The real reason for the Iraq war: From John Perkins...

[txaslftist]

author of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"

(Exerpt from an interview)

JOHN PERKINS: Yeah, it was a tongue-in-cheek term that we called ourselves. Officially, I was a chief economist. We called ourselves e.h.m.'s. It was tongue-in-cheek. It was like, nobody will believe us if we say this, you know? And, so, we went to Saudi Arabia in the early seventies. We knew Saudi Arabia was the key to dropping our dependency (on OPEC oil), or to controlling the situation. And we worked out this deal whereby the Royal House of Saud agreed to send most of their petro-dollars back to the United States and invest them in U.S. government securities.

The Treasury Department would use the interest from these securities to hire U.S. companies to build Saudi Arabia–new cities, new infrastructure–which we’ve done. And the House of Saud would agree to maintain the price of oil within acceptable limits to us, which they’ve done all of these years, and we would agree to keep the House of Saud in power as long as they did this, which we’ve done, which is one of the reasons we went to war with Iraq in the first place.

And in Iraq we tried to implement the same policy that was so successful in Saudi Arabia, but Saddam Hussein didn't buy. When the economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call the jackals. Jackals are C.I.A.-sanctioned people that come in and try to foment a coup or revolution. If that doesn't work, they perform assassinations. or try to. In the case of Iraq, they weren't able to get through to Saddam Hussein. He had -- His bodyguards were too good. He had doubles. They couldn’t get through to him. So the third line of defense, if the economic hit men and the jackals fail, the next line of defense is our young men and women, who are sent in to die and kill, which is what we’ve obviously done in Iraq."

- But you know...it wasn't about oil. It was about "freedom is on the march."

-Don't you freeper trolls feel like rubes now?

[FormerDittoHead]

1. It has "the ring of truth"... n/t

[DenverDem]

2. Freeper trolls are too stupid

to understand the fact that they are just meaningless tools for their power elite overlords to manipulate, use and discard.

[Skink]

3. Yep. Saddam wouldn't play ball.

[Poiuyt]

4. Here's a link to an interview with Perkins

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/episodes/11082004

Also here's the link to Amazon's page for the book:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1576753018/qid=1107979408/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/102-7634885-2568105

[txaslftist]

5. Yeah, I think that's where I pulled that quote.

If what he's saying about our policies in the Middle East is straight up, then we're being royally screwed by the GBWH.