Bryan said:
Re the oil issue: I know that everyone in the world, esp. non-Americans, think it was oil that drove us to Iraq. I absolutely disagree and will list my reasons:
First of all, did you expect your sister to tell you all the secrets? If she did, that would be very unprofessional of her.
I think the equation is very complex and eventually boils down to securing energy resources.
1. WMD: that's a laughable statement. Even 5yo kids knew Iraq didn't have WMD. Saddam's regime made the mistake of not allowing unlimited access to the weapons inspectors and that played very nicely into the American hands. It was the perfect opportunity. There has been lots of talk about this in the British press, and it looks like the governments were well aware that Iraq had no WMD. The reports were "sexed up"!!!
"All the available (and not yet available) material/information suggests that the White House and others were obsessed with WMD and spreading democracy."... This confirms what I'm saying. There was an obsession around WMD and democracy. The whole obsession went as far as asking the secret service to come up with evidence and sexing up reports. The whole idea had to be sold to the public. At least the Brits admit to it, why don't you admit to it as well?
2. Democracy and human rights: if the war was about democracy, Guantanamo Bay and Abu Gharib wouldn't have happened. What you did was nothing short of hypocrisy.
3. 9/11: No solid relationship between Iraq and 9/11. I don't think Saddam had much love for America but he was also against Al Qaida.
4. Israeli conspiracies: I'd rather not comment on it. Despite Israel getting huge sums of money from the US, I don't want to believe those conspiracies.
5. Energy securities:
"Also, it is useful to remember that energy security, now high on the USG's priority list as a result of rising oil prices and instability in the Middle East, was not an issue at the time of the invasion."... Right.... So, USG is too short sighted to not realise that a war in the ME would lead to raise in the petrol prices? The American allies in the ME and a few big petroleum companies made a killing out of the price hikes.
"however, the point is that more oil would be available on global oil markets, thus driving down the price....well, would Bush really want to drive down the price of oil, given his friends among Texas oil producers?!".... No, that's a false statement. It's not only about short term profit, which did happen, but also securing access to the reserves in the future. Look at the ME, it's awashed with money at the moment and it all came from the high prices.
I guess the West doesn't want a repeat of 1970s. I kinda have the feeling you are old enough to remember the times when OPEC behaved like a monopoly.
6. Europe: funnily enough, although some European countries oppose the war, they also need America to be successful in the ME. Europe heavily relies on Russian energy at the moment, and the Russians control the prices as they wish. They even went as far as cutting the gas supplies in the middle of winter because Ukraine wouldn't pay up. This had a domino effect with Bulgaria not getting any gas at all, and some other countries running very low on reserves.
Europe needs an alternative route to gas and petrol reserves, and this is where ME comes into play. Eg, Europe doesn't have a clear cut policy over Turkey at the moment, with (surprise surprise) Britain supporting Turkey's EU accession. The alternative route is to take Turkmen and Iranian gas supplies and the Caspian and ME petrol supplies through Turkey, so it's very important for Europe that those regions are relatively stable in the future. Well, at least until alternative energy technologies are developed.
7. Future petrol revenues:
"the USG understood that revenues from Iraq's oil would belong to Iraqis, not to the USG."... OK, this is one point where I don't actually know all the details. Isn't the USG supposed to recoup some of the war expenses from the Iraqi government in the future like they did with Kuwait? Also, don't the American companies get shed loads of contracts in the name of rebuilding Iraq?
With a puppet government in place, who gets all the future contracts and access to the petrol reserves?
In short, let's see who benefits.... American and British petrol companies, American and British contractors, petrol exporters (all of them), Europe, etc.
I admit that there is a degree of hypocrisy surrounding Europe, we are all pro human rights, but we don't know how our governments secure our energy resources, or how our companies bring food to our table.
