Recently I got into a conversation (if you could call it that) with someone who was relentlessly spewing his "we just went to Iraq for the oil, Bush lied, yada, yada, yada" rhetoric. I wasn't able to even have a civil conversation with him because he was so emotional about the whole thing that he refused to even reason with me. So I decided to look back over the facts leading up to the war.
First, we need to make a distinction between the War in Iraq and the War on Terror. The War in Iraq was about regime change. If you recall, that didn't take very long as we marched to the gates of Baghdad in about 3 weeks. That war ended soon after that when President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier and announced victory in Iraq. What we see know in Iraq is the War on Terror, two different, but similar things. But I'm going to deal with them seperately.
War in Iraq
The first thing you always hear is that we went to Iraq for the oil. Look, I don't think that is true, but I have no way of proving it one way or the other. However, I can compare the price of oil and gas from the time we went to Iraq and the price of oil now. In 2003, the average price for a barrel of oil was around $32 and the average price for a gallon of gas was around $1.50. So far in 2008 the average for oil is up around $100/barrel and $3.65/gallon for gas, and we've seen it as high as $140/barrel and $4.05/gal. Now technically OPEC sets the price on a barrel of oil, so if we went into Iraq and took all the oil I wouldn't expect that to have any effect on oil prices. However, if we took the oil, we'd no longer have to pay that huge $100/barrel price so technically our gas prices should come down. Since gas prices have sky rocketed with the price of oil I'm fairly certain we didn't go in and take Iraq's oil.
Next, what about the accusation that we went into Iraq on faulty intelligence information? This is red herring because we had the same intelligence information as countries like Great Britain and Germany. So let's assume for a moment that the intelligence was bad. If that's the case then how is that President Bush's fault? He's not the operative out in the field collecting that data. The President had to make a decision based on the intelligence he did have which was the same intelligence given to Congress. In 2003, H.J. Res 114 passed the House 296-133 and the Senate 77-23, essentially authorizing the War in Iraq. So Republicans and Democrats alike saw the same intelligence as the President and overwhelming decided to go to war.
Despite the intelligence information, there was one other reason we went into Iraq that never gets discussed. Like all the teethless resolutions that were passed by the United Nations. Like the last one, UN Resolution 1441. In all, Saddam Hussein was given hundreds of different resolutions from the UN, 19 specifically to disarm and to allow inspectors in to see his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons facilities. He continually thumbed his nose at the UN (not surprisingly since they did nothing the previous 18 times). 1441 was unanimously (15-0) passed, so to say we "unilaterally" went into Iraq is pretty much hogwash.
Unfortunately that's all I have time to write today... I'll keep updating this as I have time.
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12 comments:
Dude, keep on drinking the kool-ade
I'm amish, I can't drink kool-aid!!! But I do appreciate your articulated rebuttal.
I don't know what you are Milnuts, but I know you're not Amish and you're not right. (Amish do drink kool-aid, by the way, lots of it.) Your "proof" that we didn't invade Iraq because of their oil deposits because the price of oil now is higher than it was when we invaded makes about as much sense as your belief that Amish don't drink kool-aid. The price of oil is set by the international commodities markets and it doesn't vary depending on who owns it. (And no, technically, OPEC does not set the price on a barrel of oil. OPEC sets goals on the amount of oil each OPEC country produces, and the amount of production versus demand for the production sets the price of oil.) Iraq is still producing less oil than it was when the U.S. invaded because contrary to the promises of the Republican right-wing, we were not greeted as liberators but as invaders, and no plans had been made by the neocons in the Pentagon to stop the destruction of infrastructure by people who didn't want us there. Your argument that the U.S. had to invade because Hussein didn't disarm and didn't allow in inspectors is just false. He did allow in inspectors, remember Hans Blix? The inspectors found no evidence that he had any nuclear, chemical and biological weapons facilities, told us that, and told us they needed more time to follow up with more inspections. It turns out Hussein was telling us the truth when he told us he didn't have any WMD, but Bush, the former Yale cheerleader who never played football and never served in a position where he was being shot at, wanted to show the world he was tougher than his war hero father by going in and doing the job his father had failed to do. That's why we invaded Iraq.
By the way, real Amish aren't stupid. So, maybe you should change the name of your blog to Methodist and Right or Protestant and Right or just plain Right. Or better yet, Wrong.
What Crockhead said.
Crockhead, take a deep breath. The kool-aid comment was a joke, intended to evoke laughter. Kool-aid and popcorn were a staple of my diet growing up.
Anyway, my comment on oil prices is absolutely relevant. Lets say you are the owner of an apple orchard. And lets say the price of apples were determined by an international consortium (like oil) to be $5/bushel. If you sell them at $5, and then buy them back from a retailer for $7/bushel the apples didn't cost you $7. They only cost you $2. If I bought them it would be $7. The same logic applies with oil. I agree that we don't set the price, but it doesn't matter. Whatever we buy is offset by the amount we sell it for... and by we, I mean whoever is drilling for the oil. Since 79% of the price of a gallon of gas (according to the Dept of Energy website) is due to crude prices, an oil company that is bringing up oil, selling, and then buying it back greatly reduces their cost of crude/gallon.
As for the Iraq inspections, you are absolutely right on with Hans Blix. He did take teams into Iraq. But he was also required by Saddam to announce ahead of time what facilities he would visit. It doesn't take much of an imagination to think why that might be. And besides, if Saddam was so compliant, again I ask, why did the UN put out resolution after resolution requiring the Iraqi's to comply with the IAEA? He was obviously doing something wrong or the resolutions would not have been needed. I can't prove definitively that Iraq had WMD, in fact no one can and no one has. However, there is more than enough circumstantial evidence to say he did have it. (Actually, the military has found lots of VX, Ricin, and other nerve agents, which technically is WMD, but its not the big bombs everyone wanted to find).
