# So Bush lied to get into Iraq, ok but why? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 27, 2009, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567 "2009-04-27T23:16:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/41 "2009-04-28T03:12:52Z")
And you want to pretend it’s worse. C’est la vie. At any rate, I’ve given my own answers to the OP and I’m not up for round after round of this same, tired old argument with you Der. There is no way you will ever be convinced…and no way you will convince me (at least not without more proofs than you’ve shown) that your view point is anything more than a comic book view of the world. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/42 "2009-04-28T03:17:23Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > There is no way you will ever be convinced…and no way you will convince me (at least not without more proofs than you’ve shown) that your view point is anything more than a comic book view of the world. Comic book villains are typically less incompetent. And I won’t convince you because you have always been an apologist for America. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/43 "2009-04-28T03:22:39Z")
No doubt…I’m certainly your faulty logic has nothing to do with it at all. _shrug_ -XT ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/44 "2009-04-28T03:29:26Z")
I figure Bush thought winning a war would cause him to be remembered as a great president. Iraq just happaned to be a handy opportunity. I think he got a lot of support for the idea from people around him who knew a war would be good for business. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/45 "2009-04-28T03:37:46Z")
I think Bush honestly believed that the mission would be a cakewalk, that we’d be welcomed with open arms by Iraqis, That Iraq would become a American style democracy with pee-wee soccer and a League of Women Voters, and that the Iraqis would serve as a shining example to other Arab nations and inspire revolution in Iran, which we would aid militarily, bringing an end to terrorism and a Pax Americana that would last centuries. I really think he believed this. Certainly the ideologs at PNAC did. I don’t think he’s a monster, just not very bright. Unfortunately stupid often causes as much damage as evil. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/46 "2009-04-28T03:50:12Z")
If it was wall about the oil–so what? Is that such a bad thing? Countries compete for resources all the time, that’s how it works. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/47 "2009-04-28T03:51:52Z")
It works? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/48 "2009-04-28T03:58:22Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > If it was wall about the oil–so what? Is that such a bad thing? “Mass murder for profit is bad” is a fairly basic ethical concept. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tooth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/49 "2009-04-28T04:15:00Z")
[QUOTE=Little Nemo] I figure Bush thought winning a war would cause him to be remembered as a great president. Iraq just happaned to be a handy opportunity. [/Quote] But didn’t he already have one on the go? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/50 "2009-04-28T04:39:37Z")
Fun and profit and getting them terrorists and oh, yeah, war profits. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/51 "2009-04-28T05:14:00Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > Well, the Iraqi’s certainly resisted more than we thought they would…we obviously never counted on the insurgency that we got. (snip) > -XT And I believe this was due to a failure of empathy. The right wing has consistently mocked others for trying to figure out the motivations of others. “You don’t eliminate terrorism by finding out why someone is a terrorist.” Yet not understanding what makes people fight invaders is why we failed to anticipate the insurgency. Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, et. al, all had chances to fight for their country, and had other priorities. They weren’t able to put themselves into the mind set of people that would. I truly believe Dick Cheney thought the Iraqis would regard the invasion as no more than a corporate takeover. Just like if you were working for Brown and Root one day and Halliburton the next. You had a different boss, but it was just a new name on one of those organizational charts. Nothing to get worked up about. ---
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/52 "2009-04-28T05:20:26Z")
> [@ChrisBooth12](#): > > So Bush lied to get into Iraq, ok but why? > **[Project for the New American Century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century)** > > The Federalist Papers (1788) > Democracy in America (1835–1840) > Notes on Democracy (1926) > I'll Take My Stand (1930) > The Managerial Revolution (1941) > Ideas Have Consequences (1948) > God and Man at Yale (1951) > The Conservative Mind (1953) > The Conscience of a Conservative (1960) > A Choice Not an Echo (1964) > A Conflict of Visions (1987) > The Closing of the American Mind (1987) > The Death of the West (2001) > Hillbilly Elegy (2016) > The Benedict Option (2017) > Why Liberalism Failed (2018) > The Project for the... These guys wanted “Regime Change” in Iraq since 1998, when they wrote Clinton a letter. Among the people sending that letter were, surprise surprise, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, two guys you may have heard of. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/53 "2009-04-28T05:25:34Z")
The names ring a knell. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/54 "2009-04-28T07:15:30Z")
