Well, bottom line is there is a lesson to be learned here. Our checks and balances do not work anymore. And even if they did, seems all you have to do is cherry pick the intellegence that suits your purpose, throw away the rest , scare the hell out of your public, and label anyone who disagrees with you unpatriotic and then you can invade which ever countries you please ( or whichever ones pissed off dear old dad) which ever comes first.....
Originally posted by Ushgarak
I still have not seen at any point, ever, any reason which backs the asserion that oil was the reason the US went to war that actually stands up to any close or knowledgeable examination; it is a reason mostly used by people who have nothing more than a casual grasp of the facts,Memories are also short. Other countries did NOT diebelieve that WMDs were in Iraq. The UN specifically believed that they WERE. Russian and France specifically said before the war that it would make no difference to their positions if the US invaded and found WMDs, because the presence or otherwise of them was not the grounds upon which they were objecting. People trying to make out that everyone else told the US they were not there are either lying or totally misguided and history will judge them idiots.
Intelligence agencies differed on the threat posed by, not the presence of, WMDs.
Memories are also short. Other countries did NOT diebelieve that WMDs were in Iraq. The UN specifically believed that they WERE. Russian and France specifically said before the war that it would make no difference to their positions if the US invaded and found WMDs, because the presence or otherwise of them was not the grounds upon which they were objecting. People trying to make out that everyone else told the US they were not there are either lying or totally misguided and history will judge them idiots.Still the report of the UNMOVIC (United Nations Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission) was ignored and US official tried to ridicule Hans Blix
And I am sorry- bit all the people I have seen saying the first about the oil have only ever struck me as showing considerable ignorance. it is a line being unthinkingly followed by people determined to criticise, without knowledge of the facts involvedOil has been a factor, not the key issue, but the size of Iraq's oil resources has indeed a factor. The pathetic attempt to justify the invasion with fake and false evidence doesnt linger the suspicion about the oil being the real agenda. Point is the top officials in charge of this operation has handle the entire situation very poorly, which again is like throwing petrol on the fire for the opposition to the war. And the North Korean situation in the middle of this didnt help the Bush administration attempt to assure people about oil aint a factor
but I do remember that back before the war Iraq and the rest of the Middle East were having discussions and thinking about pricing oil in their own currency instead of American Dollars like they do now, and did thenthey never did, and the fact is that most of the local currency aint worth crap so that would be to undermine their own means of income, and even a hint of such action would have made the price on oil drop like a fat dude skydiving without a parachute.
Just to take this so called oil agenda.
To get things clear US didnt invade Iraq to get their hands on the oil fields to keep them as a US property tehre is now way they would get away with that. They invaded Iraq to get rid of Saddam and have free access to look after hidden VMD stuff.
Now by liberating Iraq from Saddam they hope to get a stable government in place that can "cool" down the situation the country is in.
Iraq has large oil resources which aint operational as we speak, US goal is to get them operational again which will add another bidder to the oil marked . This will lead to overproduction on oil which again will make the oil prices to take a plunge. This will benefit the oil importing countries and not the oil exporting ones. Again this will benefit the citizen of large oil importing countries through low prises on gas as a means of fuel.