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wrbones
02-01-03, 09:49 PM
This article appeared in the Daily Telegraph (London) on October 22, 2002.

Myth II: America Wants War with Saddam Because of Oil

By David Frum


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Does George W. Bush have ulterior motives for threatening Iraq with invasion and regime change? In the second of a special five-part series, the president's former speechwriter David Frum examines the importance of oil.

For a visitor from across the Atlantic, the most immediately startling thing about British political and media life is this: everybody knows each other.

I was an editor at the Wall Street Journal, America's most important conservative paper, for three years in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I can count on two hands the number of times I met a politician in an informal setting--that is, something other than an editorial board meeting or an interview.

You can blame distance for some of this sense of remoteness: New York is 225 miles from Washington, only slightly less far than the distance from London to Newcastle.

But even inside Washington, it is very unusual for politicians and journalists to know each other as well as their London counterparts seem to do. The Georgetown dinner party you read about in the novels of the 1950s and 1960s is dead and gone. At 8pm on a weekday evening, Senator Foghorn is much more likely to be drinking sparkling water at a 50-person fund-raiser with the American Smelting Association than to be exchanging wisecracks with a syndicated columnist across a mahogany dinner table. Compared to the fragmentation of American political, media, and intellectual life, there is something wonderfully seductive about London's intimacy and conviviality.

But if the fragmentation of American political life has many bad effects, it has one good one: it helps to reduce the spread of cliches. A plausible delusion can sweep through London like the Dutch blight through a close-packed forest of elms--and one such delusion is that the West's war in the Middle East is a "war for oil".

One Labour MP, Alan Simpson, phrased the accusation pungently in the Commons during the debate after Tony Blair presented the Government's dossier against Iraq. Saddam Hussein's "real crime", Mr Simpson said, "is his threat to negotiate oil contracts with Russia and France, not America". President George W. Bush was like a drunk "who needs to satisfy his thirst for power and oil", and it was Mr Blair's duty "not to pass the bottle".

For a visitor from Washington, this was all a bit dizzying, for three reasons.

Wasn't it just yesterday that America was being scolded for not buying oil from Iraq and thereby causing (as it was wrongly but loudly alleged) the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians?
Isn't it odd for people who oppose "wars for oil" to rally to the defence of a dictator who launched two of them--one to conquer the oil fields of Iran, the second to annex neighbouring Kuwait?
Although it is apparently wrong for hawks to be swayed by oil, it seems to be perfectly OK for doves. Here, for example, is a leader from the anti-war Guardian: "Would Saddam launch missiles against Kuwaiti and Saudi oil fields? Would an attack on Baghdad foment strife in Riyadh? To different degrees, both would be a shock to oil supplies . . . [During the Iranian revolution,] Iranian oil production fell from six million barrels a day to three million and never recovered. If the same happened in Saudi Arabia, the world would see oil prices spurt upwards. The consequences would be rising inflation and consumers deprived of spending power." So, while war for oil is condemned, appeasement for oil is quite all right.
Oil is important. America imports half its oil, and its friends and allies import much more. Although America's own imports mostly come from secure sources in the Western hemisphere and Africa, the shock to the world economy from a crisis in the Middle East would not spare it. And so, ever since 1973, the security of Middle Eastern oil has become one of the top priorities of American foreign policy--as it is for most of America's European allies.

continued

wrbones
02-01-03, 09:50 PM
Continued.

But here is where the no-war-for-oil crowd make their mistake. Those Americans who worry most about oil tend to oppose action against Saddam, because they worry about the effects an Iraq war would have on Saudi Arabia. Take, for example, former Georgia Senator Wyche Fowler, President Clinton's ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Last November, Mr Fowler resigned his post and returned to America to slam President Bush's Iraq policy.

A war with Iraq "would open wounds in the Arab world that we don't want to deal with", he said. Saddam's "neighbours can't stand him, but they don't understand why we won't leave him alone. They're also fearful of the break-up of the country into feuding ethnic groups if and when Saddam is ousted."

The real danger to the Middle East, Fowler added, was undue pressure on Arab states to democratise. "All of us Western democrats believe that the finest expressions of the human mind and spirit happen under democratic governance, but that's not the experience of most of the world."

