deep said:
It is an oil thing. Don't kid yourself.
The plan is have the US rely less on Saudi Arabia.
With a friendly Iraqi regime supplying oil, the US will not have to do business with the funders and supporterts of 9-11.
Well, by the same token I could argue that the only reason France and Russia oppose an attack on Iraq is because oil and defense interests in France and Russia don't want the US or other countries to gain an upper hand in business dealings with the new Iraq. But I won't.
Instead, I'll attach the following article from The New Republic. Enjoy.
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Crude
by Peter Beinart
Post date 10.01.02 | Issue date 10.07.02
Antiwar liberals say America shouldn't attack Iraq because the world doesn't want us to. Antiwar realists say America shouldn't attack Iraq because it will destabilize the Middle East. Antiwar isolationists say America shouldn't attack Iraq because it is hasn't attacked us. And in the mainstream press, these critiques get most of the attention. But venture a little further out on the ideological grid, and the critique becomes more cynical. Antiwar leftists say America shouldn't attack Iraq because American foreign policy shouldn't be dictated by oil.
While the "this war is really about oil" thesis may be marginal in Washington, it's pervasive beyond America's shores. And American hawks haven't spent much time refuting it. At its most sophisticated, the thesis goes something like this: After Saudi Arabia, Iraq has the world's second-largest proven oil reserves. For most of the last eleven years, Iraq has been exporting far less oil than it did before the Gulf war. And the oil it has been pumping has largely been in conjunction with Russian, French, and Italian oil companies--not with American ones. American oil companies want to change that and make the big bucks that could accompany intensive development of Iraq's largely untapped oil fields. What's more, the United States could force a pliant post-Saddam Hussein regime to spurn OPEC's production quotas and flood the market with cheap crude. That would boost the U.S. economy, potentially wreck the international cartel that keeps oil relatively expensive, and reduce U.S. dependence on a Saudi Arabian monarchy the American right no longer trusts.
It's a seductive thesis--especially if you're inclined to believe the worst about the former oilmen who currently occupy the White House. But it has a few problems. First, many of the same leftists who say America is going to war to ensure cheap oil also warn that war with Iraq could wreck the U.S. economy by sending oil prices sky-high. At a press conference recently convened by antiwar Representative Dennis Kucinich, Miriam Pemberton of the dovish Institute for Policy Studies warned that if America attacks Iraq, "Wall Street analysts estimate that oil prices could rise to as much as fifty dollars a barrel, which would affect all business activities in the United States." Pemberton is right about Wall Street's fears. Last week, when Saddam agreed to let weapons inspectors return, raising hopes that war might be averted, the price of oil dropped. In other words, it's not the prospect of war with Saddam that drives oil prices down; it's the prospect of not going to war.
That may be accurate in the short term, acknowledge oil conspiracy theorists, but in the longer term--once the United States has replaced Saddam with a puppet government--the price of oil will plummet. And it's true that a post-Saddam regime could substantially increase production. Before the Gulf war, Iraq produced as much as 3.5 million barrels of oil per day. Some analysts think that with significant foreign investment, Iraq might eventually manage six million barrels--enough to substantially lessen American dependence on Saudi Arabia and perhaps even destroy OPEC, which keeps oil prices artificially high.
But this just raises another logical problem: If all the Bush administration wanted from Iraq were those six million daily barrels of crude--if all its talk about nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons was merely a smoke screen--why wouldn't the United States simply lift sanctions? Attacking Saddam, after all, entails huge financial costs, risks American lives, and could prompt civil war in precisely those parts of Iraq where oil companies want to drill. Lifting sanctions would far more easily produce the same result--since it is sanctions that have partially prevented Iraq from importing the equipment that it needs to boost oil production. Saddam has made it clear that he'd love to pump more oil--if the world would let him use the revenue to buy palaces and Scuds. In 1995, for instance, Baghdad announced that if sanctions were lifted it would enter into agreements with foreign oil companies aimed at boosting production to between six and seven million barrels per day--roughly the same amount analysts envision under a post-Saddam regime.
And while Russian, French, and Italian oil companies would have the inside track in cutting deals with Saddam if sanctions fell, that's largely because Washington's anti-Saddam hard-line has kept American oil companies from investing in Iraq. Saddam's government, for its part, has said it would be perfectly happy to partner with American oil companies. And even under sanctions, it has knowingly sold substantial quantities of oil--through middlemen--to U.S. energy behemoths like ChevronTexaco and Valero.
In fact, it isn't war that the American oil industry has been lobbying for all these years; it's the end of sanctions. As late as October 2001, after Bush administration hawks had already begun talking about war with Iraq, the American Petroleum Institute was still focused on trying to lift sanctions. In an interview with Energy Day, an institute spokesman criticized "the roadblocks of U.S. law that unilaterally close important markets to U.S. companies while leaving the door wide open for competitors." Antiwar lefties are quick to cite Vice President Dick Cheney's tenure at Halliburton as evidence that the oil industry is behind America's rush to war. But when Cheney ran Halliburton, he wasn't calling for an invasion of Iraq; and, while for personal reasons more supportive of Iraqi sanctions than most, he nonetheless railed against the sanctions that America imposed everywhere in the Middle East.
Indeed, for their first nine months in office, Cheney and the Bush team didn't propose invading Iraq; they proposed scaling back the U.N. sanctions regime. The Bush administration changed its mind not because of oil but because of terrorism. September 11 made the terrorist threat a reality, and the more American policymakers began worrying about that threat, the more they began worrying about the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons--which seems to be how they arrived at war with Iraq.
If the timing of this potential war doesn't fit the oil thesis, neither does the diplomatic maneuvering going on around it. If oil were the Bush administration's top priority, it wouldn't be promising to protect Russia's and France's oil interests in a post-Saddam Iraq in exchange for their votes at the Security Council (see "Asking Price," by Asla Aydintasbas, page 12). If oil was what the Bush team wanted most, it would be encouraging Paris and Moscow to oppose the war, thus clearing the field for U.S. oil companies once Saddam fell.
Whatever you think of the Bushies, September 11, 2001, changed their view of the world. And it is that changed view that has brought America to the brink of war. The left can call that new outlook reckless or arrogant or dumb. But they should at least admit that it's sincere.
