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Originally Posted by Cool Hand
Incidently, I don't believe the "no blood for oil" hype from 2002, and I didn't believe it in 1990. It's an overly simplistic explanation for a complex problem. It's also far more cynical than what I believe to be more plausible explanations.
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I'm in partial disagreement with you here. While "no blood for oil" is, indeed, an overly simplistic take on the situation, it's not, IMO, based on false premises. It's simply a reduction of a complex argument to a sound bite sized slogan, not an uncommon thing in America's spin laden political discourse.
It's no secret that it's been part of US defense policy for decades to ensure that the Middle East's oil resources are not controlled by sovereign nations unwilling to meet American demand for oil. It's not necessarily that the US wants to control the oil fields; we simply don't want them to be controlled by anyone who isn't willing to sell us the oil we need to run our military machine and the oil we want to run our SUV's. Any US action in the Middle East is going, to some extenet, to take this goal into account. I don't necessarily disagree with this, by the way; I simply prefer that it be spelled out as a reason for action, rather than obscured by vague threats of WMD, or even more vague assertions that "freedom is on the march". The degree to which this end influenced the decision to invade Iraq is debatable. Almost certainly, it had some impact, and several pieces of evidence (the fact that Cheney's Energy Policy Task Force apparently reviewed a map of Iraq in early 2001, the fact that the Iraqi Ministry of Oil was virtually the only important government facility secured by American troops in the early stages of the occupation, the rapidity with which Iraqi oil was privatized) argue that it was fairly influential.
Work done...going home...more later...
Adam