"Why We Did It" by Rachel Maddow

[CarbonFistprint]

...its become hard to argue that this was for anything but securing access to Iraq's oil supply for control.

Holy crap, a war over natural resources? Unheard of!

 

[Gregster]

PERSONALLY...I think that saying the war was all about freeing the oppressed/beknighted people of Iraq from the oppressive yoke of tyranny is about as preposterous as saying it was all about plundering oil and making administration cronies rich. To crib a line from a movie whose name I've forgotten: that's like pulling a turd out of a sea of shit and saying "This turd pisses me off!"

I recall there were several reasons; having a bastion of democracy was on the list, as was concern over Saddam's WMD programs. Whether they were the top priorities is highly debatable.

But those were the ones that were thought to have the best chance of "selling," as it were, when making the case for war.

 

[Zankou]

we tried to sign 40 year contracts with the iraqis for their oil, and al sistani stepped in and said if we did it he would take away shiite support and we would be in an even worse civil war. so we did in fact try to take the oil, they just stopped us.

This is the kind of dumb I'm talking about. First, these are 20 year service contracts. They are *pathetically* unprofitable relative to the cost of the war. In fact their marginal profits are so shit they are hardly even profitable at all. That's why the US doesn't do them.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB124635835306572521

The "oil contract" species of argument recognizes the fact that the US didn't actually get any oil that even conceivably follows their theory -- I will credit them for that much -- and thus they are compelled to contrive some ridiculous explanation about how the US *actually would have* x, and the war was started for x, but then for some unbelievably dumbass reason the US goes through the whole war, conquers the country, and due to some preposterously minor issue was prevented from doing what the whole war was allegedly about, i.e. x.

In other words, the US was able to successfully organize, mount, and conclude a war to displace Saddam --- a staggeringly difficult task --- but then for some ridiculously insubstantial happenstance, which evidently nobody could possibly have foreseen, the US was unable to do exactly what the sinister real purpose of the war allegedly was.

Honestly I find the oil contract argument even more inane than the WMD argument. In both cases, nothing actually turned up. At least with the WMD argument, however, it made some rudimentary form of logical sense until being disproven by empirical reality, while the oil contract argument was always completely incoherent from the get-go. But your mileage may vary.

 

[Gregster]

As for the notion that hooking up Halliburton with fat no-bid contracts and lining VP (and holder of much Halliburton stock) Dick Cheney's pockets which a prevailing motive for invading Iraq:

1) Halliburton was on the no-bid preference list since 1996, and was placed there through the efforts of then-VP Al Gore. I suppose he could have done that so that when he ran in 2000, he could throw the race, then when the false flag attacks were used to justify invading...oh, fuck it.

2) Dick Cheney didn't make a dime on his stock. What with having about 30 years working in/around DC, and not being a complete idiot, or at least being advised by non-complete idiots, he divested his stock when Halliburton got the nod.

3) In roughly a year after entering Iraq, Halliburton got their oil-related contracts canked resulting from a GAO audit. They were replaced by Russian oil giant Lukhoil.

 

[Zankou]

A very short and concise video (God how I hate interminable video posts) in which Greenspan rather directly puts forth the best explanation for the war that I've ever seen -- it was primarily about protecting the world oil supply from disruption. Not seizing oil, and only indirectly about possible WMDs (they were only a concern insofar as they might threaten the regional oil production).

[YT]1DKzXAOupqM[/YT]

 

[Gervinho]

My main problem is that people don't really think through what it means to be "for oil."

The war was undoubtedly fought "for oil" in the sense that oil was the primary interest of the United States. But what, exactly, does that mean?

There's a conception that the U.S. was just going to "take" the oil, or seize "lucrative oil contracts." Both arguments are, in my opinion, fucktarded. The US was never going to "take" the oil, and the implication that the war was entirely about something which the U.S. then didn't actually do is just too stupid for words. People who maintain this argument usually claim the U.S. was going to take the oil "except" something stopped it ("the public found out etc"), which is such a foolish argument I can't be bothered to address it.

