PRIVATE POLL: Question; Do You Think We Should Get Out Of Iraq, Or Stay There?

[Sir Evil]

Well fuck, fuck, fuck. Did I say fuck?

Well I think WMD's is the lamest FUCKING excuse ever. We had some sketchy intel that led us to think he still may have some, but we didn't know for sure. Even so, if chemical warfare weapons are reason enough to invade a nation, who's next. I'm sure we're missing out on invading another 100 nations or so.

So you are one of those who thinks the whole reason for invading was based solely on the wmd's? or just one of those who really have no other reason to say it was a mistake? I was never one to say that we should of went in over the WMD's, hell I have always said there was reason enough without the whole WMD argument.

You can think what you want. That's your right, and so can I. We went in there to secure those oil fields.

Indeed, we are all individual thinkers. Thing is there is not a damn thing that supports the war for oil thing at the moment. I dunno, are you seeing some sort of benefit from all those secured oil fields? are contractors the only ones finding benefit from our new found oil wealth? I guess the Bush admin. better hurry up, and tie up all that all before time runs out, and a dem is in office. Can't wait until those fuel prices come down that have done nothing but go up since the invasion....

[Pale Rider]

So you are one of those who thinks the whole reason for invading was based solely on the wmd's?

No, you misunderstand. I'm saying going in there for only that reason shouldn't have been enough.

or just one of those who really have no other reason to say it was a mistake? I was never one to say that we should of went in over the WMD's,

And that's what I'm saying also.

hell I have always said there was reason enough without the whole WMD argument.

I don't.

Indeed, we are all individual thinkers. Thing is there is not a damn thing that supports the war for oil thing at the moment. I dunno, are you seeing some sort of benefit from all those secured oil fields? are contractors the only ones finding benefit from our new found oil wealth? I guess the Bush admin. better hurry up, and tie up all that all before time runs out, and a dem is in office. Can't wait until those fuel prices come down that have done nothing but go up since the invasion....

I don't know why you think we HAVEN'T benefited from securing Iraq's oil fields. Iraq has the forth largest oil fields in the world. We are there to "protect" those fields. Period. The whole Bush family is deep in the oil business. They have deep ties to the oil cartel in the middle east.

You're argument that weren't NOT there for oil doesn't hold any water when it comes to the pulling out argument. Because if it's not about oil, then we have no business there, right now, at all. None.

[Sir Evil]

I don't know why you think we HAVEN'T benefited from securing Iraq's oil fields. Iraq has the forth largest oil fields in the world. We are there to "protect" those fields. Period. The whole Bush family is deep in the oil business. They have deep ties to the oil cartel in the middle east.

Explain how we have benefited? We are securing the oil fields for what, the next millennium? So is the Bush family hoarding this oil to themselves? Are they selling it off for prophet? Again it seems a bit silly to do that when the whole corruption over the oil existed in the first place. Essentially the Bush administration allowed the death of all these soldiers to get a grip on a already corrupted oil industry?

You're argument that weren't NOT there for oil doesn't hold any water when it comes to the pulling out argument. Because if it's not about oil, then we have no business there, right now, at all. None.

Actually it's your argument that holds no water, you have made the accusation of invading for oil but have yet to offer anything other than opinion.

[REDWHITEBLUE2]

The fact you do not have clue to what the troops were accomplishing in Iraq is not a shocking revelation

[REDWHITEBLUE2]

Hell, everyone know that we went in to get the WMDs.
They didn't have them so let's leave.

thats because Saddam shipped them to Syria

[nevadamedic]

Sorry bout that,







1. You got nothing eh?
2. So you slink down to personal attacks.
3. I am right, you just know you can't win against the, *CWN* point of view.
4. NEXT!

Regards,
SirJamesofTexas

Gabby can't have an intelligent Debate so she resorts to personal attacks all of the time.

