For the love of oil, U.S. spills blood in Iraq

[CatWoman]

You haven't heard a word about oil from President Bush or his Cabinet as they've gone about the country on their pre-Halloween scarefest, trying to frighten voters into supporting their so-called war on terror. They've spoken of freedom and civilization, courage and cowardice, Nazis and appeasers.

But they haven't mentioned oil.

By now, of course, most Americans have long since ceased giving any credence to the administration's public explanations for the war in Iraq. Most Americans no longer believe toppling Saddam Hussein was worth the sacrifices; nor do they connect the invasion to the broader war against Islamic jihadists. The idea that the president has pitched most recently — that the very foundations of Western civilization are at stake, as they were in World War II — is no more persuasive. If Bush genuinely believed the stakes were that high, he would have called on all the nation's resources, including a military draft. Instead, the White House has gone about business as usual — cutting taxes, refusing to take port security seriously and relying on an all-volunteer military.

While several agendas converged to drive the war wagon to Baghdad, providing the United States access to Middle East oil reserves was always a critical factor. It's not just liberals — Democrats, environmentalists, Hummer-haters — who say so. So do candid conservatives.

In a book titled "The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War," Boston University professor and West Point grad Andrew Bacevich analyzed four military interventions of the Reagan era: "None of the four episodes can be fully understood except in relation to global reserves of fossil fuels and America's growing dependence on imported oil."

Kevin Phillips, a former Republican political strategist, is blunt in his latest book, "American Theocracy": "Oil abundance has always been part of what America fights for, as well as with."

Most Americans don't want to concede that. Perhaps that's why Bush was able to con the voters into re-electing him; Americans wanted to believe that we went to Iraq to clean out a terrorist infrastructure and to establish a base camp for democracy in the Middle East. No matter that the facts didn't point in that direction; it was easier for us to believe that than to believe we went to secure U.S. access to Mideast oil reserves.

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/tucker/stories/2006/09/15/0917edtuck.html

[billbuckhead]

1. No one wants to admit we're a nation of thieves

[Karenina]

2. Born and bred...

[MISSDem]

3. Senator John Warner was referenced in an editorial

by George Will as believing 'that most congressional Democrats understand that there is an unpopular way to oppose an unpopular war - by voting for abandonment of all the objectives for which blood has been shed. Warner defines the U.S. objective in Iraq not in terms of a glittering achievement, democracy, but as avoiding something appalling - the Iraqi oil fields in jihadists' hands.

[Marrak]

4. How do you spell Operation Iraqi

Liberation?
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