It’s the Oil, Stupid = by Scott Horton = "maps of Iraqi oilfields, marked with concessions"

Now, a real breath of fresh air and a lesson for American journalism generally--pay attention to the minority.
Horton marvels at the early “No blood for oil!” protesters and says they had it right in the first instance!!

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It’s the Oil, Stupid
Scott Horton - Nov 25, 2007
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/11/hbc-90001749

I still remember walking to a class at Columbia in the early spring of 2003 and listening to students chant “No blood for oil!” It was a slogan of the anti-war left at the time, and listening, I felt a negative reaction to the cynicism. Didn’t these kids recognize the threat of Saddam’s WMD programs, I wondered? There are of course times when cynicism is just another word for penetrating realism. And now, as we approach the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, with no obvious exit strategy yet to emanate from its authors, I marvel at the fact that those young protesters had deciphered the situation much more ably than I had.

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s plain that the Administration never really thought it had much of an WMD case to pin on Saddam Hussein. That, apparently, was pushed because the real reasons wouldn’t suffice to build public support. Likewise, it’s plain that Saddam’s horrendous human rights record was little more than some window dressing to apply to the operation. Why would an Administration pursue a human rights causerie by sequentially trashing all the major international human rights conventions, starting with the ones that the Americans all but wrote on their own—the Geneva Conventions? Similarly, building democracy in the Middle East was also never a very serious goal. This year, in fact, Washington has been filled with speculation that Bush would authorize a coup d’état to take down the current Iraqi Government and install one which is much closer to (and which likely was fueling its campaign with money from) the CIA.

No, in the end it really was all about the oil. “Strengthening American strategic interests in the Persian Gulf region.”

The evidence of that was present all along, for those willing to look closely enough. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil remarked on visiting Dick Cheney and finding him amidst maps of Iraqi oilfields, marked with concessions to be handed out to American oil companies. .....

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In the current issue of Harper’s, senior editor Luke Mitchell gives us a look deep inside the Black Box of Iraq—namely the Iraqi oil industry.

I am always amazed and appalled by these confessions of blindness on the part of people who were supposed to know what was going on. Actually, I always gave them credit for intelligence if not conscience, and assumed that they were complicit. Can they really have been so clueless, so innocent, so trusting of the BUSHIES, fer Chrissake, that they actually drank the Kool Aid, or are they merely trying to reposition themselves, now that the entire propaganda edifice has fallen about their shoulders?

And, giving them the benefit of the doubt, imagining them to have been deceived fools rather than willing Reifenstuhls, should I presume that they have now learned something? Are they now less likely to get suckered in again? Watching the reporting on Iran, I see no particular grounds for optimism.

Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, and I'm a New York Times reporter.

horton knew there was no 'threat' from Saddam regards WMD's. How could a 3rd world country with a smaller military budget then the Netherlands threaten? (these stats are from pre '03, but still pertain)
-------------------------
Defense Spending
Experts once argued whether Americans would finally grasp the enormity of the
military budget when spending reached $100 billion. Now $416 billion, and
candidates still arguing over who will spend the most, it would appear people still
haven't grasped a budget beyond comprehension.
Here's how political leaders are
spending the discretionary budget.
World's Largest
Military Budgets:
($U.S. Billions)
United States 416.0
Russia* 65.0
China* 47.0
Japan 42.6
U.K. 38.4
France 29.5
Germany 24.9
Saudi Arabia 21.3
Italy 19.4
India 15.6
South Korea 14.1
Brazil* 10.7
Taiwan* 10.7
Israel 10.6
Spain 8.4
Australia 7.6
Canada 7.6
Netherlands 6.6 <--------------------------
Turkey 5.8
Mexico 5.9
Kuwait* 3.9
Ukraine 5.0
Iran 4.8
Singapore 4.8
Sweden 4.5
Egypt* 4.4
Norway 3.8
Greece 3.5
Poland 3.5
Argentina* 3.3
U.A.E.* 3.1
Colombia* 2.9
Belgium 2.7
Pakistan* 2.6
Denmark 2.4
Vietnam 2.4
North Korea 2.1
Czech Republic 1.6
Iraq 1.4 <----------------------
Philippines 1.4
Portugal 1.3
Libya 1.2
Hungary 1.1
Syria 1.0
Cuba 0.8
Sudan 0.6
Yugoslavia 0.7
Luxembourg 0.2
Source: www.cdi.org.

You don't even need to be a country, or even have a big budget, to be a threat!

And, the USA gave Saddam biological weapons, so we should have been concerned.

I was more than skeptical about the WMD because I did not trust the LIARS. Not everyone was.

