WMDs, maybe. Oil, for sure. - 7.16.03
Yellow-cake
The media is a-buzz about the whole yellow-cake scandal. Did Pres. Bush know the 'intelligence' about the alleged uranium smuggling was bogus? Should he have known? Was our esteemed leader misled by the CIA? Can we blame it on the British? Or maybe the French?
Could we please get real? The threshold question is whether the Bush dynasty long ago set its sights on domination of Iraq. It seems likely that they did. Does anybody really believe that the decision of whether to invade Iraq or not depended upon some African uranium ore? I don't. I think it was about the oil.
Who could blame the CIA for believing that, in the State of the Union Address, the president was merely selling a decision that had been made long ago? Let's reflect for a moment on what the CIA does...it ain't exactly the search for truth and beauty. Spreading convenient lies is just as much a part of intelligence activity as finding out the secrets of others. Why spread convenient lies? To influence policy, for one thing.
Now that we're past that, let's look at the core question - whether we want America to project its military power aggressively throughout the world in pursuit of political and economic domination, or whether our military is for defense. I lean toward a defensive posture, but I'll admit there are valid arguments for both positions.
What we need is a half-way honest public debate. First, we're not in Iraq because there's uranium in Africa. We're in Iraq because there's a whole lot of oil there.
Oil -> wealth -> power.
Perhaps it simply wasn't acceptable for US interests to allow the Baathist regime to get the wealth and power that all that Iraqi oil could bring. Then say so, and propose a reasonable plan to remedy the situation. Develop some reasonable amount of international agreement and participation in support of the plan.
Instead, the current administration has thrust America into a very Vietnam-like situation, with daily casualties, a $3.9b/month 'burn rate', very little international support and no end in site - a remote war in a hostile, violent land, with the rest of the world looking on, cheering for our humiliation. Yellow-cake pales by comparison.
