Why are we in Iraq?

Well well...

In the process of 8 years, I have seen people shift so much. It didn't take much to realize this war was a failure, and that our government is turning into our worst nightmare. With Real ID on the way, it won't be long until the police state begins to go into full swing. Let's not forget the political BS this country faces, two-party dominated system created to destroy everyone's rights systematically. If you love this country start voting for the right candidate and not by party, or start preparing for our own civil war.:(


Epyon
 
Has anone thought about the oil in Iraq? Is that a sufficient hint, or do I need to elaborate further?

Yeah, and so much of that is flowing right now. If it was about oil, or US companies' access to it, we would have gone to war with Venezuala.
 
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I don't think war with Venezuela would have been as easy of a sell to the American people. It's not like Venezuelan terrorist blew up the WTC and killed thousands of people.

Granted, it's not like Iraqi terrorists did either. But they were ethnically, racially, and culturally similar enough to fool Joe Sixpack. Plus, you know, we had already gone to war with them not too long ago.

EDIT: Not that I'm agreeing with UH1-D either...any analysis that only includes their oil assets is just as wrong as any analysis that ignores them.
 
Not to worry Juancito...wouldn't want you to actually have to defend an unpopular idea (roll eyes).

Well if your idea is that the main/only reason we're in Iraq is for oil, then it's not just unpopular (though not really all that unpopular) but incredibly wrong.

There are severa reasons, many mentioned here, that we're in Iraq...good and bad. Oil is only one of them.
 
A couple of people say, we're there, now what. Seems to me we need helo from our fence-sitting friends who used to be one our side nearly all the time. But we spent so much credibility and goodwill on this disaster we probably need to do something to reclaim our reputation like maybe hold people accountable for putting us there. It would certainly blow my mind and once they pick their jaws off the floor they might rethink their resentment and help out their former friends. Lord knows we could use it.
 
If it was about oil, or US companies' access to it, we would have gone to war with Venezuala.
Somewhere out there in cyber-land - is a reference to a book written by a former Army(?) officer - where he admits his shame with being involved with the US .gov century long "quest for oil conquest" or something similar.
I recall he mentioned South and Central America - and how the US "stirred things up" - in an effort to keep the oil spigots open.

I can't put my finger on who it was/the title of his book though.

Anybody?
 
HMM! Perhaps some of you folks have forgotten several FACTS!

#1: Saddam Hussein DID, in fact, have WMD's and an on-going research program for nuclear weapons!
No, he did not. There was no evidence. That's why the US government was cooking intelligence, with phony documents about Nigerian uranium and the like.

It is possible or even PROBABLE that, when Saddam was delaying the IAEA inspectors, the massive amounts of WMD materials were being re-located in another country!
There is no evidence for this, either. And even if he had had those weapons, he would have used them to defend against the invasion rather than hide them and wait to be "dethroned."

The US government never attacks countries that it knows have WMDs (like North Korea). The fact that we attacked Iraq shows that the government knew that Saddam had no nukes.

#2: Saddam Hussein DID, in fact, violate UN sanctions a total of 17 times!
Did you know that nations like Israel and Morocco are in violation of more UN resolutions than Iraq was? Why doesn't the US have a problem with that?

When the Bush administration uncovered the "food for oil" scam, with many of the UN "elitists" involved, it became obvious that the UN (and the IAEA) might have been totally compromised, from pure GREED!
The US government uses the UN to gain legitimacy for its foreign policy when the UN agrees with US policy; otherwise, the US ignores the UN.

#3: It was "common knowledge" that Saddam Hussein was "payrolling" the Hezbollah and Hamas, and paying "tribute money" to the families of suicide bombers... that just might be classified as "terrorists"?
Hezbollah and Hamas are Israel's problem, not America's. Israel has killed more noncombatants than either of those groups while pursuing its ethnocentric, expansionist aims.

#4: Within the politicos in the USA, Bill Clinton (when he was still President), Al Gore (still in office as VP), Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator John Kerry, and MANY others gave speeches that openly declared that Saddam Hussein had WMD's! As an aside, you have to wonder if we would have invaded Iraq ANYWAY, if Al Gore had won in 2000, or if John Kerry had won in 2004!
The Democrats are no better than the Republicans.