In the Arab world, the human mind and spirit was best expressed under theocracy. "To have a civil government whose highest priority isn't serving God is beyond their comprehension." That incomprehension causes the Saudis to despise American liberty. But not to worry: despite their contempt for US principles, Saudi Arabia is a "solid ally" and "uniquely pro-American".

And America's highest priority in the region, he concluded, should be to mollify Arab opinion by pressuring Israel to make renewed concessions to the Palestinians.

Fowler's is the authentic voice of the oil lobby, the people who ran America's Middle East policy more or less unchallenged until September 11: pro-Palestinian statehood, sceptical of Arab democracy and concerned above all with the "stability" of the Middle East--meaning the preservation of the Saudi royal family.

Many of these people supported Bush in 2000, but they are found in both parties and throughout the American government. Listen to the retired officials and distinguished public servants who have criticised President Bush's Iraq policy--the Brent Scowcrofts and the James Bakers, the Anthony Zinnis and the Laurence Eagleburgers--and you will hear that word "stability" over and over again. "Stability" means oil.

The remarkable thing about America's post-September 11 Middle Eastern policy is that, for the first time in a generation, oil has been bumped to second place in the country's concerns.

Think for a minute about the logic of the claim that America wants to fight for oil. Does that mean "for access to oil"? America can already freely purchase all the oil it wants. There has not been a credible threat to access to oil supplies since the Arab embargo of 1973-74 and there is no credible threat to access today. Saddam wants to sell more oil, not less. And if conquest and occupation were necessary to obtain oil, why wouldn't America attack an easier target than Iraq--Angola, for example?

So does "for oil" mean "for cheaper oil"? Is it suggested that America will invade Iraq, occupy its oilfields, and then sell oil for, say, $12-$15 a barrel, rather than the $25-$30 barrel it fetches today?

Even though a $12-$15 price would close down the larger part of America's domestic production and drive the country's dependence on oil imports up from 50 per cent toward the two thirds or three quarters mark?

Even though America winked when its close allies Mexico, Norway, and Oman co-operated with Opec in 1998-99 to drive the price of oil back up from $10 to $30? Even though Mr Bush's own father publicly worried in 1986 about the dangers of an excessively low oil price--at a time when oil prices adjusted for inflation were only slightly lower than today?

If Alan Simpson is right, fighting "for oil" means "for oil contracts". Last year, for example, Saddam offered Russian companies multi-year contracts that supposedly totalled $40 billion. Perhaps America covets those deals? But why would any government--and especially one as cynical as Mr Simpson believes America's to be--fight a war widely expected to cost $100 billion to gain contracts worth $40 billion?

And does Mr Simpson understand how small a sum $40 billion really is compared to the US economy? It is, for example, only a little more than half the gross state product of Arkansas. Does he really imagine that any president, no matter how inebriated, would risk the lives of American soldiers--and his own political future--for that?

OK then: perhaps fighting "for oil" means "for an oil market unmenaced by Saddam", or "for an oil market in which suppliers do not use their wealth to acquire weapons of mass destruction"? That would be true. But that is not a fight "for oil"--it is a fight against a dictator who wants to use oil wealth to threaten the peace of the world and the safety of America and its allies. If Saddam were spending his oil wealth on palaces and roads, America would not worry about him. It is the use he is making of his oil that worries Americans--and should worry the world.

Those who mistrust America's good faith in the Middle East can accurately point to the country's long willingness to tolerate local despots, so long as they kept quiet and kept pumping. Shah Reza Pahlavi of Iran was by no means the worst, although he was bad enough. Perhaps America was wrong then; perhaps it was making the best of a difficult situation not originally of its own making.

Either way, the despots of today are much more dangerous than those of 30 years ago. Who seriously believes that Saddam and the mullahs of Iran will keep quiet and keep pumping once they have the nuclear weapons they seek? Surely not even the editorial executives of the Guardian could convince themselves of that.

It is the weapons and ambitions of the regimes and terror groups which make up the axis of evil that fuel American policy in the Middle East today. Not the price of petrol.

David Frum is a visiting fellow at AEI.

firstsgtmike
02-01-03, 11:36 PM
Bones;

Because I forget the last article you posted that I made the same comment on.

