qts, from what I’ve read Saddams generals and bueracrats participated in a form of self-deception that enabled him to say he had programs in the works developing WOMD whether the specifics were empty cans or big model airplanes run with weedwhacker engines. A crippled economy with the kind of sadistic leader that SH and his sons supported could have pork projects that make $500hammers look cheap. Just look at the manner that the army melted back into the populace. Right now US soldiers are digging up Mig jets and other military hardware,you might say “look it was hidden,there could be other stuff!”…but those million dollar jets were ruined and full of sand. If their mainstream hi-tech hardware gets hidden for safe keeping and done in such a crappy manner that it’s useless as an example of a leaders orders being executed couldn’t you imagine a general and scientist saying “yes leader Hussein, the biological weapons program is right on track, we need another $5million”…and another $5million goes off to the super secret program,that is as functional as the army or the burying of already existing and functional assets. I’ve read in a couple different articles that theorize Saddams position and it sounds credible given some excerpts of dialogues with engineers,sorry I don’t have the links or quotes.
You don’t make a very good argument for committing 100’s$Billions of dollars, lives, alienating allies based on our being mislead by Saddams lack of integrity.
Regarding the use of balls, or courage to act. Those attributes are held by the soldiers and family that are sacrificing. The president and his cabinet send those people.
I am amazed that anyone is even debating “whether” Bush lied.
Of course he did. Repeatedly.
He lied about Iraq and Al-qaeda links
He lied about Iraqs weapons
He lied when he claimed Iraq was a threat to our security.
He lied when he allowed/conspired for 9-11 to happen
He lied when he took his oath to uphold our constitution
He lies everytime he thinks he is the president.
Our president is a war criminal and a thug.
This may be true for the West Bank suicide bombers, but it was not the case for 9-11. Osama is part of a very rich family. The hijackers were by and large from middle class families.
Thank you for taking reasoned opposition to Bush and turning it into a charachterture that will be readily dismissed. Let me guess: were you one of the people who voted for Nader and helped “elect” Bush?
Good post but I have to take issue with the Mubarak statement. Although the man is far from perfect he is the best option Egypt has right now. As Christians from Egypt, my family fears that it will turn into an Islamic Republic. Right now, the alternative to Mubarak is Islamic fundamentalism a la Khomeini’s Iran. Banned terrorist groups, linked to al Qaida’s Zawahiri, have been making inroads in the poorest areas of Egypt by providing food, clothing, etc. Therefore, if there was ever a vote, the terrorists would literally win. I would rather have Gamal Mubarak succeed his father than see a President Zawahiri.
As to the OP:
Why did Bush lie? The answer to 99/100 questions is money.
By not declaring Saudi Arabia our enemy, Carlyle Group continues to make money off of Saudi Arabia. Bush Sr. is a partner in Carlyle Group.
Halliburton was awarded a lucrative contract in Iraq without any bidding and immediately proceeded to steal from American taxpayers. Dick Cheney still owns over 400,000 Halliburton stock options which go up in value when Halliburton’s stock price goes up.
Bechtel will also make a ton of money. Their strategy is to quote a reasonable price and then to jack up costs each year.
We couldn’t go to war with our number one enemy (Saudi Arabia) because Bush Sr. would lose his contracts. We were not doing business with Afghanistan or Iraq. By taking over Iraq, we gained access to lucrative contracts of our own making (rebuilding the things we destroyed in the war). Therefore, the Iraq war was an attempt to open up a previously closed market and was a diversionary tactic so Bush, Cheney, et al. can continue to do business with our biggest enemy–Saudi Arabia.
Judging just from the ‘post-war’ ‘re-building’ contracts that put a lot of money into Bush’s friends’ pockets, I don’t see how Bush COULDN’T lie. Not that there was some master plan for the war and the eventual contracts, but to me it seems that each decision that Bush makes is a small microcosm influenced by business voices. The lack of post-war planning, to me, is evidence of this.
Bush is a puppet that acts upon every little whisper by Big Business in his ear, and while the war on Iraq/Saddam was seemingly sold as a noble one (to stop WMD from attacking the US and others), it was intentionally or unintentionally snowballed by those little voices into a big mess.
