by 5thGeneration 26 Replies latest jw friends
I've been meaning to ask this for a while.
I'm just curious how all the Bush bashers who screamed for years that Iraq was 'all about the oil' justify their view now with oil prices hovering around $140/barrel?
Just wondering because that argument has kinda been quashed, hasn't it? I never saw the U.S. just taking Iraq's oil nor do I now see Iraq doing any favours by discounting the price.
I don't like Bush so this is not a desire to argue. Just a curiosity.
bush bashers.....sounds like a porno
Simple. Now, that they have the oil, they are causing the price to go, to maximise profits. You didn't think that bush and his corporate buddies had in mind the welfare of the peons, did you?
S
Not all Bush bashers say this.
The price of oil is not merely connected to American influence in certain countries, but many factors.
5th,
I'm just curious how all the Bush bashers who screamed for years that Iraq was 'all about the oil' justify their view now with oil prices hovering around $140/barrel?
I can only speak for my own consistent stand on this issue over the years. I have never been a supporter of the Bush Administration, I also do not believe the invasion of Iraq was a 'war about oil', though I am sure that securing oil played a small part in the plan. I believe a war to secure oil on which nations survive is more justified than a war fought on the foundation of a flawed ideology.
The war was far more dangerous than a 'war for oil' as it was and is being fought on ideological grounds, established long before the event. It is no secret that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove et al, whose ignorance of foreign affairs that are not John Wayne shaped is by now legendary, had plans to 'Democratize' the Middle East reaching back to the early 1980's. What was needed was a buffoon with a gift for feral cunning and with Jesus in his heart to win the Presidency, and this of course happened.
Now, someone else is going to have to pick up the mess.
It is a very good excercise in political education to go back eight years in the threads on this Board and see just who got it right, and who got it wrong. Not that those of us who saw exactly what would would happen in Iraq if an invasion took place were particularly gifted in their political analysis, it is just that it was so obvious to those whose eyes were not clouded with an agenda.
A vote in politically uneducated hands is a dangerous thing, and this is the flaw in a democratic system, it presumes that voters actually know what they are doing.
HS
Did you really think anyone literally meant "oil"?????????
Jesus Christ! Nobody gives a shit about oil. They give a shit about money.
5G -- Although I doubt the war was 100% about oil, it seems a reaonable assumption that it was a major factor.
Notice this op-ed article from today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution : http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/tucker/stories/2008/06/20/tucked_0622.html
CYNTHIA TUCKER
MY OPINION
Big Oil's slick no-bid contracts will keep us mired in Iraq
Published on: 06/22/08
Didn't you just know this was coming?
A consortium of Western oil companies — the very definition of Big Oil — is on the verge of receiving no-bid contracts in Iraq, giving them access to one of the most sought-after prizes in the petroleum industry, according to The New York Times. Can it be mere coincidence that the leading companies in the deal — ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Total — are the very same companies that Saddam Hussein threw out when he nationalized the Iraqi oil industry more than three decades ago?
The American public has been reassured, repeatedly, that petroleum had absolutely nothing to do with the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq. President Bush, the oilman from Texas, has scoffed at the idea. So has Vice President Dick Cheney.
When I raised the specter of "petroleum wars" in a column dated Sept. 9, 2002, just as Bush was selling the idea that Saddam posed an imminent threat, I was assailed by critics, who called me "naive," among other choice descriptives. While I never believed that oil was the only reason for toppling Saddam, my critics weren't willing to concede petroleum played any role. ("The Bush administration is saturated with oil industry bigwigs. ... Their natural mindset is to assume that oil must be consumed ever more abundantly, even if that means going to war to preserve access to the supply," I wrote.)
Yet despite the vociferous denials, the four original partners of the Iraq Petroleum Co. (a misnomer, since all the companies are multinationals based in the U.S. or Western Europe) are about to receive contracts that allow them to service the fields in the country with the world's second-largest proven oil reserves. According to The New York Times, these are service contracts — paying the companies for their work — instead of the more lucrative licenses for oil deposits. But the contracts will give the global oil giants a leg up on more lucrative deals later on.
"It's been a long road, but the oil companies seem set to get much of what they have been seeking," said James Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum. "The Iraqi public is overwhelmingly opposed to this privatization of Iraqi oil, just like they are overwhelmingly opposed to the so-called security pact with the U.S."
Not that the opinions of Iraqis matter to everybody. There is a rather significant segment of Americans who believe that we have a God-given right to take what we want (though they'd never be so forthright in saying so). The United States is the world's remaining superpower; we have the biggest, baddest military. A belief in American exceptionalism leads some of us to think that we should stand astride the globe.
Writing in the London Review of Books in October 2007, American journalist Jim Holt observed that "the US may be 'stuck' exactly where Bush et al want it to be," in a country with as much as 300 billion barrels of undiscovered oil reserves.
"Among the winners: oil-services companies like Halliburton; the oil companies themselves (the profits will be unimaginable ...); US voters, who will be guaranteed price stability at the gas pump (which sometimes seems to be all they care about)," Holt wrote.
And even those Americans who recoil from the notion that "might makes right" would be hard-pressed to object to a deal that allows Big Oil to extract more petroleum from Iraq's rich fields. After all, gas is $4 a gallon. Aren't we salvaging some good out of a rotten war if access to Iraqi oil drives down the price?
Perhaps. But that's not the only cost. To protect those oil fields, the U.S. would have to station troops in Iraq indefinitely. That may explain why Bush has been so determined to work out a deal for more or less permanent military bases before he leaves office.
The war in Iraq has already lasted longer than U.S. involvement in World War II, and the projected cost is around a trillion dollars. That doesn't count the human toll — more than 4,000 U.S. troops dead and tens of thousands maimed and shattered, physically or mentally. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead and millions displaced.
The U.S. government could have spent $500 billion on an Apollo mission-like search for alternative energy and still had about $500 billion to hand to Americans as gasoline subsidies. And we would have been well on the way toward freeing ourselves from the troubled Middle East.
Just for "extra credit":
So which is the richer commodity? Oil or gold?
sKally
Some excellent info has been presented. You see, when bush and company say 'democracy', what they really mean is capitalism. Saddam's big sin was that refused to play w the international capitalists. Their mo is the funneling of profits to their companies and to exploit the populations of the host country. Saddam preferred, instead to recirculate the money within his country. That is the greatest sin which any political leader can commit. This same pattern can be seen in application in many smaller, less developed countries.
S
Gopher,
Do you agree with that article or not?
HS
