I can't say it wasn't a significant factor - proving a negative and all that. But I don't see huge evidence that it was, and Cheney being a CEO is not huge evidence. I think Bush had sincerely good intentions at heart of ridding the world of a security threat and creating a peaceful, democratic society - and note that everything I said had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, Iraq can be construed as a security threat even if it had never happened. Of course, good intentions mean absolutely nothing in this world, but that's what I believe.
haha rep. Come on Kojirou.. Ask yourself this Kojirou - How much did you make on iraq? now ask yourself this - How much did bush make from iraq? now ask yourself this - How much did cheney make from iraq? Now ask yourself which one was more you or them? Are you seriously kidding? Please tell me you really think they didn't make any money from this. I just want to see you type it.
Well, IBTL, given that I decided to toss WNBA on my ignore list, thanks for quoting that obnoxiously large image. Once again, I can't prove a negative. The onus is on you to prove it, which means you ought to provide something better than "Wah Halliburton" junk. Furthermore, even if you did prove it, it's once again on you to prove that was the reason, as correlation is not causation - otherwise, the historical lie spouted in the 1930s that America went into World War I to feed arms manufacturers would be true as well.
Oil was part of it but it doesn't make sense from a purely cost benefit standard. Saddam had been a US ally before and if would've been easy to just make peace with him to get exclusive contracts for Iraqi oil without going through the trouble of invading.
Money made by Halliburton for providing services isn't the same thing as money made off of oil production from Iraq. I have no doubt that Halliburton thought they could make money off of oil production at some future point but if oil was the primary profit driver there was a much easier way to go about it, make peace with Saddam. Getting a government military services contract is a different matter than oil.
Kojirou, I cannot prove that we entered WWII because we were attacked at Pearl Harbor. I also cannot prove that we entered WWII because of the human rights atrocities of the Nazi regime. I also can't prove that we went to WWII because of the sinking of our ships that we were using to supply our allies. I cannot prove or disprove any of these reasons because they all likely contributed to various synergistic degrees. I can point to none of those as the cause of our entrance that would be absurd. We simply live in too complex of a world to talk in logical certainties. Most of the time, when people say something resulted/caused something they are making a linguistic shortcut instead of saying I believe with a high confidence level that there is a strong correlation. To go back to WWII, I can however say with confidence that all those factors had strong correlations. Stronger than say the fact that Adolf Hitler enjoyed painting. I personally believe that oil contributed to our calculation in the same way that natural resources have always contributed to a scramble for power. Natural resources drive people to war for a variety of reasons and not just for personal extractionary purposes. People go to war to prevent others from taking resources even if they do not want them theirselves. The U.S. goes to war in the name for stability because we believe that stability is good for resource extraction. People go to war to make people like them in areas that are geopolitically compelling and Iraq is geopolitically compelling because it is in a region that has a large amount of the world's energy source. To say that simply because we are not extracting all the oil for ourselves there is not a strong correlation of oil and war is a flimsy argument. Oil is the main reason we care about the Middle East because it influences our decisions in so many ways other that just direct extraction. We care that Oil is extracted in a stable manner by stable states that have favorable dispositions toward the U.S. and our allies and less favorable dispositions to our enemies. We also belive that stability begets stability and that democratic states are the most stable (despite a whole bunch of historical evidence to the contrary). Our enemies care about oil and therefore care about the region because we care about the region and care about the oil. It goes round and round and makes the region a playground for greater powers. If the oil was in Central Africa we'd be talking about Central Africa - we aren't because oil isn't.