Does that let GWB himself off the hook as just a pawn. No. It makes him look all the more incompetent. Mainly because of extent of the mess that has flowered (civil unrest, no WMD at all, etc.) and the world + american public growing concerned about the handling of it.
In effect: Big Business pulled Bush’s strings to fire away and that was the easy part. That’s something the Bush adm is good at: firing away. Now there is something on the plate that the Bush adm is bad at: diplomacy, tact, complicated strategy.
In a word, Bush is not sophisticated enough to handle this now.
And in my opinion, the mess will only grow as Big Business continues to work it for all it’s worth and Bush bends over for them simply because he doesn’t know what else to do.
(call me Generalities-R-Us, or FOX News)
haven’t got time to get involved today, folks, but just wanted to mention this;
Released today unde the ‘30 year’ rule. Interesting stuff, including;
*"The oil embargo was begun by Arab governments during the Yom Kippur or October war between Israel and Egypt and Syria, which left Israel in a strong position.
It was designed to put pressure on the West to get Israel to make concessions. The embargo was aimed mainly at the United States but many other countries were affected.
The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) assessment said that the seizure of the oilfields was “the possibility uppermost in American thinking when they refer to the use of force; it has been reflected, we believe, in their contingency planning.”
This phrase indicates some knowledge of American plans.
Other possibilities, such as the replacement of Arab rulers by “more amenable” leaders or a show of force by “gunboat diplomacy”, are rejected as unlikely. "*
- 30 years on . . . everything has changed, yet nothing has changed.
Ah, the articulate and wise Kimstu weighs in. Always a real treat. We simply do not see enough of you around here.
He may have lied for the same reason some cops plant false evidence. They believe that the guy really is a really bad perp and want to put him away and are willing to break the law to act on their beliefs because they dismiss the possibility that they might be wrong and know that they know best. Think Dirty Harry or many Chales Bronson movies. I’m sure Bush has watched them too.
Or to gain US control over oilfields, or a mistaken beleif that the people of Iraq would flock to US values and embrace the coming saviors and democracy would spread like a field of wildflowers in the Spring throughout the region.
He lied (if he lied, and I think he did) because he believed it was in the US’s best interest to go to war and that we wouldn’t go without the lie.
Yep, this has to be true; control of the flow of oil from the ME is, ultimately, in the interests of all the western democracies. In and of itself, losing that oil could eventually be overcome but – aside from the real-world trauma’s and stock market issues – it would also result in the relative importance of countries like Russia and Venezuela, increasing dramatically; we’d be more than ever reliant on fewer key suppliers. Very not Cheney.
As well as, as you say, the invasion being in the interests of the US and capitalism, it also had to be in the interests of Bush, primarily Bush in the context of 9/11 vengeance and Bush the re-election contender.
Kimstu’s post identifies what I term the* ‘basket of reasons’ * by which all the key players justified their endorsement of the regime change policy - Bush’s reasons, weren’t for example, Blair’s or Powell’s.
Agreed. And it’s a religious kind of belief in the free market, not just micro or macro but world wide; entire States and even regions can be treated like supplies of Wal-Mart or Marks and Spencer keynote products and – because of their importance - acquired in the best interests of (a) securing that supply and (b) controlling the market price for the shareholders (the capitalist voters) and stakeholders (Wall St).
More generally, it has to be right that there was a basket of private rationale’s from which the main western protagonists picked/justified their support for the public rationale (the common ground Wolfowitz identified as WMD); so you tell the public they’re in danger and, depending on who you are, justify your support for that spun (for public consumption only) policy in very different (personal and private) terms.
My favourite examples of this would be Powell and Blair, neither of whom, imho, were within a country mile of supporting the removal of Saddam for the same reasons by which Cheney / Bush determined the policy in the first place.
I think I’d add a few more items to Kimstu’s basket of reasons (for either/or Blair and Powell), if she (a) doesn’t mind and (b) doesn’t mind me characterising the concept in those terms . . .
