Non sequitor

[kyleb]

well US, in the sense of US government, and US goverment in the sence of US goverment favored coperations. considering that the first big anouncment of a step to victory was the declaration that we had secured the oil feilds, the argument isn't really far fetched.

 

[Legion]

well US, in the sense of US government, and US goverment in the sence of US goverment favored coperations. considering that the first big anouncment of a step to victory was the declaration that we had secured the oil feilds, the argument isn't really far fetched.

Considering the oil is the maincontributor to the Iraqi economy i'd say distorting matters wrt to the oil is what makes the argument far fetched. Its fundamentally baseless conspiracy talk.

 

[Natoma]

It translates to a "war for oil" for some people because of the fact that once the war is over, the US is left in charge, awards contracts to US oil companies (Halliburton ring a bell?), and they reap the profits of all the second largest oil reserve in the world.

So they win the bids and now these off base arguments are justified? Seems rather falacious especially considering Halibuton is not a US run originization.

You are forgetting these allegations were running about Natom long before Halliburton won the bids. To me that speaks of them rationalizing their position via the outcome of wining the bids. Meaning, if any US company won they'd feel justified.

These were allegations of what would occur, and they turned out to be true.

Notice this is what the administration has done basically. Though the infrastructure to reap the profits doesn't really exist anymore because of 12 years of degradation and neglect.

How would the Administration reap the benefits from this private company? Furthermore, how would they reap benefits inlight of costs?

You need to stop breaking up my posts like this. This was not a paragraph written in and of itself. You quoting me now makes it seem like I was saying the bush administration would reap the profits of this endeavour when I was not. Read what I wrote in full. Your response here is to a point I never made.

Pleaes don't at me when you don't know the history of the first gulf war conflict. The reason we got involved was because Saddam invaded and took over Kuwait, i.e. one of the largest producers of oil in the world.

Please do not insinuate i do not understand the history. We invaded to prevent Saddam from controlling and manipulating the oil resources. We did not fight the war to control the oil supplies. It wasn't until recently an US company had control over the oil. Before our recent intervention the major oil investors were European.

We certainly didn't intervene when he and Iran were going at it, and he was killing tens of thousands of Iranians with chemical weapons. So it certainly wasn't a humanitarian effort. Only other reason left was to prevent Saddam from having control of yet another oil producing country.

Yet again this is not the same as fighting a war to control the oil.

Again, you broke up my one paragraph into two separate bits. Your first response would not have been necessary considering what I wrote in the full piece, which you responded to in the second bit. We can't discuss effectively if you do this, because it just makes the posts longer and longer, and you stop arguing the points at hand, and start arguing what was said and what was not said. We've been down this road before and it's really counterproductive.

Now, the first gulf war was indeed about controlling oil and who in fact has control over it, because if it weren't, we would not have interevened. It was in the interests of the United States for that much oil to fall into the hands of a dictator like Saddam Hussein. He already controlled the second largest oil reserves in the world behind Saudi Arabia. Kuwait may have put him on the Saudi level, if not higher. I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but it's certainly a lot of oil.

Internal memos leaked to the press regarding the reasons bandied about in the Bush Administration to give to the american public for going to war basically summed this up. They didn't believe they could sell the war based on just removing a bad man. But terrorism and terrorism-related WMD on the other hand would certainly sell.

So, what you are suggesting is these "leaked memos" suggest the WMD issue for war were fabricated encourage support. For what reason would the US wish to stage a war with Iraq? What is the insinuation here?

No. The WMD issue wasn't fabricated. The memos showed that the administration was looking at all the reasons they had at their disposal to start a war, and the initial ones were "he's a cruel dictator." WMD and Terrorist Ties were also among the lists of reasons, but they weren't stressed as much because the evidence to support those was shaky according to the CIA reports. But they went that route and tried to shore it up in the end because their own reports showed the american public would never support a pre-emptive invasion based solely on "he's a bad man" because it was against our military history and our national attitudes on these matters. I posted this information in the "Well Well Well....." thread from a few months ago.

 

[Vince]

These were allegations of what would occur, and they turned out to be true.

I think that even you would agree that the Left in general has been toting the Bush/Cheney connection to "Big oil" since atleast 1999. It's a common and convinent theme to pain a Republican as a friend of big-buisness and underhanded contracts, etc. Hey, it's good poilitics - ethics aside.