Second, and slightly more sophisticated, is that the war was about oil contracts. Two blatant problems with that argument. First, oil exploitation contracts are incredibly unprofitable relative to the cost of the war. It would have been like investing $1000 to make a $1. Second, the bidding was open, and French and Brits and Chinese profited as much or more than the Americans. This theory thus requires some explanation about why the US embarked on a ludicrously unprofitable war, and the answer is usually some epic corruption story -- Halliburton doesn't care, it will spend $2 trillion in taxpayer money to make $20 billion for itself, muhahahah!

Again, super-stupid.

Far and away the strongest oil explanations are those which view the situation as an *oil supply threat* that the US set out to resolve. The international economy is critically dependent upon a continuing supply of oil, largely Middle Eastern in supply. Saddam's invasion of Kuwait demonstrated how vulnerable that supply was to political intrigues in the Middle East. It was crucial to establish control over the oil production system to get constant supply to the international markets. This ensures that the price is reasonable and the global economy is not hammered by oil shocks. Thus the key was never stealing oil, or making money on contracts. It was putting in place a system of political control that ensures the Middle East "plays nice" with the United States on oil production policy.

Put very short, the war was all about converting Iraq into Saudi Arabia. We don't steal Saudi Arabia's oil, and we don't make appreciable money on Saudi oil contracts. Yet because it works with us on ensuring the total global oil supply is workable, Saudi Arabia is arguably our most important ally -- or was, until fracking made the US oil independent. IMO, the Iraq War would never have happened after the rise of fracking made the U.S. so much less dependent on continuous ME oil supply.

No you just get it extremely cheap. Offcourse the US wasnt just gonna take the oil as you cant just steal from people and accept them to be OK with it. But you can put people who are pro you in charge of the country, you can get the oil extremely cheap and you wont have someone who can threaten you by cutting the oil off or use it as a political tool. The war was about oil and not freeing the people in Iraq

 

[Gregster]

I almost forgot: I wonder how many people who are crowing about what a telling indictment of the Iraq War (and vindicating to boot) Rachel Maddow's documentary is are the same ones who've been saying for years that "the mainstream media" are bitches to the government, whores to corporations, would *never* tell the truth about anything bad the government does, and only an idiot would ever believe them?

 

[Zankou]

No you just get it extremely cheap. Offcourse the US wasnt just gonna take the oil as you cant just steal from people and accept them to be OK with it. But you can put people who are pro you in charge of the country, you can get the oil extremely cheap and you wont have someone who can threaten you by cutting the oil off or use it as a political tool. The war was about oil and not freeing the people in Iraq

What do you mean "extremely cheap"? That the "US" (presumably meaning American oil companies) would get a price break? That never happened, and it would have been impossible without the US seizing the actual oil supplies and controlling its sales while keeping the actual prices totally secret.

What's more, we in the U.S. get less than 20% of Iraq's oil. It's fairly inane to characterize this as some sinister oil grab:

Again, since the US never actually took any oil, at cut rate prices or otherwise, this is the same genus of theory that requires believing that the US was intending to do some super-nefarious x with the oil (muhahaha!), but then something happened which prevented it (those damn incompetent conspirators). Any theory which is premised on "the war was all about x, but x didn't happen, and even if it had the profits would have been a miniscule fraction of the total war's costs" is incredibly implausible.

 

[deise69]

A very short and concise video (God how I hate interminable video posts) in which Greenspan rather directly puts forth the best explanation for the war that I've ever seen -- it was primarily about protecting the world oil supply from disruption. Not seizing oil, and only indirectly about possible WMDs (they were only a concern insofar as they might threaten the regional oil production).

[YT]1DKzXAOupqM[/YT]

So it wasn't about getting the oil, as long as America continues to got oil.
It was about overthrowing dictators because he wasn't one of the "good" dictators in the ME.
It was to make sure nobody in the ME has WMD's like nukes because only the "good guys" in the ME can have them.
It was about supporting democracy because America has never overthrown a democracy to suits its needs.
And it wasn't about securing lithium reserves (the new oil) or any minerals in the area either.

 

[DhakaMMA]

"A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Reich" is why they did it.

 

[JuliaB4GSP]

First Gulf War was about immediately stabilizing oil supply from the region, wasn't about a grab for oil or control, really. Iraq believed they could gain control of the Arabian Peninsula for whatever outlandish reason.

