10 Years Ago We Went To War For Oil

no, the plan was laughable

 

We buy more oil; from Russia. The very idea that we went to war for that little oil is silly.

 

little oil?? are you insane??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_proven_oil_reserves

and the Iraqi stuff is as easy as any to recover!!

 

Iraq is a small player.

 

yeah 1/2 of Saudi is small!! hahahahaahahahahaha

 

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2178rank.html

 

Let's see, we start a war half a world away for less than 500,000 barrels a day when we get near 3 times that from our neighbors to the south who would succumb to our military power far easier and at much less cost. Care to try that again?

 

Oh let me try...

The plan to get rid of the Iraqi army in a couple of days: splendid success.
The plan to secure the country: complete fail
I do think the above is historical correct and should be basic knowledge when discussing this.


Because of the fail to secure the country its also a fail to secrure the resources... and thats does influence graphs etc that proves that it was about the resources. That it was about oil (and probably also about the militairy supermacy of Israel that the US supports by pumping in billions of $ a year)... is also founded by the following people:

Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said in an interview that the removal of Saddam Hussein had been "essential" to secure world oil supplies. In his memoir: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

Sarah Palin said "We are a nation at war and in many [ways] the reasons for war are fights over energy sources".

John McCain said "My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East,"


So who are you to argue against these people?


As if the US never helped out and install ruthless dictators only to serve their own economical interest.
Don't make me laugh.

 

While your argument is "cute" it still doesn't address the basic question, Iraq supplies such a small amount of oil to the U.S. why would we go to war to "purchase" their oil? If we were getting it for free ya'all might have something there.

 

Because oil gets sold to other countries. An oil company makes profit whether they sell it in America or China.

 

Were the people who drove us to war motivated by oil somehow? Yes, but it's not that simple. That's just one factor out of many. It's not just oil companies who politicians cater for, but also offense contractors, whose entire business is war profiteering, therefore they need war. Not to mention the "reconstruction" and of course, the paid mercenaries. Also that the US are building bases all over the Middle East, because it is a strategically important area. Iraq is a big part of establishing a major foothold in the region. It allows striking capability to Russia and China, and for the latter, it goes hand in hand with the increased naval presence in the area of the South China Sea. Read the PNAC document "Rebuilding America's Defenses" for more information, as was suggested earlier. And they needed Iraq to trade in petro dollars. They tried switching to Euros, we invaded, and lo and behold, it's back to dollars again! Plus it's yet another way to kiss the asses of Israel.

I'll tell you what the war was NOT about.. Defending freedom, liberating the Iraqi people, fighting terrorism, or weapons of mass destruction.

 

It's not for the benefit of Americans or your price at the pump. These politicians and businessmen are so corrupt they would sacrifice the blood of thousands and trillions out of the treasury, just to make themselves a single dollar for their offshore bank account.

 

Because we bungled the war.

Rumsfeld and Cheney thought it would be easy and quick and that the man they planned to install (Ahmed Chalabi) was going to play ball and do what he was told.

Neither assumption proved to be correct, and the US dithered while Iraq dissolved into civil war.

The government the eventually emerged is weak, corrupt and riddled by factional and regional rivalries. Today, Iraq's oil concessions are largely awarded piece meal, and the Chinese have a much larger share than they would have had we not started the war.

The Bush adminstration had dreamed of talking over Iraq, installing a puppet, and splitting up the oil fields between Exxon, Chevron, BP and Shell (the latter two were the ONLY reason Blair went along with Bush).

They failed, and that is single largest reason that the Iraq war was the greatest foreign policy disaster in US history.

 

Not necessarily. Too many factors and variables. The oil companies don't want a low price for oil anyway. They sell oil so they want it as expensive as possible, and work towards that end.

Just because the price doesn't drop it doesn't necessarily mean that increased supply hasn't made a difference. Maybe it would have risen by a lot more had the increased demand not mitigated the skyrocketing price.

 

I see it much differently.

Iraq, Iran and north Korea were threats to world stability and peace but ratherbthan just unleashing our military to go in there to kick ass and take names he tried to appease the left wingers by (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)footing around.

That led to the drawn out conflicts that we still have today.

 

If it was for WMD's, where's the WMD's?

 

This is correct.

Ironically, the four companies mentioned, BP, Exxon, Shell and Chevron are the modern descendents of the partners in the Iraqi Petroleum Company, which controlled Iraq's oil concessions for thirty years before Iraq nationalized its production in 1969.

The other piece, the Hydrocarbon Law, was intended to restore that concession on the terms that existed prior to nationalization (and provide a template for big oil to impose on the other oil producing companies).

Iraq had very little input into the Hydrcarbon law. It's primary intent was to reverse the ratio of royalties in favor of the oil companies, giving big oil with 82% of the oil royalties, and leaving the remaining 28 with the people who actually owned the resource. In this resect too, the objective was to restore the arrangements that existed before oil producing countries nationalized their oil production.