The actual Contract over Iraq was well placed, it was to a firm with a proven history and repuation to get the job done. Unlike you, I don't buy that anyone (not just the 'administration" haha... that was over-the-top) underestimated the work necessary in Iraq. The companies all had their engineers and financial guys over there ASAP to see what was needed - they knew what they were getting into. And even thought they'll make little profit, Haliburton will have large intangible gains from this which compensate for it.

IMHO, All this did is provide an easy place for the Left to apply their already known mantra about big-buisness and Republicans who take kick-backs from them.

 

[Legion]

These were allegations of what would occur, and they turned out to be true.

How so? An american now holds the right to produce oil and their arguments that this war was started with the premise of controling the oil were correct? Correlation does not equal causation.

You need to stop breaking up my posts like this. This was not a paragraph written in and of itself. You quoting me now makes it seem like I was saying the bush administration would reap the profits of this endeavour when I was not. Read what I wrote in full. Your response here is to a point I never made.

I asked you two simple questions with regards to the nature of the US gov benefiting from the oil.

Again, you broke up my one paragraph into two separate bits. Your first response would not have been necessary considering what I wrote in the full piece, which you responded to in the second bit. We can't discuss effectively if you do this, because it just makes the posts longer and longer, and you stop arguing the points at hand, and start arguing what was said and what was not said. We've been down this road before and it's really counterproductive.

Honestly, I think this entire argument is already counterproductive. The allegations are based of logical fallacies of assumptions. They are neither justified nor supported without evidence the war was started for the the purpose of oil control. To do that they'd need more than their present circular argument

No. The WMD issue wasn't fabricated. The memos showed that the administration was looking at all the reasons they had at their disposal to start a war, and the initial ones were "he's a cruel dictator." WMD and Terrorist Ties were also among the lists of reasons, but they weren't stressed as much because the evidence to support those was shaky according to the CIA reports. But they went that route and tried to shore it up in the end because their own reports showed the american public would never support a pre-emptive invasion because it was against our military history. I posted this information in the "Well Well Well....." thread from a few months ago.

Alright, you haven't answered my questions. Why would they go about doing all of this? What was their intent?

How do we know these memos are authentic?

 

[Natoma]

These were allegations of what would occur, and they turned out to be true.

I think that even you would agree that the Left in general has been toting the Bush/Cheney connection to "Big oil" since atleast 1999. It's a common and convinent theme to pain a Republican as a friend of big-buisness and underhanded contracts, etc. Hey, it's good poilitics - ethics aside.

The actual Contract over Iraq was well placed, it was to a firm with a proven history and repuation to get the job done. Unlike you, I don't buy that anyone (not just the 'administration" haha... that was over-the-top) underestimated the work necessary in Iraq. The companies all had their engineers and financial guys over there ASAP to see what was needed - they knew what they were getting into. And even thought they'll make little profit, Haliburton will have large intangible gains from this which compensate for it.

IMHO, All this did is provide an easy place for the Left to apply their already known mantra about big-buisness and Republicans who take kick-backs from them.

Vince, the underestimation came pre-war. The engineers and financial guys as you put it would not have been able to go over to Iraq asap if Saddam was still there. Pre-war, no one thought Iraq's infrastructure was as degraded as it was. They knew it was bad, but it was much worse when they actually got there. As I said earlier, pre-war the estimates were that the oil would pay for the war and all we had to do was turn the spigots on. Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld were two of the most ardent supporters of this theory. If they came out saying that, then it's obvious that they underestimated the extent of rebuilding required to get Iraq's oil industry up and running.

Unless of course they meant that the oil would pay for the war, but we'd have to wait 10-15 years for that oil to flow, then I can understand the assumption that they were aware of the state of Iraq's infrastructure pre-war. But I'm not that paranoid.

 

[indio]

Way to stay on topic.....
Anyway Bush has speechwriters , these ppl. write speechs professionally for a living .this type of "speech" is not a mistake. It's a the classic propaganda/brainwashing technique of saying nothing but having ppl emotionally associate with inflamatory words. The words have absolutely zero meaning.
Analyze the meaning of this sentence

"I had a choice to make: either to take the word of a madman or take such threats seriously"
The choices given actually mean the same thing. Which is completely illogical from the beginning of the statement. The mind then attachs itself to the words whose meaning causes the strongest emotional response.

