First we went in because Iraq was behind 9-11 Second we went in because of WMD Third we said we must oust Suddam Hussein Fourth we said we are installing democracy Fifth we said we are fighting terrorism How many would like to see the occupation end this year? Whatever the reason we have foreign troops in Iraq, The only reason I have heard that might be accurate is ousting Suddam. That objective is finished. I am praying for a good 2006- Hear is some sanity and reason from Congressman Ron Paul- Peace and Prosperity in 2006? January 2, 2006 The ongoing war in Iraq, hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and congressional scandals all served to make 2005 a tough year for America. We can hope and pray that 2006 is a happier and more peaceful year for our nation. All Americans, regardless of their views on the Iraq war, can share the hope that the killing in that country will end in 2006-- and that our troops can begin to come home. Our goal in Iraq at this point must be self-determination for the Iraqi people, nothing more and nothing less. Nation building doesn't work and we can't afford it. We should seek to get our troops out of the country as soon as possible and remain neutral toward the various factions still vying for power. The ultimate solution may be for Iraq to break up into several countries based on ethnic and religious differences. Regardless of the outcome, we must have the courage and integrity to admit that our founders' wise counsel against foreign entanglements was correct. Once the rationale for the war shifted from weapons of mass destruction to installing democracy, our credibility became dependent on true Iraqi sovereignty-- even if the government that emerges is not to our liking. True sovereignty for Iraq cannot be realized unless and until we end our occupation and stop trying to engineer political outcomes. Meanwhile, prosperity at home cannot be achieved if we allow government to engage in the kind of runaway spending that marked the final months of 2005. The fiscal year 2006 budget, already bloated with billions of dollars in unnecessary and counterproductive spending, became an 11th hour Christmas grab bag for every group or industry seeking a handout. Several federal agencies and bureaucracies needlessly received even more funding than originally requested by the administration. Dangerous foreign aid spending also grows next year, sending more of your tax dollars overseas to fund dubious regimes that often later become our enemies- as we've seen in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress cannot continue to increase spending each year and expect tax revenues to keep pace. No reasonable person can argue that a $2.4 trillion budget does not contain huge amounts of special interest spending that can and should be cut by Congress, especially when we are waging an off-budget war in Iraq that costs more than $1 billion every week. It is easy for us to lose sight of the primary responsibility of our government during troubled times, and many Americans are anxious to have the administration spend any amount and ignore the Constitution to achieve some mythical standard of security. Yet we should not forget that peace and prosperity are best secured by a government that secures liberty for its citizens. The best formula for securing liberty is limited government at home and a noninterventionist foreign policy abroad. Americans deserve better from their government in 2006 than huge deficits, scandals, domestic spying, and mindless partisanship. link
We are building a 1 billion dollar fortified embassy in the green zone that would make the pentagon look like a playground. We are building 4 permanent bases around Baghdad alone. We will never leave.
Well the U.S. armed forces are still in the following too: Phillippines, Japan, Okinawa, South Korea, Germany, Italy, Cuba and Kuwait. Now we can add Iraq to the list of countries invaded that we never left. I guess those countries got off easy considering the amount land the U.S. annexed from Mexico after that war.
Well the U.S. didn't annex West Germany and make it a state. Mexico lost California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico at the end of the war with Mexico. You know the U.S fought a war with Mexico right? The marine anthem goes "From the Halls of Montezuma..."
It's really quite simple. We will not end our fight against insurgents until we are confident that Iraq has established a government that (1) will cooprate with foreign nations in oil production and pricing and (2) can protect itself from being overthrown. That's it. That's our extraction plan. The Iraq war was and is being fought for oil. Not because of 9/11. Not because of WMD's. Not because of tyrannical leaders. Not because of democracy. Not because of terrorism. Oil. So, once we have secured our interests, we'll stop fighting.
If true..... I would respect our government so much if they would simply state the truth, explain the bigger picture and then help us understand why it is the right thing to do for America.
But, see, our gov't can't do that. People are willing to send their 19-yr-old sons to battle to fight and die for freedom ...to fight and die for democracy. But if a president (any president) states that we're gonna send over troops to fight and die for oil production and prices, NOBODY will support the effort.
Our government has had military plans for years on securing the Middle Eastern oil fields. The threat used to be those fields falling into Soviet hands, but today you insert radical Islam's hands. The U.S. so far has secured Kuwait, Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. is working, however poorly, on securing Iraq. Only one left after Iraq is Iran whose big oil fields are near the coast. Once the Middle East is secure, old George can go after that Chavez guy.
