Alan Greenspan Claims Iraq War Was Really for Oil
September 16th, 2007If the diabolical old prick had claimed that the War in Afghanistan was really about opium, I’d be be mildly impressed.
Alas, no joy.
Via: Times Online:
AMERICA’s elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.
In his long-awaited memoir, to be published tomorrow, Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W Bush’s economic policies.
However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,†he says.
Greenspan, 81, is understood to believe that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the security of oil supplies in the Middle East.
I think the opium thing in Afghanistan was a “nice-to-have”, perhaps a “very-very-nice-to-have”, but not the main goal. The main goal was and is still to have bases and supply lines in place when “hot” war breaks out over the oil in the region. And, of course, to surround Iran from as many directions as possible.
Get out your barf bags. Greenspan says: “I really didn’t get it.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/13/60minutes/main3257567.shtml
What a piglet’s rump. It’s enough to make a person, well, whatever. I was going to say something about pork that was too rude.
Duh.
Wars are not, and never have been, initiated for idealistic reasons.
The only threat to national security was related, as the article says Greenspan believes, to the security of oil supplies. The threat posed by Hussein was the threat of selling oil in Euros, rather than dollars–a naughty, naughty move, and a very unwise one, especially for a paid stooge who had been installed in power by the US, in the expectation that he would act in US interests.
The argument that the war has anything to do with fighting terrorism is full of holes–the premier holes being that it is highly questionable whether the supposed “terrorism” was ever anything but a false-flag operation, and, if the World Trade Center bombing had been a genuine terrorist attack–which now seems highly unlikely–that the logical response to it would be to attack a country unconnected with the event.
Actually, the logical response to terrorism–if a terrorist event actually occurred–would be to go after the individual terrorists, rather than killing a million Iraquis.
We have terrorists right here in my neighborhood. Most of them are cops, but we do have one woman who likes to threaten children at the school-bus stop. I am in favor of apprehending such people and bringing them to justice–though that’s a rather remote possibility here in the US. But, despite the fact that justice is unlikely, I still don’t favor bombing the whole county back to the Stone Age.