I've browsed this place for some months now, having become an ardent lover of the sublime Ms. Mitchell. I feel somewhat odd using my first post here on a political subject, but the issue is of such import, and the truth of the matter is in such short supply, I feel compelled to put this forward.
It's generally been printed in only the 'better' papers, but this war on Iraq has been desired and planned, by Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, etc., for some years now; as the first step towards American military domination of the oil of the Middle East. Their plan was codified most recently in the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) written in the fall of 2000, in which they openly stated the need for a new 'Pearl Harbor' in order to galvanize American public support for such a plan - this was supplied by 9/11. Saddam Hussein and whatever WMD may remain are fairly beside the point - Hussein was largely a creation of the Reagan/Bush years because he was seen as a counter-weight to revolutionary Iran; those administrations were Hussein's major suppliers of WMD, chemical and bio weapons included; and has been emphasized with recovered video clips, Donald Rumsfeld was basically the chief sales rep on the account, smiling broadly while shaking Hussein's hand. When Hussein sought to invade Kuwait because they were drilling slantwise under the border, he sought our permission, and our ambassador, April Glaspie, gave it. Hussein's a thug, but he was 'our' thug, and he's never been stupid enough to threaten us. The essential purpose of the entirety of the Bush administration is to establish this global empire based on military domination of the world's oil. It began office by announcing a huge, new 'energy crisis,' the evidence of which was provided by Enron and its other buddies who immediately jacked up the electricity prices here in California; and something that's been forgotten, gasoline prices immediately doubled too, even though, as reported in the Orange County Register, refineries had so much gasoline on inventory they were running out of room to store it. So they cooked up a phony energy crisis in order to get support for their then unannounced ambitions; but then Jeffords switched and the GOP no longer controlled the government, and the 'energy crisis' disappeared. Meanwhile, the Bush administration had re-opened negotiations with the Taliban, cut off by Clinton because of their human rights record, for the building of oil and gas pipelines through Afghanistan; these pipelines providing access to the reserves of the Caspian Sea, thought to be among the world's largest. The Taliban wasn't coming around, so Bush's representative, Tom Simons, told them 'Either accept our carpet of gold, or we will bury you in a carpet of bombs.' This was in late July 2001, I believe. Hamid Kharzai, the new 'President' of Afghanistan, is a former Unocal employee. Those pipelines are now being built. Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, nothing to do with Wahabi fundamentalist terrorism. The CIA funded bin Laden as part of its effort to contain and subvert the Soviet Union with Islamic fundamentalism, and what we have now is what's known as 'Blowback,' or the threat of unintended consequences. If there were to be popular elections in Saudi Arabia, where bin Laden and most of the hijackers are from, bin Laden would probably be elected President. Which is probably the immediate impetus for invading Iraq - Wahabism is so strong in Saudi Arabia that the House of Saud could fall pretty soon, and so no more cheap oil for us. We get Iraq, we get the cheap oil, we get a permanent military base to keep Saudi Arabia in line, whether Wahabi or not. It's not about finding a dozen empty artillery shells. Hell, Rumsfeld said last year the Pentagon couldn't account for $4 trillion worth of spending over the last few decades. Avusblue
