Let the feasting begin...

[fumetti]

Bush cooked the intelligence. He (em)broiled Iraq in war. He whipped up a half-baked Iraqi replacement government as an appetizer. And now, the REAL feasting will begin.

American and British oil corporations will be meeting this week to carve up the 200 billion turkey Bush has served them.
http://www.thelondonline.co.uk/theline/article.php?articleID=437

Freedom isn't free, y'know.

Conservatives have long argued that economic freedom and political freedom are intricately linked. There is a world of truth to this. So it's hard to reconcile how America is bringing freedom to Iraq when Bush is so clearly setting Iraq up as a colony for US/UK oil corporations. It's a sleazy Clintonian lie to say the oil belongs to Iraqis when foreigners control the contracts.

What pisses me off the most, though, is that--regarding American corporations--this gift Bush is giving them is a total freebie. The big energy corporations rarely pay much in federal taxes and not a single share holder is over there carrying a rifle, but they will rake in many billions of dollars from Iraqi oil profits without ever footing the $200+ billion cost of this war.

Working Americans are paying for this, and all they're getting in return are dead relatives and high gas prices.

Evil bastards.

[Drew Van T.]

It's a sleazy Clintonian lie to say the oil belongs to Iraqis when foreigners control the contracts.

On the upside, it's going to last only for as long as US troops are kept there. Once they leave, it doesn't look like there's going be any pliable client regime left to enforce the oil deal that US/UK corporations want to maintain. Either democracy or an armed uprising will see to that.

[fumetti]

On the upside, it's going to last only for as long as US troops are kept there.

Which means we'll NEVER EVER leave.

Bush didn't topple Saddam to pave the way for political reforms (that's just too close using rich folks' tax money for unprofitable Iraqi welfare). He knocked down the barrier preventing US energy corporations from cashing in on all that Iraqi oil. It's the entire motivation for the invasion.

[Steven Grant]

It wasn't the entire reason. They also wanted a permanent US military presence in the Middle East, just as part of the point of Vietnam was a permanent US military presence in Southeast Asia.

Which is another reason they're unwilling to announce an exit strategy, and, as the Downing Street memos record, never intended one.