#5: Just prior to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush had an EXTREMELY high rating in all of the polls! For that matter, the majority of the American people kept on wondering WHEN we would attack, not WHY!
That's because most Americans are extremely gullible and actually believe what "their" government tells them. I doubt many Americans have heard of Operation Northwoods, for example:

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

The US government lies all the time as a first resort. If anyone from the White House or the Pentagon tells you the world is round, it's best to start thinking that it may be flat after all.

#6: The "fatalistic" aspect within the USA was falsely based on what became "vogue" to say....that the USA had attacked "unilaterally"! It was NOT "unilateral", for there was a total of 32 countries that supplied troops, logistics or intelligence! We were NOT alone, yet the news media kept on hyping the word "unilateral"!
It wasn't really unilateral, but a solid majority of troops sent into Iraq were American, with Britain sending some as well. The other nations were very minor players. The UN did not support the invasion because the evidence for the threat posed by Saddam was weak at best.

#7: The leftist anti-war organizations "warned" that "hundreds of thousands" of body bags would be filled with American troops! It sounded like even those organizations BELIEVED that Saddam had WMD's, and would use them!
Leftists can be just as gullible as right-wingers.

#8: If the invasion of Iraq was all about the oil, then WHY are we seeing such high gasoline prices right now? I'm not sure of what the price of gas is in Iraq at the moment, but it was a whopping 12-cents per gallon not too long ago.....because THEY are using THEIR oil!
The Iraq invasion was not about oil. It was the beginning of a plan to redraw the Middle East in a manner favorable to Israel at US expense. Do some online searching on the PNAC, the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, and neocons such as Wolfowitz, Perle, and Feith.

#9: We've "lost" the war, or it's "un-winnable"? Well, if the FACTS are correct, 16 of the 17 Iraqi provinces are relatively peaceful right now! The "insurgency" seems to be centralized, mostly within Baghdad! Maybe the news media folks, who RARELY venture out of the "green zone", aren't exactly reporting the TRUE story?
Whether the US eventually wins this clusterf__k or not, it sure wasn't worth the loss of lives, limbs, hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money, and the moral standing of the US in the eyes of the world. Remember, the point of this war was never really to disarm Saddam of WMDs or, even better, bring freedom to the Iraqis. If the US government cared about freedom, we would not be trading with communist China.

#10: ....And, I just GOTTA use this one, since it has become so popular with the lefties: The invasion of Iraq was....."For the children"! Perhaps if/when Iraq is able to stand on its own feet and become "democratic", they won't feed the children into the "suicide bomber" factories that the fanatic "Mullahs" have made! Maybe the Iraqi kids of today won't become "Martyr's" later on!
Iraqi children were never bombing anyone. A lot of children did die, however, during the initial bombing of Iraq. Countless others lost limbs, hearing, or sight. Either the families of those children are now very grateful to us, or they're determined to get revenge. Maybe some of them are sneaking across the wide-open US border right now to get a little payback. That's how these wars make us "safe."
 
SteelCore...

Awesome points made. Now if only we can dismantle this crappy two party system under the guise of democracy, and actually allow REAL folks to run for political office.


Epyon
 
"That's because most Americans are extremely gullible and actually believe what "their" government tells them."

Yeah, sure, everybody is stupid except you. We've heard all this before. You're doing a good job reading from the talking points bulletin.

John
 
No, he did not. There was no evidence. That's why the US government was cooking intelligence, with phony documents about Nigerian uranium and the like.

You haven't produced evidence to prove this either.

There is no evidence for this, either. And even if he had had those weapons, he would have used them to defend against the invasion rather than hide them and wait to be "dethroned."

The US government never attacks countries that it knows have WMDs (like North Korea). The fact that we attacked Iraq shows that the government knew that Saddam had no nukes.


There are more weapons other than "nukes" that are classified as WMDs.


Did you know that nations like Israel and Morocco are in violation of more UN resolutions than Iraq was? Why doesn't the US have a problem with that?

Neither of those countries have signed an unconditional surrender and then spent 12 years shooting at our aircraft enforcing the no fly zone over their country.

The US government uses the UN to gain legitimacy for its foreign policy when the UN agrees with US policy; otherwise, the US ignores the UN.

Too bad they don't stop funding the U.N. and then boot the U.N. out of the U.S.

