.

And if you watched that, go and watch WHY WE FIGHT, a brilliant documentary about America's willingness to wage war again and again.

I think this is really what I was trying to say. Thanks for summing it up so succinctly!

I agree with Frank Cobretti, the Iraq sanctions regime was on the brink of falling apart as many countries were trying to find ways to undermind it to get to Iraq's oil. The US had spent 10+ years trying to find a solution to the Saddam problem (w/ sanctions, targeted bombings, financing opposition, etc.) and 9/11 was the catalyst to stop delaying and finally solve it. The administration thought invading Iraq would solve two problems by overthrowing Saddam and spreading democracy in place of authoritarianism in the Middle East to reduce terrorism which had just attacked inside the US.

Iraq is going to become a democracy eventually. The Iraqis could have had it the easy way by embracing their new freedom, working together and quickly building a very rich country. Instead many Iraqis let themselves be tricked and seduced by insurgents who exploited their old feelings of victimization under European & Ottoman colonialism and sectarian abuse under Saddam into formenting revenge attacks against different ethnic and religious groups and American soldiers.

Now they are going to have to suffer through a civil war if America pulls out because their fellow countrymen can't seem to agree on a way to share power & oil revenue in the absence of Saddam. It seems they are more intent on revenge with each other and trying to horde as much of the Iraqi pie for themselves then trying to build a better country for all Iraqis.

The Iraqi government probably has till the Spring of 2008 to make meaningful progress toward reconcilliation and stability before all the American political willpower toward helping them is gone.

Those silly Iraqis just don't know how good they could have had it!

I agree, except it's not silly, it's stupid. It's called cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Do you honestly think Iraqi civilians had a clear-cut choice to embrace the invading American army, and the repercussions for them for doing so would have been minimal?

You hide your disgust well. I wish I could.

I'm sorry, Noah, but that's a ridiculously simple assessment. Do you think these factions and hatreds sprung up overnight just to prevent the US from succeeding? We walked into a hornet's nest of ancient hatreds and feuds thinking that they'd shelve hundreds of years of prejudice and resentment against both us and each other to embrace a form of government most of them equate with evil and greed. Success was never an option. They were practically destined to resent American interference no matter what went down, and they couldn't work together even if it meant working against us to do it. If the Bush administration had deigned to listen to anyone who knew anything about that area of the world, they would have known better. Instead, they cut themselves off from everyone who could have helped them avoid this situation, willfully damning themselves to ignorance because there was too much money to be made to entertain any doubts.

Yes. If they didn't do it before they dug the dead and dying out of the rubble, they had ample opportunity during the nighttime sweeps. Or maybe they should've embraced American occupation instead of wasting all their time being rounded up off and tortured.

I wonder: is Noah completely and totally ignorant about the actual situation in Iraq, or is he just blowing sunshine up our asses knowing full well his apologia is nonsense? I can't imagine anyone with three brain cells to rub together actually thinking that invading another country under false pretenses in order to force their favourite system of government upon a sovereign people is a good thing. I can't imagine anyone with the aforementioned lonely ganglia and access to a newspaper actually believes this was the motivating force behind the US government in the first place either. Then again, I'm not an American Conservative. My sense of right and wrong doesn't seem to jibe with theirs.

Oil and soil is what it's about. PNAC wanted the US to invade in 1998; they petitioned its president to do so. When it didn't happen, the members of PNAC got themselves into positions of power in the following administration and made it happen. They made it happen for the sake of American economic hegemony. Do the signatures at the bottom of that letter ring any bells at all?

The reason people believe it's all the Iraqis fault and that the lack of "benchmarks" is because of their internal feuds is because the truth is not reported by the media. Added to that is right wing media repeating not only lies day after day but strategic answers to any intelligent question that might come up about the illogic of those lies.

I just don't think people at large are capable of ever grasping that everything they believe with their heart and soul has been manipulated into them. It's just too earth shattering. Our system of government can change if people understood their own collective power, but until they drop the fantasies of immigration this and dems vs. repubs that, we will be continue to be the ultimate losers.

