CORRECTION: war BECAUSE of oil, not FOR oil!

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Wolfowitz said that the  war had to be launched against Iraq and not
North Korea, BECAUSE Iraq had oil.  But he did not say that the war
was FOR Iraq's oil.  What then was the war for? On this Wolfowitz is
not clear.

Wolfowitz admits that WMD was a handy bureaucratic excuse for the war,
and his admission seems reasonable since there apparently were fewer
WMD in Iraq than in most countries in the world today -- due partly to
the activity of the UN inspectors, who helped disarm the intended
victim.

Was the war for democracy? Then where is the democracy?  Instead we
have a military occupation regime settling in for an indefinite stay.
But while there is no democracy, there is oil and now the US has it,
not Iraq. The change to democracy has not taken place, but the change
in control and possession of the oil has taken place. So Iraq had the
oil and now the US has it, but that's just serendipity, not the
reason. So what was the reason?

I think that the United States occupied Iraq because Bush was outraged
that Iraq allowed "partial birth abortions," whereas Bush favors
abortions performed cleanly by bombers at tens of thousands of feet
and cruise missile ships at sea.

Once you leave out the oil, which Iraq had and the US now has and
which necessitated the war but wasn't the reason for it, that is the
only explanation that makes sense.
Fred Feldman



----- Original Message -----
From: <dhuber@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Madelyn R. Hoffman <njsane@xxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 12:31 PM
Subject: Re: Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil


> The retraction has been moved from the home page to the corrections
> page
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/corrections/story/0,3604,971436,00.html
>
> In case it moves again, I'll paste a copy for you:
>
> Corrections and clarifications
>
> Thursday June 5, 2003
>
> 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.
>
> [snip other corrections]
>
> On Thu, 5 Jun 2003 15:06:12 -0700, "Madelyn R. Hoffman"
> <njsane@xxxxxxx> wrote :