Hezbollah and Hamas are Israel's problem, not America's. Israel has killed more noncombatants than either of those groups while pursuing its ethnocentric, expansionist aims.


Agreed that they are Israel's problem. Death is what happens when you live in a combat zone. BTW, there are more Palestinians living in Jordan than Palestine and have been since before Israel started killing them, maybe they are trying their own hand at expanding.

The Democrats are no better than the Republicans.

Or libertarians, or the green party or the socialist party. They are all politicians, none of them can be unconditionally trusted. You have to pick and chosse which agenda you want to support.

That's because most Americans are extremely gullible and actually believe what "their" government tells them. I doubt many Americans have heard of Operation Northwoods, for example:

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

The US government lies all the time as a first resort. If anyone from the White House or the Pentagon tells you the world is round, it's best to start thinking that it may be flat after all.

See the above answer, my tinfoil hat is beginning to get warm so I need to go back in my bunker.

It wasn't really unilateral, but a solid majority of troops sent into Iraq were American, with Britain sending some as well. The other nations were very minor players. The UN did not support the invasion because the evidence for the threat posed by Saddam was weak at best.


Spending 12 years breaking his surrender that was really all that was needed. I still can't get my head around people thinking we need the "blessing" of the U.N. for anything.

Leftists can be just as gullible as right-wingers.

What a revelation.
The Iraq invasion was not about oil. It was the beginning of a plan to redraw the Middle East in a manner favorable to Israel at US expense. Do some online searching on the PNAC, the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, and neocons such as Wolfowitz, Perle, and Feith.


I guess I'll add another layer of tinfoil to my hat so I can finish replying.
Whether the US eventually wins this clusterf__k or not, it sure wasn't worth the loss of lives, limbs, hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money, and the moral standing of the US in the eyes of the world. Remember, the point of this war was never really to disarm Saddam of WMDs or, even better, bring freedom to the Iraqis. If the US government cared about freedom, we would not be trading with communist China.

You're right, it was their fault their dictator was a lunatic.:rolleyes:
Thank the Dems darling Clinton for China.

Iraqi children were never bombing anyone. A lot of children did die, however, during the initial bombing of Iraq. Countless others lost limbs, hearing, or sight. Either the families of those children are now very grateful to us, or they're determined to get revenge. Maybe some of them are sneaking across the wide-open US border right now to get a little payback. That's how these wars make us "safe."

Hate to break this to you, but that's what happens when you drop bombs. We didn't tell him to put hide his hardware in neighborhoods, schools and hospitals. You can only do so much to prevent casualties of war.
 
That's may be the reason we're there now, but it wasn't the reason for going in the first place. Unless you drank the kool-aid and believed all the bs coming from Bush and his buddies. Which they knew wasn't true according to Tenet.
 
My $.02

I'm not going to try and make and judgements about whether we should or shouldn't be there. But I am going to tell you that people personally known to me for years, working for Fluor Corp. as Fissile Material Handlers and Radiation Protection Technologists spent nearly a year in Iraq recovering nuclear material.

This task was made even more difficult by the fact that some of the material was looted after the collapse of Saddam's govt. The looters had no idea about the nuclear material, they were after the scrap metal value of the fixtures, and some of the material was scattered around in suburban areas.

1200R Cobalt sources (about the size of a grain of rice, and lethally radioactive) were recovered from several locations, including one from a drainage ditch about 100ft from civilian housing. Also drums of Uranium were found in a warehouse, giving off a measurable dose rate outside the building.

This information came to me through "the old boy network", and AFIK there has not been any official acknowledgement or news report about this work. Quite likely there are classification and confidentiality issues involved, along with the fact that public disclosure of this info would not advance certain people's agendas. I cannot provide any confirmation of this information, only that it came to me from people I have worked with and trusted for years.

Saddam may or may not have had a viable Nuclear weapons program, but he certainly had some nuclear material, and was easily capable of producing a "dirty bomb", which could have been given or sold to anyone he wished.

Virtually any chemical plant can produce the basis for chemical weapons, it all depends on which chemicals you mix. And Bio weapons (at least the low tech versions) are ridiculously easy to make. Botulism toxin can be produced using a few thousand dollars worth of vessels and piping, a couple of dead animals, some common chemicals, and the whole thing can fit inside a semi-trailer.