[ul]
[li]The importance (for Blair and, maybe Powell) in extracting ourselves (the US and UK) from the increasingly compromised and undesirable sanctions policy; it was a dead end, getting no where and the UK long wanted out.[/li]
[li]Also, Blair does have this, religious based, sense for doing ‘the right thing’ which he acquired during the Kosovo experience with Clinton; he has to meet his maker at some point and Blair wants to believe he’s more than your usual political bag of shit. Relieving the Iraqi people of their plight – howsoever that plight came to be – was one of his self-justifying reasons. It might also have been for Powell, it’s unlikely to have been that far up the list for Cheney or Bush. Somewhere beneath the opportunity to listen to contempory Iraqi music for the latter two mentioned, in my view.[/li]
[li]I’d even go as far as to say Bush ‘guaranteed’ both Powell and Blair something that became termed the ‘Middle Eeast Road Map’ and a whole lot of support/pressure in getting that logjam unblocked. Unfortunately, it was doomed as have all previous efforts but neither Powell or Blair could say Bush didn’t give it a shot. Bush did have three key personal meetings with Powell and it here, imho, that deal was struck; my support now for your support of a new Palestinian initiative. At least it helped Powell sleep at night.[/li]
[li] For Blair there was also the long-term national interest policy of the UK (in supporting US foreign policy initiatives). But we don’t need to get into that here.[/li][/ul]
But that’s what it was, imho, a laundry list of reasons, and each key player privately justified their role in this war of aggression by capitalism by their own agenda while publicly endorsing the WMD (false) pretext.
And, I should add, so did I - as some here probably remember. My basket of reasons was, however, a variation of the Powell/Blair baskets.
Aw shucks, Stoid. Yeah, I live in India for the time being and don’t get to post as often as I used to.
LC, I think your characterization is spot on. Curious: what do you think about the “war for oil currency” hypothesis, i.e., the goal of maintaining the dollar as the (nearly) universal unit of petromoney, and frightening other countries away from switching to euros (as Saddam did in 2000)? I came across that notion only recently, and I’m wondering if it’s reasonable (on its face it sounds fairly reasonable, at least the part about the US needing the petrodollar to keep foreign investors committed to our currency despite a struggling fiscal situation) or wacky (I know nothing about oil transaction financing and wouldn’t be hard to fool).
Noam Chomsky writes in his latest book that the bombing of Kosovo was directly responsible for the genocide, not, as has been widely accepted, the other way around (that the bombing ended the genocide already happening). The Kosovarian liberation army had actully more deaths on their conscience than Milosovic’s military before the bombing, and the KLA has frankly admitted to the CIA that the reason why they were killing Serbs left right and centre, was to provoke a genocide so “the West” would come to their aid. (don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending Milosovic, but facts are facts, and should not be twisted to serve a hidden agenda).
Chomsky stated that the only real reason the UN intervened at all in the Balkan conflict of the 90’s, was to make sure that the UN’s authority wasn’t undermined. The US-Uk coalition back then, as now, has no humanitarian motives at all for intervening anywhere, but only their own status (of power) in the eyes of the international community.
Chomsky also states that the reason the US attacked Iraq, was to send a message to the rest of the world that it will attack if it wants to for whatever reason, regardless of what the Security Council says or does. The US is the self-proclaimed boss of the world, and they will do anything in their power to keep it that way. They disguise it as bringing democracy to the world, while, in fact, they are hardly a democratic nation themselves, and they have, as Kimstu stated, helped to overthrow more democratically elected governments than it has helped to instate them.
The message the War on Iraq has taught us, is that the only way to deter a preventive attack by the US, is to acquire WMD. The exact opposite of what the US proclaimed to have been after.
Look at Syria and North Korea. We know that they have WMD, but does the US attack them? No, they won’t.
The reason why they did attack Iraq, however, is because they darn well knew Iraq did not possess any such weapons and therefor was a sitting duck, an easy target.
You should take that with a grain of salt if it’s the report I’m thinking of that was written with input from energy executives. They and Cheney obviously have an agenda and monetary reasons why more control over Iraqi oil would be good for them, regardless of where oil will be imported from in the future.
The price of oil worldwide is determined by OPEC for the most part. OPEC sets prices for the OPEC nations while the non-OPEC nations generally follow suit to avoid things like price wars. I didn’t really have any point in my post other than pointing out that many people have no clue where the United States gets most of their imported oil.
I agree about the grain of salt, but I think one point we can agree on is that American dependence on petroleum – whatever the source – has been increasing over time. Unless we suddenly find a mother lode of black gold in the Ozarks, the notion that the USA will be increasingly dependent on foreign oil seems to be a logical conclusion.
