Moyers: It IS! about Oil

[Oliver]

bv

No, but you did make the suggestion.

And you know this how exactly? Crystal ball?

Absolutely wrong. Iraq was all about it's dictator. More specifically, a dictator whose intentions about acquiring chemical/biological/nuclear weapons was clear, and who was also strangling his people economically and politically, while siphoning oil revenue for his personal ventures of funding suicide bombers and acquiring said arms.

You see, the difference is Mugabe is only a threat in Zimbabwe, whereas Saddam posed a threat to the entire region and beyond.

Seriously Oliver, what is it with you and the Jews? You reference Israel in nearly every post.

Bah! That's why they get paid the big bucks.

Reviewing all I learned about the American POV about Saddam is, that Saddam was a major problem because he virtually didn't lick US-Interests Boots. That's not an evil thing at all - in the name of his Country. So while the US provided Iraq with the WMD's that Saddam used to kill the Kurds, and while he certainly was a Dictator as well, the US was more interested about the Oil and his hostility towards Israel.

But the major fact was:

Big Oil and the war in Iraq

Are you even able to address this point/topic?

 

[gtc]

"Unfriendly Neighborhood Aspect for Israel",

Is that a real quote?

 

[IchabodPlain]

bv


Reviewing all I learned about the American POV about Saddam is, that Saddam was a major problem because he virtually didn't lick US-Interests Boots.

Does your PM "lick [the boots of] US-interests?"

I don't believe there is a universal American POV towards Saddam that extends beyond "he was a bad man".

That's not an evil thing at all - in the name of his Country.

Evidence? I don't see how it was in the interests of his country for Saddam to turn off the water to his political dissidents. I also don't see how it was in his country's interests for Saddam to skim money from the oil-for-food program.

So while the US provided Iraq with the WMD's that Saddam used to kill the Kurds, and while he certainly was a Dictator as well, the US was more interested about the Oil and his hostility towards Israel.

We were concerned about an aggressive tyrant who had access to large revenue sources in the form of natural resources. That is from a security standpoint. Economically speaking, Iraq's oil imports to the US are a pittance.

The US did not provide weapons to Saddam to kill the Kurds; we gave him weapons to fight the Iranians.

But the major fact was:

Big Oil and the war in Iraq

Are you even able to address this point/topic?

I did: here.

 

[Undesired Walrus]

Absolutely wrong. Iraq was all about it's dictator.

Not so. Up until the very day of the war, Blair was saying clearly that he did not like Hussain, but he could remain as the ruler of Iraq if he got rid of his WMD.

More specifically, a dictator whose intentions about acquiring chemical/biological/nuclear weapons was clear, and who was also strangling his people economically and politically, while siphoning oil revenue for his personal ventures of funding suicide bombers and acquiring said arms.

Barring the last fact, you could be describing the maniac who controls North Korea and treats his people like disposable citizens. More to the point, it seems entirely likely he had nuclear weapons in 2003.

whereas Saddam posed a threat to the entire region and beyond.

He did once, but in 2003 his army was a shadow of its former strength and the country was crippled by sanctions. An army that can be defeated in under 30 days is not much of a threat.

If you want to imagine this threat as suicide bombing, you have to ask if the 100,000-600,000 lives lost in the war were worth it.

 

[Cain]

Of course oil is a crucial factor explaining our interest in the region. Its strategic value cannot be understated and anyone who says it was not a critical component in our decision to invade is a ****ing fool. I vaguely recall quotes from State Department documents describing Middle Eastern oil as "the most stupendous material prize" in history. Look at the behavior of empires through recorded history and get real.

Nixon wrote a rather good op-ed for the NYT as we were about to invade Iraq for the first time. He quickly dismissed the talk about Saddam being "another Hitler" and the crazy idea of bringing Iraq democracy. He said the war could be reduced to two reasons: 1) Vital energy resources. Dick Cheney has said countries can use oil as instruments of "intimidation and blackmail". Oh, the U.S. would never do the same. 2) Nixon said it's good to have a show of force in order to intimidate others who might oppose us. Think "Shock and Awe."

 

[GreyICE]

Oliver: Because some days mere failure is insufficient.

 

[plumjam]

Of course oil is a crucial factor explaining our interest in the region. Its strategic value cannot be understated and anyone who says it was not a critical component in our decision to invade is a ****ing fool. I vaguely recall quotes from State Department documents describing Middle Eastern oil as "the most stupendous material prize" in history. Look at the behavior of empires through recorded history and get real.