I think everyone would agree with this even those who support the invasion but the question is how to extract ourselves. I make no secret that I disagreed with the invasion and think its handled badly yet I am very cautious about some sort of rapid withdrawl without some more cautious planning. Iraq is in a very precarious position right now regarding whether it can remain a single country. I don't believe its a good idea for it to be three countries which will very likely lead to more chaos in the region possibly creating bigger threats to regional stability than Saddam ever was. Even if the country is to split it needs to be handled in a very careful way, ie it can't break up like Yugoslavia but more like the Soviet Union. I don't think the Admin has a good plan for dealing with holding Iraq together or mediating the breakup but at the sametime I believe us withdrawing suddenly will only lead to more problems. Couldn't agree more with the wisdom of avoiding foreign entanglements but its too late for that debate and the invasion and occupation is a reality. I agree that trying to engineer political outcomes might not work but we can't just ignore the mess we've made. Like it or not the Iraqis and the region deserve that we give them some measure of stability and I don't think we can withdraw until we can figure out someway to get there.
Particularly so when the revenue and power from the oil is only going to benefit those who started the war in the first place. The media seems to have become bored with this angle, and most people will roll their eyes and accuse you of beating a dead horse if you bring it up - as if a repetitive narrative is somehow proof that what you're repeating is untrue. Just because it doesn't make for an exciting story any longer, it's dismissed. The medium has become the message. Many wars, throughout history, have been fought over resources. But, very few of those wars have leaders and profiteers who have stated that motive outright. Even the Spanish wars of conquest in the early Colonial period in North America were almost always couched in religious terms of "saving the souls of savages." When England wanted to justify it's attack of Spanish ships and settlements, there were pamphlets spread about that condemned the Spanish for their "cruelty to the savages," and that Spanish cruelty made it necessary for England to intervene - and, of course, sink their galleons and take their gold. It was piracy presented in the flowery terms of humanity and religion. Nothing's changed. This is a war predicated by the powerful in the pursuit of greater power.
look it was stupid of us to get involved, but leaving now will just make the situation even worse. Like it or not, we're all in this mess, and leaving early is just gonna make it even worse.
I partly agree with you: I agree with this: But don't agree with this: I don't like Bush. I didn't vote for him. I think he's a crappy president. But, even though he was an oil mogul, I don't believe that he sent us to war in Iraq just to benefit himself and his oil buddies.
for us. Can you imagine Iraq breaking down into civil war, what with Syria and Iran chomping at the bits for moe influence in the region. Our actions in getting rid of Saddam just created a wholenew set of problems which we will have to take care of or the instability in that region will come back to bite us even worse. Look at Sudan, the region's civil war has caused it to be a safe haven for terrorists.
For obvious reasons, this is a difficult thing for anyone to prove. But, if you keep in mind that control of resources is a potent form of power in a world with limited resources (at least limited in the resources we use now), it should make sense. Power wants nothing but more power. If you think about this strictly in terms of oil, it could be difficult to arrive at the conclusion that leaders would allow people to suffer or die just for some liquidized fossils - but, if you think about it in terms of what oil means in terms of power, maybe imagining that scenario is less of a stretch. I'd say one of the biggest impediments slowing the realization of people that most of the problems of society originate at the top is a lack of understanding of how power works, and how the powerful view the world. Other than a fundamental misunderstanding of power dynamics, the other impediment is the reticence people have to believe that other human beings could be that callous and uncaring. But there's a different morality at work in the halls of power than there is in the cubicles, classrooms, and common places. Ironically (at least in my viewpoint), the morality most similar to the one at work in the capital and the congress (the more secret recesses of those institutions) is the morality you'll find in prisons; Power is good, because it is powerful. More power is better than less power. Power can only be enjoyed when it is being exercised. To increase one's power, power must be taken from other people. The means and methods are only important in terms of their effectiveness. If a method brings more power, it is good. I think I'm writing a thesis again. Full stop.
