Why No Iraq Exit Strategy?

by Damozel |  At the extremely insightful Politics After 50 the author suggests an answer----one so obvious that's been staring us in the face all along.  In fact, it's the answer my coblogger D Cupples has been suggesting all along.  "Follow the money trails," she enjoins me sternly, whenever I feebly protest that surely, surely, they wouldn't have gone to war on a thinly drummed-up pretext or based on dubious intelligence just to get their hands on Iraq's oil.. Here's the author of Politics After 50 on the same subject:

For a long time now...I have known that, contrary to some opinions that they are stupid, or stubborn, or in denial, [Dick Cheney and Bush] know exactly what they are doing, and Iraq is a huge success for them. 

Why does most of the American media ignore huge facts like the permanent military bases we have been and still are building? Why are we building the largest embassy in the entire world in Iraq? Because we want the Iraqis to hurry up and restore Democracy so we can get our troops home and get back to focusing on our own country? Fuck, no. Bush and Cheney were planning on an ongoing US occupation from the very beginning...

Let me say something loud and clear: George Bush and Dick Cheney are thrilled with their success in Iraq because their own neoconservative goals have been met, not the goals they set publicly, to hoodwink the American people, but the goals they set many years ago to dominate the Middle East and the oil supplies there.....(Politics After 50; emphasis added)

She encourages those who, like me, really are in denial about Iraq, to read this article in Vanity Fair from beginning to end.  And indeed it is fraught with interest----of the sort that makes you feel more than a bit sick inside as well along with hopelessly credulous and trusting to the point of idiocy. 

And she suggests that we pass along the following excerpt. 

Jim Holt makes the persuasive counter-intuitive argument for this thesis in a piece for the London Review of Books called “It’s the Oil, Stupid,” which begins, “Iraq is ‘unwinnable,’ a ‘quagmire,’ a ‘fiasco’: so goes the received opinion. But there is good reason to think that, from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is none of these things. Indeed, the US may be ‘stuck’ precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no ‘exit strategy.’ ” Spreading democracy in the region was never the goal, a quick in-and-out never in the cards, despite Michael Gerson’s misty-eyed testimony to the contrary. The goal was to take control of Iraq’s oil resources and stand guard over its infrastructure, which is why military bases with world-capital-size airport runways and suburban comforts (miniature-golf courses, fast-food restaurants, sports fields) are under boomtown construction in Iraq. Holt writes, “The draft law that the US has written for the Iraqi congress would cede nearly all the oil to Western companies. The Iraq National Oil Company would retain control of 17 of Iraq’s 80 existing oilfields, leaving the rest—including all yet to be discovered oil—under foreign corporate control for 30 years.” All in all, a pretty sweet deal for the U.S. and trans-national corporations, paid for in part thus far by the sacrifice of nearly 4,000 American troops and countless thousands of Iraqis, a necessary cost of doing business if you don’t mind having others get their hands bloody.  (Vanity Fair; emphasis in original)

"Perhaps Bush’s post-presidential memoir should be titled From Coffins to Coffers, since he’s helped fill so many of both," OMYWORD! concludes.


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Comments

[Lisa Wines]

Hi Guys - thanks for the linkage. Some more info for those who want to understand that the neoconservatives have had Iraq in their sights since 1998...

Go to the Project For The New American Century (PNAC) website: http://www.newamericancentury.org/

...and read the letter to Bill Clinton, dated 1998 and pay attention to the signers - many of whom have served in the Bush administration (or in the press like William Kristol): http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm

...notice the mention of the vague term "protect our interests" which this administration continuously uses, which translates to "protect our oil."

Then go to the Publications & Reports link at read the paper at the bottom of the page, written in 2000, Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century. Look at the signers there too. You will see many familiar names, like Libby, Wolfowitz, Kagan, etc.

911 was a dream come true for the neocons. They have been itching for a reason to invade Iraq. Pretending that Iraq was connected with 911 and then falsifying evidence of WMDs gave them the opportunity.