Is it Blood for Oil? 
U.S.A. Today on March 16 showed color photos of luxury Walter Reed suites where members of the Senate and House are provided with the best of everything courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.
If a member of the Senate or House were placed in a moldy, rat-infested room at Walter reed Hospital a congressional investigation would begin immediately. One explanation given for the horrifying neglect of wounded service personnel being relegated to such scandalously inadequate hospital rooms is simply this.
So many more injured war individuals were arriving daily at Walter Reed Hospital that they didn't have time to maintain and renovate the facilities. Also, there weren't enough rooms to keep up with the soaring numbers of injured that were continuously arriving from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
The Reagan Republican mantra of "Get the government off of the people's backs" led to the privatization of utilities to cut costs. Even prisons were singled out for privatization and cost cutting. Sadly utility costs have skyrocketed as privatization took hold. Prison privatization is also a disaster!
Observe the war injured returning to daily life with prosthetic devices for arms and legs. We discover there are over 55,000 injured, counting war combatants and non-combatants. One question must be asked for those responsible for such tragic losses - why?
Republicans desperately searching for rationalizations for the unneeded Iraq War dare to compare it to World War Two. There is no logical parallel whatsoever. Hitler had conquered much of Europe and was bombing England while enemy submarines had been sighted along the coasts of the U.S.A.
Now for once face the ugly truth about the U.S.A.'s foreign policy. America had supplied Saddam Hussein, the dictator the elder Bush once compared to Hitler, with every conceivable weapon for years on end.
Saddam kept busy killing Iranians with those U.S. supplied weapons, not to mention the Kurds in the northern provinces of his own country.
Is that fact considered one of the U.S.A.'s brighter moments? When Saddam wasn't killing Iranians he took time out to gas the Kurds in Northern Iraq. We saw it all on television. Saddam was a Sunni Muslim, which represented a minority of Iraqis.
Saddam rounded up opposing Shiites and killed them off. Iraqis were well aware that the U.S. and other nations obtaining oil from Iraq were supplying the dictator with armaments to keep Saddam's killing machine going.
Shiite Iraqis hated the U.S. for boasting of freedom and democracy while allied with the their killer dictator. Can you blame them?
Remember all those TV news briefs showing Rumsfeld and Saddam shaking hands and smiling while the U.S. delivered weapons systems? The Gulf War changed that!
How precisely did the change of heart of U.S. politics undergo such a drastic turnaround from a weapon-supplying ally to going to war against a former friend, Saddam Hussein?
The Kuwaitis had slant drilled on Iraq land to steal oil from Iraq. Of course Saddam was outraged as their blatant theft of Iraq's most treasured asset - oil.
Saddam Hussein asked then U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie this question, "What would the U.S. do if Iraq invaded Kuwait to stop this outrageous oil theft?" Ambassador Glaspie replied that the Bush Administration believed "That is an Arab-Arab problem for them to solve."
Thinking he had been given the green light to invade Kuwait to stop that nation's blatant oil theft, Saddam Hussein felt justified in invading Kuwait.
The elder Bush instantly seized upon this opportunity to play the role of the "great emancipator." Hastily Bush rallied other nations to join the U.S.A. to stop Saddam's invasion of Kuwait.
As some nations considered joining this coalition, Russian leadership urged Bush to take time to settle this invasion of Kuwait diplomatically.
The elder Bush wouldn't wait. After supplying dictator-killer Saddam with weapons for years, the U.S. and those nations who joined the coalition declared war on Iraq.
No doubt some war armament companies saw this as an excellent and challenging chance to test many U.S. weapons systems.
Having been told by Ambassador Glaspie that if he invaded Kuwait to stop their oil theft that the U.S. would consider it an Arab-Arab problem for them to solve left Saddam Hussein no doubt stunned.
Saddam Hussein's former ally that had supplied him with weapons for years to kill Iranians in the Iraq-Iran War and to kill opposing Shiite Iraqis had turned on him in a double cross.
With the U.S. warplanes, tanks and troops leading the hastily organized coalition, within weeks the Gulf War ended. The U.S. stock market soared. Iraqi soldiers rushing across the desert often raised their arms in surrender.
How many Iraqi soldiers were plowed under by U.S. tanks or otherwise killed we don't know. Colin Powell at the time replied to such a question about Iraqi casualty figures by declaring that he did not care.
At least Kuwaitis haven't been slant drilling anymore. Could this dispute have been settled through international diplomatic negotiation? We will never know.
When the 9/11 dark day in U.S. history claimed over 6,000 lives, the son of the Gulf War president, George Bush, the White House resident was in power.
Like father, like son. George Bush wasted no time in launching the war against Iraq. A media blitz featured as its capstone forged documents read by General Powell at the U.N. The documents revealed that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear power along with being threatened by Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
Members of the Senate and House almost leaped to their feet in a standing ovation when Bush dramatically declared war on Iraq. Hugs and even kisses followed as Bush wended his way to leave following this momentous declaration, one that will live in infamy.
All pleas for more time for weapons inspectors to double check to be 100 percent certain such weapons actually existed were ignored. When no weapons were found, the Iraq War morphed into "Operation Iraqi Freedom" to ostensibly expand democracy and freedom all over the Middle East. It all sounded so wonderfully patriotic!
To give his "Mission Accomplished" speech televised around the world impact, George Bush donned a flight suit. He was swept out from San Diego Harbor to board a waiting naval ship to deliver those two memorable words "Mission Accomplished."
All the while sectarian and civil war raged on in Iraq. How could anyone seeing such error and terror back such colossal failure and vote to give Bush a second term? This allowed more troops to be sent to Iraq. Why?
Antonia Juhasz writes in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times what might be the real answer to why this nightmarish Iraq War began and why it continues indefinitely.
Ms. Juhasz explains that there are 80 oil wells in Iraq. She stares further that the terms of a contract the U.S. wants the current Iraqi government leaders to sign gives Iraq control of only 17 of the nation's 80 oil wells.
The U.S. wants foreign investors to have the rights to 63 of the Iraqi oil wells. There is no guarantee the oil profits from these wells will be spent in Iraq. There is no guarantee that Iraqis will be employed in the operation of these oil wells.
Juhasz concludes her Los Angeles Times article of Friday, December 8, 2006, with this challenging statement, "It is now our time to decide if we wish to spill more blood for oil."
KEYWORDS: George W. Bush, George Bush the Elder, Walter Reed Hospital, Gulf War, Iraq War, Saddam Hussein
Sign up for a Complimentary Member Account... Join the community! It's fast. And it'll allow you to take advantage of all this site's great features!
| < The Impeachment Chronicles: Hagel Mentions That Dreaded "Impeachment" Word | Should we "Cut and Run"? > |