If you don't have the "time" (I want to be PC) then forward the address list to me, and I'll e-mail them. This article should be sent to every "anti" group on your list. With a note, "Please respond. Inability to adequately and coherently respond WILL be considered concurrence with the article. Your concurrence WILL be publicized. Then YOU can explain both your concurrence and opposition to the same argument."

The Marine Corps mascot is a bulldog. There's a reason for that, that most people, Marines included, have forgoten. The bulldog, in the wild, was a hunter. He would track his prey, attack, and sink his lockable jaws in a vital area. A large animal, like a deer, could run "like a deer", the locked jaw would remain in place. Some time, or even days later, as a result of exhaustion, or loss of blood, the bulldog would win.

Running only meant that you were going to die tired.

Semper Fi

wrbones
02-01-03, 11:58 PM
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29921

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Posted: December 9, 2002
1:00 a.m. Eastern


© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com


In the midst of this joyous holiday season we will all enjoy a series of family and social gatherings sure to provide festive food, abundant libations and freewheeling political rants. It could be your Uncle Murray or perhaps your sister-in-law Fawn, but this year one or more members of your clan will inevitably offer some indignant objection to the upcoming war against Iraq. Here, as a public service, we present a handy guide to the top-10 arguments against that war, and the most direct and effective ways to counter them.



War never solved anything.
Not true – war has successfully solved many (if not most) of the major problems and dangers in history. What "solved" Hitler? Negotiation, compassion, psychoanalysis? No, the willingness of Churchill and Roosevelt to slaughter as many Germans as necessary before we achieved regime change in Berlin. Decisive, crushing victories (like World War II) lead to long-term solutions (like the utter transformation of Germany and Japan), while indecisive and hesitant outcomes (World War I, the Gulf War) often lead to further struggle and instability.


We have no right to attack Saddam because our aid made him powerful and he once functioned as our ally.
Not true, and not even vaguely relevant. During the Cold War, Iraq was a client state of the Soviet Union, not the United States, and Saddam has always been outspoken in his Marxist, anti-Western fulminations. It's true that the U.S. foreign-policy establishment tilted toward Iraq in its bloody war against Iran, but only because the Islamic fanaticism of the Iranians represented a more direct, immediate danger to the United States. Suggesting that fleeting cooperation some 20 years ago means that we have no right to oppose Iraq today makes no sense whatever. We provided massive military and financial support to Stalin during his desperate battle against Hitler. Does that mean that we had no moral right to oppose the aggressive designs of the Soviet Union when it turned against us within months of the conclusion of the world war?


It's all about oil.
Not really, but so what? Are we supposed to ignore the fact that our whole economy, and therefore our national security, depends upon imported oil? Why is it even theoretically inappropriate to fight in order to ensure the continued delivery of a substance so essential to our survival and independence? Meanwhile, Saddam's psychotic and despotic regime would represent a profound danger to the world even if he controlled no oil assets whatever. The United States imports almost none of its petroleum from Iraq, but our European "allies" (the French, in particular) get a great deal of their energy from that country – and therefore ardently oppose the idea of waging war. On this issue, it's the appeasers – not the hard-liners – who are "all about oil."


Instead of planning war we should be developing alternate energy sources to lessen our dependence on oil from the Middle East.
Sure, it's a good idea to secure new energy supplies – beginning with the long overdue drilling of the fertile oil fields contained in 4 percent of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Meanwhile, the fond visions of windmills and solar panels solving our national addiction to that nasty black goo will do nothing to change our immediate economic or strategic situation. Even the most visionary and optimistic views of "renewable" energy development indicate that these emerging technologies can play a significant role only some 10 or 20 years in the future – by which time regime change in Iraq will have surely occurred in any event, due to the eagerly awaited demise of the mustachioed megalomaniac.


If we make war on Iraq, it will only enrage the Arab world and provoke even more terrifying assaults by terrorists.
The logic behind this assumption is that our enemies don't really hate us yet, but that if we dare to harm Saddam, they'll just go nuts. As a matter of fact, it's hard to understand how much more hostile you can feel once you've already declared (as Osama did in 1998) that every American, civilian or military, adult or child, richly deserves to die. The truth is that our enemies don't hate us for what we do, they hate us for who we are. The "don't get the crazy Arabs mad" argument rests upon the premise that their fury arises in reaction to some action or policy of the United States, rather than as an expression of their own self-destructive insanity and suicidal evil.