Crockhead and Milnuts,
As someone famous once said, you cannot argue with stupid. There is an abyss of irrationality and deception into which it serves no good reason to dive. Things cannot be amended. Paul Krugman addresses this quite brilliantly in today's column, "Know Nothing Politics," at http://tinyurl.com/6f2a6v. PG, the Prancing Fool
Dear Milnuts,
In your original post you stated as a fact that since gasoline prices are higher now than when the U.S. invaded Iraq, that proves the U.S. didn't invade Iraq because of the oil. It proves no such thing, of course, but in the course of your argument you said that OPEC sets oil prices. I pointed out that OPEC does not set oil prices. OPEC sets production quotas for its member countries; the international commodities markets set oil prices. You have now responded with a weird analogy about a farmer buying and selling apples and what the true cost of the apples are. I take it you haven't studied economics (neither have I, but it doesn't take an economist to know that your example doesn't hold up even in establishing the cost of the farmer's apples, much less in determining whether the fact that gasoline prices are higher now than they were when the U.S. invaded Iraq is relevant as to the reason Bush invaded Iraq.)
As to the second point, thank you for acknowledging that your original statement that Saddam Hussein didn't allow UN inspections was false. You are now making the argument that the inspections were ineffective because Saddam knew the time and place of the inspections before they took place. I don't believe that is correct. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, Hussein agreed to allow inspections without preconditions. Blix reported to the UN that his team had not been able to find any evidence of WMDs and that he needed more time to finish the job. He said he didn't need a lot of extra time. Bush's refusal to allow Blix to finish the job is why the UN did not endorse the invasion. We now know, because of books by Bush insiders like Paul O'Neill, the former treasury secretary; Richard Clarke, the terrorism czar, and others, that Bush had the invasion of Iraq on his mind from the day he took office and that he was only looking for an excuse. You said in your original post that many others, including President Clinton, had access to the same intelligence Bush had which erroneously concluded that Hussein had WMD. Again, that misstates the facts. The others did not know, as the Bush Administration did, that documents linking Hussein to attempting to get nuclear material from Africa and to Al Quada were forged.
If you are going to be right wing, at least try to be right on your facts. And stop slandering the Amish by putting their name on your title. You are no more Amish than your hero, George W. Bush.
Lets go back to the original posting for a minute. You forgot to include a thesis statement, so I have to make some guesses about your intended point. You seem to claim that the criticism of the war in Iraq might not be true, that you can’t quite prove them false either. This is followed by a loose attempt to generally support the war. So… I’ll attempt to shed some light on your well-intended confusion.
Your Argument 1 - the war wasn’t for oil.
You say oil prices have gone up, but OPEC “sets the prices” so even if we took the oil, prices would still go up. However, you claim if we took the oil, prices would not have gone up.
What??? Dude, you sound confused. I guess by predicting that prices will and won’t go up you really covered your bases. You should research what Crockhead said about the commodity markets. The balance of supply and demand sets the price. By the way, I wouldn’t use the apple analogy in public.
Your Argument 2 – “faulty intelligence”
You more or less claim that the faulty intelligence is a red herring, because Germany and Great Britain had the same intelligence. Then you say that even if it was bad, it wasn’t Bush’s fault.
Hmm. Maybe I should note that Germany was not part of the “coalition of the willing”. Oh wait, they actually helped to block the Security Council from approving the war. So, what about Great Britain? Well, you surely remember the US/British organized 1953 coup to overthrow the Iranian government. It was done because their leader Mossadeq attempted to break up the US/UK grip on Iranian oilfields. If this has slipped your memory, try looking up Operation TPAJAX.
As far as it not being Bush’s fault, you don’t seem to understand the responsibility of leadership. The “but I didn’t know” defense didn’t work for me when I was in grade school, nor does it work for the president going to war. I guess you also want us to ignore the indications that the evidence was probably fabricated by the administration.
Your Last Argument – “the unspoken reason”
The silent reason for the war is supposedly that Saddam thumbed his nose at the UN.
This argument is pretty loose on the facts. Bush has declared the UN to be irrelevant so many times it has become cliché. He was most vocal about his disrespect for the UN during the lead-up to the war because he was in violation by fighting the war. Surely you remember the spiel about not letting foreign bodies determine US policy. So are you claiming that he publicly ridiculed and ignored the UN so he could punish another country for ignoring them?
It sounds to me like your argument is just an accumulation of sound bites. Prove me wrong.
You can send me your email here and we can discuss further: http://www.milastotle.com/email.php
WWHHAAAT! You're the one with the blog, spouting for the whole world to see! Now you want to take it behind closed doors!
BWAAAHAAA HAAAA What a pansy!
Why don't you get back on the porch where you belong?!!
Lay off, Easy. Milnuts is misinformed and uninformed, but he's not evil and he's not a pansy. If he wants to have a private discussion, I'll be happy to do it. Maybe we can both learn something.
Milnuts - from the looks of it you are getting hammered from some crazy libs out there. And who is this crockhead dude? What a complete tool. If he truly did grow up Amish, there's a real possibility he got out b/c of all the tough manual labor involved. I can guarantee he is a proud member of the Michael Moore America Haters fan club - perhaps the president. Anyway, keep up the good work Rembrandt.
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