According to my brother, who works for Shell, North America has plenty of oil, mainly in shales and tar sands. The problem is that it isn’t yet economic to extract it.
I think this is getting at the point. America is addicted to low-cost oil. Shale oil, tar-sand, wind power, etc. cost more than oil and we are not willing to pay for it. Yet one could argue that we are paying for it with our huge military budgets. Personally I’d like to see us pull out of the ME and develop alternative energy and conservation technology that will make petroleum useful for nothing more than paving roads and making plastics. The “street” in the ME would be happier without the corrupting influence of all the oil money and the ruling class can go pound sand.
Don’t you think we are in Iraq because the Israelis told Bush to do it? Saddam was Israel’s enemy, not the US’s. Saddam’s secularism would have made him an unsavory but effectively ruthless ally against Islamic fundamentalists. The US has lain down with worse scumbags them him before. Such an Israeli directive would also explain why nobody in the Senate stood up against the war (cf the famous Sen. Fulbright quote).
mipsman: Don’t you think we are in Iraq because the Israelis told Bush to do it? Saddam was Israel’s enemy, not the US’s.
Personally, no, I don’t think so. There’s a lot of US support even for Israel’s most controversial positions, coming from a lot of directions (Jewish and Christian right-wingers, moderate-Zionist Jews, ME-democracy advocates, etc.), but IMO Israel does not have the clout to tell the US what to do. It’s closer to the other way around: 5–10 billion dollars of US aid per year makes Israel very dependent on the US.
And as for Saddam, at the time of the invasion he was no longer a dangerous enemy to anyone but his own unfortunate citizens. I have no doubt that the Israeli government, like the US government, saw the practical advantages in having him replaced by a more US-friendly, US-military-base-maintaining regime, especially if we’re really going to pull out of Saudi Arabia. But I don’t think there’s any way Israel could have made Bush invade Iraq if he hadn’t already wanted to.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Mambo *
Good post but I have to take issue with the Mubarak statement. Although the man is far from perfect he is the best option Egypt has right now. As Christians from Egypt, my family fears that it will turn into an Islamic Republic. Right now, the alternative to Mubarak is Islamic fundamentalism a la Khomeini’s Iran. Banned terrorist groups, linked to al Qaida’s Zawahiri, have been making inroads in the poorest areas of Egypt by providing food, clothing, etc. Therefore, if there was ever a vote, the terrorists would literally win. I would rather have Gamal Mubarak succeed his father than see a President Zawahiri.
I didn’t mean to suggest that Mubarak’s government should immediately give way to popular will - obviously the prospect of someone like Zawahiri (although isn’t he holed up somewhere in Pakistan?) running Egypt isn’t desirable. One of the problems with Mubarak is that for the longest time, by squashing his secular and moderate Islamic opposition, he’s made militant Islam one of the only alternatives by default.
What I hope to see is a Gamal Mubarak, encouraged by US support and a flourishing democracy in Iraq, who pushes democratic reforms and loosens restrictions on free speech. Abandoning the “emergency powers” that have been in place for most of the past fifty years would be a nice start. The transition in MENA countries from Hosni and Bashar-style autocracies to open societies will obviously take a long time, but the inroads you speak of will never be exposed for what they are when the people have no recourse.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by DanBlather *
This may be true for the West Bank suicide bombers, but it was not the case for 9-11. Osama is part of a very rich family. The hijackers were by and large from middle class families.
The rich Saudi families you’re referring to, while in a situation that seems vastly different from their Palestinian brethren, are very much in the same boat as far as terrorism is concerned.
Many rich Saudis, unwilling to perform such menial tasks as “working for a living”, import migrant workers from India and the Phillipines. Rich as they are, their kids obviously don’t have to work either, and so are free to major in such practical and useful subjects as Islamic Jurisprudence and Islamic philosophy. Not everyone can be a part of the Ulama, so a lot of the dumber ones end up as the Imams who preach anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans in their Friday sermons. If they do try to get jobs as lay men, they’re drowned out by infinitely more qualified foreign nationals. Where does that leave them? Jobless, bored and without purpose. Enter al Qaeda.
This, perhaps more than anything in the MENA, needs to change. Giving the west a freer hand in dealing with Saudi Arabia is a necessary precondition.