I'll believe Horton until shown otherwise. Let's see your proof.

because the pig controls the newsmedia, and 911 was primarily a media operation. As far as your believing horton, the question is why? He baldly writes
" still remember walking to a class at Columbia in the early spring of 2003 and listening to students chant “No blood for oil!” It was a slogan of the anti-war left at the time, and listening, I felt a negative reaction to the cynicism......."
it would be a different thing if bush really won the 2k election- the networks called the election for Gore, then AFTER EVERYONE WENT TO BED, they sneakily claimed bush won...blah blah. Calling a person a liar on a national forum like this might strike you as unfair, but to be honest, i hope to see alot of these mediawhore bastards hanged someday. This aint no game- the righties fear justice, and some try explain themselves, but the damage done is beyond recall. The next 'Democratic' president will find that out...and the bushies never cared about America, or whether it had enough oil. To say that is sick, perverted

since you are so well-informed on his veracity.

Have you any idea about who you are accusing of lying?

(though horton could demand an apology) but Horton has a stage, vast numbers of readers, and he says bush is doing it for an explicable reason (outside of larceny) to whit, to garner the oil needed for america's lavish lifestyle (thus america itself forced bush to act, via it's greediness, and he just screwed up trying to do good)...i don't buy it. "Harpers' is a great magazine; and horton obviously has credentials, but still! Horton admits he misjudged the WMD's issue- which just defies understanding, to me. How can a tiny 3rd rate power like Iraq, even if it wanted to, AFFORD real WMD's, much less be able to deliver them, and survive? Too much of what happened since bush came in the room defies logic- damn it a million people have died! Yet horton chooses to believe that which explains away bush's guilt? (maybe i shouldn't have put it so starkly, lying or truth. But it's too late to edit it, and sometimes we lie w/out realizing it)...after all, oil is a major factor in the Iraq equation.
I think alot of people eventually going to wish they never heard the name bush...

and he gets my kudos for doing so!!!

Those not familiar should read a few hundred of these: http://harpers.org/subjects/ScottHorton/WriterOf/BlogEntry

as you said, i had no idea who Scott Horton was; who i was calling a liar. The 'Harpers' magazine aspect should have red flagged such language, but.... to be honest, i'm getting reckless in hating the bushies, the liar media, and even the fates (Katrina wouldn't strike in '04, oh nooo! but in aug '05? Why not georgie, the fates say! And poor old New Orleans had to die...)

Even if they did have those chemical weapons how do you think that would have threatened America. We attacked in '91 when the weapons might actually still have been viable and Iraq did not use them so why would they use them when we weren't attacking them. It makes absolutely no sense and is just paranoid rambling IMO.

...and buying into the "conventional wisdom". It is really a very powerful psychological phenomenon, based on inner tapes that start with phrases like "Everyone knows...". For example, "Everyone knows that Saddam GASSED HIS OWN PEOPLE!" "Everyone knows that Saddam IS EVIL!" "Everyone knows that Saddam HAS WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!"

It's really weird how effective this internal dialogue is. Most of us are prone to it in one form or another. But the insiders in our government and financial insitutions are particularly prone to it, and unfortunately particularly well able to influence national discourse. So by repeating their internal convictions -- which are not convictions at all but merely accepted "common wisdom" -- they promote it outwards to the whole country, until "Everyone knows" becomes part of the internal dialogue of much of the populace.

So as the reporter confesses, they just discount those darned rabble-rousin' students and old hippies, because "What do they know? Why, everyone knows ..."

We saw them here on DU

http://www.judicialwatch.org/IraqOilMap.pdf

That little dot represents one of two world sources of no-sulfur oil, an essential material required for semi-conductor and advanced avionics production (the other source is in China). In the 80's, ARPA developed horizontal drilling technologies sufficient to drill into this field from Kuwaiti territory. This is why Saddam invaded Kuwait: to stop ARPA, the CIA, and the Kuwaiti government from stealing Iraq's most precious commodity. Saddam took his case to the World Court. After he lost his case, he invaded Kuwait. On his retreat from Kuwait, Saddam ordered all of Kuwait's northern oil wells set afire, not knowing exactly which wells were drawing oil from the Iraqi field.

The FIRST Iraq war was ALL about oil. The second war, while oil plays a part, it is only a part in a larger context of geopolitical strategy for a world American empire vis-a-vis China (PNAC). Add to those reasons: sociopath Bush's warped desire for revenge (Saddam's failed assassination attempt against dear old Dad), his personal life-long conflict with said same dear old Dad, and his Rapturist visions for initiating the Second Coming. It was no surprise, as Paul Simon pointed out in 2002, that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was inevitable from the start of Junior's first theft of the presidency.

aka: OIL!

<snip>

She said in the interview that there were “remaining vital national security interests in Iraq” that would require a continuing deployment of American troops.

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/010006.php