Second Gulf War was about extending US influence into the heart of the conflict zone that for decades threatened to manipulate the oil supply against US interests. It's a definite shift from the standoffish approach we had previously. The No Fly zones existed because we didn't want to commit time, money, soldiers to Iraq and the project of sitting ourselves firmly down in the center of the never ending bullshit that is supporting paramilitaries, revolutionary dictatorships.

Saddam wasn't doing anything but shitting on his people and talking shit to the UN/US, the oil was flowing fine in the region. The oil wasn't going anywhere, why did we choose to invade Iraq when we did? Oil was only an ever-present background character.

There is no one solid answer to that question -- the timing of the war. There are hints, the Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney neo-con idealism. The faults/'weaknesses' of Bush 1 and Reagan, not willing to commit enough US power to protect US interests. That we could use force to control economic spheres as opposed to buying our way in and supporting puppet/dictatorial governments like we normally did until things fell apart.

Cheney and Bremer were beside themselves in the 80s and 90s when we didn't just bomb Iran out of existence/invade Iraq the first go around. The neo-cons are largely publicly dead and buried in retirement at this point, thank God. There's a very dangerous ideology just below the surface from Kissinger/McNamara through Reagan/Bush that finally bubbled to the surface during Bush 2's time in office. It's the sort of thing that still pollutes our foreign policy. How nonchalantly it is for Obama to mention we'll send our forces to Ukraine and fight Russia.

 

[ZroC]

I think almost everyone outside the US knew the war was about oil and the US couldnt give fuck about democracy or other moral arguments their politicians love to use. But the US media together with American patriotisms makes alot of Americans easy to manipulate as long as you create us vs them mentality. It sure sounds better for military families to say our kid died for protecting his country and fighting tyrant rather than our kid died for oil filling the pockets of corporation

Nonsense. I still have a pretty clear of all the flag wavers trumping up the freedom cause on the news, people outright saying Iraq was responsible for 9/11. At the time the people were blatantly overly emotional and uneducated about what was going on. I remember being a teen and cringing watching FOX news twist everything around. They had a segment where they read peoples' texts about the news of the war and the host jammed in the point that they could do that because they live in a democracy while the same thing would be impossible in a place like Iraq. One man sent in a text saying Iraq hadn't done anything to deserve this and the host blasted him, calling him an idiot because Iraq caused 9/11. Again he reiterated the point that this man wouldn't be allowed vent his opinion in Iraq. The same ignorance could be found years later when everyone gathered to cheer for the capture of Saddam, even though most people should have known by then that he had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no WMDs.

American society went full fucking retard during that period. Now everyone tries to pretend they already knew what was going on even though most of the country were trumpeting the war for freedom cause. Funny how these days you can't seem to find any of these people anymore, like they didn't exist or that was some crazy neighbour. Everyone knew better, everyone too smarts. When a news caster can read out that your country is bombing another with "patriot" missiles without snickering you know you had a serious fucking problem.

 

[Bob Gray]

I would really like to have the constitution to press the play button and watch it, but it's way too difficult for me to listen to anything that woman says anymore.

 

[ZroC]

First Gulf War was about immediately stabilizing oil supply from the region, wasn't about a grab for oil or control, really. Iraq believed they could gain control of the Arabian Peninsula for whatever outlandish reason.

Second Gulf War was about extending US influence into the heart of the conflict zone that for decades threatened to manipulate the oil supply against US interests. It's a definite shift from the standoffish approach we had previously. The No Fly zones existed because we didn't want to commit time, money, soldiers to Iraq and the project of sitting ourselves firmly down in the center of the never ending bullshit that is supporting paramilitaries, revolutionary dictatorships.

Saddam wasn't doing anything but shitting on his people and talking shit to the UN/US, the oil was flowing fine in the region. The oil wasn't going anywhere, why did we choose to invade Iraq when we did? Oil was only an ever-present background character.

There is no one solid answer to that question -- the timing of the war. There are hints, the Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney neo-con idealism. The faults/'weaknesses' of Bush 1 and Reagan, not willing to commit enough US power to protect US interests. That we could use force to control economic spheres as opposed to buying our way in and supporting puppet/dictatorial governments like we normally did until things fell apart.

Saddam wanted to invest the oil in euros instead of dollars. When the US invaded one of the first things they did was change it back into dollars. Every country that starts planning to go against the petro dollar ends up in the crosshairs.

