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I realized recently that a lot of people writing about it today were not necessarily old enough to follow politics yet at the time of the events. No, the WMD c

by Iv 9y ago

I realized recently that a lot of people writing about it today were not necessarily old enough to follow politics yet at the time of the events. No, the WMD claim by the US was not an honest mistake, it was a purposeful lie to be used as an excuse for war. Here is a speech by GWB on Iraq in 2002: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/oct/07/usa.iraq https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/oct/07/usa.iraq The claim was that Iraq threatened USA. At the time, everybody knew this was a lie. Iraq did not have capable missiles to reach US territory and claims that it had a secret nuclear program were extremely dubious. Remember : the fear was nuclear ICBM, this is what was hammered in the media. They fell back to chemical weapons, but if the US plans to invade every country with a stock of chemical weapons, good fucking luck! Colin Powell, presenting the threats to the UN council, put forward a nuclear threat. He used as proofs, documents that were fake. "Obvious fake" as the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency would call them: http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/03/14/sprj.irq.documents/ http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/03/14/sprj.irq.documents/ What he said about it: "My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence." These were not mistakes, these were lies: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-schwarz/colin-powell-wmd-iraq-war_b_2624620.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-schwarz/colin-powell... Iraq was (correctly it appears, in hindsight) fearing an invasion so it was worried that opening up to foreign inspectors would lead to espionage to prepare the invading forces. In the end, as a last hope to preserve peace, it allowed inspectors in a mission, led by Hans Blix. Here is how he described the cooperation of Iraqi forces: "Iraq has on the whole cooperated rather well so far with Unmovic in this field. The most important point to make is that access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect and with one exception it has been prompt. We have further had great help in building up the infrastructure of our office in Baghdad and the field office in Mosul. Arrangements and services for our plane and our helicopters have been good. The environment has been workable." > If I believed any conspiracy as far as Iraq goes US disregarded that and still decided to invade. No one had a single doubt that this was about oil. Iraq is a clear case of a conspiracy. This is actually a very good counter-point to conspiracy theorists: When a government tries to lie about something, it is really obvious, and it still works.

wybiral 9y ago
Admittedly, I'm only 30 so I was an angsty teen who blindly opposed it and everything the Bush administration did. I've only recently been starting to rebuild some faith in government (what a time to do so). > US disregarded that and still decided to invade. No one had a single doubt that this was about oil. I remember that being what everyone cried in opposition to the war with Iraq but I never understood it. How did oil factor into the war?
- jacquesm 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War#Economic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War#Economic https://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/08/the-wars-that-really-are-about-the-oil/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/08/the-wars-that-really-are... http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhas...
- boomboomsubban 9y ago
  The US and UK currently control 35% of the oil reserves in Iraq, and US/UK companies made huge amounts of money rebuilding the infrastructure destroyed in both wars.
- Kadin 9y ago
  Oil is an oversimplification. The US could have just bought all the oil it wanted from Iraq at market prices for less than the cost of going to war, and the Hussein regime would have been happy to sell it at those same prices. So that doesn't really fly as a whole explanation. The Bush Adm. had its eyes on Iraq pre-9/11. It's mostly forgotten now, but there were Tomahawk cruise missile attacks on Iraq in the summer of 2001. I remember discussing it and even noted in a journal entry that summer that it looked like G.W.B. wanted to go back and finish G.H.W.B.'s job. It was not as straightforward as just oil. I think that eventually history will settle on it being a more complex set of factors, some of which boiled down to personal animosity by the President, and a feeling that Hussein had been given a free pass by the US in 1991 and was using it to thumb his nose at the West and, in doing so, was in a position to build up power and status within the region on the basis of having "survived" a US-led invasion and deposition attempt. To conservative hawks, his continued existence was a reminder of US failure and impotence, which didn't fit with the US's unipolar, pax Americana / "hyperpower" ambitions at the time. It wasn't a war for territory as much as it was a very public execution (or, politely, "regime change"), pour encourager les autres. Hussein was a dead man, in retrospect, when G.W.B. got elected; it just took the administration a while to figure out how to get the war they'd wanted from the beginning out of the post-9/11 environment. Absent 9/11, if you look at what was going on during the early months of the G.W. Bush presidency, they would probably have found a way to push Hussein into giving them a casus belli anyway (it's not like Saddam was the most level-headed dictator; given the resources of the entire State Department, one can safely assume the US would have come up with a way of making him overreach, and then grab that overreach to pull him off the cliff and into destruction). The oil and strategic position of Iraq viz. Iran, Russia, Turkey, etc., certainly helped make the case and pushed aside what might have been probable objections (if we invade, how can we survive an oil boycott, a la 1973?), but saying that it was a "war for oil" as is sometimes claimed doesn't really wash. You don't need to go to war for oil at the price the US goes to war for, you just buy the damn oil. You go to war for things you can't buy with money.

by Iv 9y ago

wybiral 9y ago

Admittedly, I'm only 30 so I was an angsty teen who blindly opposed it and everything the Bush administration did. I've only recently been starting to rebuild some faith in government (what a time to do so). > US disregarded that and still decided to invade. No one had a single doubt that this was about oil. I remember that being what everyone cried in opposition to the war with Iraq but I never understood it. How did oil factor into the war?

jacquesm 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War#Economic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War#Economic https://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/08/the-wars-that-really-are-about-the-oil/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/08/the-wars-that-really-are... http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhas...
boomboomsubban 9y ago
The US and UK currently control 35% of the oil reserves in Iraq, and US/UK companies made huge amounts of money rebuilding the infrastructure destroyed in both wars.
Kadin 9y ago
Oil is an oversimplification. The US could have just bought all the oil it wanted from Iraq at market prices for less than the cost of going to war, and the Hussein regime would have been happy to sell it at those same prices. So that doesn't really fly as a whole explanation. The Bush Adm. had its eyes on Iraq pre-9/11. It's mostly forgotten now, but there were Tomahawk cruise missile attacks on Iraq in the summer of 2001. I remember discussing it and even noted in a journal entry that summer that it looked like G.W.B. wanted to go back and finish G.H.W.B.'s job. It was not as straightforward as just oil. I think that eventually history will settle on it being a more complex set of factors, some of which boiled down to personal animosity by the President, and a feeling that Hussein had been given a free pass by the US in 1991 and was using it to thumb his nose at the West and, in doing so, was in a position to build up power and status within the region on the basis of having "survived" a US-led invasion and deposition attempt. To conservative hawks, his continued existence was a reminder of US failure and impotence, which didn't fit with the US's unipolar, pax Americana / "hyperpower" ambitions at the time. It wasn't a war for territory as much as it was a very public execution (or, politely, "regime change"), pour encourager les autres. Hussein was a dead man, in retrospect, when G.W.B. got elected; it just took the administration a while to figure out how to get the war they'd wanted from the beginning out of the post-9/11 environment. Absent 9/11, if you look at what was going on during the early months of the G.W. Bush presidency, they would probably have found a way to push Hussein into giving them a casus belli anyway (it's not like Saddam was the most level-headed dictator; given the resources of the entire State Department, one can safely assume the US would have come up with a way of making him overreach, and then grab that overreach to pull him off the cliff and into destruction). The oil and strategic position of Iraq viz. Iran, Russia, Turkey, etc., certainly helped make the case and pushed aside what might have been probable objections (if we invade, how can we survive an oil boycott, a la 1973?), but saying that it was a "war for oil" as is sometimes claimed doesn't really wash. You don't need to go to war for oil at the price the US goes to war for, you just buy the damn oil. You go to war for things you can't buy with money.