Tell me again how this war was not about oil
A lot of people have given those who protested the war a hard time about the “No blood for oil” signs that many of them carried. “You fools,” the chickenhawks would sneer, “this war is not about oil—oil has nothing to do with it!”
Perhaps the fact that Dick Cheney’s buddies at Haliburton are scoring very lucrative no-bid contracts to reconstruct Iraq’s oil industry does not phase you, but this recent article at the Guardian seems to suggest that the war was, in fact, very much about oil.
Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil
Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war.
The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz—who has already undermined Tony Blair’s position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a “bureaucratic” excuse for war—has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is “swimming” in oil.
The latest comments were made by Mr Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt.
Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: “Let’s look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil.”
(Thanks to this entry at DailyKos for the link.)
Hi. Thanks for trying to help with my HTML problems. \r
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In the meantime, that quote on Wolfowitz was taken out of context to skew the meaning 180 degrees. There was such an uproar about it that even the Guardian displayed a prominent retraction on their page. Just to set the record straight, I’ll copy it here:\r
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A report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading “Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil” misconstrued remarks made by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, making it appear that he had said that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. He did not say that. He said, according to the department of defence website, “The ... difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq.” The sense was clearly that the US had no economic options by means of which to achieve its objectives, not that the economic value of the oil motivated the war. The report appeared only on the website and has now been removed.
Here is the URL for the Guardian retraction above, which is admirable for its honesty. \r
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,972482,00.html
Hi, Zak.\r
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Glad to see that you have got your blog up and running again.\r
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Yes, I’m aware of the retraction. The operative part of that entry was “this recent article at the Guardian seems to suggest” (emphasis added). It turns out that the Guardian was wrong, as you have pointed out. I acknowledge that, I just haven’t modify this entry in any meaningful way to reflect that.\r
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Why? Well, part of me shudders to think about the amount of time it would take to follow up on every entry I ever write, to make sure that the links--and the articles linked to!--are still correct (that’s one part), but also I have no problem admiting when I am wrong--even if I am only wrong by way of reference to others who are wrong--so I don’t mind leaving this entry here as a reminder. \r
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I particularly enjoyed this blogger’s take on the whole issue:\r
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The Importance of Being Skeptical\r
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Or, as the saying goes: “If something looks too good to be true, it probably is.” \r
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It’s something The Guardian might want to keep in mind next time. The paper must have thought it had a hot one when it saw a couple of German newpapers had quoted Paul Wolfowitz as confirming the invasion of Iraq was really a U.S. grab for oil...\r
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Speaking of something too good to be true, even assuming it were true about the US going to war over Iraq’s oil (which I do not believe, since as Wolfowitz says the US could have just relinquished the sanctions a any times in the past 12 years if we needed to satisfy our petrol jones), I hardly think someone like Wolfie would come out and say it!\r
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He did cause a bit of a storm with the admission that WMDs were simply the “bureaucratic reason” that everyone could agree with, did he not?\r
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I think this was the major reason people were initially inclined to believe the Guardian story: He had unleashed a major zinger only a few days before.
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