Here is another one though mostly reporting on administration discussions.
Let me try a different approach on this.
Remember how Obama proposed a “civilian national security force” comprised of Peace Corps workers, Americorps, etc? His intent was to guarantee that young Americans had an ability to serve in various capacities that will benefit our country and also our standing in the world. Pretty innocuous stuff, except it was hyped as a major initiative.
Right-wingers seized on Obama’s words and portrayed it as a FEMA-led Obama Youth movement, like a brownshirt terror group, basically.
And when right-wingers were challenged on their interpretation of Obama’s speech, they simply quoted the same speech over and over again, even though they were deliberately misreading the plain text of the speech.
What you’re doing in this thread is pretty much the same thing. You post a quote of a Bush Administration official saying that Americans will not have to pay to rebuild Iraq because of Iraq’s oil wealth, and then incorrectly argue that the statement is proof of a plan to seize Iraq’s oil wealth for American purposes. That’s just simply not what those quotes say, notwithstanding that the words “Iraq” and “oil” appear in the sentences. You just keep misrepresenting the plain meaning of all those statements — which is to foist off the cost of rebuilding a country due to an unprovoked invasion onto the victim of the invasion – into meaning “US Exxon badman is coming to take all your oil.” You’re simply incorrect on the plain meaning of the words.
And the ingratitude! We even had a leader all picked out for them, groomed, vetted, ready to step into the role! A natural leader, charismatic, well-connected, unforgettable…you know, what’s his face, the guy who was sitting in the special box with Laura Bush. Guy who looked like he spent the last 24 hours in a very small closet frying fifty pounds of bacon.
Fly tried to land on his forehead and skidded off. That guy!
The link I just posted talks about some wishing to take all the oil. In any case, reconstruction and occupation is a cost of the invasion, so paying for the reconstruction is paying for the war. It would be one thing if the place were a mess before the invasion.
We can’t say for sure how much would be taken if the oil was flowing. But I have a hard time believing they’d respect the rights of the Iraqi people unless someone was looking. At least I’d expect them to use some of the oil to pay for the occupation which was supposedly keeping the Iraqis safe.
Here’s the relevant quote from your link:
So, this is someone reporting what he claims to have heard from someone else who was in the meeting.‘’ That is not what journalist would call a primary source.
I think I’m done responding to links that don’t include quotes. If you want to establish a claim, quote what you think backs up that claim, don’t just give a link and expect folks here to be satisfied that the work is done. The claim was that the US was going to “commandeer” Iraqi resources. If you want to make a less claim, feel free. But no one so far has established that original claim to be true.
As I said, reporting on Administration discussion, not a final decision.
At the least, they were hoping to take Iraqi resources to pay for damage we did. Pretty much unprovoked damage at that point. (Gulf War I was another matter.)
After WW II we paid for the reconstruction of West Germany through the Marshal Plan. The Russians stole factories from the parts they occupied and brought them back to the Soviet Union. Which was closer to our plan for Iraq?
I’m not sure it’s accurately described as that. I don’t have a degree in journalism, so I’m not sure if that would be considered a secondary or tertiary source. I talked to someone how talked to someone who heard someone say… To the extent it was “reporting” it was reporting on what someone said they heard someone else tell them that a 3rd person had said in a meeting they were allegedly in. Does that count as “reporting on Administration discussion” or is it “reporting on what someone said who was not actually part of the discussion”? Again, IANAJ, so I’ll let someone who is weigh in on the matter.
Where did they say they were going to “take” Iraqi resources? Seems to me they were saying the Iraqis would pay for it, at least that’s all I can draw from the quote I quoted. Again, it will help if you use actual quotes instead of paraphrasing. I’m happy to concede to a (primary source) quote, but not to a 2nd/3rd hand quote or a paraphrase.
It’s a single report from an unremarkable Australian local newspaper that relates secondhand reports of discussions made by an unnamed person who may not have even been in the government at the time.
I have no problem with anonymous sources, but this is really thin gruel.
No, at the least, the Bush plan was to wreck Iraq and simply leave the clean-up bill to Iraqis. I’m not sure how many more times this can be repeated.
