Will Democrats ever publicly discuss real reasons for the Iraq War?

[yurbud]

Poll question: Will Democrats ever publicly discuss real reasons for the Iraq War?

They have done an admirable job of exposing the lies, and a surreal job of saying Bush is failing in Iraq in the fairy tale propaganda terms he dictated.

But the second shoe has yet to drop in the debate. I'm still waiting for a democrat to say to a reporter, "you don't really believe Bush when he says he is worried about security for Iraqis do you? He wanted to give the oil concessions to his buddies and let them write their own ticket. Those contracts are worth nearly $10 TRILLION. Before all the oil is gone, they could be worth two to three times as much. We need to investigate how much of this was dictate by the oil companies and how much this was the creative work of the Bushies themselves, but the broad outlines of these economic war crimes are already established.

The Bush administration recently forced a hydrocarbon law on the Iraqis that other oil rich countries would never accept without a gun to their head. Iraqis are not stupid, and oil workers and clerics are already protesting the law. Obviously the War on Terror and reducing animosity toward the US are less important than throwing a very big bone to his cronies. I hope the American people begin to understand this so we can have a real debate about getting out of Iraq."

or something like that.

Will that ever happen?

[lligrd]

1. I Have Yet To Hear Any Democrat Tell The Truth About The War

I suppose that even those who voted against the IWR don't think Americans are ready to admit they were idiots to support it.

[yurbud]

4. some apologize with the lie "if I knew then what I know now..."

which of course is bullshit.

Even if Saddam had nukes, it would be suicidal for him to use them on us or give them to terrorist who did since we have 10,000 and a history of using them.

Anyone old enough to remember the Cold War knows this. Sen. Bob Graham got George Tenet to admit it in a letter about his secret congressional testimony released to the public.

[hiaasenrocks]

2. They're not going to tell the truth or do much of anything to stop it.

Most Democrats in Congress voted for the IWR, and they're either too stupid or too cowardly to step up and take blame and pledge to end it. They're certainly not in this as deep as Bush/Cheney, but don't kid yourself -- the Democratic members of Congress are in this for the politics, too, or some other gain. Hard-core partisans of either side will never admit that their side is wrong about any of this. Just laugh at them and keep on movin'. :)

[yurbud]

6. the problem is, without an honest public debate, we are vulnerable to being had again, like in Iran.

[Jonathan50]

3. I'm on quite a few other non political boards

And no one but extreme libs will even consider the idea that it might be OIL that prompted the invasion of Iraq.

I say the Dems will never talk about it, it's radioactive.

[yurbud]

5. it's astonishing that people can ignore 50 years of our history in the region

Before 9/11, I read Daniel Yergin's Pulitzer Prize winning book, THE PRIZE, a history of oil, that made it pretty clear that oil companies dictate what we do to those countries. Yergin was such a lefty that he later went to work with Papa Bush at the Carlyle Group.

PBS even made a miniseries about the book.

Maybe we should get them to play it again.

[treestar]

7. I've said it on lists to righties

And they flat out deny it. They just say "you are wrong" but never back up their statement. They know damn well it is for oil, and all they think of is their own comfort.

They also want to drill in the Alaskan wilderness and therefore, they think it is the environmentalists' fault we have to do all this. They don't admit it outright because they won't admit the Iraq war is about oil. But you can see that by reading between the lines.

[yurbud]

10. ironically, it will have no effect on their comfort except in the negative

whoever pumps the oil will not ignore a customer that uses 25% of their product.

The only issue is who profits from pumping it and who sets the price. Bush works for the oil people. Would he do something that LOWERED the price of oil, so his friends would have to work harder to make the same profit, or even more inconceivably, get less of a profit?

Greg Palast even found evidence that one of the motives for the war was to keep oil prices UP. Putin sought assurances from Bush that when we invaded, Bush wouldn't drive up production in Iraq and drive down prices, which would hurt Russia. Bush said it wouldn't. Also, oil execs told Palast they were concerned about Saddam ramping up, and in the past, there were complaints about him being a "swing producer" who could affect the price all by himself.

Sources:
http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2006/09/iraq-oil-war-resources.html

The only thing that would really change if someone else was pumping that oil is 600,000 Iraqis wouldn't be dead, 3,000 of our troops wouldn't be dead, and we wouldn't be left holding the half trillion dollar check for the meal of Iraq big oil just ate.

[yurbud]

11. you know what's sad? got 2X replies to posts of pics of Sean Hannity & hos and Bush & Lula

this could also be why it's not being talked about. People only have room in their brains for fairy tales and gossip.

[Selatius]

8. Sorry, but it boils down to war profiteering and power projection (empire building), not just oil.

Oil is apart of the equation, and everything in the region is clouded by oil, but I believe the real reason was to justify increasing yearly spending on the military to 600+ billion/year and to fulfill the PNAC agenda of primacy of US power. The military industrial complex was scrambling when the Cold War ended. Nobody could justify that kind of spending anymore, and this meant a lot of defense contractors and arms manufacturers were threatened. A new reason to spend that kind of money on war machines had to be found. Our old friend Osama from the 1980s provided the excuse.

[yurbud]

9. US power=private profit, in this case OIL. Oil is not the only reason, but if it was primarily

about pumping up military spending, we would have attacked China or Russia.

Too bad about that peace dividend.

It's funny that few people notice Saddam couldn't put a plane in the air unless we let him, and our tech advantage over our Third World "enemies" is several orders of magnitude. We probably could have done most of the same job with 30 year old weapons.

[treestar]

14. I agree with that, too

The MIC was looking for a sub for the USSR from before it even collapsed. Gulf War I was in 1991, just when the USSR was collapsing.

The sad thing is that the American population of 1991 fell for it hook, line and sinker. Our troops, support the troops was started then. And no one even thought "our freedom" was under attack. They knew is was an oil war and went for it.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. Does anyone really believe that we would be at war if there was no oil in the M.E.?

Most of the countries in the M.E. would be forgotten and ignored backwaters if they hadn't been cursed with oil. Much as most of Africa is now.

The politicians aren't about to ascribe our multitude of neo-colonial wars to greed. Nobody would want to face the fact that our "vital national interests" are always about $$$$$.

[yurbud]

13. we would treat them the way we do North Korea at worst. Can you imagine what would happen if Iran

shot a missile across Israel the way North Korea did Japan?

I'm not saying there should be a military response in either case, but the difference in reaction would be pretty striking.

In the case of Korea, we ignored it.

If Iran did it, we would nuke them, occupy them, shoot any people still writhing on the ground, and stay until the oil was gone.