Considering that we have spent almost $3 trillion on this war (and lost over 4000 lives), none of these reasons make any sense! ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/55 "2009-04-28T07:26:54Z")
> [@Bill\_Door](#): > > I truly believe Dick Cheney thought the Iraqis would regard the invasion as no more than a corporate takeover. Just like if you were working for Brown and Root one day and Halliburton the next. You had a different boss, but it was just a new name on one of those organizational charts. Nothing to get worked up about. It’s something I’ve seen before: Americans don’t understand nationalism. They have a hard time grasping the concept. That’s why, while other people fight for their countries, Americans fight for “freedom” and “democracy,” and can’t understand people who consider these things less important than not being invaded by foreigners. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/56 "2009-04-28T07:49:58Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > It’s something I’ve seen before: Americans don’t understand nationalism. They have a hard time grasping the concept. That’s why, while other people fight for their countries, Americans fight for “freedom” and “democracy,” and can’t understand people who consider these things less important than not being invaded by foreigners. I think that it’s more that Americans have trouble understand \*\*\*other people’s \*\*\*nationalism; we certainly have plenty of it outselves. We’ve told ourselves that we are the champions of all that is good so long that we’ve come to believe our own propaganda - and to assume that everyone else agrees with us. Remember “They hate us for our freedoms” ? Not that they hate us for being infidels, or looking funny, or invading Iraq, or anything like that; they have to hate us for our moral superiority. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/57 "2009-04-28T07:59:48Z")
Just as simplistic sloganeering for one position is silly and absurd, so is its mirror opposite. Pretending that Jihadis don’t, in part, hate us precisely because of the freedoms that we enjoy in the west is, simply, silly. [ > [@](#): > > Before Sayyid Qutb became a leading theorist of violent jihad, he was a little-known Egyptian writer sojourning in the United States, where he attended a small teachers college on the Great Plains. Greeley, Colorado, circa 1950 was the last place one might think to look for signs of American decadence. Its wide streets were dotted with churches, and there wasn’t a bar in the whole temperate town. But the courtly Qutb (COO-tub) saw things that others did not. He seethed at the brutishness of the people around him: the way they salted their watermelon and drank their tea unsweetened and watered their lawns. He found the muscular football players appalling and despaired of finding a barber who could give a proper haircut. As for the music: “The American’s enjoyment of jazz does not fully begin until he couples it with singing like crude screaming,” Qutb wrote when he returned to Egypt. “It is this music that the savage bushmen created to satisfy their primitive desires.” > > Such grumbling by an unhappy crank would be almost comical but for one fact: a direct line of influence runs from Sayyid Qutb to Osama bin Laden, and to bin Laden’s Egyptian partner in terror, Ayman al-Zawahiri. From them, the line continues to another quietly seething Egyptian sojourning in the United States—the 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. Qutb’s gripes about America require serious attention because they cast light on a question that has been nagging since the fall of the World Trade Center: Why do they hate us? > > […] > > Still, Qutb’s contempt for America was not as simple as some people might now imagine. He did not recoil from political freedom and democracy, as, say, President Bush might expect from a jihadi theorist, nor did he complain about shades of imperial ambition in American foreign policy, as writers on the left might suppose. Regarding the excesses of American culture—vulgarity, materialism and promiscuity—Qutb expressed shock, but it rang a bit hollow. “The American girl is well acquainted with her body’s seductive capacity,” he wrote. “She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs and she shows all this and does not hide it.” These curvy jezebels pursued boys with “wide, strapping chest[s]” and “ox muscles,” Qutb added with disgust. Yet no matter how lascivious his adjectives, the fastidious, unmarried Egyptian could not convincingly portray the church dances and Look magazines he encountered in sleepy Greeley as constituting a genuine sexual “jungle.” > > […] > > Sayyid Qutb cut short his stay in America and returned to Egypt in 1951 after the assassination of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the nationalist, religious and militant movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood. Over the next decade and a half, often writing from prison, Qutb refined a violent political theology from the raw anti-modernism of his American interlude. Virtually the entire modern world, Qutb theorized, is jahiliyya, that barbarous state that existed before Muhammad. Only the strict, unchanging law of the prophet can redeem this uncivilized condition. Nearly a millennium of history became, to the radicalized Qutb, an offense wrought by the violence of jahili “Crusaders” and the supposed perfidy of the Jews. And Muslim leaders allied with the West were no better than the Crusaders themselves. Therefore, Qutb called all true Muslims to jihad, or Holy War, against jahiliyya—which is to say, against modernity, which America so powerfully represents. > > This philosophy led to Qutb’s