MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has made two documentaries that are worth your viewing time, because they respectively detail how America was lied into the Iraq war, and then answer why we were lied to. Long story short, as was obvious to many people throughout, yes, it actually was all about the oil – although not in the way most people think.
Hubris, below, documents the selling of the Iraq war to the American people, i.e. how it happened:
Why We Did It on the other hand, explains why the Bush administration was so determined to march to war with Saddam Hussein, regardless of any mythical weapons of mass destruction. The neocon Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Feith focus on invading Iraq was envisioned as a way to increase the supply (and thus lower the cost) of oil, thereby enhancing energy security for world markets and economic growth. None of which was mentioned publicly, obviously.
Three trillion dollars later, oil prices now entrenched at around $100 per barrel, hundreds of thousands of people maimed and killed, millions displaced and turned into refugees, the strategic influence of America’s greatest enemy in the region – Iran – massively enhanced, and a Sunni vs Shia schism unleashed that threatens to turn into a conflagration throughout the entire Middle East… Well, it’s hard not to get angry watching – even after all these years.
It’s worth remembering that Iraq is not an isolated incident. The United States has been invading countries that pose no threat to its own borders for hundreds of years. Given the amount America has been spending on “defense” in the post WWII-era, not to mention what its own citizens spend on guns, let alone the arms America exports, this country is arguably up there with history’s greatest ever purveyors of death.
Globalmitch 