As to why we haven't found any of these things (at least officially), I won't hazard a guess, other that the people over there have been hiding things in the desert for thousands of years, and I would imagine they are pretty good at it by now.
 
johnbt said:
"That's because most Americans are extremely gullible and actually believe what "their" government tells them."

Yeah, sure, everybody is stupid except you. We've heard all this before. You're doing a good job reading from the talking points bulletin.
What "talking points"?

Did most Americans fall for the lies about Saddam's WMDs, or not? Did most Americans end up believing the Bush administration's repeated implications that Saddam had a hand in 9/11, or not?
 
DonR101395 said:
SteelCore said:
No, he did not. There was no evidence. That's why the US government was cooking intelligence, with phony documents about Nigerian uranium and the like.
You haven't produced evidence to prove this either.
Nothing short of a confession from administration officials would prove it. But the evidence makes it obvious. First do some research on the Office of Special Plans and its "stovepiping" of intelligence, an overview of which can be found here:

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

Each time the Bush administration would present a piece of evidence, the evidence would be debunked, yet that wouldn't slow their rush to war the slightest bit. First it was the aluminum tubes; then it was the Nigerian uranium documents were found to be forgeries; and so forth. It all culminated with this lie-filled presentation at the UN:

http://www.westpointgradsagainstthewar.org/powellpresentation_to_the_un.htm

There is no evidence for this, either. And even if he had had those weapons, he would have used them to defend against the invasion rather than hide them and wait to be "dethroned."

The US government never attacks countries that it knows have WMDs (like North Korea). The fact that we attacked Iraq shows that the government knew that Saddam had no nukes.

There are more weapons other than "nukes" that are classified as WMDs.
Yet Bush did warn of a "mushroom cloud over a US city." Other so-called WMDs, especially chemical weapons, are capable of nowhere near the devastation of nukes.

Did you know that nations like Israel and Morocco are in violation of more UN resolutions than Iraq was? Why doesn't the US have a problem with that?
Neither of those countries have signed an unconditional surrender and then spent 12 years shooting at our aircraft enforcing the no fly zone over their country.
Why would Israel or Morocco have to shoot at us? We're not harassing them or forcing them to obey UN resolutions. The whole point is that when the US acts as World Policeman, it does so selectively.

The US government uses the UN to gain legitimacy for its foreign policy when the UN agrees with US policy; otherwise, the US ignores the UN.
Too bad they don't stop funding the U.N. and then boot the U.N. out of the U.S.
I don't really believe that the US should be involved in the UN, either. We should have no entangling alliances with any other countries. But I was making a point about the US government's cynical use of the UN for its own purposes.

Hezbollah and Hamas are Israel's problem, not America's. Israel has killed more noncombatants than either of those groups while pursuing its ethnocentric, expansionist aims.

Agreed that they are Israel's problem. Death is what happens when you live in a combat zone. BTW, there are more Palestinians living in Jordan than Palestine and have been since before Israel started killing them, maybe they are trying their own hand at expanding.
Death is also what happens when someone else makes you live in a combat zone by occupying your land. But my position is that the US should not have a dog in that fight. Unfortunately, organizations like the AIPAC exist solely to subvert US foreign policy to Israel's benefit.

The Democrats are no better than the Republicans.
Or libertarians, or the green party or the socialist party. They are all politicians, none of them can be unconditionally trusted. You have to pick and chosse which agenda you want to support.
The Libertarians are certainly better, as they want to return government to its constitutional limits. I agree about unconditionally trusting them, though.

That's because most Americans are extremely gullible and actually believe what "their" government tells them. I doubt many Americans have heard of Operation Northwoods, for example:

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

The US government lies all the time as a first resort. If anyone from the White House or the Pentagon tells you the world is round, it's best to start thinking that it may be flat after all.
See the above answer, my tinfoil hat is beginning to get warm so I need to go back in my bunker.
"Tinfoil hat" -- how original. So you do believe in unconditionally trusting the government, in spite of your statement above? I guess I'm just hallucinating all this "Operation Northwoods" stuff.

It wasn't really unilateral, but a solid majority of troops sent into Iraq were American, with Britain sending some as well. The other nations were very minor players. The UN did not support the invasion because the evidence for the threat posed by Saddam was weak at best.

