Why America Invaded Iraq:

Well, if the government was honestly lying to the public about WMD's, then why haven't we found anything? Doesn't it seem odd to you that they haven't put any effort into planting anything?

Common sense would dictate that Saddam still had chemical or biological weapons. If he didn't, then why would he be so uncooperative with weapons inspectors?
 
I had momentarily suspected that if the US hadn't found the weapons they woudl plant them. But now we are talking a conspiracy that, if exposed during an election year, would cost the president his job. Not going to happen.

I would also accept the position that Saddam wanted to have those weapons at his disposal and would have built them had he the opportunity. But that's like convicting someone of murder for wishing they could, even without coming up with the proximity enough for "attempt".

And don't forget that the government has been trying to sell the story that the weapons went over the border to Syria during the war.

To be honest, I think the tests that confirmed large amounts of Cyanide and Mustard gas elements in the Tigris was a smoking gun.

But it has also been raised here that weapons of mass destruction can be fired from RPG's. Now it's true that such weapons would be chemicals weapon the kind used in World War I.

But when I think of weapons of mass destruction, I put the emphasis on mass. Strategic weapons- and they could be nuclear, biological or chemical that could be deployed and fired at a target with the intention to either cause a massive amoung of causualties, or which would be indiscriminate in their targetting. So a chemical warhead on a Scud fired against Israel counts for me.

But so far I haven't seen that, nor any WMD that could threatened the US. North Korea has that capacity, Iraq didn't. Or so the evidence thus far indicates.

We should also remember that this administration staged the Jessica Lynch rescue as well. That raises questions to me as to how far a government will go to sell a story.

Personally I can understand the reasons for public manipulation, but that doesn't mean I like it.
 
'Course, its also entirely possible that Saddam never had the weapons prior to the Kurdish rebllions, and merely wanted us to think that they had them so he'd still seem like a big player.
 
That's also one of the stories to explain why we haven't found the weapons yet.

But is that enough? Shouldn't our intelligence know before we went in? And if they didn't know, should the President have used that to mobilize public support for the war?
 
Quiet Welsh! If you continue to puch such fatal holes in Governor Bush's publicity facade you'll end up being suspected of terrorism and spend the next few years in Guantanamo Bay! :lol:
 
Well I don't know, Saddam has had 12 years to give us a good reason not to oust him.

And I doubt WMDs would be the only reason we'd bother to invade a country. Unfortunately though, that's the only reason people will accept.
 
Well, let's look at it from a different angle. I don't think oil was our main motivation. Even with all the oil revenues that would be generated in the near future, the losses would still be in the billions. The reason I believe this administration invaded Iraq was because they wanted to eliminate a future threat, and at the same time, they want to change the face of the middle east. It was ideologically and politically motivated, not financially (unlike France and Russia).

Think about it. the biggest threat to the US is still terrorism. A terror group gets a hold of a nuke and it could potentially devastate this countries stability more than what a 1970's style OPEC embargo ever could. Secondly, most of the terror threats to this country are primarily from the Middle East, hence the reason that we have invested more time there than we have anywhere else, although, to be fair, our involvement in the Carter and Reagan administrations was primarily oil related due to the OPEC embargo. But the question on hand is why did we invade Iraq now, something that could have easily been done back in the early 90's.

Now that we are rebuilding Iraq, we can create a model of democracy across the Middle East. Already the general masses in Middle eastern countries are stirring against there respective monarchies and dictators. Look at Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia; all countries that are at the brink of an all-out political upheavel. Democracies inhibits radicalism, simple as that. The US wants this for their benefit and long term safety.

The whole oil argument is rather short sighted in the sense that we see oil as the only important energy resource of the future. But at the rate we consume it, those oil fields won't last 20 years. This war is going to become an economic loss in terms of oil profits and oil flow.

We are already nearing an energy revolution with fuel cells and other renewable resources. And if we would have invested all those billions into research, it would likely become a reality in the next 10 years easily (which is quite a shame). Oil just isn't that important in the long run. Safety is.
 
Ancient Oldie: I like your argument, but I disagree about oil. Fuel cells are all nice, and so is ethanol, while we're at, but neither is going to be econimcally viable if we keep spending billions to facilitate our dependence on oil.