[red states rule]

thats because Saddam shipped them to Syria

That is where they may have went

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialRe...20060202a.html

Saddam Sent WMD to Syria, Former General Alleges
By Sherrie Gossett
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
February 02, 2006

(CNSNews.com) - A former Iraqi general alleges that in June 2002 Saddam Hussein transported weapons of mass destruction out of the country to Syria aboard several refitted commercial jets, under the pretense of conducting a humanitarian mission for flood victims.

That's one of several dramatic claims made in the book by former Iraqi General Georges Sada: "Saddam's Secrets: How an Iraqi General Defied and Survived Saddam Hussein." Since the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Sada has served as the spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and continues to serve as national security advisor. He is the former vice marshal of the Iraqi Air Force. Sada was interviewed at the headquarters of Cybercast News Service on Jan. 30.

Sada contends that Saddam took advantage of a June 4, 2002, irrigation dam collapse in Zeyzoun, Syria, to ship the weapons under cover of an aid project to the flooded region.

"[Saddam] said 'Okay, Iraq is going to do an air bridge to help Syria," Sada recounted. Two commercial jets, a 747 and 727, were converted to cargo jets, in order to carry raw materials and equipment related to WMD projects, Sada said. The passenger seats, galleys, toilets and storage compartments were removed and new flooring was installed, he claimed. Hundreds of tons of chemicals were reportedly included in the cargo shipments. [See Video]

"They used to do two sorties a day," said Sada. "Fifty-six sorties were done between Baghdad and Damascus."

Sada said he obtained the information from two Iraq Airways captains who were reportedly flying the sorties. "They came immediately and they told me," said Sada.

This is not the first time that the possibility of a transfer of WMDs from Iraq to Syria has been raised. Two years ago, U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, (R-Kan), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence acknowledged that "there is some concern that shipments of WMD went to Syria." No details were forthcoming. The claims have also been made by the U.S.-based Reform Party of Syria.

[Pale Rider]

Explain how we have benefited? We are securing the oil fields for what, the next millennium? So is the Bush family hoarding this oil to themselves? Are they selling it off for prophet? Again it seems a bit silly to do that when the whole corruption over the oil existed in the first place. Essentially the Bush administration allowed the death of all these soldiers to get a grip on a already corrupted oil industry?

I think you're being a little naive here SE. It would much easier to explain what would happen if we DIDN'T have those oil fields under our control. What do you think would happen then? Would we better off? Would your gas be cheaper? What if all that oil money was going back into the pockets of the terrorists? Tell me none of that matters. And you'll have to excuse my misinformation. So correct myself, it has been proven that Iraq has the SECOND LARGEST OIL RESERVES IN THE WORLD. Here's a little interesting reading SE. It's about oil alright. To think different is just kidding yourself...

Oil in Iraq


Iraq has the world’s second largest proven oil reserves. According to oil industry experts, new exploration will probably raise Iraq’s reserves to 200+ billion barrels of high-grade crude, extraordinarily cheap to produce. The four giant firms located in the US and the UK have been keen to get back into Iraq, from which they were excluded with the nationalization of 1972. During the final years of the Saddam era, they envied companies from France, Russia, China, and elsewhere, who had obtained major contracts. But UN sanctions (kept in place by the US and the UK) kept those contracts inoperable. Since the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, much has changed. In the new setting, with Washington running the show, "friendly" companies expect to gain most of the lucrative oil deals that will be worth hundreds of billions of dollars in profits in the coming decades. The Iraqi constitution of 2005, greatly influenced by US advisors, contains language that guarantees a major role for foreign companies. Negotiators hope soon to complete deals on Production Sharing Agreements that will give the companies control over dozens of fields, including the fabled super-giant Majnoon. But first the Parliament must pass a new oil sector investment law allowing foreign companies to assume a major role in the country. The US has threatened to withhold funding as well as financial and military support if the law does not soon pass. Although the Iraqi cabinet endorsed the draft law in July 2007, Parliament has balked at the legislation. Most Iraqis favor continued control by a national company and the powerful oil workers union strongly opposes de-nationalization. Iraq's political future is very much in flux, but oil remains the central feature of the political landscape.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/irqindx.htm

Actually it's your argument that holds no water, you have made the accusation of invading for oil but have yet to offer anything other than opinion.