Spending 12 years breaking his surrender that was really all that was needed.
Then why didn't Bush et al. use that as their rationale and skip all the WMD BS?

I still can't get my head around people thinking we need the "blessing" of the U.N. for anything.
We don't. But at the same time, the US has no business invading other countries that pose no known threat to us -- UN or no UN.

Leftists can be just as gullible as right-wingers.
What a revelation.
Your sarcasm is unnecessary, as I was obviously responding to the other poster's point that many leftists as well as right wingers bought the line about Saddam's WMDs.


The Iraq invasion was not about oil. It was the beginning of a plan to redraw the Middle East in a manner favorable to Israel at US expense. Do some online searching on the PNAC, the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, and neocons such as Wolfowitz, Perle, and Feith.

I guess I'll add another layer of tinfoil to my hat so I can finish replying.
It's that sort of attitude that allowed most Americans to be deceived into supporting the Iraq war in the first place.

Did the executive director of the 9/11 Commission also wear a "tinfoil hat"?

Iraq was invaded 'to protect Israel' - US official

I was told I had a "tinfoil hat" back when I was arguing that the claims about Saddam's WMDs were lies prior to the war. Of course I was right. Maybe there's something to this "tinfoil hat" thing after all? :rolleyes:

Whether the US eventually wins this clusterf__k or not, it sure wasn't worth the loss of lives, limbs, hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money, and the moral standing of the US in the eyes of the world. Remember, the point of this war was never really to disarm Saddam of WMDs or, even better, bring freedom to the Iraqis. If the US government cared about freedom, we would not be trading with communist China.
You're right, it was their fault their dictator was a lunatic.
Where did I say that?

Thank the Dems darling Clinton for China.
I blame both parties for US foreign policy. I hated Clinton as much as I hate Bush.

Iraqi children were never bombing anyone. A lot of children did die, however, during the initial bombing of Iraq. Countless others lost limbs, hearing, or sight. Either the families of those children are now very grateful to us, or they're determined to get revenge. Maybe some of them are sneaking across the wide-open US border right now to get a little payback. That's how these wars make us "safe."
Hate to break this to you, but that's what happens when you drop bombs.
Really? Hmmm...maybe that's one of the reasons why I was against the war in the first place!

We didn't tell him to put hide his hardware in neighborhoods, schools and hospitals.
Where is your evidence that he did this? Did the ever-so-truthful government say so?

You can only do so much to prevent casualties of war.
True -- which is why it should be avoided whenever possible. For too many Americans, war is some kind of "macho" thing -- even when they're not the ones risking their lives. I think they'd have a different opinion if they ever actually had to suffer from it.
 
I don't want to sidetrack any further, so I'll simply respond to one.


Quote:
We didn't tell him to put hide his hardware in neighborhoods, schools and hospitals.
Where is your evidence that he did this? Did the ever-so-truthful government say so?

Personal observation.
 
It's three letters: O-I-L, like others have posted.

Why did the British become so interested in Iraq after WWI? because prior to that their only source of oil was in Persia (Iran).

Why did Roosevelt pay a visit to the ruler of a 15th rate power in the '40s? because it was thought that Saudi Arabia might have extensive oil fields, and the U.S. wanted to be on good terms with them.

What did the Arabs do in the 70's to make Westerners not like them (as if they did prior to that ;) )

Why did the western powers play off Iraq and Iran in the '80s? Most likely because it kept them too busy cutting each other's throats to do anything else. Like send terrorists into the West financed by oil money.

Why did the western powers boot Iraq out of Kuwait? Gosh, could it be that Kuwait was a tiny nation with vast oil resources? Nah. It was for the cause of peace and justice.

And why is it for centuries prior to the Age of Petroleum the Middle East was a largely insignificant, stagnant part of the world? Could it be that no one wanted anything from the Arabs?

Shocker: could it be that when the Arabs have no oil to sell that we will resume ignoring them, unless they give us a reason to carpet bomb them?
 
Why?

If the war in Iraq is critical to our future, and it might be, why are we not fighting to win? When our soldiers do show some fight they are arrested and tried for murder. I don't hear the Commander-in-Chief come to their side. He has the power and authority to order them released.

The more you think of this the more it stinks.
 
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