Do you have any more information on this? Not that I doubt you but I haven’t heard of that particular aspect before.
I don’t think you can really view the British as being outside of the conflict in NI, they were an integral part of it on a number of levels. For that reason it took their participation to help bring it to a conclusion.
Though with the recent past and todays events the hard-won peace may not be quite as peaceful as we’d like to believe.
She was complaining that our current actions in the Middle East were due to oil. It was something she posted well after we got involved there.
And none of the scenario I laid out happened in Iraq because things didn’t go the way we planned them despite our every effort. If things had gone like we planned then that’s how the situation would have played out.
The historical record (and the link I posted) shows that the US/British/western governments have used military and diplomatic power in the Middle East ever since oil was discovered there to control the oil there. We’re still in the region in great force militarily and diplomatically on an ongoing basis and we prop up every major opil regime apart from Iran who we used to prop up till they kicked us out. The record shows that we unquestionably started the military/diplomatic/propping up process due to all the oil there. If we’re now not there because of the oil, what are we there for and when did our rationale for being there in such force change?
Afghanistan isn’t in the Middle East. We invaded Afghanistan because we had to be seen to be doing something after 9/11.
The United States doesn’t need to intervene militarily in a lot of those situations. Nigeria is run by a regime we deal with just fine, same with Algeria, same with Gaddafi even most of the last forty years. The really crucial contries oil-wise are Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and the UAE and assorted Gulf kingdoms. That’s where over half the world’s oil is at and those are the countries we’re currently and historically most involved in, militarily, diplomatically, in terms of propping the current regimes up etc.
As far as Iraq being a conspiracy theory. During WW1 British geologists disguised as archaeoligists discovered oil in Kirkuk. The oil they discovered blew so far out of the ground in such magnitude that it killed some of them and hundreds of Kirkukians in a massive oil flood. About five minutes after that a British expeditionary force arrived to free Iraqis from Ottoman occupation. The Brits only left after WW2 and the country was still so tied to the british empire for years afterwards that their currency was linked to Sterling and they were unable to sell oil in any other currency due to contracts with western oil firms which controlled every barrel of Iraqi oil production.
Here’s what Lord Curzon, a kind of hybrid of Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney, had to say about bringing democracy to Iraq back in 1931 when he installed the puppet King Faisal as head of an Iraqi government (the Brits ghave them their own parliament, constitution, everything, just like America did!) :
"(We need an) ..Arab facade ruled and administered under British guidance and controlled by a native Mohammedan and, as far as possible, by an Arab staff… There should be no actual incorporation of the conquered territory in the dominions of the conqueror, but the absorption may be veiled by such constitutional fictions as a protectorate, a sphere of influence, a buffer state and so on”.
So this regime held basically up until the 1960s (in terms of who got the oily goodies). My questuion to you is, if at some point between the 1960s end of the system we set up and 2003 our rationale for interfering in Iraqi affairs militarily, diplomatically etc. changed, when did the change happen, what brought it about and what is, at a time when oil has never been more crucial for us, our new rationale for what we’re doing there?
Reading though my post I realise that I didn’t even point out a really glaring fact. The fact that Iraqis are called Iraqis and Iraq is called Iraq is all down to the brits, who named it and drew the borders of the country in London, and the reason they drew the borders they did, agreed to the hiving off of Kuwait etc. and put the minority Sunni group in power was to change the geopolitical balance of the region to enable easier and greater control over its oil. I’d love to know when our rationale for doing stuff like this actually changed, why it’s suddenly a “conspiracy theory” when it was conventional policy for decades.
“Seen” to be doing something? Are you kidding me? Are you next going to say that there’s no hard evidence that Osama bin Laden is responsible for 9/11?
In the immortal words of Tonto, “Who are you calling, ‘we?’” For all the intelligent discussion of the history of Britain and Iraq, you seem to conscientiously ignore my main point that the 2003 war was not about “controlling” oil.
I didn’t bring up in my post the letter that Lord Baldersnatch sent to Imam Iziz in 1932, or the oft-noted Ibiza Communique of 1953, or the agreement between the Pan-Arab Petroleum and Methane Concern and the Royal House of Windsor’s Chamber on Oriental Investments concerning the Trans-Berber Pipeline and the crucial autogyro refueling stations of the Trans-Sahel. All that history has nothing to do with what I was talking about.
I’m talking about what happened in 2002 and beyond, in which the US led a colossal mistake of a war against Iraq for reasons that were clear and totally stupid. But it wasn’t about controlling Iraq’s oil.
Your cite says Slaughter resigned in January, which was long before the unrest in Libya started. She’s been back at Princeton since February. And again, she supported getting involved in Libya for human rights reasons and said the refusal to do so was because of oil interests. You said the opposite (that the involvement is because of oil), so she doesn’t support your position.
I’m not sure how the errors in the invasion stopped the Bush administration from writing the Constitution it wanted.
It is dead on topic. we did not go to Iraq to save the people from an evil dictator. We did not go because of weapons of mass destruction, We were well aware they were not there.