It would be nice and really should be required for the US to try to make amends for the mess we have made of Iraq. However, it is doubtful that merely subjecting Iraqis to checkpoints, razing rebel towns like Fallujah, busting into houses, sponsoring death squads, torturing, imprisoning and arming S h i ites and Turks to fight Sunnis will make Iraq more peaceful and moderate. As we see a couple of days ago 11 more US soldiers were killed and 100 plus Iraqis died from suicide bombs. Besides, how long can we stay under the guise of "democracy'when the vast bulk of the people want us to leave. Chomsky argues that, morality aside, we may not have helped oursleves with the oil grab. *********** Beyond the Ballot by Noam Chomsky .. When Bush and Britain’s Prime Minister, Tony Blair, invaded Iraq, the pretext, insistently repeated, was a "single question": Will Iraq eliminate its weapons of mass destruction? Within a few months this "single question" was answered the wrong way. Then, very quickly, the real reason for the invasion became Bush’s "messianic mission" to bring democracy to Iraq and the Middle East. Even apart from the timing, the democratisation bandwagon runs up against the fact that the United States has tried, in every possible way, to prevent elections in Iraq. Last January’s elections came about because of mass nonviolent resistance, for which the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani became a symbol. (The violent insurgency is another creature altogether from this popular movement.) Few competent observers would disagree with the editors of the Financial Times, who wrote last March that "the reason (the elections) took place was the insistence of the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who vetoed three schemes by the US-led occupation authorities to shelve or dilute them." Elections, if taken seriously, mean you pay some attention to the will of the population. The crucial question for an invading army is: "Do they want us to be here?" There is no lack of information about the answer. One important source is a poll for the British Ministry of Defence this past August, carried out by Iraqi university researchers and leaked to the British Press. It found that 82 per cent are "strongly opposed" to the presence of coalition troops and less than 1 per cent believe they are responsible for any improvement in security. Analysts of the Brookings Institution in Washington report that in November, 80 per cent of Iraqis favoured "near-term US troop withdrawal." Other sources generally concur. So the coalition forces should withdraw, as the population wants them to, instead of trying desperately to set up a client regime with military forces that they can control. But Bush and Blair still refuse to set a timetable for withdrawal, limiting themselves to token withdrawals as their goals are achieved. There’s a good reason why the United States cannot tolerate a sovereign, more or less democratic Iraq. The issue can scarcely be raised because it conflicts with firmly established doctrine: We’re supposed to believe that the United States would have invaded Iraq if it was an island in the Indian Ocean and its main export was pickles, not petroleum. As is obvious to anyone not committed to the party line, taking control of Iraq will enormously strengthen US power over global energy resources, a crucial lever of world control. Suppose that Iraq were to become sovereign and democratic. Imagine the policies it would be likely to pursue. The Shia population in the South, where much of Iraq’s oil is, would have a predominant influence. They would prefer friendly relations with Shia Iran. The relations are already close. The Badr brigade, the militia that mostly controls the south, was trained in Iran. The highly influential clerics also have long-standing relations with Iran, including Sistani, who grew up there. And the Shia-dominant interim government has already begun to establish economic and possibly military relations with Iran. Furthermore, right across the border in Saudi Arabia is a substantial, bitter Shia population. Any move toward independence in Iraq is likely to increase efforts to gain a degree of autonomy and justice there, too. This also happens to be the region where most of Saudi Arabia’s oil is. The outcome could be a loose Shia alliance comprising Iraq, Iran and the major oil regions of Saudi Arabia, independent of Washington and controlling large portions of the world’s oil reserves. It’s not unlikely that an independent bloc of this kind might follow Iran’s lead in developing major energy projects jointly with China and India. Iran may give up on Western Europe, assuming that it will be unwilling to act independently of the United States. China, however, can’t be intimidated. That’s why the United States is so frightened by China. China is already establishing relations with Iran — and even with Saudi Arabia, both military and economic. There is an Asian energy security grid, based on China and Russia, but probably bringing in India, Korea and others. If Iran moves in that direction, it can become the lynchpin of that power grid. Such developments, including a sovereign Iraq and possibly even major Saudi energy resources, would be the ultimate nightmare for Washington. Also, a labour movement is forming in Iraq, a very important one. Washington insists on keeping Saddam Hussein’s bitter anti-labour laws, but the labour movement continues its organising work despite them. Their activists are being killed. Nobody knows by whom, maybe by insurgents, maybe by former Baathists, maybe by somebody else. But they’re persisting. They constitute one of the major democratising forces that have deep roots in Iraqi history, and that might revitalise, also much to the horror of the occupying forces. One critical question is how Westerners will react. Will we be on the side of the occupying forces trying to prevent democracy and sovereignty? Or will we be on the side of the Iraqi people? http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0106-34.htm
Dick Cheney: Oil is my business. The war mean more Halliburton contracts. More Halliburton contracts mean more money. More money mean more power. George W. Bush: Yeah, well, before I commit any of that to memory, would there be anything in this for me? Dick Cheney: Speed is important in business. Time is money. George W. Bush: You said oil was money. Dick Cheney: Money is Money. George W. Bush: Well then, what is time again?