You haven't offered anything better.

[red states rule]

I think you're being a little naive here SE. It would much easier to explain what would happen if we DIDN'T have those oil fields under our control. What do you think would happen then? Would we better off? Would your gas be cheaper? What if all that oil money was going back into the pockets of the terrorists? Tell me none of that matters.



You haven't offered anything better.

It would not make any difference PR. For those who say this war was for oil are forgetting something

We can have hundreds of oil tankers coming to the US, but without MORE refineries the oil can't be processed. There has not been a new refinery built sine the last 70's

The US needs to not only to tap all the oil we have within our borders, but we need to start building new refineries

[Pale Rider]

Oil, Iraq and America

Dilip Hiro

Of the two slogans that the Bush Administration has coined to sell the idea of invading Iraq--installing democracy and monopolizing Iraq's petroleum riches--the one about democracy means little to ordinary folks. It is the prospect of uncontested access to the world's second-largest oil reserves--leading to the end of America's growing reliance on petroleum from Saudi Arabia, the homeland of most of the 9/11 hijackers--that excites popular imagination in the United States. And the US hawks, who are determining Iraq policy, know it.

Interestingly, there is a rare concurrence of perception between Americans and Iraqis at both official and popular levels regarding the centrality of Iraqi oil to the current crisis and the earlier conflicts with Baghdad. "The weapons of mass destruction is just an excuse," says Tariq Aziz, Iraq's deputy prime minister. "The Americans are after the Iraqi oil." Many months earlier, Muhammad Bagga, an elderly resident of Saddam City, Baghdad, explained the 1991 Gulf War to me thus: "The big Western powers got angry because Saddam Hussein wanted to benefit all Arabs from Iraq's oil; and so they attacked us."


http://www.thenation.com/doc/20021230/hiro20021216

[red states rule]

Oil, Iraq and America

Dilip Hiro

Of the two slogans that the Bush Administration has coined to sell the idea of invading Iraq--installing democracy and monopolizing Iraq's petroleum riches--the one about democracy means little to ordinary folks. It is the prospect of uncontested access to the world's second-largest oil reserves--leading to the end of America's growing reliance on petroleum from Saudi Arabia, the homeland of most of the 9/11 hijackers--that excites popular imagination in the United States. And the US hawks, who are determining Iraq policy, know it.

Interestingly, there is a rare concurrence of perception between Americans and Iraqis at both official and popular levels regarding the centrality of Iraqi oil to the current crisis and the earlier conflicts with Baghdad. "The weapons of mass destruction is just an excuse," says Tariq Aziz, Iraq's deputy prime minister. "The Americans are after the Iraqi oil." Many months earlier, Muhammad Bagga, an elderly resident of Saddam City, Baghdad, explained the 1991 Gulf War to me thus: "The big Western powers got angry because Saddam Hussein wanted to benefit all Arabs from Iraq's oil; and so they attacked us."


http://www.thenation.com/doc/20021230/hiro20021216

PR you are using the Nation as a credible source?

[Pale Rider]

PR you are using the Nation as a credible source?

rsr, respectfully, this war is about bush, and Iraq having the second largest oil reserves in the world. After we deposed Saddam, America took control of all of Iraq's oil money. Recently, they tried to pass a law that would let vets and others sue Iraq for injuries and other things due to the war. Bush put the death blow on that bill because it would have put all that oil money at risk. But at the same time the bush people feel they have free reign to spend that money as they see fit... maybe like the WORLDS LARGEST EMBASSY BUILDING in BAHGDAD, and that's AMERICA'S embassy building.

I'll tell you all this who think it isn't about oil... I've given you at least SOMETHING to show that it IS, so now, YOU people show me SOMETHING to "prove" to me it ISN'T.