Yeah, we more or less can. Roosevelt wanted to limit Japan ( hence the sanctions), but was perfectly prepared to let Imperial Japan burn itself out holding onto an empire it had nowhere near the resources to actually subdue and concentrate on the much greater threat of Hitler. If Japan during its December 7th attacks had avoided Pearl Harbor and the American-occupied Philippines, there's a good chance America does nothing. This is all the more true since the only way Japan had a shot of defeating the US in the war would have been if US does declare war, they send their fleet out to defend the Philippines which gets annihilated by the then superior Imperial Navy, and America wonders why it's fighting for colonialism and sues for peace - and FDR knew that. Pearl Harbor changed all that. However... Well, we didn't, so yeah you can't prove it. Assuming you're referring to Wilhelmite Germany and not Nazi Germany, that's not why either. So yeah, you flubbed on two of those three, so not a good start. As for the rest of your post, I'll highlight your weakness: Who the flying **** is stupid enough to believe that going to war IMPROVES stability? Much less a war to establish a democracy? The fact is that the Iraq war completely flies in the face of US policy regarding the Middle East, largely because Bush was an ideologue. US policy during the Cold War and afterwards has been simple - it's not so much "keep the oil flowing" as it is "prevent oil shocks" like that which occurred during the 70s, because that can bring real economic suffering and misery as we saw then. These follow twin goals of not just stability, but stability and control. American doesn't pursue control at any cost - otherwise we would have let the British and French do what they wanted at Suez. Given these paradigms, Iraq makes absolutely no sense. It doesn't create stability, not in the short term like overthrowing Mossadeq did, and it doesn't create it long term because democracies are far less stable and more difficult to control than dictatorships, especially since the US could never destroy Iraq and rebuild it from the ground up like we did Germany and Japan( and EVEN THEN, it took about 20 years for the Germans to really get it into their heads that Hitler was an evil man because contrary to history, denazification was a failure, and the Japanese still don't get it completely though it's more than dumbasses like WNBA think). If we wanted the oil, the solution was damn simple as judoka points out. Either reconciliate with Saddam ( perfectly possible, given that Iran was starting to become a nuisance during the early 2000s, and don't give me the "Well, they were sorry after 9/11" crap because there is no compatibility between Iran and the US as long as they keep building their nukes) or just do what the French did and buy their oil under the table.
So cheney getting paid isn't allowed huh? umm okay umm okay??!? so if I prove it or not that's not enough huh? I mean I went to work but you can't prove I was paid because of that? I mean if it rains the floor is wet. pero si no llueve el suelo esta mojado? To be.. or not to be.. that is the question. If it doesn't fit we must acquit right johnnie? How can YOU prove it WASN'T for money? Anyone can play that game. You are right no politician in the history of time has done anything for money. You got me there. Clearly you are convinced of it and can get into some existential argument that air isn't really air and this is all just a 16th dimension of space and time since I can't prove that either. You need to be on the nigerian government corruption oversight committee. They would love you. It's called military industrial complex. Even eisenhower said it.. Or wait maybe he didnt since I can't really prove it's eisenhower. I mean it could have been faked. Just like you are really me and I am you. I mean we can't prove that either. <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/8y06NSBBRtY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Billy joel once said ' you can never argue with a crazy mind' A 2 second google search reveals these kinds of gems: " The Facts Halliburton’s business with the military has grown substantially since Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney took office. The company rose to seventh-largest military contractor in 2003 from 22nd-largest in 2000. Mr. Cheney’s financial disclosure statements from 2001, 2002 and 2003 show that since becoming vice president-elect, he has received $1,997,525 from the company: $1,451,398 in a bonus deferred from 1999, the rest in deferred salary. He also holds options to buy Halliburton stock. " http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/28/national/28fact.html?_r=0 SOUND LEGIT Kojirou won't believe it since he didn't have the bank statements mailed to his house.
As for your evidence: your entire evidence is Cheney worked for Halliburton. Halliburton made money off the Iraq War. Therefore, the Bush administration launched a war spending 1.7 trillion dollars so Halliburton could earn 40 billion. That proves nothing. Halliburton has plenty of defense contracts in Afghanistan. Well, you could start by reading your own article. And also, I get to use an earlier post of mine!
