This may not make as effective a sales pitch

September 23, 2002 11:15 PM

This may not make as effective a sales pitch as "weapons of mass destruction," but with two oil men in office, it can't be ignored as a possible ulterior motive to war in Iraq. Am I a cynic or should we be asking if this "preemptive" war is really about what they are saying it's about?
posted by karlcleveland (7 comments total)

I was all ready to express Bush/Iraq boredom, then I read this:

The Iraqi dissidents chosen by Washington to lead the new regime in Baghdad have threatened to cancel all contracts awarded to firms in countries that fail to assist in the overthrow of Saddam

Anyone have links that go further into depth about this?
posted by Yelling At Nothing at 11:35 PM on September 23, 2002

Not necessarily about the Iraqi dissidents - but some further pointers toward Western interest in Iraqi oil. From last sunday, this AP article by Tom Raum about backroom bartering at the UN. I'm unsure of his sources, but quoting here:

Russia wants assurances the $7 billion Iraq owes it would be assumed by a post-Saddam Hussein regime and that there will be less criticism about its Chechnya policy. China would appreciate support in its crackdown on Islamic militants in its Central Asia border areas.

France wants future access to Iraqi oil fields. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait hope for U.S. protection for their own vast petroleum reserves. Egypt and Jordan could use more economic assistance.

Turkey would like reimbursement for its past and continued support in confronting Iraq. Turkey also would prefer that an invasion of Iraq not take place in the summer; the timing would be bad for tourism, a major prop of the Turkish economy.

And - speaking of tourism... did anyone else hear that last week in Iraq was the second annual Iraqi National Tourism Week? It's true, they held a conference for travel agents in Baghdad. The slogan, from Saddam himself is: "Tourism is a River of Gold". Timing is everything.
posted by kokogiak at 11:53 PM on September 23, 2002

Beyond general lure of oil and beyond, even, the 'wag the dog' benefits of a war before november elections lurks a larger agenda which has been spelled out in a 90 page document called "REBUILDING AMERICA’S DEFENSES: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century"

This document was commissioned (in the year before GW Bush took office) by central members of the current Bush Administration - Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and others (Wolfowitz is one of the authors). It is a refinement of an earlier work from the last days of the George Bush 1 adminstration, from Dick Cheney's Defense Dept. (Cheney was Sec. of Defense under Bush 1) and served as the general framework for the recent first-strike "Bush Doctrine". Besides advocating that the US seize the advantage of it's current world military supremacy to implement amounts to, essentially, an American World Empire, the document also has some hair raising material including a suggestion that biological agents which target certain genetic groups might become "politically usefull" (for the US military, that as). This document is available (free) online as a PDF, and I don't know WHY the media hasn't discussed it except for the possible reason that it is, in fact, too hot to touch. But it is quite real. Read it. Also another tip - see "The Grand Chessboard" by Zbigniew Brzezinski, published in '97.
posted by troutfishing at 2:38 AM on September 24, 2002

Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century

Link goes to cryptome.org. There is a small article at the top, then the entire document is in on a single htm page. There is also a link to the pdf, but on dialup it takes forever to download.
posted by lampshade at 5:55 AM on September 24, 2002

Iraq may be the 51st state.

It's oil infrastructure that is so delapidated right now, shall be rebuilt by (Texas) oil companies. Puppet gov't installed, preferred pricing on crude to Britain and the US.

And we will all be able to sleep a bit sounder knowing they don't have any WMD.
But, will we watch the war on Libya every night on the news?
posted by a3matrix at 6:09 AM on September 24, 2002

Speaking of that wacky "Bush Doctrine", I was suprised to see no mention of it here before now. Can I hijack the thread long enough to get some opinions about that thing? From what I read about it, it sounds like a blueprint for U.S. hegemony, unless I'm reading things wrong.
posted by 40 Watt at 8:04 AM on September 24, 2002

There is also a link to the pdf, but on dialup it takes forever to download.

Just in case this scared anyone off, the PDF is only 853K. Even with 3K/sec throughput, you'll have it before five minutes have elapsed.
posted by hilker at 9:32 AM on September 24, 2002