Are you suggesting that Texas "awl" men are to blame for the Iraq war, rather than the Cheney-Bush NeoCon Cabal?

I feel as though I'm on a soap box, but I suggest again that Armed Madhouse will give you a good indication as to exactly why we are (and, it seems, forever will be) in Viet Iraq.

Hint: It is oil and the heady plans that two different Bush string-pullers had for it.

Wearybottom Associates

A couple of excerpts from Armed Madhouse:

"Conspiracy theorists believe George Bush, long before the invasion of Iraq, had a plan to control its oil. That's wrong. He had two plans and my investigative team obtained both. The conflict between these two plans is what has kept our soldiers pinned down on the Tigris. The war is about the oil, for certain - not to get it for our SUVs, but to prevent us from getting it. The war is not about bringing down Saddam but about lifting up OPEC. In The Flow [a chapter], we discover that the real insurgents come from Houston.", [Greg Palast, Armed Madhouse]

"A History of Oil in Iraq

1925-28 "Mr. 5%" sells his monopoly on Iraq's oil to British Petroleum and Exxon, who sign a "Red-Line Agreement" vowing not to compete by drilling independently in Iraq.

1948 Red-Line Agreement ended, replaced by oil combines' "dog in the manger" strategy- taking control of fields, then capping production- drilling shallow holes where "there was no danger of striking oil."

1961 OPEC, founded the year before, places quotas on Iraq's exports equal to Iran's, locking in suppression policy.

1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. Iran destroys Basra fields. Iraq cannot meet OPEC quota.

1991 Desert Storm. Anglo-American bombings cut production.

1991-2003 United Nations Oil embargo (zero legal exports) followed by Oil-for-Food Program limiting Iraqi sales to 2 million barrels a day.

2003-? "Insurgents" sabotage Iraq's pipelines and infrastructure.

2004 Options for Iraqi Oil. The secret plan adopted by U.S. State Department overturns Pentagon proposal to massively increase oil production. State Department plan, adopted by government of occupied Iraq, limits state oil company to OPEC quotas.", [Greg Palast, Armed Madhouse]

Wearybottom Associates

on the topic in a mariad of articles and postings. My impression is that the war was started "Cheney-Bush NeoCon Cabal" I referred to, but that the oil industry has indeed weighed in subsequently to protect and further its interests. Thus, the war, having failed to fulfill the Neo-Con's fantasies, is nonetheless continued for the very real economic designs of the petroleum industry, and it has become indeed a war for oil. Or so is my impression.

The Republicans scream how this is totally false even though there is quite a bit of evidence to the contrary, yet at the same time, the Republicans accused Bill Clinton of wanting to start a war to distract people from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. But, I guess IOKIYAR.

In August 1998, President Clinton ordered missile strikes against targets in Afghanistan in an effort to hit Osama bin Laden, who had been linked to the embassy bombings in Africa (and was later connected to the attack on the USS Cole). The missiles reportedly missed bin Laden by a few hours, and Clinton was widely criticized by many who claimed he had ordered the strikes primarily to draw attention away from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. As John F. Harris wrote in The Washington Post:

In August 1998, when [Clinton] ordered missile strikes in an effort to kill Osama bin Laden, there was widespread speculation — from such people as Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) — that he was acting precipitously to draw attention away from the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal, then at full boil. Some said he was mistaken for personalizing the terrorism struggle so much around bin Laden. And when he ordered the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House after domestic terrorism in Oklahoma City, some Republicans accused him of hysteria.

. . . the federal budget on anti-terror activities tripled during Clinton's watch, to about $6.7 billion. After the effort to kill bin Laden with missiles in August 1998 failed — he had apparently left a training camp in Afghanistan a few hours earlier — recent news reports have detailed numerous other instances, as late as December 2000, when Clinton was on the verge of unleashing the military again. In each case, the White House chose not to act because of uncertainty that intelligence was good enough to find bin Laden, and concern that a failed attack would only enhance his stature in the Arab world.

. . . people maintain Clinton should have adapted Bush's policy promising that regimes that harbor terrorism will be treated as severely as terrorists themselves, and threatening to evict the Taliban from power in Afghanistan unless leaders meet his demands to produce bin Laden and associates. But Clinton aides said such a policy — potentially involving a full-scale war in central Asia — was not plausible before politics the world over became transformed by one of history's most lethal acts of terrorism.

Clinton's former national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger . . . said there [was] little prospect . . . that Pakistan would have helped the United States wage war against bin Laden or the Taliban in 1998, even after such outrages as the bombing of U.S. embassies overseas.

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"You can't fix stupid..." ~ Ron White"
"I never said I wasn't a brat..." ~ Talidapali

As Palast has put it elsewhere, oil at $70-plus per barrel is the real "Mission Accomplished."

Even GWB and Cheney have to sleep at night.

I think we can all name several despots down through history who had absolutely no problem sleeping at night.

Somebody mentioned on another thread that he had not seen anything of Mr. Bush's once-touted church attendance in the news lately. I would suggest that he is now at the stage in his political career where this photo op is no longer considered necessary.

Wearybottom Associates