Forget all the nonsense about "exporting democracy" - throw that on the Used-up Justifications scrapheap with all the talk of WMDs, mushroom clouds and Saddam's ties to Al Quaeda. Bush has finally admitted that the real reason the USA invaded Iraq was what everybody said it was in the beginning: OIL!
But hey! says George, we didn't invade Iraq to steal their oil. We had to invade to stop the bad guys from stealing their oil! Got that? It was a pre-emptive invasion, not to stop WMDs being used against us, but to stop oil being used against us!
Let's cut to the Raw Story transcripts as Bush talks to Rush Limbaugh:
Bush said that he was "worried that rival forms of extremists will battle for power, obviously creating incredible damage if they do so; that they will topple modern governments, that they will be in a position to use oil as a tool to blackmail the West."Where do you start with such fear-mongering crap?
"People say, 'What do you mean by that?'" The president continued. "I say, 'If they control oil resources, then they pull oil off the market in order to run the price up, and they will do so unless we abandon Israel, for example, or unless we abandon allies.'"
"You couple that with a country that doesn't like us with a nuclear weapon, and people will look back at this moment and say, 'What happened to those people in 2006?' and those are the stakes in this war we face," Bush said.
"On the one hand we've got a plan to make sure we protect you from immediate attack, and on the other hand we've got a long-term strategy to deal with these threats, and part of that strategy is to stay on the offense," Bush continued. "Part of the strategy is to help young democracies like Lebanon and Iraq be able to survive against the terrorists and the extremists who are trying to crush their hopes, and part of the democracy is for a freedom movement, which will help create the conditions so that the extremists become marginalized and unable to recruit."
Limbaugh called Bush's comments "extremely visionary."
Numerous reports have shown that the USA is actually CREATING terrorists, not defeating them. Violent, radical Islam is on the rise around the world. If a group like Al Quaeda ever takes control of a country, it will be thanks to Bush, not despite him.
And as for "pull[ing] oil off the market in order to run the price up" - what does he think OPEC does today? Isn't that pure market economics, something the USA supposedly champions? Or not when it works against them?
And by the way, does he realise that the oil under the sands of Iraq actually belongs to the Iraqis? He talks as if the USA has some divine right to ownership of it...
Bush talks about "help[ing] young democracies like Lebanon" - but wait a minute. The USA just sat back and did nothing while Israel invaded Lebanon and bombed it to pieces. You wanna talk about "a country that doesn't like us", look no further. The Iraqis don't like the USA either: over 90% want them gone. Just about nobody in the Middle East likes the USA, except a few repressive regimes propped up by US-made weaponry and oil dollars. In fact, most people in the world don't like the USA any more, George, and guess what? It's mostly your fault!
As for this bit, can anyone even explain what it means, really:
...and part of the democracy is for a freedom movement, which will help create the conditions so that the extremists become marginalized and unable to recruit."Can anyone point to anything like a "freedom movement" in Iraq? Are there any signs of extremists becoming "marginalized"? Any signs that their recruitment is dropping? No, just the opposite in fact. So what the hell is he talking about?
Bush is talking to his base here, and he is desperate. So he is finally talking about oil, but he is still not telling the whole truth.
Yes, the USA invaded Iraq for the oil. Yes, the US government (wrongly) believes that control of global oil is an essential security goal for the US economy, and therefore the nation.
But the people who were really supposed to benefit from Iraq's oil were not US taxpayers, but Dick Cheney's globalized Big Oil friends. And if you think they are not going to manipulate prices and "run the price up", then you got a lot to learn, Bub.
More here.
