BUSH'S WAR

When we have economic problems, it's been caused by disruptions in our oil supply. If we have a force in Iraq, there will be no disruption in oil supplies.

Robert Kagan

After watching Bush's War on Frontline, I was feeling empty, sick, and sad.

The program did not make any judgments about the war, and that was the correct thing to do.

There was that same male voice (a good one) that Frontline usually has for its programs' narrator.

Some clear and definite points were revealed in this two-part program:

1. The Bush administration was looking for and then repeating false data in order to invade Iraq.

2. Dick Cheney was the chief lord and liar of the Iraq war.

3. Although Frontline did not imply so, it is likely that George W. Bush was aware that he was promoting his war with Iraq that was based upon inaccurate and false information and intelligence.

I wince every time I see a replay of Bush saying:

The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

You can tell that Bush really didn't believe what he was saying.

4. John McCain is probably correct when he says "We are paying a very heavy price for the mismanagement—that's the kindest word I can give you—of Donald Rumsfeld, of this war. The price is very, very heavy and I regret it enormously."

What McCain is wrong about is his support of bombing Iraq in the first place.

5. Getting rid of the military, social and police structure was probably the main reason chaos and civil war followed.

If peace had been "won" in Iraq, would any of us really care about why this war was made?

Probably not.

If you were to spin the globe and look for real estate critical to building an American empire, your first stop would have to be the Persian Gulf. The desert sands of this region hold two of every three barrels of oil in the world -- Iraq's reserves alone are equal, by some estimates, to those of Russia, the United States, China, and Mexico combined. For the past 30 years, the Gulf has been in the crosshairs of an influential group of Washington foreign-policy strategists, who believe that in order to ensure its global dominance, the United States must seize control of the region and its oil. Born during the energy crisis of the 1970s and refined since then by a generation of policymakers, this approach is finding its boldest expression yet in the Bush administration -- which, with its plan to invade Iraq and install a regime beholden to Washington, has moved closer than any of its predecessors to transforming the Gulf into an American protectorate.

[From The Thirty-Year Itch
By Robert Dreyfuss, Mother Jones, 29 March 2003]