The U.S. is no better than Saddam because we've murdered some 1.5 million Iraqi children with our sanctions.
At times, leftists offer this same argument using the figure of 500,000 Iraqi children, or 2 million Iraqi children, or whatever other number sounds good at the moment. It's a stupid lie – contradicted by reports of the United Nations – and simply shows that whoever repeats it serves as an unpaid but loyal propagandist for Saddam. The U.N. has repeatedly reported (as recently as last month) that the Iraqi standard of living and health care has been going up, not down, for the last several years – in part because of the "Oil for Food" program administered as part of the sanctions regime.

Starvation remains a problem in that country – not because of a lack of resources or trade, but because of the deliberate and cruel policies of an evil regime. The magical mystery tours of Saddam's palaces by the United Nations inspectors demonstrate that the problem for Iraq isn't a lack of wealth, but a misallocation of wealth by a monstrous kleptocracy. In one of the dictator's palaces, all eight walls of an entrance hall were decorated with verses of poetry in praise of Saddam, inlaid in solid gold.


There is no connection between Islamic terrorists and the Saddam Hussein regime.
This statement represents one of the few examples of anti-war activists disagreeing with the official line of the Iraqi government. That line emphasizes the proud support of the heroic and revolutionary Iraqi people for Islamic fighters everywhere, including the holy warriors of al-Qaida. Meanwhile, the al-Qaida crew similarly expresses its solidarity with Saddam – as they did in their Internet statement (widely validated by intelligence agencies in the West) claiming credit for the recent Kenya attacks, and linking future assaults to potential war against their friends, the Iraqis. If Iraq expresses solidarity with al-Qaida, and al-Qaida expresses solidarity with Iraq, peaceniks face a difficult challenge in arguing that they represent utterly disconnected phenomena.


All the talk of war against Iraq has caused us to lose focus on the war against terrorism.
Even if the president of the United States happens to focus on Iraq in his speeches, that doesn't mean that the several hundred thousand Americans who have been dedicated since Sept. 11 to rooting out Islamic terror suddenly gave up or pulled back on their efforts. If our military and counter-terrorist capabilities don't allow us to simultaneously combat a gang of murderous thugs like al-Qaida and a fourth-rate military power like Iraq, then we have been even more tragically weakened by eight years of Clinton defense cuts than even the gloomiest conservatives assumed.


If we go ahead with war against Iraq, it will represent a betrayal of our values and mark the first time in history that we attacked another country that never attacked us first.
Only those with a truly pathetic public-school education could believe such rubbish, since we fought the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish American War, World War I, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, our campaigns in Bosnia and Kosovo, and many lesser engagements – all with no direct attack on the United States. Great powers face great threats – and dangerous enemies. Why would a war prove easier or more appropriate after Saddam develops, or uses, nuclear weapons – rather than before he's completed such deadly development?


Iraq is no military pushover and we will suffer appalling losses in any war we launch.
No credible military analysts agree with this assessment, and the peaceniks don't believe it either. After all, some of the same "activists" issued the same dire warnings about imminent disaster before the first Gulf War, not to mention our recent efforts in Afghanistan. According to any impartial analysis, the Iraqi military is vastly less powerful than it was at the time of the prior Gulf War, and our capabilities – including our mission-appropriate high tech weaponry – make us much better prepared than we were last time.

The truth is that for many of the critics of Bush administration policy, the real fear (as some of them actually admit) isn't a bloody American defeat but a swift, relatively painless U.S. victory. Their belief is that it's a bad thing for the world if America becomes even more powerful, more dominant, in the Middle East and around the globe. They're dead wrong, of course – all humanity – especially the 200 million Arabs who suffer under the fanatical oppression of their own regimes – will benefit from a sweeping U.S. victory and an increase in American influence.

wrbones
02-02-03, 12:04 AM
My address list is pretty short First Segeant. I just look them up on the net and do it the old fashioned way. If they answer, I keep those in my addy book. Two or three have actually carried on a civil discourse!

I'll try to keep a log from now on.

You can be guranteed that I will forward as much as I can of everything that I've gathered over the last two weeks to as many peace activists as I am able to find!