It was business. In Iraq’s case, oil business. But as long as we are there, why not clean it up so American business can run it to their liking. We did.
Who are our enemies? Chavez? He has oil. Gadaffy? He has oil. Saudi Arabia? No they are willing participants in controlling oil prices and production.
It is all business. Bremer just did it all at once and so obviously that it could not be ignored.
Remember when Bush invaded? He warned Saddam not to destroy the oil fields. Yet it is not about oil???
It is fascinating how people can rationalize that the United States had total control to rewrite Iraq’s constitution and fundamentally change everything about their government, but when it comes to oil contracts not ending up in the hands of US businesses, there’s this shug and “Oh, I guess Bush’s plan didn’t work out the way he planned.”
If the war were about oil, one would think the priorities would be:
Especially in less developed countries like Iraq, contracts get handed out on the basis of patronage ALL THE TIME. How is it that the US could accomplish something so grand as to design a new Iraqi government, but fail on the rather trivial issue of making sure contracts were awarded to the “right” winners?
Yet another reason why all this “control Iraq’s oil” nonsense is merely a conspiracy theory.
No, I’m saying we invaded Afghanistan because we had to be seen to be doing something about 9/11. But our heart wasn’t in it. A couple of days after 9/11 Dick Clarke the top anti-terrorism guy was talking about invading Afghanistan with Rumsfeld but all Rumsfeld wanted to do was talk about invading Iraq. Bush gave up looking for Bin Laden really quickly, saying “I’m truly not concerned about him.”
Oil has been the reason that we’ve been so militarily/diplomatically/etc. centred on the Middle East all of last century. As far as the five countries that hold all the oil go oil is the sine qua non of our rationale for being there. As far as Iraq goes we were told we had intel that Saddam had some fearsome weapons, intel that we later found out was basically made up by the authorities who were basically forced to do it by the Bush administration. Then our rationale changed to bringing democracy to Iraq despite the fact that we were propping up dictatorships in the countries surrounding Iraq and farther afield. Basically one buillshit reason after another. There’s only one reason to have invaded iraq and that’s the exact same reason that we’ve been so invloved in the Middle east for the last century.
You’re right about my cite. I didn’t read it until well after we started bombing over there and read it wrong too. 
But even the way we’re actually involved there ( we’re backing the Libyan rebels selling the oil they control (( all of it)) to our protectorate Quatar, something Middle Easterners see as us controlling it) makes us look like we’re only there after one thing. Even our military are pointing this out to the politicians :
The Bush administration were prevented from writing the constitution they wanted ( a bunch of appointed Iraqi exiles like Chalabi who’d been on the US payroll for decades to write the constitution before any elections were held) by a fatwa issued by an Iranian Ayatollah who ordered that no constitution could be written by the Bush-appointed council. The Ayatollah ordered that free elections must be held and the winners of those elections then write the constitution*. After spending months trying to dodge the Ayatollah’s fatwa and do anything but hold free elections, Bush was forced to bend to the Ayatollah’s will and hold them. He then took the credit for the elections in Iraq :
How Cleric Trumped U.S. Plan for Iraq
Ayatollah’s Call for Vote Forced Occupation Leader to Rewrite Transition Strategy
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 26, 2003; Page A01
BAGHDAD, Nov. 25 – The unraveling of the Bush administration’s script for political transition in Iraq began with a fatwa.
The religious edict, handed down in June by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s most influential Shiite Muslim cleric, called for general elections to select the drafters of a new constitution. He dismissed U.S. plans to appoint the authors as “fundamentally unacceptable.”
[..]
With no way to get around the fatwa, and with escalating American casualties creating pressure on President Bush for an earlier end to the occupation, Bremer recently dumped his original plan in favor of an arrangement that would bestow sovereignty on a provisional government before a constitution is drafted.
Bremer’s unwillingness to heed the fatwa until just a few weeks ago may have delayed the country’s political transition and exacerbated popular anger at the occupation, Iraqi political leaders said.
“We waited four months, thanks to Bremer,” said one council member, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We could have organized this [transition] by now had we started when Sistani issued his fatwa. But the Americans were in denial.”
etc.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14718-2003Nov25?language=printer
*and then the Ayatollah got together a bunch of groups we’d recently been describing as Iranian-backed terrorist groups, unified them in a single party and backed their ticket in the election, which they won. So from 2005 onwards the United States army was fighting and dying in Iraq to keep in power a bunch of guys we’d been describing as Iranian-backed terrorists five minutes previously. Guys who, amongst other things, blew up the US Embassy in Kuwait in 1983. So it’s fair to say that our invasion of Iraq didn’t go exactly as planned.
While the war in Afghanistan was horribly mishandled because Bush had a hardon for Iraq, that statement was made a year after the invasion.
Do I actually need to respond to this? Just reread the last couple of pages of this thread. Dick Dastardly, who you are ostensibly agreeing with, even admits the U.S. did not wind up controlling Iraq’s oil. Yes, they set up a friendly climate for businesses the same way they did in the U.S. If you’re arguing the invasion was to get the oil, it failed, and if it was to turn Iraq into a profitable environment to run a washing machine business - I guess I have to give you credit for a unique argument, but it’s nonsense.