 

[chardog]

remember when saddam blew up the oil fields? since then, he's was on a hitlist, and 911 was just that opportunity. He was destined for death IMO.

 

[Zankou]

First Gulf War was about immediately stabilizing oil supply from the region, wasn't about a grab for oil or control, really. Iraq believed they could gain control of the Arabian Peninsula for whatever outlandish reason.

Second Gulf War was about extending US influence into the heart of the conflict zone that for decades threatened to manipulate the oil supply against US interests. It's a definite shift from the standoffish approach we had previously. The No Fly zones existed because we didn't want to commit time, money, soldiers to Iraq and the project of sitting ourselves firmly down in the center of the never ending bullshit that is supporting paramilitaries, revolutionary dictatorships.

Saddam wasn't doing anything but shitting on his people and talking shit to the UN/US, the oil was flowing fine in the region. The oil wasn't going anywhere, why did we choose to invade Iraq when we did? Oil was only an ever-present background character.

There is no one solid answer to that question -- the timing of the war. There are hints, the Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney neo-con idealism. The faults/'weaknesses' of Bush 1 and Reagan, not willing to commit enough US power to protect US interests. That we could use force to control economic spheres as opposed to buying our way in and supporting puppet/dictatorial governments like we normally did until things fell apart.

Cheney and Bremer were beside themselves in the 80s and 90s when we didn't just bomb Iran out of existence/invade Iraq the first go around. The neo-cons are largely publicly dead and buried in retirement at this point, thank God. There's a very dangerous ideology just below the surface from Kissinger/McNamara through Reagan/Bush that finally bubbled to the surface during Bush 2's time in office. It's the sort of thing that still pollutes our foreign policy. How nonchalantly it is for Obama to mention we'll send our forces to Ukraine and fight Russia.

Being both critical and intelligent, while displaying a keen understanding of how global politics actually works? Hmm ..... Not sure you'll fit in here in the War Room. You need to either (a) be an apologetic tool for the Federal gov't; or (b) vaguely allude to conspiratorial action that doesn't make any sense on its face.

Btw, the reason for Iraq's initiation of warfare against Kuwait was very straightforward -- Iraq's crippling debts required huge revenue increases. Most of Iraq's funding in its war against Iran war came from Shiite-hating Saudis/UAE, and they weren't being forgiving on repayment. In dire economic straits, Iraq desperately needed to seize Kuwaiti oil and increase its influence over the whole region. Saddam gambled that the US would just lie down and let him take over Kuwait (not unlike Putin and the Crimea), rather than risk a disruptive war. Unlike Putin, he gambled wrong on that.

 

[Zankou]

Nonsense. I still have a pretty clear of all the flag wavers trumping up the freedom cause on the news, people outright saying Iraq was responsible for 9/11. At the time the people were blatantly overly emotional and uneducated about what was going on. I remember being a teen and cringing watching FOX news twist everything around. They had a segment where they read peoples' texts about the news of the war and the host jammed in the point that they could do that because they live in a democracy while the same thing would be impossible in a place like Iraq. One man sent in a text saying Iraq hadn't done anything to deserve this and the host blasted him, calling him an idiot because Iraq caused 9/11. Again he reiterated the point that this man wouldn't be allowed vent his opinion in Iraq. The same ignorance could be found years later when everyone gathered to cheer for the capture of Saddam, even though most people should have known by then that he had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no WMDs.

American society went full fucking retard during that period. Now everyone tries to pretend they already knew what was going on even though most of the country were trumpeting the war for freedom cause. Funny how these days you can't seem to find any of these people anymore, like they didn't exist or that was some crazy neighbour. Everyone knew better, everyone too smarts. When a news caster can read out that your country is bombing another with "patriot" missiles without snickering you know you had a serious fucking problem.

Honestly you seem to have a problem with reading comprehension. Go back and read his post again.

 

[PainIsLIfe]

For all the war for oil that's been spouted over the last decade has anyone ever stopped and asked where that oil is?

 

[Strychnine]

The (ch)Air Force doesn't count. :icon_chee

 

[Dolomite]

IMO, the Iraq War would never have happened after the rise of fracking made the U.S. so much less dependent on continuous ME oil supply.