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yurbud

(39,405 posts) Sat Jul 9, 2016, 01:53 PM Jul 2016

Chilcot Report: UK Oil Interests Were Lead Motive For Iraq War

I thought this was going to be the main thrust of the Chilcot report since the false evidence publicly presented has already been hashed over pretty thoroughly.

Still, any documentation of the oil motive is historically important, and this clearly shows it was even strategic access or anything like that--it was just a matter of who would profit from sucking the oil out of the ground.

That's why our government killed a couple of hundred thousand to over a million Iraqis, left the country in a shambles, and created recruits for ISIS.

Our democracy and foreign policy is based on a lie until this gets a similar investigation and honest discussion here.

Documents revealed as part of the huge, 12-volume report, show that British government officials involved in the events that led up to the war, the war itself and the following restoration period pursued as a main objective the corporate interests of energy giants BP and Shell. This was not, however, mentioned in the 150-page summary of the impressively extensive report: 2.6 million words in all.

Secret meetings between government officials and BP and Shell to discuss how they would proceed once Saddam was been toppled are revealed in the document. Iraq, the minutes of one such a meeting read, is “special for the oil companies” and “BP are desperate to get in there.”

In other words, what Chilcot’s report has revealed, albeit reluctantly and seemingly unwillingly, is that energy, not weapons for mass destruction (non-existent as it turned out) was the main motive for the Iraq invasion and the bloody conflict that ensued.

Energy concerns continued to top the agenda in the aftermath of the war as well. According to Open Democracy, a theme repeatedly appearing in the documents that were analysed by Chilcot and his team was “to transfer Iraq’s oil industry from public ownership to the hands of multinational companies, and to make sure BP and Shell get a large piece of that.”

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Chilcot-Report-UK-Oil-Interests-Were-Lead-Motive-for-Iraq-War.html

2 replies

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Chilcot Report: UK Oil Interests Were Lead Motive For Iraq War (Original Post) yurbud Jul 2016 OP

That's always been my contention. This war had nothing to do with terrorism. denverbill Jul 2016 #1

there were two levels of lies: 1) the truly embarrassing fightin' terror & spreadin' democrac... yurbud Jul 2016 #2

denverbill

(11,489 posts)

1. That's always been my contention. This war had nothing to do with terrorism.

Reply to yurbud (Original post)

Sat Jul 9, 2016, 04:05 PM

Jul 2016

Dick Cheney and Bush wanted access to that oil. It was not a war for 'cheap oil' like some people kept saying. It was a war for control of the oil. Cheney and Bush knew that the sanctions against Iraq were collapsing and other countries were going to win the contracts for drilling equipment, etc. 9-11 was the excuse they needed to act.

yurbud

(39,405 posts)

2. there were two levels of lies: 1) the truly embarrassing fightin' terror & spreadin' democrac...

Reply to denverbill (Reply #1)

Sat Jul 9, 2016, 04:40 PM

Jul 2016

2) the more grown up geopoliticky sounding one that we needed to secure access to that oil since the world's supply was rapidly dwindling.

The problem with the second one is whoever controls that oil isn't going to cut off the customer who 25% of the world supply of their product and if the jacked the price up too much, we'll use less and start squeezing oil out of sand and shale.

Also, if it was just access, we would have been on the IRAQIS side in negotiating the oil contracts to ensure a good relationship and steady supply. Instead, we sided with the oil companies even though it added to the resistance to the occupation and likely the death of more of our troops.

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