How to Remember 9/11

[BailOut]

Originally Posted by la panique

Consider this, the oil fields in Iraq? What do you know...for the most part belong to French companies, not Iraq. If we were fighting for the oil in Iraq, why not fight against France.

On the morning that Iraq invaded Kuwait there were 29 hotspots around the world. On the previous day there were 28. In the previous 6 months there had been at least a dozen an any given day, and we never deployed. Yet the minute Iraq crossed the border into an oil-producing country that was friendly to the United States I was on a plane and didn't set foot in my home country for the next 19 months.

Over the next decade Saddam continued to threaten oil security not only in Iraq but in all of the Middle East (don't forget that Iraq is an OPEC member and producer), and so we invaded Iraq. On the day we invaded Iraq there were at least 4 other countries hostile to the U.S. that had WMD, and at least another dozen countries working on it. On that day Al Qaeda was active in at least 7 other countries.

The difference between all those other countries and Iraq? No oil, or at least no seats on OPEC.

Since the invasion of Iraq began Bush has signed many Bills revolving around oil. There were no less than 5 refinery bailout packages, the $100k tax credit for any SMB that purchases a vehicle heavier than 10k pounds, the appointment of the former CEO of GM as Bush's Senior Advisor, etc. Congress has unsurprisingly failed to raise CAFE or emission standards, and more money than ever is puring into their pockets from big oil, as reported recently by the AP.

I do not mean to belittle your involvement in Iraq whatsoever, and truth be told I'm just glad to see Saddam overthrown, regardless of the circumstances. I saw what he did to the Kurds in the days between the cease fire called in the first Gulf War and the establishment of the no-fly zone... his retaliation for the Kurdish uprising that we instigated. However, make no mistake that everything we've ever done regarding Iraq is based in oil and regional/oil security.