Washington's strategy reveals U.S. motives and plans for Iraq's future
by ARTHUR KENT

The UN failed to act against Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad, U.S. leaders charged, but America wouldn't. It's a clear, simple statement, but like most doctrinal contentions it's essentially misleading: the UN, in fact, failed only to act within a time frame dictated by the Bush administration. A majority of nations on the Security Council resisted the American agenda -- and made the President's day. "The Bush administration wanted war from the start," says Steven Livingston, senior research fellow at the University of Washington's Center for American Politics and Public Policy. "This is now just a political culture on steroids.

While the President talks of humanitarian assistance, specialists in strategic studies say Washington's plans for rebuilding Iraq are based on far more practical and self-serving objectives. Paul Rogers, a professor in the department of peace studies at Britain's University of Bradford, told Maclean's: "The bottom line essentially is that this is not about short-term profit from oil reserves, but long-term control of what is really the world's absolute key energy source. The Gulf is now so important that it would be simply unacceptable to the kind of people controlling the Bush administration not to have control of the area."

Full Article:
http://www.macleans.ca/xta-doc2/2003...er/57443.shtml
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Could still be about oil yet. No wonder starting the war just does not seem right.

Just a reincarnation of the lame "war for oil" argument. It's truly such a weak argument that even the radical Left wingers rarely use it anymore. The only people I've seen using it lately are in the middle east, where the government controlled media have pounded it into citizens to the point where it's started to sound reasonable to them.

Thoran, do you really think that Iraq being the 2nd oil producer of the middle-east is just an unfortunate coincidence ? :D

I'm not saying it's the main reason though. But it counts for sure.

The "war is about oil" argument?

ARRRGGGH, not again! [img]smile.gif[/img]

Well when the war is over and a government as been established I just hope just hope your country will get its troops out of the region and let the UN take over to show that it isn't true. If not I am quite sure you will be witnessing 9/11's over and over again and no one will care.

[ 03-26-2003, 03:41 PM: Message edited by: pritchke ]

No I think that if we'd wanted oil we'd have been able to buy all that we wanted, and if that was the case the sanctions would have been lifted long ago. Saddam has never proven a difficult man to "do business" with. Why would the US go through the cost and risk of a war, so that at the end we can buy oil from Iraq... when we could have bought oil from Iraq at any time by lifting sanctions.

"War for oil" makes absolutely no sense, and the existance of such a resource in Iraq does not automatically mean it's a factor.

It's not about "getting" the oil, and even if it was - why buy it from a madman when you can get it at knockdown price from a friendly government you installed.

But that's not what it is about. It's about control. Saddam is a nutter, and the US, UK and, well, nobody wants one of the world's biggest oil reserves to be under the control of a lunatic who could do anything at any time, including pump millions of barrels of it into the Gulf.

War for oil is not stuipd - it makes fantastic economic sense in the long term. The problem is, when you say that oil is a motive, people assume you mean Bush sneaking in there with a 50-million gallon bucket and siphoning the stuff off, before nipping back to the USA. That is *not* what's happening. The USA hasn't gone there to steal the oil, and neiather have we. Oil is a factor, but we're interested in sorting out it's long-term stability, not hiding a few billion barrels of it under our jackets and making off into the night.

Well said Bardan.

Pritchke - the war for oil alone argument is a very weak case. A better case is for long term stability as what Bardan said.

Saddam had his chances and he failed miserably and he isn't going to cave in by UN sanctions alone or UN pressure.

It's pretty obvious that UN santions never really had the desired effect on saddam's regime. I think several countries have been skirting or violating UN sanctions since 1991.

Sanctions, in fact, bolstered his regime by making sure that his own people suffered while blaming it all on the US.

[ 03-26-2003, 04:07 PM: Message edited by: Wutang ]

Stability is a valid reason for the war... and as Oil stability is a factor in world stability it does come into play. However, instead of saying that the war is for "Oil" it is more accurate to say the war is for "Regional Stability" which is a much more comprehensive and appropriate term. Is it coincidence that "Oil" is being used instead of "Stability", umm... NOPE. Heck, "Stability" is one of the things that the Coalition is ADMITTING the war is about, and it's not particularly objectionable... so there's not much point in complaining about it. By substituting "Oil" for "Stabiltiy" people are purposely distorting the goal to create something they can complain about.

The reason that substitution is a problem is because of the connotation that the US is really seeking to "Control" the oil supply, which is bunk. So the opposition is using a nugget of truth but distorting it by relying on an implication that is totaly unsupportable. Even your seemingly reasonable post above falls into the trap by throwing in the "knockdown price" line. Again you're implying that the US will gain some advantage in oil pricing by doing this. This assertion is simply unsupportable based on the historical performance of the US in dealing with countries that are under their "control". Therefore your own post points out quite conveniently the reason why the whole argument is baloney.