I shoulda kept a seperate email addy for them and kept all of the addys I sent stuff to in that one. Damn, why can't I think ahead instead of just runnin off half cocked! I honestly never thought of it. LOL. Dang First Sergeants always pointin out the obvious! :D

I just kept sending out that other essay I wrote without thinking that I might turn this into some sort of real and effective campaign! LOL

I was worried about the firefights and not the 'war'! LOL

firstsgtmike
02-02-03, 01:22 AM
Same comment : My 3:36 response also applies to this 3:58 post.

If it's inappropriate, please explain.

thedrifter
02-02-03, 06:41 AM
Deep Throat Returns:
Insider Notes from the Pentag


St. Valentine’s Day Massacre – Coming Soon to a Desert Near You!

21 January 2003

America has had both powerful mafias and powerful political figures. Sometimes they have been the same folks.



George Clooney, that great American, now says “Washington is running itself like the Sopranos.”



We all know Hollywood culture drives everything, so I’m in. Hey, George! In recent months I have actually been warned by several different people inside the Pentagon that “You have to watch out... these people are ruthless.”



Never in twenty years of government service have I been warned in such a way – so maybe Clooney is on to something!



The Pentagon decision makers and their counterparts in the NSC and the White House are indeed members of a small select group who share a culture of secrecy and intense personal relationships. They are proud neo-conservatives, working hard to implement “muscular Wilsonianism” with a hint of Zionism, and making oil money is no crime, either. They have a monopoly on foreign policy-making these days, and to challenge their views on the final solution for the Middle East is to be disloyal, a betrayer.



The fellas here have a great setup, except there is a little competition in the ingenuity department, as Saddam Hussein’s recently orchestrated turn of events illustrates. The Blix team is turning up actual physical evidence!



The evidence is older stuff, some missiles with traces of bad juju, defunct mostly, but it’s a helluva lot more evidence than the Sopranos have produced so far. What’s even better – just as Blix was looking as if he was all whine and no bite, Saddam throws him a bone! Think of the pressure to continue the newly successful inspection regime!



Given these events, the mood among pro-war planners is an odd mixture of confidence in the momentum of our accelerating logistics engine and a strange new distrust of the President’s willingness to see through the elimination of Saddam, occupy with U.S. soldiers, and establish the desired outpost of neo-conservative Americanism in Baghdad and selected oilfields.



You can’t have a good mafia story without betrayal. And the possibility of a Bush betrayal makes this story fascinating. Distrust of the President’s “backbone” is seen in recent Pentagon-initiated attention given to alternatives to war – Saddam’s voluntary retirement to an undisclosed location, advocated by Rumsfeld. Israeli and U.S. hit teams operating globally, to inspire the idea that the President has already set in motion something he no longer fully controls.



Wolfowitz’s recent statement regarding his intention to deal with the Palestinian settlements “immediately after the war” is also part of it. While the Likud Party and Sharon disagree with Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of War sends the plea to Europe and the Arab world, “Please, give us this military action and we promise to play fair with Palestinian concerns afterwards.”



We see it in yesterday’s Washington Times commentary discounting sinking Bush poll numbers and American’s rising concern about what a technically unprovoked war with Iraq will do to the economy and security of the United States.



All this tension would be healthy -- for a democracy. But if Clooney is right, it isn’t good for a family operation, with the hand-selected group of made men wannabes running security. As we plan for the grand invasion in February, it is looking more and more like a St. Valentine’s Day massacre.



The original event, back in 1929 (only nine months ahead of the famous stock market crash!) occurred when Al Capone’s group of thugs needed improved market access to a certain high-value liquid commodity, and took some pre-emptive action to solve the problem.



Capone’s thugs dressed like policemen, complete with a paddywagon, and violently took out the competition, Bugs Moran’s North Side Gang in the middle of February.



What’s not to like? One gang fighting another gang – lots of angst and an impassioned lust to control and leverage a certain market in liquid commodities. One of them dresses up like legitimate cops, and does the deed.



Capone’s plan was ingenious, vicious and effective. I’ve been told that the cabal in Washington that wants our flag and our oil company deal-makers planted in Baghdad is ingenious, vicious and so far, they have been effective.



Speaking of Al Capone, I’m going to stay on the lookout for that baseball bat... I know they keep it here somewhere…..


Sempers,

Roger

wrbones
02-02-03, 12:30 PM
Nothing's inappropriate about your posts Mike. I don't get it.

You just woke me up is all! LOL