So I Guess We're All Evil (Except You with the Signs)

Here’s a beautiful example of some of the whack-job bloofy that makes this country great. I got a letter from a friend of a friend, one of those out-there writers who still think the war in Iraq is about stealing their oil.

I envision this odd worldview that ties everything together. See, Bush and his evil lackey Cheney (who are normally stupid but suddenly got really bright) duped the whole world (sans our really, really smart friends in France) into invading Iraq in order to steal their oil, to feed it to our SUVs in an effort to pollute the environment and quicken global warming, for the purpose of making the Earth uninhabitable for future generations. Because, of course, it will be Halliburton, staffed by illegal Mexicans (brought up by the secret North American Union via the Trans-Texas Corridor), who gets the multi-billion-dollar contract to build the first moon colony - which is the real reason for the Space Shuttle program - with parts built by children in China and shipped via Dubai Ports World.

Welcome to the New Religion. And, all you conservative heretics out there, you will convert! Jihad isn't just for terrorists any more!

Anyway, since the letter was apparently in response to something I wrote here, and since this friend of a friend wrote me the letter because he was (for whatever reason) unable to leave a comment here {remind me to look into that – come to think of it, there haven’t been any comments here for a very long time}, I thought I’d go ahead and include his letter – and my response – here.

Terrorists bomb Iraqi oil facilities in northern Iraq

Robert's Letter:

Jerry,

Spring 2001 Michael Klare, an international security expert and author of Resource Wars, reported the military had increasingly come to “define resource security as their primary mission.” An article in the Army War College's journal by Jeffrey Record, a former staff member of the Senate armed services committee, argued for “shooting in the Persian Gulf on behalf of lower gas prices” and “advocated the acceptability of presidential subterfuge in the promotion of a conflict” and “explicitly urged painting over the US's actual reasons for warfare with a nobly high-minded veneer, seeing such as a necessity for mobilizing public support for a conflict.”

April 2001 Gen. Tommy Franks, C.O. of US forces in the Persian Gulf/South Asia area, testified to Congress that his command's key mission was “access to energy resources.” The next month US Central Command began plans for war with Afghanistan. (Sydney Morning Herald 12/26/02)

April 2001 “Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century,” a report commissioned by former Secretary of State James Baker and the Council on Foreign Relations stated that the US remained a prisoner of energy needs and needed “military intervention” to secure its oil supply. Saddam Hussein should be overthrown so the US could control Iraq’s oil. (Sunday Herald 10/5/02)

It looks like Alan Greenspan was right when he said our war on Iraq was for oil.
Robert Flynn
http://www.robert-flynn.net/

.

My Response:

Robert,

My purpose with war-like discussion on the blog was really more to point out the lunacy of far-fringe-left moonbats like Code Pinko and the mayor of Berserkeley than to rehash the old, tired (and frankly just plain silly) argument that the Iraq War was all about oil. But, since you're a friend of Mike's (and I'm proof that Mike has some strange friends), I'll go through it one more time.

Think about this. Since the US went into Iraq, what has happened to international crude prices? Where exactly is all that Iraqi oil?

No, my friend. You're way off. In fact, I'm afraid you're missing the whole point. The Gulf War (1991) was about oil - and was fought (and lost by Kuwait) before the Americans ever entered the theater. What followed (the American 'liberation' of Kuwait) was about 2 things: 1, establishing a military presence in the region and establishing precedent for US military intervention in defense of allies in the region, and 2, securing future US interests in the Kuwaiti petro market, because it was already known in the halls of American government that we'd soon be alienating the Iraqi petro market.

This current war is a whole different thing. The dynamic is all wrong. The US went into Iraq in 2003 because regime change in Iraq has been US policy for four presidents now. Even back in the day when Rummy was shaking hands with Uncle Saddam, folks like Ronaldus Maximus, Daddy Bush and Wild Bill were scheming to remove Uncle Saddam from office. It's really both as simple and as complex as that.