Madman , Threat , Defend
It's just puked up gibberish with inflamatory buzzwords thrown in. It completely sickens me .

 

[Natoma]

These were allegations of what would occur, and they turned out to be true.

How so? An american now holds the right to produce oil and their arguments that this war was started with the premise of controling the oil were correct? Correlation does not equal causation.

No. American companies were given the rights to produce oil, not necessarily because of their merit in doing so, but because of no-bid contracts that were awarded. It just so happens that those no-bid contracts went to oil companies that also have strong political ties with those in power. Is it pretty easy to see the pattern and discern what happened? Certainly. Is it 100% airtight factual that this is what occured? Certainly not. But one can read between the lines, as it were. If you're content to take things as told, then of course you'll think this is all bullocks. But some people don't do that.

You need to stop breaking up my posts like this. This was not a paragraph written in and of itself. You quoting me now makes it seem like I was saying the bush administration would reap the profits of this endeavour when I was not. Read what I wrote in full. Your response here is to a point I never made.

I asked you two simple questions with regards to the nature of the US gov benefiting from the oil.

Ok. I thought you were saying that I was making the assertion that the US government would benefit from this. Is that the case?

Again, you broke up my one paragraph into two separate bits. Your first response would not have been necessary considering what I wrote in the full piece, which you responded to in the second bit. We can't discuss effectively if you do this, because it just makes the posts longer and longer, and you stop arguing the points at hand, and start arguing what was said and what was not said. We've been down this road before and it's really counterproductive.

Honestly, I think this entire argument is already counterproductive. The allegations are based of logical fallacies of assumptions. They are neither justified nor supported without evidence the war was started for the the purpose of oil control. To do that they'd need more than their present circular argument

The first gulf war was started for oil control. Saddam attacked Kuwait to gain control over their oil fields, and we attacked Saddam to keep it out of his hands. That much is historical fact.

No. The WMD issue wasn't fabricated. The memos showed that the administration was looking at all the reasons they had at their disposal to start a war, and the initial ones were "he's a cruel dictator." WMD and Terrorist Ties were also among the lists of reasons, but they weren't stressed as much because the evidence to support those was shaky according to the CIA reports. But they went that route and tried to shore it up in the end because their own reports showed the american public would never support a pre-emptive invasion because it was against our military history. I posted this information in the "Well Well Well....." thread from a few months ago.

Alright, you haven't answered my questions. Why would they go about doing all of this? What was their intent?

How do we know these memos are authentic?

The intent was to remove Saddam Hussein. As for the authenticity of these memos, I'm assuming TIME and Newsweek have ways of vetting information to make sure they're not getting quack info.

 

[Legion]

No. American companies were given the rights to produce oil, not necessarily because of their merit in doing so,

Thats arguable. As Vince mentioned Halliburton is one of the best in the world.

but because of no-bid contracts that were awarded. It just so happens that those no-bid contracts went to oil companies that also have strong political ties with those in power. Is it pretty easy to see the pattern and discern what happened? Certainly. Is it 100% airtight factual that this is what occured? Certainly not. But one can read between the lines, as it were. If you're content to take things as told, then of course you'll think this is all bullocks. But some people don't do that.

Its sill nothing more than assumptions and fallacies. Correlation does not equal caussation. Unless some one can provide proof of a conspiracy i have no personal interest in believing such.

Ok. I thought you were saying that I was making the assertion that the US government would benefit from this. Is that the case?

You have been careful not to say what you believe personally. I haven't stated you believe this personally. I do not see why you are so quick to jump on matters.

The first gulf war was started for oil control. Saddam attacked Kuwait to gain control over their oil fields, and we attacked Saddam to keep it out of his hands. That much is historical fact.

No quite. We didn't control the oil afterwards IIRC. The largest contributors and buyers of Iraqi oil have been Europeans/Japanese as of late. IIRC TFE was one of the involved oil producing companies.

The intent was to remove Saddam Hussein. As for the authenticity of these memos, I'm assuming TIME and Newsweek have ways of vetting information to make sure they're not getting quack info.

Why did they want to remove Hussein?

 

[Natoma]

No. American companies were given the rights to produce oil, not necessarily because of their merit in doing so,

Thats arguable. As Vince mentioned Halliburton is one of the best in the world.

