That’s from a red, white and blue bumper sticker I saw on a Jeep outside the Stop n’ Shop. It was shortly after the invasion of Iraq. It was before the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ rationale had given way to the ‘promoting Democracy in the Middle East’ fantasy. I thought the Jeep owner must be some witless slob who was doing the image of America no favor. Someone who thought the war was a chance to beat up and rob a small unpopular nation so fools could drive fake military vehicles to the supermarket.
Maybe the Jeep owner was a political scientist being ironic. Maybe all the time it was nothing more than Operation Iraqi Liberation. Was all the confusing doublespeak a show to get Americans to sacrifice their people in the military, to give up whatever amount of money we are told might make the troop’s mission less dangerous? We were told it would be fast, like a smash and grab. Now our troops are stuck there and the Republicans have no way out and want a blank check to escalate the war. The Democrats can’t offer any clean and easy answer because there is none. They’ll approve more money because it wouldn’t be supportive of the troops to deprive them of any protection or help that could be bought. The support will arrive in a leaky bucket. Even before the shooting started corruption was diverting American money to corporations, contractors, profiteers and, no doubt, our enemies.
In December 2003, when the American death toll was about 450, there was a revealing article in the New York Times. France and Germany had refused to participate in the invasion so the U.S. told them they wouldn’t get to bid on the ‘lucrative contracts’ in Iraq reconstruction. In other words, "No spoils of war for you, wimps."
I don’t know what kind of mind calculates profits while exhorting citizens to send their sons and daughters to war. Maybe you need a Bush to put a pious face on it and a Cheney to work behind the scenes. And the oil men have been working. We are told that the welfare of the Iraqi people is worth American lives. We are told that all the terrorists in the world have traveled to Iraq and are waiting there for our troops to shoot them so we can be safe. The war hawks have to tell us something- we’re not yet at the point where we’ll knowingly trade our first-born for gas. We have sacrificed over 3000 of our volunteer army and countless, deliberately uncounted, Iraqi civilians who did not volunteer. They were not even drafted because you don’t draft children and old people. They are the collateral damage of war, and their national wealth is the spoils of war. This is how the real winners are going to divide up the loot...
The Independent January 9, 2007
Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.
The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.
The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.
You know how it is when the smart guy gets so complicated that he ties himself up and it takes a dumb guy to state the obvious? Maybe the slob in the Jeep was right.
Kick Their Ass and Take Their Gas