"Oil and soil" encapsulates it best (kudos Seabass), and the greatest tragedy is that all those people over there are dying to increase corporate profit and power. And that's it. And when the variety of life on this earth is gone in that same spirit, there will be no comfort in "I told you sos."

You forgot another important fact. In 1944 France was liberated from conquering invaders, whereas in 2003 Iraq was invaded and conquered.

I cannot believe that people were so stupid as to believe this was a liberation of any sort, or that the invading army would be cheered on as they raced to secure Iraq's resources while the people they were allegedly liberating were left to die in the streets. Even if the rubes believe it (because it comes from the President, or because they saw it on the news, or because their priest endorses it, or because Democrats oppose it, or whatever), I have a hard time believing the architects of this atrocity believed it. I cannot fathom it. It's like trying to draw a round square or pretend 2+2=5. Perle and Armitage and Rumsfeld and their lot aren't stupid. But they are grossly immoral and will insult the intelligence of anyone who points a camera their way in their defense of their little Project.

Saddam Hussein was hanged for having people killed in retaliation for an assassination attempt. I see no reason why Bush shouldn't be arrested and tried on similar charges.

I truly do not understand why your beef isn't that you invaded a country under false pretense for the sake of material gain in the first place. I understand why the Grifters of this world support such things: they're thugs and fools. You don't seem to be either.

I certainly respect your point, but I have to disagree. While I wouldn't call the Neocons stupid, they certainly drank their own kool-aid. I think they very much believe that anyone would be crazy to turn down Democracy--you've heard the way Bush speaks about it...that Democracy is the great leavener.

This is an ideal left over from the Cold War days, when everything was so black and white to these guys.

Also, its important I think to remember that they're really devoted to capitalism. What you see--and, I believe, correctly so--as their desire to turn Iraq into a cash cow, they see as bringing civilization to a neglected corner of the world. In their paradigm, the whole world is there to be bought and sold and capitialism/Democracy spread peace and wealth.

There's a popular saying in International Affairs/Macro-Economics...that no two countries with a McDonald's have ever attacked each other...and it's true. So, to their mind (and to Clinton's, who was a firm believer in globalisation--just not in the use of force to achieve it) the quicker the Middle East gets hip to the Western Way of doing things, the better off everyone is.

You and I and everyone here has the smarts to question these ideas--and to see them as a cheap excuse for maintaining American/Western dominance throughout the world. But these guys don't question--they're true believers, which is also why their such stubborn assholes with everything they do.

I mean, think about Bush being Evangelical--not just to bash the religion, but--what does it take to believe the Bible so firmly? To never question its ideals or God's decisions, even when they don't square...that sort-of blind faith is what's at play with his foreign policy and with all these wackos--an undying faith in the Western way.

I'm not going to believe something just because Bush says it's so. I heard Bush say that it was a fact that Iraq possessed a vast arsenal of illicit weapons, too. When it became impossible to maintain that lie, he trotted out the humanitarian angle. Then the fear angle. Then the anti-terrorism angle. And on, and on.

And I agree with Goldberg as well: anything done there is done there to improve the fortunes of a select few. A friendly Iraqi government is one that will cut the US oil industry in on their action, by definition. They aren't replacing governments because democracy is awesome, it's all about the money.

And the power. Hence the enduring bases from which to maintain US domination over this new, friendly government, and from which to force other nations to be friendly to US interests as well. Happily, the conquest is not going their way. The only thing worse than the US failing in its bid to annex Iraq would be the US succeeding. The New American Century looks to be awfully short.

I notice that the apologist creep from San Diego is calling yet again for Bush's critics and opposition to be silenced. I wonder if the imaginary freedom he claims Iraqis have includes the imaginary right to speak their minds regarding their government. I wonder if it includes the imaginary right to criticize George W. Bush.

Frank, is there any sort of consensus amongst your military brethren concerning the war and Bush's prosecution of it, and does it differ much from the general public's apparant lack of faith?