Which is why I said not necessarily because of their merit, but because everything was no-bid, did they get the contracts. If it had been based on merit, it may not have been Halliburton. We may never know. It just seems convenient that Halliburton is the most qualified company in the world to do these things, while being the former employer of the VP, as well as a pretty hefty campaign contributor.

but because of no-bid contracts that were awarded. It just so happens that those no-bid contracts went to oil companies that also have strong political ties with those in power. Is it pretty easy to see the pattern and discern what happened? Certainly. Is it 100% airtight factual that this is what occured? Certainly not. But one can read between the lines, as it were. If you're content to take things as told, then of course you'll think this is all bullocks. But some people don't do that.

Its sill nothing more than assumptions and fallacies. Correlation does not equal caussation. Unless some one can provide proof of a conspiracy i have no personal interest in believing such.

As I said, those that wish to take things as they're told will see bullocks. Those that don't, and it's not conspiracy or whatever but merely an example of good politics, i.e. you wash my back I'll wash yours, etc, will question.

If a senator gets $100K campaign financing from an industry, and then introduces legislation to allow that industry to do a certain type of business in his/her state, is it provable that this was a case of political back washing? No. Is it simple to see what has occurred and make a judgment based on that? Certainly.

Ok. I thought you were saying that I was making the assertion that the US government would benefit from this. Is that the case?

You have been careful not to say what you believe personally. I haven't stated you believe this personally. I do not see why you are so quick to jump on matters.

I haven't been careful about anything, , I'm just writing.

I don't believe the US government as a body has any gain by this endeavour other than taking out a despot who could have potentially threatened us in some nebulous future, which is why I never made that assertion. Which is why I was confused as to your question which seemed as if you were questioning why I would make such an assertion when in fact I never did.

The first gulf war was started for oil control. Saddam attacked Kuwait to gain control over their oil fields, and we attacked Saddam to keep it out of his hands. That much is historical fact.

No quite. We didn't control the oil afterwards IIRC. The largest contributors and buyers of Iraqi oil have been Europeans/Japanese as of late. IIRC TFE was one of the involved oil producing companies.

Legion, it was never about direct control. In 1990, Saddam Hussein's chem-bio arsenal and military was so strong that he could have taken over the middle east if he wasn't stopped. If he had done so, he would have had the world by the balls. Stopping Hussein in the gulf war was indeed about containing him within his country and making sure control over the world's oil supply did not fall into his hands. You're missing this point. It was never about the US laying claim on the oil fields itself. Control doesn't have to be about the US actually controlling it directly. Just making sure that certain interests do not control it, thereby influencing the US's geopolitical stake.

The intent was to remove Saddam Hussein. As for the authenticity of these memos, I'm assuming TIME and Newsweek have ways of vetting information to make sure they're not getting quack info.

Why did they want to remove Hussein?

There are various reasons that would be enough to start their own thread if delved in detail.

Geopolitics, re: Oil control in order to ease our reliance on OPEC, Creating a democratic nation state in the middle of the middle east, and showing the rest of the dictatorial/theocratic regimes that they're not safe anymore.

Attempt to assassinate a former US president.

And waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down the list: Atrocities against his people.

 

[Natoma]

Note that I don't believe this war was about oil.

In a sense it is, in that a militarily strong Iraq under Saddam Hussein would be a significant threat to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait which is where we get a lot of our oil.

If the Middle East didn't have such high oil reserves it wouldn't be center stage, and Middle Eastern terrorist organizations wouldn't have the funding they require to be a global threat. So, in that sense, it's all about oil.

Agreed. That's why Gulf War I happened.

 

[RussSchultz]

American companies were given the rights to produce oil, not necessarily because of their merit in doing so, but because of no-bid contracts that were awarded. It just so happens that those no-bid contracts went to oil companies that also have strong political ties with those in power.

I don't think you are correct.

Halliburton, et al. were not given any rights to produce oil in a no bid contract.

They were awarded contracts for all sorts of stuff, mostly centered around rebuilding infrastructure (oil refineries, included). They, themselves, have no rights to any oil, for any oil pumped. They're contracted to rebuild buildings, pipelines, etc.

 

[digitalwanderer]

You're all wrong.


This was not a war for oil, this was a holy crusade to bring Jebus to the world and the first step in the building of the American Empire.


Thank you, please go back to your petty arguments. 8)

 

[zidane1strife]

And the means to undo the constitution are already in motion!!!! REX-84, and it is said the US shall be come the new empire!!!