I think the best course of action for an enlightened US (not the current state, IMO) would be to get the flying fuck out of oil altogether. Spend the billions we spend facilitating oil (through invasion, regime support a la Saudi Arabia) and invest it in fuel cell technology, infrastructure and supply. And ultimately increase research in fusion power by orders of magnitude.

By doing this, we uncouple the relationship between mideast politics and religion from our dependence on their oil. Then and only then can we talk, debate and negotiate with that troubled region without ulterior motives, real or perceived, that will always overshadow our efforts.

In principle, instituting mideast democracy is the Best Thing Ever, but we can no longer do it by force! The world is too small and vested to allow WWII style, imperialism, for lack of a better term.

Democracy, IMO must come from within, and the only way the extremists terrorists and people are ever going to allow that is if they no longer feel threatened by the US. They will always feel threatened unless we uncouple democracy from oil.

I hope to whatever gods exist that Iraq turns out for the better and I am wrong, but I think history is on my side.

And of course, only time will tell.

Discuss
 
Though America should prepare itself for an easy infrastructure change from an oil to electrically based economy, its just not feasible now, nor would it be smart if it was.

America's primary interest in the Persian Gulf lies in ensuring the free and stable flow of oil from the region to the world at large. This fact has nothing to do with the conspiracy theories leveled against the Bush administration during the run-up to the recent war. U.S. interests do not center on whether gas is $2 or $3 at the pump, or whether Exxon gets contracts instead of Lukoil or Total. Nor do they depend on the amount of oil that the United States itself imports from the Persian Gulf or anywhere else. The reason the United States has a legitimate and critical interest in seeing that Persian Gulf oil continues to flow copiously and relatively cheaply is simply that the global economy built over the last 50 years rests on a foundation of inexpensive, plentiful oil, and if that foundation were removed, the global economy would collapse.

Today, roughly 25 percent of the world's oil production comes from the Persian Gulf, with Saudi Arabia alone responsible for roughly 15 percent -- a figure expected to increase rather than decrease in the future. The Persian Gulf region has as much as two-thirds of the world's proven oil reserves, and its oil is absurdly economical to produce, with a barrel from Saudi Arabia costing anywhere from a fifth to a tenth of the price of a barrel from Russia. Saudi Arabia is not only the world's largest oil producer and the holder of the world's largest oil reserves, but it also has a majority of the world's excess production capacity, which the Saudis use to stabilize and control the price of oil by increasing or decreasing production as needed. Because of the importance of both Saudi production and Saudi slack capacity, the sudden loss of the Saudi oil network would paralyze the global economy, probably causing a global downturn at least as devastating as the Great Depression of the 1930s, if not worse. So the fact that the United States does not import most of its oil from the Persian Gulf is irrelevant: if Saudi oil production were to vanish, the price of oil in general would shoot through the ceiling, destroying the American economy along with everybody else's.

But the United States is not simply concerned with keeping oil flowing out of the Persian Gulf; it also has an interest in preventing any potentially hostile state from gaining control over the region and is resources and using such control to amass vast power or blackmail the world. And it has an interest in maintaining military access to the Persian Gulf because of the region's geostrategically critical location, near the Middle East, Central Asia, eastern Africa, and South Asia. If the United States were denied access to the Persian Gulf, its ability to influence events in many other key regions of the world would be greatly diminished. (Much of the air war against Afghanistan, for example, was mounted from bases in the Persian Gulf.) The tragedy of September 11, 2001, finally, has demonstrated that the United States also has an interest in stamping out the terrorist groups that flourish in the region.
Click to expand...

That was an exerpt from the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs.

So, to put it quite simply, the disruption of oil would cause the entire global economy to... how should I say... fuck up.
 
Anceint Oldie, I agree with you on everything save that I must admit that welsh is right on one point;the major reason we are interested in the region is oil. But I think there are better, less greedy reasons.

I am to tired t opost a big rant, but expect one.
 
True as that may be Bradylama, I think that the fear of having cemicle wepons pumped into the ventelation system of the Sears Tower is a pretty big fucking threat..
 
