Russ McBee

Now why on Earth would the oil industry pals in the White House fight a war to bring *down* the price of oil? That would hurt their profits, not help them.

It is by no means "apparent" that's what I believe.

I'm sure it's all just a coincidence that oil is now over $100 a barrel, resulting in the largest profits in Exxon's history (just to take one example).

The price we're paying to "spread democracy" will have costs for generations to come. Increased terrorism, increased animosity toward the US, and increased difficulty in securing ever more scarce petroleum supplies are only the beginning of that dividend.

But really, I believe the invasion of Iraq happened for a lot of reasons, and oil was only one of them: Bush was desperate to change the subject away from his failed pursuit of Osama bin Laden; he wanted to avenge his Daddy's failure to bring down the neo-cons' favorite bogeyman; he wanted to placate the hard-liners in Israel. Take your pick. But I am fairly certain that if Iraq's major export were kumquats, none of this would have happened.

I still think it's funny that Cheney's buddies in the petroleum industry are losing out to the Chinese. It's going to suck for us economically, but it's still funny.

Since Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, and since Al Qaeda had no presence in Iraq prior to the US invasion (although they do now), it seems obvious that the Iraq invasion had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that 3,000 lives were taken by (primarily Saudi Arabian) terrorists.

I'm not "assuming" it was strictly about oil profits, but that certainly seems to have been a compelling factor to those who planned the debacle. You should read up on the oil revenue laws currently being debated by the Iraqi parliament. The US-backed version of the law would give most of the profits to foriegn oil companies and would leave precious little of those profits for the Iraqi people.

Of course, the neo-cons expected those "foreign" oil companies to be American, not Chinese.

Spreading democracy and revenge for 9/11 had nothing to do with the Iraq invasion.

Of course not. The 9/11 Commission (among many others) established that years ago. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks; that fact is well documented.

The only "connection" between the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Iraq was to change the subject away from the fact that the Bush gang couldn't find Osama bin Laden.

A quick Googling shows at least twice that George Bush himself has admitted Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. First, from 2003:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3118262.stm

And again from 2006:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/sep/12/september11.usa2

That question has already been laid to rest.