 

[Natoma]

American companies were given the rights to produce oil, not necessarily because of their merit in doing so, but because of no-bid contracts that were awarded. It just so happens that those no-bid contracts went to oil companies that also have strong political ties with those in power.

I don't think you are correct.

Halliburton, et al. were not given any rights to produce oil in a no bid contract.

They were awarded contracts for all sorts of stuff, mostly centered around rebuilding infrastructure (oil refineries, included). They, themselves, have no rights to any oil, for any oil pumped. They're contracted to rebuild buildings, pipelines, etc.

NYTimes

Only now, over five weeks after the contract was first disclosed, are members of Congress and the public learning that Halliburton may be asked to pump and distribute Iraqi oil under the contract.

I remembered reading about this last year. Took me a while to find it again. I've been trying to find followup articles on this, but I haven't been able to thus far.

 

[Fred]

I can't believe some people still adhere to this universally disqualified view.

Even the history proffessors at my University (who are about as close to maoists as you can get) have gone on record saying this was a myth.

Iraqi oil was supposed to help cover some of the costs of war, it was NEVER accepted that it would cover all of it, or end up being profitable for the US in any forseeable future.

Claiming the first gulf war was about oil, is also silly. It was one strategic factors amongst many others, the primary academic reason of course was the elusive domino theory and the outrage of an outright invasion of that magnitude in modern times. Sure Kuwait outputs a lot of oil, we also don't use them very much in terms of percentages, and we have never made up the cost of war from energy sectors.

Democrats have so many good arguments against the Bush administration, it irratates me to all hell that they have to ruin their credibility by going out and making up these fantasy conspiracy fairytales.

Years from now, videos and documents will come out with the actual minutes of administration meetings. And everyone will see that, no, this isn't like a Simpsons episode where the evil white balding men meet and discuss Orwellian schemes to conquer the world. Its just a bunch of people (many who have been there for years regardless of administration changes) who are highly educated outputing reasonable policy suggestions.

 

[RussSchultz]

Again...no rights to the oil.

They're simply contracted to perform a service.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Again...no rights to the oil.

They're simply contracted to perform a service.

At whatever rate they happen to feel is fair and just...

 

[Natoma]

http://www.house.gov/schakowsky/iraqquotes_web.htm

I don't believe that the United States has the responsibility for reconstruction, in a sense…[Reconstruction] funds can come from those various sources I mentioned: frozen assets, oil revenues and a variety of other things, including the Oil for Food, which has a very substantial number of billions of dollars in it.

On the resource side, Iraq itself will rightly shoulder much of the responsibilities. Among the sources of revenue available are $1.7 billion in invested Iraqi assets, the found assets in Iraq…and unallocated oil-for-food money that will be deposited in the development fund.

There’s a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be U.S. taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people…and on a rough recollection, the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years…We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon

Well, the Office of Management and Budget, has come up come up with a number that's something under $50 billion for the cost. How much of that would be the U.S. burden, and how much would be other countries, is an open question.

Well, the reconstruction costs remain a very -- an issue for the future. And Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is a rather wealthy country. Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction.

Considering they were projecting around $50 Billion for the war and $50 to $100 Billion from oil receipts alone, as well as saying that they didn't think the american public would have to shoulder the burden of reconstructing Iraq, I think you're incorrect Fred. There was definitely the premise that Iraq's oil would indeed pay for this war.

The domino theory that you suggest fails in the fact that it only works if you topple a middle eastern government and establish a democracy, which of course was not Stormin Norman's mission objective.

I'm not sure who's disqualified this considering the facts on record Fred, but I'd be interested in reading some articles if you have any to provide.

[EDIT]

At the time of the Iraq invasion of Kuwait in 1990, we were importing roughly 9% of our oil from them. Today it stands at 11%. Considering the proximity to Saudi Arabia, Saddam's actions were certainly a danger to our economic security.

Also, I doubt that we could have been too shocked at Saddam invading another country in that we had to act on that as one of the factors, considering we stood idly by while he gassed the Iranians throughout the 80s. I really don't think it could have been for humanitarian purposes considering Saddam's ugly past and our nasty habit of looking the other way.

[/EDIT]

 

[RussSchultz]

Again...no rights to the oil.

They're simply contracted to perform a service.

At whatever rate they happen to feel is fair and just...

No, at whatever rate the GAO happens to feel is fair and just.