War is often an excellent business opportunity for those with the right connections. Who cares about all that messy Oil, when you can make huge billions selling the services of private contractors to the US government in a war zone.
Says here that contractors made $134billion out of Iraq.
All that money came from the US tax payer and went into the pockets of a few well known companies with friends in the Bush administration.
I am sure that lesson has not been lost on the current business brain in the White House.
:dubious:
To be fair, billions and billions went to an unknown number of private armies.
Bingo.
Saying that we invaded Iraq “to steal their oil” is a gross oversimplification IMO.
But saying we invaded them to protect oil interests is 100% accurate - our status as the world’s unitary superpower largely hinges on all oil being traded in U.S. currency. When Iraq dropped the petrodollar and started trading oil in euros in 2000, they suddenly became the U.S. Public Enemy #1. It was inevitable that we would come up with a pretext to invade them, or at least support rebels to overthrow their government and restore business as usual, as we’ve done a dozen other times, particularly in South American countries who don’t follow orders.
Actually, the initial invasion was quite successful (with the notable exception that U.S. forces weren’t numerous enough to provide security), and most Iraqis were overjoyed about their liberation.
The invasion might have had a happy ending were it not for the incredibly incompetent decisions made during the early occupation. Cheney et al childishly wanted to rub all Baathist noses in shit. Infrastructure collapse was viewed as an opportunity for Friedmanist experiments and profitable contracts which employed Americans and friends, but never Iraqis. Top occupation posts were given to callow right-wing Republicans barely out of their teens who knew nothing about the Middle East. A Western-style “purple finger” democracy was imposed rather than more traditional councils of compromise. Tragedies were summed up with Rumsfeld’s “Freedom is messy! Ha ha!” The country has never recovered from the on-going civil wars, with a million lost lives and millions of displacements, provoked by Cheneyist greed and malice.
All for the good I guess: Although Blackwater and Carlyle Group are privately held, most American middle-class have Halliburton in their index funds. 
To be even more fair, nobody even knows where billions and billions of it went. At least $9 billion in $100 federal notes flown into Iraq on pallets simply vanished, possibly as much as $23 billion.
*Now it ain’t hard feelings or nothin’ sugar
That ain’t what’s got me singing this song
It’s just nobody knows honey where billions go
But when they go they’re gone gone *
I’m pretty sure somebody does.
Depending on varying values of “commandeer.”
The Wolfowitz term paper that stupidly claimed that we would be joyously greeted as liberators with the Iraqi people insisting that they wanted to be welcomed into the U.S. sphere of influence also declared that doing so would make Iraqi oil open to U.S. “investment.”
Now, if one wishes to claim that the U.S. government did not intend to “commandeer” the oil because it was corporations, not the government, that did the taking, one may wish to hide behind that wilting fig leaf, (can you say banana republic? I’m sure you can), but the U.S. waged a war of conquest and U.S. corporations with close ties between government officials and the heads of those corporations profited from it.
A frequent claim made by the administration was that the Iraqi oil would pay for the invasion. Beyond the horrible violation of ethics of making a victim pay for its own restitution, it was a claim correctly refuted by a Doper with actual business experience in MENA who pointed out that Iraq already owed an unsupportable debt to its Gulf neighbors from the first Gulf War).
But, it always works out so well to force a country to pay restitution after they lose a war.
Just ask any German…
By this value of “commandeer,” would you then agree with Donald Trump if he said that various trade agreements are resulting in China “commandeering” the U.S. economy?
Somehow I doubt it.
It’s taken much more than a century, but by now we seldom hear informed people claim there was any reason for the Civil War except slavery.
How long until the Bush apologists finally admit that the 2003 War was based mainly on greed and an utter disregard for human life?
Paul O’Neill is not a left-wing correspondent for Rolling Stone; he was hand-picked by Cheney as a fellow right-winger. Anyone who has good things to say about the Cheney Administration probably has not read The Price of Loyalty, O’Neil’s inside look at one of the most incompetent and partisan U.S. Administrations ever.
Are you calling me a Bush apologist?