Huge gold and Iron deposits found in afghanistan

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah I'd put the whole "the pres did it for oil" thing right up there. Yes I think the war was stupid, and there's clearly been some deception, but it's giving them too much credit with zero reason to think it's the case to suppose they did it secretly for oil. If only! At least THEN I could consider it an evil genius plot. The reality is a lot more mundane, and depressing.

Oil was certainly one of the central factors behind why we invaded Iraq. We do not usually attack countries that we do not have some economic interest in; see how we ignored Afghanistan for many years despite their radically anti-American government, until we couldn't after 9/11, mostly because we thought the country had no real resources. Also remember that Cheney, the real power behind the throne, WAS AN OIL COMPANY CEO! And Bush's father had been in oil for a long time as well (think of Bush I's long, close relationship with the Saudi royal family). They knew the business. This is not some crazy theory, to imagine that he would want to secure oil! And the right had been saying for years that they wanted a friendly country in the Middle East, and why do we care so much about the Middle East? Because of the oil of course.

It wasn't the ONLY reason, though. Revenge for Bush I's "failure" to take down Sadaam in 1990 was another part of it; Bush I was criticized for not doing so at the time, and Bush II wanted to make up for it by doing what his father hadn't. Wolfowitz for instance had co-authored a paper in the early '90s saying how big of a mistake not taking out the Iraqi government in 1990-91 was. The neocons had been thinking about doing what they did for many years. They were just waiting for the opportunity. There were a few other reasons as well, of course, but those are the most important ones I think. Looking for chemical and biological weapons was just the excuse used to do the invasion, not something any of them actually cared about; they thought that that reason would be the one most likely to actually hold up... little did they know that the sanctions had actually worked and Sadaam had no chemical or biological weapons. Of course had they allowed the search teams to finish their work we probably would have learned that without a massive war and lots of people getting killed, but that would have required waiting, and maybe being shown that Sadaam had nothing, and they really wanted a war, so they couldn't have that... so before the teams were finished looking Bush and his cronies forced them to leave and invaded.

It's funny that despite all that their plan for how to follow up the invasion was so delusionally bad... you'd think that in all that time they'd have had the time to come up with sane ideas. But no.


Remember though, America has a long history of going to war and conquering things for economic reasons. We conquered Hawaii because the sugar companies wanted it, we invaded various Caribbean nations because the banana companies wanted it, etc, etc... why should it be so hard to believe that oil companies had a big say in our invading Iraq, particularly when you consider who was in the White House?