Yeah, I know that is a drastic statement - but this is. Once again, this echos a thousand things I've said on these pages regarding our battle with Islamism in Iraq, our real reasons for undertaking the mission there, and what's at stake. Even the headline is great. As always, bold emphasis mine.
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Greenspan Gets Drilled
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Tuesday, September 18, 2007 4:20 PM PT
Reasons For War: Critics of President Bush will exploit Alan Greenspan's new book, saying the Iraq War was largely about oil. So can they also explain why vast reserves of oil are off limits in this country?
In his just-published memoir, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures In A New World," Greenspan, who managed America's money supply for 18 years, says: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq War is largely about oil."
Famous for his somewhat Byzantine syntax and hidden meanings, Greenspan once told an audience, "I guess I should warn you: If I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I said."
Apparently so. For after the brouhaha that erupted over his published remarks, the former Fed chief felt compelled to revise and extend them.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Greenspan said he "was not saying that that's the administration's motive," only that he himself had said it would be an added benefit of regime change in Iraq.
Removing Saddam Hussein, Greenspan recalled telling the president, was "essential" to securing the world's oil supplies, since the Iraqi dictator "very clearly was giving evidence of moving toward controlling the Straits of Hormuz, where there are 17, 18, 19 million barrels a day passing through."
Regardless of who brought it up, Defense Secretary Robert Gates pounced on the idea that has been gospel on the loony left.
"I know the same allegation was made about the Gulf War in 1991," Gates said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "I think that it's really about stability in the Gulf. It's about rogue regimes trying to develop weapons of mass destruction. It's about aggressive dictators."
As Greenspan clarified, the U.N.-sanctioned and multinational Operation Desert Storm was about oil, but not about the U.S. thirst for it. It was about the seizure and occupation of Kuwait and its oil by the storm troopers of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. If this was about blood for oil, it was about Baathist blood in exchange for Kuwaiti oil. If it was about our thirst for oil, we would have marched to Baghdad when we had the chance.
With half a million troops in the field, did we seize the Kuwaiti or Iraqi fields for ourselves under the guise of protecting the free world's energy supply? No, we brought our troops home and waited a decade while the U.N. ran its corrupt oil-for-food program that let Saddam build palaces while the Iraqi people starved.
The current war is not a new war, but a resumption of hostilities after Saddam violated the conditions of the cease-fire that halted the Gulf War. One of those conditions was to account for the weapons of mass destruction that the United Nations, not George W. Bush, said he had.
U.N. Resolution 1441, which everyone seems to have forgotten, said Saddam had to provide a final accounting of his WMD program and stockpiles or there would be "serious consequences." He didn't and there were.
This war was not about oil. It was about a rogue Iraqi government violating 17 U.N. resolutions. It was about ending the reign of a madman who filled mass graves with his own people and who used WMD in wars against his own people and neighbors, a dictator who financed and provided haven to terrorists around the world, including al-Qaida.
Frankly, the notion that we would go to war in Iraq over oil and expend vast amounts of blood and treasure in the process, while we leave vast reserves of petroleum and natural gas locked up on federal lands in Alaska and in the Outer Continental Shelf, is a more fanciful scenario than any Hollywood liberal could dream up.
Perhaps those who really think Iraq is about blood for oil can explain just why we would put the lives of young Americans in harm's way for energy while we safeguard the oil-rich habitats of caribou and sea urchins.
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Final thought:
At what point does the UN lose all credibility in its resolutions? When the UN didn't enforce its 11th resolution, with six more to follow, put yourself in Saddam's shoes - or any other tyrant. The UN says "do 'x' or else". The tyrant learns if he doesn't do "x", nothing happens.
GWB comes along and gives a speech to the UN - enforce your resolutions or they become worthless. Since the UN refuses to enforce its resolutions, the US will; in a post-9/11 world it is the height of irresponsibility not to.