[Pale Rider]

BUSH'S DEEP REASONS FOR WAR ON IRAQ: OIL, PETRODOLLARS, AND THE OPEC EURO QUESTION



As the United States made preparations for war with Iraq, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, on 2/6/03, again denied to US journalists that the projected war had "anything to do with oil." <1> He echoed Defense Minister Donald Rumsfeld, who on 11/14/02 told CBS News that "It has nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil."

Speaking to British MPs, Prime Minister Tony Blair was just as explicit: "Let me deal with the conspiracy theory idea that this is somehow to do with oil. There is no way whatever if oil were the issue that it would not be infinitely simpler to cut a deal with Saddam...." (London Times 1/15/03).

Nor did Bush's State of the Union Message, or Colin Powell's address to the United Nations Security Council, once mention the word "oil." Instead the talk was (in the president's words) of "Iraq's illegal weapons programs, its attempts to hide those weapons from inspectors, and its links to terrorist groups."

However our leaders are not being candid with us. Oil has been a major US concern about Iraq in internal and unpublicized documents, since the start of this Administration, and indeed earlier. As Michael Renner has written in Foreign Policy in Focus, February 14, 2003, "Washington's War on Iraq is the Lynchpin to Controlling Persian Gulf Oil."

But the need to dominate oil from Iraq is also deeply intertwined with the defense of the dollar. Its current strength is supported by OPEC's requirement (secured by a secret agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia) that all OPEC oil sales be denominated in dollars. This requirement is currently threatened by the desire of some OPEC countries to allow OPEC oil sales to be paid in euros.

Entire article here...

[red states rule]

Here is a snip from a long article on the war in Iraq. The author is hardly a ruight winger PR


snip
A War to Be Proud Of

The second bit of luck is a certain fiber displayed by a huge number of anonymous Americans. Faced with a constant drizzle of bad news and purposely demoralizing commentary, millions of people stick out their jaws and hang tight. I am no fan of populism, but I surmise that these citizens are clear on the main point: It is out of the question--plainly and absolutely out of the question--that we should surrender the keystone state of the Middle East to a rotten, murderous alliance between Baathists and bin Ladenists. When they hear the fatuous insinuation that this alliance has only been created by the resistance to it, voters know in their intestines that those who say so are soft on crime and soft on fascism. The more temperate anti-warriors, such as Mark Danner and Harold Meyerson, like to employ the term "a war of choice." One should have no problem in accepting this concept. As they cannot and do not deny, there was going to be another round with Saddam Hussein no matter what. To whom, then, should the "choice" of time and place have fallen? The clear implication of the antichoice faction--if I may so dub them--is that this decision should have been left up to Saddam Hussein. As so often before . . .

DOES THE PRESIDENT deserve the benefit of the reserve of fortitude that I just mentioned? Only just, if at all. We need not argue about the failures and the mistakes and even the crimes, because these in some ways argue themselves. But a positive accounting could be offered without braggartry, and would include:

(1) The overthrow of Talibanism and Baathism, and the exposure of many highly suggestive links between the two elements of this Hitler-Stalin pact. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who moved from Afghanistan to Iraq before the coalition intervention, has even gone to the trouble of naming his organization al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

(2) The subsequent capitulation of Qaddafi's Libya in point of weapons of mass destruction--a capitulation that was offered not to Kofi Annan or the E.U. but to Blair and Bush.

(3) The consequent unmasking of the A.Q. Khan network for the illicit transfer of nuclear technology to Libya, Iran, and North Korea.

(4) The agreement by the United Nations that its own reform is necessary and overdue, and the unmasking of a quasi-criminal network within its elite.

(5) The craven admission by President Chirac and Chancellor Schröder, when confronted with irrefutable evidence of cheating and concealment, respecting solemn treaties, on the part of Iran, that not even this will alter their commitment to neutralism. (One had already suspected as much in the Iraqi case.)

(6) The ability to certify Iraq as actually disarmed, rather than accept the word of a psychopathic autocrat.

(7) The immense gains made by the largest stateless minority in the region--the Kurds--and the spread of this example to other states.