Definition of SINCE 1 : from a definite past time until now <has stayed there ever since> 2 : before the present time : ago <long since dead> 3 : after a time in the past : subsequently <has since become rich> http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/since
All of those offhand examples are simplifications because simplification lends itself more toward short form posts on a message board. As I pointed out earlier, you seem to be unable to deal with any sort of short cuts in language or meaning. So if you wish to learn more about WWII in a long form manner, I recommend the selection of history books on Amazon.com. They have a fairly good search and ratings system that will enable you to parse the chaff from the more reputable sources. I said WWII not WWI. And yes, German U boats leading up to US involvement in WWII did sink vessels going to supply our allies. As I recommended earlier, Amazon has a great selection. Even if you disagree with those examples, you can just pick and choose whatever variables you want to explain WWII and I'll accept those. My point still stands even if my chosen examples are imperfect. In fact, it is further reinforced by your chosen method of response. You seem to want scientific causation in a world where we must resign ourselves to dealing with correlation. People sometimes believe that war is sometimes necessary to ensure long term stability. Sometimes they are stupidly wrong but that doesn't mean that that the motivation wasn't there after the fact. You seem to believe that governments act perfectly rational all the time - they don't. We would have cared enough about the region to let a ideologue haphazardly lead us to war if not for resource interests. There are a very large amount of countries we could have pursued some sort of regime change. We pursued this in Iraq and not say in Eritrea because from a geopolitical standpoint it is in an important area to us. The importance of the area is strongly related to resources e.g. oil. When a person is a ideologue, you can hold that somewhat constant when examining their actions. If as you suggest he is an ideologue, then the variable falls out and what you are left with are what influenced the decision.
I don't know if you are not getting the point of my posts. You are confusing Halliburton's profit from the military services contracts with oil as the reason for the war. The two are not the same. That Halliburton made money off of the war doesn't mean that the primary reason for entering the war was oil.
Simplification has nothing to do with it. If you want it simplified, Hitler's human rights abuses have absolutely nothing to do with why we fought him. Absolutely none. Absolutely false. Hitler declared war on the United States precisely BECAUSE it gave him a reason to allow his submarines to sink American ships which had been firing upon them. If you're telling me that there's a WW2 version of the Lusitania, I should dearly like to know about it. Playing that means that your entire argument that oil was a factor in the Iraq war violates the falsifiability rule that all legitimate theories must abide by. Any evidence that shows that Bush did not fight for oil, or that it did not remotely follow the modus operandi of American foreign policy, can be simply chalked up to "irrationality." Hardly. Iraq had plenty of factors aside from oil. It was strongly opposed to the United States, there's the Bush motivation for revenge to consider, and there has always been a strong desire to finish the job since Desert Storm. It's also from a military perspective close enough to Afghanistan, and nowhere as difficult as a war against Iran or North Korea. People had been speaking of liberating Iraq for a long time before the war because democracy.
This is the reason we invaded Iraq, straight up: Giving US corps the windfall of huge defense contracts was just a bonus. Protecting the integrity and Imperialism of the dollar was the objective.
Classic, I'm fairly certain I know what answer you'll give, but you might as well spell it out. Since obviously one can easily change dollars into euros, why precisely does it matter whether Saddam would buy oil in dollars, euros, gold, or yen?
Oil is a global commodity, the primary effect 'Iraqi' oil has on the US market is in the available supply influencing the price. It doesn't really matter if Iraq sells it's oil to the US or China. However, the US is vitally interested in the overall supply and number of suppliers so that the threat of an embargo from any one source cannot influence our national Security. The milestone passed last week was that US production surpassed our total import; we now produce roughly 50% of our needs. That's good but it is a long long way from energy independence.
Iraq switching to the Euro will pressure the American ability to maintain its debt. Clearly, the logical thing to do is to engage in a war, because we all know that wars don't create debt, especially when you don't raise taxes.
