Quoth President Bush, in a speech yesterday:
If Zarqawi and bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks; they’d seize oil fields to fund their ambitions; they could recruit more terrorists by claiming an historic victory over the United States and our coalition.
Presumably, Bush apologists throughout the nation will be penning notes to war opponents admitting their error, first thing in the morning.
This is pretty obviously a huge stategic resource, but that resource was not in danger of falling into the hands of Bin Laden or Zarqawi prior to the invasion. Even if the war was started in an effort to protect that resource, that would not have been so terrible, but that was not the justification for invasion. It is a good justification for staying the course, but to make that argument without admitting complicity in creating the environment where terrorist control of those fields is a concern . . . well, it is the typical theadbare dishonesty that Bush was supposed to be pushing out of the White House when first elected. Further, it is our own dependence on that resource that makes it an asset to the terrorists, so why isn’t it part of the War on Terror to decrease dependence? What scares me about this comment is that the Iraqis will likely never be able to defend those fields from terrorist attacks. This is really a justification for a long term involvement similar to our defense of South Korea. Of course, any long term base would be a huge target for terror attacks and with reprisals and incursions occuring intermittently this would be the road to neverending war.
Posted by Jeff Baker on 31 August 2005 @ 11pm
I remember seeing the following from an article about Bush #41 many years ago:
Bush + Oil = War
Oil + War = Bush
War + Bush = Oil
Does seem to run in the family, huh.
I think this is the closest statement to truth Shrub has made in years, but he had to ‘gussy it up’ with the wrapper about ‘training grounds and site security’ instead of saying “Its about the Oil, ya Turdblossom”.
Anyone know if construction of the pipeline thru Afghanistan has started yet?
Posted by DanglingChad on 1 September 2005 @ 11am
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