(8) The related encouragement of democratic and civil society movements in Egypt, Syria, and most notably Lebanon, which has regained a version of its autonomy.

(9) The violent and ignominious death of thousands of bin Ladenist infiltrators into Iraq and Afghanistan, and the real prospect of greatly enlarging this number.

(10) The training and hardening of many thousands of American servicemen and women in a battle against the forces of nihilism and absolutism, which training and hardening will surely be of great use in future combat.

It would be admirable if the president could manage to make such a presentation. It would also be welcome if he and his deputies adopted a clear attitude toward the war within the war: in other words, stated plainly, that the secular and pluralist forces within Afghan and Iraqi society, while they are not our clients, can in no circumstance be allowed to wonder which outcome we favor.

The great point about Blair's 1999 speech was that it asserted the obvious. Coexistence with aggressive regimes or expansionist, theocratic, and totalitarian ideologies is not in fact possible. One should welcome this conclusion for the additional reason that such coexistence is not desirable, either. If the great effort to remake Iraq as a demilitarized federal and secular democracy should fail or be defeated, I shall lose sleep for the rest of my life in reproaching myself for doing too little. But at least I shall have the comfort of not having offered, so far as I can recall, any word or deed that contributed to a defeat.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America. A recent essay of his appears in the collection A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq, newly published by the University of California Press.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...phqjw.asp?pg=1

[Kathianne]

rsr, respectfully, this war is about bush, and Iraq having the second largest oil reserves in the world. After we deposed Saddam, America took control of all of Iraq's oil money. Recently, they tried to pass a law that would let vets and others sue Iraq for injuries and other things due to the war. Bush put the death blow on that bill because it would have put all that oil money at risk. But at the same time the bush people feel they have free reign to spend that money as they see fit... maybe like the WORLDS LARGEST EMBASSY BUILDING in BAHGDAD, and that's AMERICA'S embassy building.

I'll tell you all this who think it isn't about oil... I've given you at least SOMETHING to show that it IS, so now, YOU people show me SOMETHING to "prove" to me it ISN'T.

Here's something:

http://www.inthenationalinterest.com...9kohlhaas.html

... Could we increase production in Iraq after an invasion? Yes, but that increase would also require investment just as it would anywhere. We can make that investment in Iraq if the opportunity is available or elsewhere if it is not. But in Iraq any investment for oil would be increased by the large sunk cost of the war. That cost is not justified by the amount of oil production. Nothing is changed by an invasion and the cost of the war is still a large cost without any return based on oil.

From a political and diplomatic standpoint, the United States will probably not be able to impose any taxes or fees on the production nor take any competitive advantage for American companies. As noted above, immediate objectives will be to encourage formation of a stable government and political system. Control and administration of the oil industry will probably remain in the hands of Iraqis. First priority will be to rehabilitate the existing wells, fields, facilities, and infrastructure that are quite dilapidated after years of isolation from modern technology, services, and materials. Except for the costs of this rehabilitation, oil income will probably be used for general governmental purposes to rebuild the country and its infrastructure and services. Therefore, any expansion into development of new fields will probably require foreign capital and a significant increase of activity by foreign companies. Privatization of the fields is not a practical possibility, so foreign investment and activity will be in the form of contracts for which the operating, fiscal, procurement, labor, liability, insurance, accounting, legal and regulatory terms must be established. Such a process is subject to lengthy political and bureaucratic delays.

So not only can the United States not receive any direct payback of the cost of the war from the oil, but any significant increase of Iraqi supplies will probably not be realized for a few, or possibly several, years.

As a business decision, invading Iraq "for the oil" is a loser, a big loser. Anyone who would propose, in a corporate boardroom, invading Iraq for the oil would probably find his career rather short. No, the slogan "no war for oil" is a blatant misrepresentation propagated for political reasons.

Charles A. Kohlhaas is a former Professor of Petroleum Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines and has worked for, founded, managed, and consulted for major and independent companies in the international oil and gas industry.