Bear Flag Republic Radio Weblog

War for oil?.

There was an excellent op-ed piece in the NY Times a few days ago, by Max Boot, that disassembles the theory that the US wants to go to war with Iraq to somehow control the oil.

First, he pointed out that Jimmy Carter, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who is opposed to going to war, says that he knows his country and government, and knows it's not true. Then Boot explains how we already control the oil, with our dollars. Hussein would sell us as much as we want. He doesn't have an exclusive on oil, and as long as that's true he has no control (that's probably why he took over Kuwait and was starting to move on Saudi Arabia, and went to war with Iran -- to get control of all the Middle East oil reserves).

And we all know what he does with the oil money -- he uses it to build nukes, missiles to deliver them, etc etc. He is one major asshole, a dangerous one. Why anyone would stand up for him is beyond me. Yet that's what the French, Germans, Russians and Chinese (and others) are doing. This makes no sense. (Unless you consider the possibility that they have conflicts of interest.)

Then in the last few pargraphs the author explained that the Germans and French and other European countries with long histories of starting brutal hypocritical wars over things like oil, sometimes even proclaiming themselves the master race, might not understand a country like the US where we're more likely to go to war to save the free world. Stupid ole US, no good deed goes unpunished. Of course. We knew that.

[Scripting News]
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Who is motivated by Oil? 

A senior Pentagon adviser accused France of striking a deal with Saddam Hussein to oppose military action in return for a lucrative oil contract.

Richard Perle, a former US Assistant Defence Secretary, said the French anti-war stance was driven by economic interests. French oil giant TotalFinaElf has exclusive exploration contracts worth $US40-50 billion to develop the massive Majnoon and Bin Umar oilfields in southern Iraq, he said.

"What's distinctive about the Total contract is that it's not favourable to Iraq, it's favourable to Total," Mr Perle, the chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, said during an address in New York.

[John Robb's Radio Weblog]
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Sir Winston Churchill. "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals." [Quotes of the Day]
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