@Bradylama: That's an excellent, yet biased, article. The only doubts I ever had about the US's oil motivation was whether oil was an integral and necessary part of the world economy. That would answer why an alternate fuel source hasn't been as aggressively researched as it warrants.

However, the article still doesn't answer an important question; what's going to happen 20 years from now when the oil wells start running dry? I'm figuring that a plan is already being formulated, although that begs yet another question; what is going to replace oil in the world economy?

What I can't understand is why would the US invade and topple Saddam's regime now when it had a perfect opportunity (both politically and reputation wise) in the 90's? They definitely knew about the economic significance of oil back then. Secondly, why invade Iraq for oil when Saudi Arabia is reliable. Yes there's a chance that they might embargo, but things aren't the same as the 70's. Their domestic political climate is to volatile now to risk an embargo, not to mention that there isn't a USSR to back them up against the worlds remaining superpower. If Saudi Arabia would have cut off there oil supply, they would have done it when the US invaded Iraq.

I think the answer to some of these questions is that oil was an important motivation. I believe this now more than before I read that article. However, the economic gains of oil are too short-term to warrant a full scale invasion and occupation of a foreign land.

Which comes to the reason why I think the article is biased; it downplays the terrorist threat and makes a bigger deal about the oil instead. Yes, an embargo could currently grind the world economy to a crawl, but we would have to royally piss the Saudi's off for that to happen, enough so that they would be willing to face the political wrath of most of the world's most powerful nations.

But with terrorism, hell, if destroying two skyscrapers could impact the world economy like it did on 911, imagine what a nuclear bomb off on in Washington DC would do. Not only that, but said scenario is more likely to happen than an embargo in today's world. There are many nukes and other radioactive materials that go unaccounted for in the former Soviet territories, and don't even get me started on the biological and chemical weapons. Plus there are numerous terror groups out there who want to accomplish this and 911 proved that they can pull it off.

It's impossible to think that we can kill all the terrorists out there. The only thing than we can do to shut them down is to prevent them from being recruited and financed, and that is where Iraq plays an important and pivotal role.
 
I agree wtih you Ancient Oldie except for one point. The political environment during gulf war I was not conducive to 'going all the way'. The only reason that such a large and diverse coalition could be formed was that the UN mandate was only to liberate Kuwait (to paraphrase). The UN mandate did not extend to removing Hussein from power. To invade Iraq would have put most of our allies in that war at odds with us. Muslim nations would have cried Imperialism, and other western powers would have balked, since doing so would have neagted and trade agreements (for oil) they had guaranteed with Saddam's regime.

So regardless of what General Swartzkopf thought, it was not politcally possible to invade Iraq in 1990. Bush Sr walked a fine line (and did so well, IMO) and as such was constrained by the terms of the alliance.
 
I don't see how that would of stopped us back then if the purpose of this invasion was to get our hands on all that oil. It sounds like the current situation now and keep in mind that most of Bush Jr's administration were a part of Bush Sr's administration also. Hell, back then it would have still looked better in the eyes of the world community since Sadam had just invaded or attacked most of his neighbors and it could have easily been argued that he had to be removed for the sake of the region. Plus, there were many other means of removing Sadam from power back then. We could have armed the uprisings and at the same time imposed a no-fly zone over the rebel bases, then we could have moved in with the UN to impose order after Sadam was toppled.

Like I said before, the only reason we risked are national reputation was so that we could change the face of the Middle East. It's primarily an ideological war.
 
Ancient- I appreciate your argument even if I am more on the "it's about oil" argument.

As someone else has pointed out here, the reason why the US gets dragged in, and becomes the target of middle east terrorism is because the the US is involved in the region. The US mainland has been rarely hit by terrorists- the two major strikes were against the World Trade Center. In both cases those came as a result of US involvement in the middle east- primarily deploying troops in Saudi Arabia. Why? Because Muslims in the US generally have more freedom to practice their faith, make money and have happy families in the US than they would in the middle east.

I don't think the time was right in '92 for the kind of operation we are trying now. Part of that had to do with the existance of the coalition, the UN mandate, but also '92 was signficantly different. The future of the Central Asian oil was uncertain, our relationship with the Saudi's was stronger and there was a belief that sanctions could work against Saddam. THere were also issues of whether Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (which has been argued as the reason we didn't invade then) and had connections to terrorists.