Couldn't be done during Reagan's time, because we were backing the Iraqis against the Iranians (because of our opposition to their caliphate-inspired 'revolution' and their penchant for taking American hostages - plus, it was only a few years after the Desert One fiasco). Simple enough. But then, even after the two sides wore each other down like children who fell asleep while fighting in the car, we didn't do it because we were in the midst of regime change here in Los Estados (out with Ronaldus Maximus, in with Daddy Bush).

Daddy Bush knew things about Saddam that Ronaldus never knew. One of the benefits of having a president who'd been the Director of the CIA, as opposed to a president who'd been a B-list actor (not that I'm anti-Reagan, mind you...but in that situation, Bush was more on-the-ball). By this point, Saddam was getting it from both sides. He had to deal with saber rattling from Washington on one hand, and petro theft from Kuwait on the other (millions of barrels of light sweet crude - some of the best oil in the world - from the Iraqi part of the Rumalia Oil Field). Add into the mix Saddam's complete inability to think rationally, and there you have it, folks. Bus loads of Iraqi troops roll into Kuwait City (that's how the Iraqis initially invaded Kuwait, by bus.).

Of course, this cemented the US anti-Saddam policy. But it also set it back about 10 years. The idea was to remove Saddam before, but then when he invaded Kuwait, we couldn't do it because it would appear to the rest of the world that US had overstepped its mandate from the UN (to lead a coalition to liberate Kuwait). Whether he knew it or not, Saddam had bought himself some years by invading Kuwait.

Fast-forward to 2002 or 2003. Bush Jr. (I think, anyway) is looking for reasons to hit Saddam. He has some personally-imposed guidelines, if this is the case. One, it can't be a personal reason, meaning that he can't hit Iraq because Iraq tried to kill his father. Another is that it can't be unverifiable. This means that, if he says there are weapons, by God there'd better be weapons. Let's not just go in there and never find them. For twelve years now, (as of 2003) mind you, everyone from Hillary Clintoris to individual Iraqi dissidents have been swearing to the presence of a weapons program. And not all of them were wrong.

It's pretty silly to assert, knowing what we know now, that the whole weapons thing was just a made-up excuse to go to war for oil. Although, I have no doubt that the reports about the weapons program played perfectly into Washington's plans, and their accuracy was an issue relegated to the back burner.

By the time the first US reporters (with some troops embedded in their units) rolled across the Iraqi border, there were no reasons. Curve Ball was already known to be full of crap, but it didn't matter. Regime change was on its way, and even Baghdad Bob couldn't stop it ("There are no American tanks...").

Listen. I've seen the Iraqi oil infrastructure with my own two eyes. There was never a threat of the US taking Iraq's oil. I wish I could say that we don't give a crap about their oil, but that would be taking it too far. But still, I can attest to the fact that, until the US (and many other coutntries, mind you) went in there and worked with the Iraqis on RIO (Restore Iraqi Oil), no one - not the Iraqis or anyone else - was getting Iraqi oil. This is why the Oil for Food program was such a sham, and why Saddam's peeps were starving while he depleted the nation's European bankrolls to build new palaces.

No, I'm afraid it wasn't to gain access to their oil. If the US military said it was, then either you're (or your source is) taking the quote out of context, or someone's talking through their ass. And I don't believe anything General Franks has to say about it (just like some don't believe General Petreus). General Franks, a registered Democrat, did the same Macciavellian (sp?) thing the Democrats in Congress did. They purposely failed in their duties to prosecute a full-out war, in order to saddle a sitting president with that failure. It's the only explanation I can see for Franks' shoddy performance in Iraq (it was only after Petreus took over that things in Iraq started to improve - and dont try to tell me they haven't improved, because I was there - and if you need to hear it from troops instead of fat civilians like me, ask Mike's daughter-in-law).

I wish the war was about oil. The reason I say this is that while we've been largely stymied, until recently, by terrorist insurgents (no, not Iraqis fighting for their homeland, as some peacenik wannabes would have you believe, but actual foreign Al Qaeda terrorists who only want to kill Americans - I know because I've met them and asked them), we won the war well enough to simply take their oil, if that was what we were after. And if we'd done that, then maybe I could pay less than $3 a gallon for my gas.

~Jerry

NEXT UP: The truth about Obama's health care plan (it ain't pretty)