execution in 1966. Proud to the end, he refused to accept the secular Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser’s offer of mercy in exchange for Qutb’s repudiation of his jihad. Nasser may have silenced a critic, but the martyrdom of Sayyid Qutb accelerated his movement. The same year the philosopher was hanged, according to journalist Lawrence Wright, the teenage al-Zawahiri formed his first violent cell, dedicated to the overthrow of the Egyptian government and the creation of an Islamist state. Meanwhile, Qutb’s brother Muhammad went into exile in Saudi Arabia, where he taught at King Abdul Aziz University. One of his students, an heir to the country’s largest construction fortune, was Osama bin Laden. ]([http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/presence-feb06.html](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/presence-feb06.html)) ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/58 "2009-04-28T08:16:55Z")
Every war of aggression was aimed at stealing whatever the other guys had: land, food, women, whatever. But most of the time people know stealing is wrong so they dress up the aggression in terms of propagating good things like religion, democracy, or whatever shit they can think of at that moment. So the war, rather than being about beneffitting themselves at the expense of the attacked, turns into a favor to the attacked and so is morally good. Today “democracy” has replaced Christianity and “civilization” which were used a century or two ago but the idea is the same: “we are better than those backwards peoples and we deserve to have their stuff which they do not deserve”. Every thief has convinced himself that he is not a bad person but is just taking what he deserves and which the unfairness of society are witholding from him. IMHO Iraq was not only about oil but about making America dominant in that part of the world. Certainly America had plans to control Iraq and its oil which have not worked out but they were there. From the very beginning things did not go according to plan, expectations were gradually lowered until here we are where we are. But the intentions were clearly there. The military bases were not going to be “permanent” but “enduring” and they were all hush hush. America was saying one thing but doing another. America envisioned an American protectorate where the ruling class was tightly controlled by the American friends. Viceroy Paul Bremer did not want to hold elections but was forced to by Sistani’s pressure and threats to mobilise the people. From the beginning it has all been a slow chipping away of American expectations. The first contracts awarded by America for oil, for rebuilding the infrastructure. They were all going to go to America and its friendly allies. Bush threatened that those countries which did not help with the war would be left out. I remember on this very board the apologists saying how France would be punished by not being allowed into Iraqi reconstruction contracts. Which would all be paid by Iraqi oil. Of course. And controlled by America. Of course. It was going to be the plundering of Iraq and it was defended as good and legal by many on this board. How easy we forget. The first contracts were indeed controlled by America and were rife with corruption. I remember the first oil contracts, the cell phone contracts as an example. No Iraqis were hired. All contracts went to American companies. But then reality set in. Americans were being killed. This was not just building cell towers or water plants, it was doing that under fire and with “contractors” fighting back. Four “contractors” (mercenaries) were killed and their bodies hung from a bridge. Gradually reality began to sink in. This was not what America had envisioned. The infamy of the razing of Fallujah followed. The Iraqi government gradually demanded more and more autonomy and America was in no position to deny it. Even today the situation continues where the Iraqi government demnds more power and the USA gives some reluctantly. It is not what America had planned for but it was how things turned out. It is highly disingenuous to claim now that America never intended to control Iraq. It most certainly did as was evident from all actions. It is just that the bank robbery did not work out as planned. The soldiers who are being sent there are patriotically told they are fighting for America and democracy. Because they are young and gullible and more ready to die for some noble ideal than to defend the interests of the moneyed classes. Just like the jihadists on the other side. There is little difference bettween both sides. I am amazed how little people know and how much we have forgotten. It was just a few short years ago and it was all in the press for everybody to read, ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/59 "2009-04-28T08:47:19Z")
Not about oil so much as about hegemony. Afghanistan & Iraq are on opposite sides of Iran, Iran dared to drive out the British & the Americans _& rule themselves_, which towelheads are not supposed to do, so we were to set up a pincer & invade them. Also provide cover for the Likud in Israel somehow. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it was planned by a bunch of Jews in DC & NY who grew up believing in the romantic just necessity of fighting Communism[sup]TM[/sup]. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567/60 "2009-04-28T08:58:11Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > If it was wall about the oil–so what? Is that such a bad thing? It was when Saddam Hussain did it to Kuwait. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-bush-lied-to-get-into-iraq-ok-but-why/494567.md?page=4)