I am not sure how long the oil will last. I do agree that we should invest in alternative energy sources, but I don't think these are proven to the point that we can count on them replacing our dependence on oil. One day, perhaps. I don't think it's a coincidence that Bush's agenda, as articulated in the last State of the Union Address, favored both the opening of oil reserves in Alaska as well as incentives to develop alternative sources for oil through such ideas as fuel cells.

If you look carefully you see the problem of oil coming up repeatedly. Just as you have the development of alternative power cars, you also have the Bush administration playing with politics inside Venezuela (oil rich). The US turns a blind eye in Nigeria (oil rich) and even the US supporting the end of Indonesia's control of East Timor. Note that in East Timor, that the peacekeepers sent were Australians and that Australia was also exploiting the natural gas fields off East Timor. Then add US pushing for a compromise in the civil war in Sudan (where new oil fields were discovered but can't be exploited because of the conflict between the Muslim north and the non-muslim South).

There are a lot of reasons why developing alternative power sources would be a great idea. Such incentives would put the US on the cutting edge of a new, and substantial, product cycle. But as the article by Bradylama points out, it's about oil now. And it's not that oil has a direct effect on the US economy, US corporations or the price of fuel. It's becaue the global economy still runs on oil and the alternatives are not yet available.

We cannot trust the Saudis as we did in '92. The competition for oil in central asia has heated up with different pipelines running east to China, north through Chechnya and Russia, and West through Turkey. This region looks like the next fuel pump for the global economy. However, the oil from Iraq's fields has not been utilized as it could have been due to the sanctions against Iraq since the '92 Gulf War.

Opening those oil sources reduces pressures elsewhere. Consider it like a strategic reserve. If the Saudi regime is toppled by a more militant islamic regime, the world's access to oil is not so badly threatened. Pressure on central asia is reduced and the list goes on. It's the need for fuel that makes those regions with it more vulnerable and contested.

So you can think of this in another way. US policy in the middle east also buys time for other sources of energy to be developed.
 
Of course terrorism and WMDs are important motivations. But they become moot points when you compare them to the larger picture of oil and oil stability.

Take the Civil War for instance. Slavery, of course, was the primary motivation and source of conflict. But the more important part, the bigger picture for the North, was the preservation of a federation of mutually supporting states, while for the South, the reason was the preservation of State's rights against Federal regulation.

On a philosophical level, neither side was "wrong" per-se, but history has shown that the preservation of the Union was a much more practical solution.

Slavery was a small part of a much larger picture, much like terrorism and WMD's today.

Ultimately, the global economy can recover a lot easier from mustard gas in the Sears Tower than the distruction of Saudi Arabia's oil fields.
 
ok guys, i would like to laugh at the following comic, but it isn't a joke...it's reality. enjoy:

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so why is it that you people let your president turn your country into a fasict state?
 
If feminazis are threatening people or destroying property then I suppose they're more of a problem than I thought.
 
@Welsh: I'm still leaning towards the ideological side of the coin, although the US buying time is an excellent point. The differences with Venezuela, Sudan and such is that we didn't take an extreme course of action with them like we did with Iraq. The US isn't threatening Chavez with an invasion because he is setting up a commy dictatorship and is allying himself with the likes of Castro in an excuse to take Venezuela's oil.

I totally agree with you guys on the reasons why we didn't invade Iraq back then, but that's because oil isn't the main issue of an occupied Iraq. Why is it that all of a sudden we changed our minds about our need for oil after 911. If we wanted the oil bad enough like we supposedly do now, I still think we would have invaded. We currently went into Iraq with no UN support and we pissed off a lot of our NATO allies, not to mention most of the Middle East. Our relationship with the Saudi's back then was just as strong as it is now since the basis of it is mainly based on money, and sanctions against Sadam's regime wasn't going to get us any oil.

@Bradylama: That's a false analogy, but I gotta go to work so I'll get back to that when I can.

@NGIne: Cool comic. Thank god the courts ruled against the Bush administration today on some important issues.
 
You're right, it was a terrible analogy.

But it was an example of motivation gaining more notoriety than cause.
 
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