Nixon wrote a rather good op-ed for the NYT as we were about to invade Iraq for the first time. He quickly dismissed the talk about Saddam being "another Hitler" and the crazy idea of bringing Iraq democracy. He said the war could be reduced to two reasons: 1) Vital energy resources. Dick Cheney has said countries can use oil as instruments of "intimidation and blackmail". Oh, the U.S. would never do the same. 2) Nixon said it's good to have a show of force in order to intimidate others who might oppose us. Think "Shock and Awe."

well said, Cain. Nominated.

 

[Beerina]

Of course it's about oil in the bigger picture. And uncertainty breeds higher prices, which are pure profit for the oil producers Coincidently.

But stay away from low level conspiracy theories. It doesn't add anything to Moyer's "credibility".

 

[IchabodPlain]

Not so. Up until the very day of the war, Blair was saying clearly that he did not like Hussain, but he could remain as the ruler of Iraq if he got rid of his WMD.

Firstly, that's Blair, not the US. Secondly, it was Saddam who did not let inspectors finish their jobs, so we're still back to square one.

Barring the last fact, you could be describing the maniac who controls North Korea and treats his people like disposable citizens. More to the point, it seems entirely likely he had nuclear weapons in 2003.

Again, how many times has KJI invaded one of his neighbors?

He did once, but in 2003 his army was a shadow of its former strength and the country was crippled by sanctions. An army that can be defeated in under 30 days is not much of a threat.

Correct, but nonetheless his intentions were clear; he wanted to acquire arms.

If you want to imagine this threat as suicide bombing, you have to ask if the 100,000-600,000 lives lost in the war were worth it.

To make Iraq a Democratic nation? Yes, it's worth it.

Of course oil is a crucial factor explaining our interest in the region.

Of course.

Its strategic value cannot be understated and anyone who says it was not a critical component in our decision to invade is a ****ing fool.

I could agree, but not from an economic perspective. The US oil imports from Iraq are measly (about 4% of all imported oil, or about 2% of total US consumption), rather it is the security aspect of having a tyrant sitting on a mountain of natural resources. Unlike finance or manufacturing, natural resources don't require the same amount of infrastructure or education investments by the state. With a natural resource like oil, you essentially have an easy-to-access source of revenue. Combine this with a repressive and aggressive dictator, and from a security aspect, yes oil is a critical component in our decision to invade. However, had Saddam not been a crazy bastard, the oil, in and of itself, is hardly meaningful.

I vaguely recall quotes from State Department documents describing Middle Eastern oil as "the most stupendous material prize" in history.

Irrelevant.

Look at the behavior of empires through recorded history and get real.

Equivocation.

 

[Jimbo07]

On an note unrelated to oil:

Massive incompetence within the administration (for which there is plenty of evidence) isn't enough for much of the anti-war movement,

If massive incompetence isn't enough to convince Bush supporters, why should it be for his critics?

The question is, how big a portion of the debacle that is the current administration is due to incompetence, and how much to infamy... take your pick.

 

[Darth Rotor]

American foreign policy is crafted to support American interests. American interests in the Persian Gulf area has been about oil for about fifty years. See the 1973 oil embargo for a data point even you will get, Oliver, and the reflagging of Kuwaiti tankers during the Iran Iraq war for another data point. The global economy runs on cheap energy, oil is cheap energy, US benefits from international trade, therefore keeping the cheap oil flowing into the global economy is in American interests. Whether or not invading Iraq supported those interests is debatable. It made good sense in the 1980's to craft new relationships with the despots of the Persian Gulf region in order to keep the oil flowing at a price that kept global economy's access to relatively inexpensive oil. Note how much of Japan's oil comes from the Middle East. About 90% in the 90's, and given Japan being a huge American trading partner, and the interconnectedness of international trade, it made sense to stop Saddam Hussein from becoming John Galt. Note that the Saudi King was very interested in stopping Saddam, since for an Arab, Saddam was a progressive (as Stalin and Mao were progressives, and ruthlessly so) and as such a threat to the Saudi's reactionary regime were Kuwait and its wealth to fall into his hands.

None of this changed much during the sanction years, other than Saddam not getting as rich off of his oil on the open market as he did under the table.

This is a non thread.