What does Hugo Chavez - who the Bush administration despised but who Obama has mostly ignored - have to do with Libya?
On what planet does this make sense? Saudi Arabia has far more oil Venezuela, which has more than Libya, but you’re arguing that U.S. policy is based on oil based on the fact that it’s intervened in Libya but not Venezuela or Saudi Arabia and the fact that it didn’t wind up dominating Iraqi oil?
Not to nitpick, but it took only six months for GWB to do a 180-degree reversal on bin Laden’s importance:
You’ve had more than another day to provide a credible cite. You have not done so. I will, then, take that as you do not have a credible cite.
Yes I do. Consider the wars currently occurring in the world today.
I’m just very busy, and have felt insulted over the accusations of conspiracy promotion, or the notion of having to walk the mods through elementary points of reasoning and logic… I was reluctant to come back, but I felt I had to defend the premise, which is that of all the wars in all the world, we happened to walk into the one where the oil is.
I don’t care what your feeling is about a fact. As many others have noted on this board many times, “you are entitled to your own opinion; however, you are not entitled to your own facts.” You tossed out an opinion as though it is a fact and you tossed it in Great Debates. You have nothing simply because there is nothing factual to support the opinion that “The US military controls the oil.”
It’s less of a conspiracy theory when it comes from the horse’s mouth, as said horse (the White House) made it clear ahead of the Gulf War that it would “take any steps necessary to protect vital oil interests in the region” (post #10, by Polerius). I certainly remember hearing various similar pronouncements reassuring the audience that the government was keeping its eye on the oil. This is not surprising, since almost from the time Iraq was cobbled together, its oil wealth has been a primary political motivator.
I do agree that Afghanistan and Libya (and some other interventions, like in the ex-Yugoslavia) had little to do with oil or other resources, and I do agree that conspiracy theories that lump all such interventions together are silly. It seems especially incredible to me that anyone who paid any attention to the Arab Spring and to news media covering it could come up with such positions as “US intervention in Libya is all about the oil”. This requires a special effort to remain oblivious for months at a time, probably achieved by consuming the hallucinogenic Nescafe that Gaddafi alluded to.
But in the case of Iraq the conspiracy theory is not quite as conspiratorial. I recall that during Gulf War II Bush Jr. and his merry band of cretins were quite vocal about their plan to secure Iraqi oil in order to pay for expenses in Iraq - claims which generated much furor from concerned citizens and groups (as well as on these message boards). The US also provided ammo to ConTheorists with a sloppy bidding process in which some lucrative oil-related contracts in fact appeared to be handed out noncompetitively based on cronyism (Halliburton). So these claims regarding Iraq are not quite as outlandish as the same claims made for intervention in Libya or Kosovo, where pressure from Europe and humanitarian arguments played a far, shall we say, more serious role than anything remotely comparable in Iraq.
I don’t disagree with your overall point, but you keep repeating the above even though it is not evidence of anything. Just because Iraq was handled in a ham-handed, obtuse and absurdly foolish manner does not prove that the Bushites didn’t entertain some suspect intentions to begin with (let’s not forget the lies, distortions, mischaracterizations, obfuscations, etc. that were all in evidence at the time). That the Bushites failed to secure any oil (the US was even excluded from oil contracts awarded in Iraq years later) is evidence more of their cretinism than the purity of their intentions…
They entertained plenty of suspect, stupid notions. They also failed to achieve any of these alleged objectives. They didn’t even come close. The occupation of Iraq did not go as they planned because the military force wasn’t large enough and the invasion didn’t get the reception they were hoping for. None of that would have prevented them from writing the Constitution they wanted. Their failure to achieve those “objectives” without a clear reason indicates that maybe they weren’t a priority in the first place.
What prevented then from writing the constitution they wanted was an Iranian Ayatollah. At first they tried to ignore his fatwa, then they tried watered-down versions of the original plan which was still basically the same plan. They tried everything they could to avoid holding them and spent months trying different tactics. Eventually the Ayatollah got fed up waiting and called for demonstrations demanding elections. Over a million people turned out in Baghdad and millions more in the Shiite south of Iraq, leaving Bush with no alternative but to agree to elections. You can’t go and invade a country to bring them democracy and then impose a constitution on them and ignore the wishes of millions of their people, especially when you’ve got your hands completely full dealing with an insurgency derived from Iraq’s five million Sunnis. To deal with one from Iraq’s 20 million Shiites at the same time, when your supply lines run through Shiite country and Shiite leaders are demanding free elections and calling you undemocratic is just untenable. That’s why Bush had to agree to elections after his initial position was that they were impossible to hold so early.
And as for a year after the invasion thing. Come on. The biggest ever attack on the US mainland by a foreign force and he gioves up in public after a year? A year is a satisfactorily long time to spend trying to get the perpetrator? How soon had he given up in private?