Soldier butchered in street in Woolwich

[Kirkland Laing]

You can pretend that the Iraq war was all about Oil but that is a gross over simplification and misrepresentation of a conflict prompted by much more than that and at it's heart represented a universalism and willingness to stand alongside others who wished for nothing more than the opportunity to aspire to liberal ideals.

There's no pretend about it. Iraq was entirely down to it having the world's second-largest oil reserve under its sands.

Five countries in the Arabian desert have more thanhalf the world's easily recoverable oil. If it was five coutries around the Sahara desert then a quater of America's foreign firepower would be clustered round those countries, America would be propping up those dictatorships and anytime one of those dictators fell out with America they'd become a credible threat to the national security of the United States.


It's not just a crazy leftie like me who thinks the Iraq war was all about oil. The current US Secretary of Defence thinks it was. The former Chairman of the Federal Reserve thinks it was. And the former top US General running the occupation in Iraq thinks it was.


Hagel: War for Oil | The Weekly Standard


Just clivk and listen for a couple of minutes, it's cued up right to the rlevant bit : EDIT : it is now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sd2JseupXQ&t=21m45s

And in a few years when oil hits two or four hundred dollars a barrel and fucks advanced economies up and countries start threatening each other over supplies it'll become crystal clear to everybody just why we went into Iraq. Almost everybody.