DR

 

[IchabodPlain]

If I can agree with Darth Rotor for a moment, I've often heard him rail against people who advocate taking out this repressive regime or that dictatorial thug; the common catch phrase being "Let 'em Play", and I think Iraq is exemplary of this retort.

I can't quite think of an analogy from which to get my point across, but Iraq was, and always has been, about Saddam Hussein. All of the rationalizations for war: WMD's, repressive bad man, liberate the Iraqis, funding of terrorists, --and even oil, all had the common current of Saddam Hussein at the forefront.

WMD's? We don't know, he won't fully comply with the UN.

He's a bad guy.

Liberate Iraqis? See above.

Funding of terrorists? See above.

Oil? He steals from it, and uses it to fund pet projects like lavish mansions, weapons, and terrorist activities.

Oil is a vital interest in the region, but Iraq is but one country - one which we get very little oil.

Iraq is why not to go to war over some crumby dictator; civil war lurks around the bend. It's why Rwanda, Myanmar, Darfur, and Zimbabwe are bad ideas for a single country, or some half-assed Coalition of the Lollygagging to try and bring Democracy to places you vaguely remember from junior high. It's best to let 'em play until one wins or no-one wins, unless one side starts firing missiles into random locations not within their own borders.

 

[Cain]

I could agree, but not from an economic perspective. The US oil imports from Iraq are measly (about 4% of all imported oil, or about 2% of total US consumption), rather it is the security aspect of having a tyrant sitting on a mountain of natural resources. Unlike finance or manufacturing, natural resources don't require the same amount of infrastructure or education investments by the state. With a natural resource like oil, you essentially have an easy-to-access source of revenue. Combine this with a repressive and aggressive dictator, and from a security aspect, yes oil is a critical component in our decision to invade. However, had Saddam not been a crazy bastard, the oil, in and of itself, is hardly meaningful.

Two things to unpack here. One is the all too common mistake of forgetting that there is a world market for oil. Apart from transportation costs, it does not matter where we get our oil. The last time I checked our largest suppliers were Canada and Mexico, but if those countries suddenly disappeared off the face of the map, then it would certainly affect other nations importing ZERO Canadian and Mexican oil.

This whole "crazy bastard" theory of yours is lacking is also lacking. Do you seriously think Saddam was going to send drones over the Atlantic, or all of the other fanciful attack scenarios dreamed up by the Bush administration? The President and his surrogates are guilty of massive, massive threat inflation, and some of those jokers were the same guys under Reagan giving financial and diplomatic cover to Saddam at the height of his atrocities (see for example Donald Rumsfeld). You want to talk repression and aggression? What on earth had Hussein done in the last ten years that are comparable to what he did in the 80s? He was building a nuclear power plant, killing hundreds of thousands of people, and invading Iran. Since the early nineties he has been under sanctions. This war was ******** from the beginning, and Bush got us into it by drumming up and playing off the irrational fears of the American public.

Irrelevant.

Irrelevant, really? People right now are talking about drilling off the coast in order to move toward energy independence and you don't think it would help American interests to control those huge, proven reserves of Middle Eastern oil (which is much easier to extract than in the ocean)? You don't think controlling Iraqi oil would help insulate us from a goddamn OIL CARTEL? This is like saying "JFK" was blown up terrorists? ****, I don't care. I always catch my flights out of LaGuardia. Or one of two parallel freeways in Southern California going offline. "I RARELY use the 210, so it doesn't matter if it goes down."

Equivocation.

Meaning? What more nonsense can you throw? It's more like induction. Do you not see patterns in history? The stronger argument needs to come from the people blathering on about American exceptionalism -- how we're some enlightened hegemon who behaves differently than previous powers... which, incidentally, is what all empires believed, more or less.

 

[Undesired Walrus]

Firstly, that's Blair, not the US. Secondly, it was Saddam who did not let inspectors finish their jobs, so we're still back to square one.

Someone else did not let the inspectors finish their jobs. Work that was finding no weapons of mass destruction.

Again, how many times has KJI invaded one of his neighbors?

KJI does not have a crippled army that is a fraction its former strength. And Israel manages to violate UN resolutions 30 years after the invasion and occupation of Lebanon.

Correct, but nonetheless his intentions were clear; he wanted to acquire arms.

And couldn't.

To make Iraq a Democratic nation? Yes, it's worth it.

Democracy does not ensure peace.