Oil
This is the reason everyone (except the administration) thinks we're in Iraq. Yep, they've reportedly got 112 billion barrels of oil reserves, the second largest known reserves in the world. The key there is "they've" got it. Unless the U.S. is intending on supplanting the government of Iraq and turning them into a U.S. colony, it's their oil. And while their new government may be friendly to us, they'll sell to who they want to sell to. The only real reason oil may have been part of the reason for invading Iraq was to depose Saddam, end the sanctions, and enable larger oil exports from Iraq thus putting more oil into the supply but I think this is at best a secondary reason. Of course I'm sure that returning the oil assets that Saddam nationalized to the big oil buddies of George W. and Chaney was a nice secondary bonus.
Oil, Part II
Then there's the famous oil pipeline issue. From the Globe and Mail,
In the late 1990s, an American-led oil consortium held talks with the Taliban about building a pipeline from Central Asia - where oil and gas reserves are gigantic - through Afghanistan to Pakistan, from where it could be shipped westward. The talks broke down in mid-2001. Washington was furious, leading to speculation it might take out the Taliban. After 9/11, the Taliban, with good reason, were removed - and pipeline planning continued with the Karzai government. U.S. forces installed bases near Kandahar, where the pipeline was to run. A key motivation for the pipeline was to block a competing bid involving Iran, a charter member of the "axis of evil."
Yeah, I'm sure this was another "nice secondary bonus" but again, this is icing on the cake, not the main reason. It looks good on paper but read on and you'll get to what I think is the main reason for the Iraq War.
Saddam
Yeah, yeah... Bush wanted to get some back for his daddy. Yeah, sure. While George W. may have felt this way, I don't think his handlers really cared and I doubt that George W. had any real input here.
Terrorism & Muslim Extremists
This one is pure bullshit. The Muslim extremists hated Saddam for having a secularly led Muslim nation. They wanted him dead just about as much as they wanted to hurt the U.S. Pre-war Iraq wasn't going to fund or aid the people who had "Depose Saddam and make Iraq into a Muslim stronghold" on their to-do list.
WMD's
Sure, we all heard about the supposed WMD's and we now know that it was a load of horseshit. Cherry-picked evidence, evidence tampering, and so on that made the original case for the war in Iraq. Even if the general public didn't know it was all made up, the administration sure did.
The REAL Reason
So why are we in Iraq? Why do George W. and McCain keep talking about long-term extended presence in Iraq? Why do they consistently oppose timetables? Remember McCain's comment about staying in Iraq for 100 years? I'll give you a hint, the same hint that George W. and McCain give us when they compare dealing with the Middle East to WWII... they want what happened after the war. Take a look at the list of U.S. military bases in Germany. We maintained prior to the Iraq War approximately 70,000 soldiers in various U.S. military bases in Germany. That's nearly half as many soldiers as we have in Iraq right now in an active phase and I'd bet that 70,000 figure is fairly close to the target George W., McCain, and their neo-con friends would like to see permanently stationed in new U.S. military bases in Iraq. And that "100 year" comment from McCain... well, go Googling for "military" and "99 year lease" and you'll see what I mean.
The republicans would love to claim that they've brought peace and stabilization to the Middle East... that elusive goal that has evaded everyone that's tried for the last several hundred years or more. Well, this is how they plan to do it. Make a friendly country, establish enough troops to intimidate or force neighboring countries into behaving, and voila... peace in the Middle East and oil for everyone. Isreal won't work for these purposes because they're too tainted by the Isreal/Palastine thing and nowhere near large enough to support the kind of presence we're after. And besides, if you're going to park a bunch of U.S. troops in the Middle East, you might as well park them on top of the 2nd largest oil reserves in the world.
Yes, it's just possible that a continued U.S. presence in Iraq could have a stabilizing effect on the rest of the Middle East. And it's true that there's no way that the President could have come out in 2001 and said we're invading Iraq so we can build military bases there... the American public wouldn't have gone for it and the world would have united against us for it. But that would mean that we went to war with a sovereign nation, deposed their leaders, and imposed a new government upon them for a lie. Maybe with the best of intentions but a lie nonetheless.
So what should we do about it?
We're there now and at the time I'm writing this over 4,000 American servicemen and women are dead and thousands if not tens of thousands more are wounded. Is the answer to pull them all out? Do we go ahead and keep thousands or tens of thousands there in new U.S. held military bases and follow the neo-con plan? I'll be honest and say I'm torn. Part of me says that we should pull our troops home and deny the neo-cons a victory achieved through lying and deceiving the American people, the troops, and the world. And the other part of me says that we should go ahead with the neo-cons this time rather than give up what our servicemen and women have paid for with blood. Just keep in mind that those troops may stabilize the region, or just serve as a magnet for continued attacks and an endless stream of American blood and money. I just don't know.
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