The law was not written by Iraqis. It was written in Houston by the oil company law firm Vinson and Elkins, which also employed Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The law was handed to the Iraqi Parliment, and they were expected to rubber stamp it. The Bush adminstration's efforts to secure this rubber stamp eventually became the major stumbling block in the negotiations over US withdrawal. Typically, this part of the discussion was left out of the coverage by the US media and NEVER mentioned in public by Bush adminstration officials (although it was covered extensively elsewhere in the world).
Ahmed Chalabi played along with this geopolitical fantasy. In addition to Cheney and Bush's tie with big oil, Chalabi himself met with representative of the four big oil companies as early as the Fall of 2002, over how to divide up the booty. In a move typical of the "look at the shiney (fake) object " media coverage Americans were fed to sell the war, this fact was never covered in the US media, other than in the oil industry trade press, where it was no secret.

The CNN article is interesting because it notes where former US Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmy Khalildad would up. He was once prominent in the Bush spin campaign in Iraq. Before the war he worked for Chevron. Now he's back where he came from.

 

Get busy debunking it then.

Otherwise learn to live with the facts.

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Yes, we've seen those spin pieces. The saddest thing about them is their shamelessness. They're easily debunked.

 

That has no basis in fact whatsoever.

There was never any evidence that there was ever any connection between Iraq, Iran or North Korea (which is what Frum's term of art implies).

The US wasn't going to start a war in North Korea because China and Japan would have nothing to do with it ,and the US had nothing to gain (we had the Korean War as example).

Iran is four times the size of Iraq, so we weren't going to start a war there.

In 2002, the Bush people didn't give a damm what "left wingers" thought about his war. Karl Rove told the CPAC convention that "war was a platform we could win on".

It was Rumsfeld and Cheney who kept insisting that we could invade a country the size of California and occupy it with an army that would fit in the Los Angeles Coloseum, not liberals. And military leaders who dared suggest otherwise were promptly forced out (including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff). The undermanning and underequipping of the Iraq war was the Bush adminstration's policy and it would remain so until the surge.

You just made up the claim that Bush was appeasing liberals. Even the larger facts make a mocery of that idea.

 

Maybe, just maybe, we went to war for more than one reason. Maybe it was because the Bush admin was looking for reasons to install a western friendly model of freedom and capitalism in that wonderfully situated nation so we could use the "domino effect" (ala communism circa post WW2) to enlighten the entire Middle East. Maybe all that potentially cheap oil looked pretty good and possibly even magnified our positive evaluation of the information services in their estimates of the risk posed by Iraq through their once real WMD programs. Maybe the fact that Iran was right next door had something to do with it, as well. Maybe GW wanted to finish the job that he, Cheney, and Rumsfeld regretted that Dad left hanging. I'd be willing to bet that all those things and more all went into the soup.

 

There is no reason to believe that, save for the Bush team's empty rhetoric.

From the very start, the obvious plan was to install a puppet state. Ahmed Chalabi was expected to lead it. But as the undermanned and underequipped US invasion force encountered the vacuum created by the US policy, the country dissolved into near civil war.

Chalabi started dealing with Iran (and still does).

So, the US "model of freedom and capitalism" took the face of Paul Bremmer, and a series of staged elections.

The US did nothing to curb the excesses of the weak government that eventually emerged. As the government we installed turned out be as brutal and corrupt and far weaker than the government we overthrew, the US did nothing, and the American public ignored what was going on.

Freedom and democracy had nothing to do with the Iraq war. It was fought by big oil's agents (the Bush adminstration) and on big oil's behalf.

 

No, the idea is both real and the real reason.

You need to consider your perspective.

First of all, you have to stop looking at it in terms of US oil imports, but rather in terms of share of the world's proven reserves.

Big oil doesn't give a damm about US oil imports. They care about their inventory, and oil reserves in the ground are their inventory.

Cheney's energy task force identified Iraq as the world's number two proven reserves, two thirds of which remained unexplored. This lake of oil was the only resource in the world capable of challeging Saudi Arabia and OPEC.

Iraq oil production had been in decline due to mismanagement and sanctions, and it would go to zero when we started the war.

Bush officials (notably Paul Wolfowitz), told us that Iraq oil production would be back up to snuff in months and that the war would pay for itself. It took ten years for Iraq's oil fields to come close to Sadaam''s dismal performance, and we know about the "self financing" part.

Big oil was the only winner in the Iraq war, and stood to win no matter how the war turned out for the US.

If the US bungled the war (as we did), market instability would drive the price of oil and gasoline up substantially, which is what happened. Exxon posted its biggest profits in history during the Bush years.

Converesly, had the US succeeded, the four largest oil companies would have been handed the world's second largest proven reserves on their terms and watched over by a US client state.

Either way, big oil wins.

In fact, the only way big oil might have lost is if there had been no war at all.

 

Yep.. And see my post 61 for the main reasons I think.

 

Where was it ever implied this was for US markets? You are simply laughable.
Doesn't anyone on the RW read? Or are they just to ignorant to comprehend a single sentence ever written.
It was for major Western OIL COMPANIES. Not for US consumption or US gov't control.

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Iraq is believed to have reserves 2nd only to Saudi Arabia. Read some of the links, or get someone who can read explain it to you.

 

It wasn't to supply oil to the US. Capece?

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BINGO. It was to secure the oil. It was for profits for large WESTERN OIL Cos. Not even necessarily US companies.